ALC Game #7: Frederick/Germany

[Eqqman]

Good job on getting up to 1000 BC! I'm sure after that hard work '...do what I wanted' comes as a relief .

It's just as well that the Copper is in out-of-the-way spots. If it had been closer, you'd have been tempted to build a Mine on it with no Worker-turn surplus left for it. Since 1000 BC is a little late for an 'early' war and you already have Chariots, it's best to get right to Iron Working and fight the first war with Swords. Trying to get Copper hooked up for Axemen wouldn't help much.

It's a shame that Montezuma founded Buddhism. On the plus side Kublai looks like he's totally buried in the jungle so that should slow him down. The downside here is that with two Creative neighbors and your 'slow' opening war, you'll be facing 40% culture or more and the defenders will start to be more advanced than Archers. So you might be right in thinking that Catapults are going to be a requirement for your first fight.

You're certainly right that the AIs will be tripping over themselves to get Metal Casting off you. I wouldn't go too nuts trading for the cheap techs- doing a better job of avoiding WFYABTA is something I'm still learning to manage. You might try cleaning out Cyrus for what he's worth shortly before you attack him, then do the same with Kublai and so forth.

Planning out the tech tree is going to be tricky. Literature has to be quick for the Great Library. Banking for mercantilism. We're recommended to try and pick up Astronomy via Liberalism. Education of course for Oxford. I'm not exactly sure where we're supposed to slip in the military techs. They may have to be traded for until we can get an advantage from Grenadiers. Since we may be the only ones on our block with War Elephants they'll have to last for a while... and since the WE is going to be just as good as Pikemen vs Keshiks, the war against Kublai will probably rely a lot on those backed up by the City Raider veterans of the Cyrus war.

 

[Sisiutil]

Yeah, once I got the forge completed and the engineer assigned, I realized that the game was entirely mine once again. Wheeee!!

I don't think Monty founding Buddhism is so bad. As I said, I'm hoping for it to spread to my cities so I can convert and keep him happy with my while I take out the other two. I find founding and especially spreading my own religion to be a distraction from more worthwhile pursuits.

What's "WFYABTA"?

VoU, I see you've added your vote to Eggman's for making Hamburg the science city and GP farm. One tricky thing with it is that it will need several health improvements to grow its population properly. I'd rather not chop its two remaining forests to build the GL and lose their health bonus. It occurs to me that the proposed city 5W of Berlin would have had two more floodplains and no forests after chopping its only two for the forge, so health would have been an even bigger headache there.

On the other side of the coin, with gold, early access to forges, ivory, wine and silver within reach, happiness will not be too much a problem early on.

I am going to make a couple of minor changes right off the bat. I have a Combat I/Shock Chariot in Cologne, which is the city least likely to come under attack, so I'm going to swap him with the 1 XP Chariot currently in Hamburg. I'm also going to reassign the shared horse tile to be worked by Hamburg. It has a forge and will therefore get more out of the extra hammers.

In terms of research, I think I'm going to have to balance the techs needed for a specialist economy against those needed for military. Since several people have mentioned how a specialist economy lends itself to warring, this doesn't strike me as unusual, but I will appreciate tips, suggestions, and guidance.

I'll play the next round later today, after more feedback, and post it tonight.

 

[Eqqman]

I don't think Monty founding Buddhism is so bad...

What's "WFYABTA"?

My Buddhism concern is more along the lines of, since your two northern opponents are already sharing a religion you don't have, they are earning religious diplo points. So you are going to have a harder time trying to persuade Monty to attack Kublai instead of you than you would otherwise.

WFYABTA is the inappropriately named 'We fear you are becoming too advanced'. It should really be called 'We're just tired of trading with you.' The former makes it seem like the AI is actually gauging your progress and trying to slow you down. This is partly true, since when your score becomes significantly higher than the AI's it does factor into play. But really the largest factor is that each AI will only trade so many techs with you and no more. And this has nothing to do with beaker count- so for the purposes of WFYABTA Archery counts the same as Artillery.

I used to do the intuitive, naive trading- be the first to Alphabet and hawk that around for everything I could get. Then I'd be stuck mid-game trying to trade for important things like Guilds, Banking, Currency, or Optics. I recently won my last Monarch game because I'd learned to wise up and not take everything they offer. Saladin was willing to trade tech with me throughout the entire game so I was able to make a game winning trade of giving him Electricity and Radio for Artillery (a total rip-off, but this was game-winning). If I'd run into WFYABTA with him I'd have added a huge amount of time to my eventual victory.

You mentioned trading for Archery, Monotheism, and Horse Back Riding. Archery and HBR aren't going to be needed for quite a while, if ever. Maybe you can slowly acquire them as techs used to 'make change' when you make a more important deal. Or just wait until your science is up high enough that you can do them in 1-2 turns yourself. I don't know what Monotheism is going to be useful for. Maybe you were thinking of Monarchy, to get the Wine? With the happiness from representation and the other luxuries already close by getting the Wine going can come much later than you might otherwise be forced to shoot for. Plenty of stuff comes into play in trying to avoid the WFYABTA message, but the only rule of thumb you really need to bother worrying about is, stop trading for techs that just aren't that important/urgent.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

VoU, I see you've added your vote to Eggman's for making Hamburg the science city and GP farm. One tricky thing with it is that it will need several health improvements to grow its population properly. I'd rather not chop its two remaining forests to build the GL and lose their health bonus.

Well, you are pulling in 10 engineer points per turn - there's a decent chance that you can rush it. If your GP generators were to remain as they are, you'd get a GE as your next GP 20 turns from now (Hamburg would pass Berlin again).

But part of the point of this start is to get the specialist economy going. Which means libraries and scientists. GP are determined by the ratio of source turns, not the ratio of GP points, so running two scientists in Hamburg more than doubles your GP rate while keeping your chances of scoring an Engineer at 50%. It's not a great trade off, as you don't need the GE sooner, you just need him at all, but it should give you two or three cracks at the apple before you need it.

The tricky build will be getting the National Epic in there. You may need to resort to the whip to get the hammers. Or turn off a couple specialists and work the desert hills for a while. Go get some marble.


BTW: I'm impressed by 1000 BC - I've been screwing around with a Saladin start that looks promising, and my best is whatever turn is after 925 (I'm deliberately adding the handicap of no prechopping, but I think I just realized that I misunderstood how the obelisk and barracks are used).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Hamburg does look like the best Specialist City.. short/mid term.. it has the Rice and 3 Floodplains.

Longterm, it probably is too, it has 5 regular grasslands, and has some OK production spots that can be worked.

I'd say let it build a Library, get to 3 Specialists, (2 Scientists and an Engineer)
Start building N.Ep. as soon as you can and Rush GL when you get an Engineer

Assuming the Library takes ~10 turns your GPP wil be ~100
then you switch to full specialists, and you get the next 2 GP (total cost =500) within 20 turns... that should be a bit after the time you get Alphabet... earlier because of the Library....you can then Rush the Great Library and Start building National Epic, because you should get a Third GP sometime after Literature... One of those three should be another GE.

Extra Engineers that you get can even be Settled if there are no useful Wonders to get [Side note: big advantage of Engineer Wonders being they can go wherever you want] But a Settled Represented Engineer still gives 6 Flasks. (and 3 hammers, helping to build things like National Epic, Universities, Oxford)


Settling on the Stone seems like a bad idea, that city would not have good production early on, and I think the tile 1 W of the Stone would allow it to have some decent Early production. (unless you want to Rush for Stonehenge with it)

Otherwise start gearing up for War Production everywhere else.

 

[Gnarfflinger]

Yes, you have your pyramids, not kick someone's ass. I vote Cyrus first. Once you get your Iron up, build your mixed force and Git'R'Done!

 

[NaZdReG]

damn this thread is starting to give me a headache!! well good job on performing the MC/P sling you did it well (pulling off the forge intime despite the mistake was great) the technical nature of the specialist econ does make it a tougher game than normal but you're doing fine. as far as upcoming war.. I would definately pursue construction asap.. but do remember that you'll need to get COL asap to really maximize what you can do with the specialist econ.

your 2nd GE definately should go to the library if you can.. will put you seriously ahead in tech for quite a long time. just remember that you'll have 1science city with the library, academy, 2 more scientists, and then settled ones.. then 2 scientists in every other city.

because of the need to use soo much pop for science, you won't be able to really use whipping, instead shoot for calendar when you can to take advantage of the happy's around you.. and start switching from science to culture so you can increase happiness... more happy = more pop to really dominate w/ a specialist econ.

even still I'd recommend settling west for the 2 gold and copper, and or settling near that other source of iron. preventing the ai from getting it.

while the specialist econ does rock.. i'd still either work the happiness resources (the patches of die or silks) so that you have a little more commerce to pay for upkeep and move your culture slider up. it will be helpful!!!

gonna keep following this to see how it turns out, best of luck sisuitil!!

back to warlords for me

NaZ

 

[Sisiutil]

Round 4: to 25 AD

This round was mostly about building up.

My Scout continued exploring the north around Aztec territory. He found a source of marble, but unfortunately, it's WAAAAAAY up north in Aztec territory.

I finished researching writing and made the diplomatic rounds:

I got Open Borders agreements with all three known civs. Anything, at this point, to improve relations and possibly lead to the spread of Buddhism. Since barb military units are also starting to appear, it meant my Scout could survive by ducking into "friendly" territory when needed.

I finished another Chariot in Berlin and sent him on a recon mission through Persian territory. It turns out that Cyrus has built Stonehenge in his capital! Check the hill just east of the city:

I also founded my fifth city:

I decided to take an earlier suggestion by Jet regarding its location, as well as making this the science city and GP farm. Once I take out Cyrus, this will be a very secure location. It has a fresh water bonus, a food resource, extra production and defense built-in, 7 riverside grasslands and 5 riverside plains, a grassland hill, and a plains hill.

I also, based on previous experience (especially the Mao ALC game), I wanted to keep my GP production in each city as "pure" as possible. So the majority of my GPs from this point on should be Great Scientists, though I may still get a few Great Engineers out of Hamburg. I'm certainly going to try to build a couple of GE wonders there, like the Hanging Gardens, though the lack of production tiles may not help.

Once the iron mine came on-line, my cities shifted into war preparations, building barracks, then Combat I Axemen for city defense, then Swordsmen for city attack. The rally point for the units was Hamburg. I'm anticipating an L-shaped, northwest-to-southeast sweep through Persia.

I had to take some time out of the military build-up to start building libraries, though, to further lay the groundwork for the specialist economy. Hamburg got its first. I stagnated this city's growth for awhile to avoid health problems, but once I got Cologne's clams and Frankfurt's crabs available, I was able to grow it a little further.

My next GP was, as expected, a Great Engineer:

Hey, you won't hear me complaining. I sent him to Frankfurt in anticipation of researching Literature after Alphabet so I could use him for the Great Library--especially since I have no marble.

Once I had Alphabet, Monty showed up and demanded I give him Polytheism. Wanting to keep him happy for now, I complied. I then decided to see what I could get from him and wasn't too disappointed:

That, so far, is the only tech trade I've made, mainly because trading with Cyrus or Kublai would have been very unbalanced in their favour--Metal Casting for Monotheism, for example. Forget that noise.

But I should be able to keep up in tech. Once I finished researching Literature, I put that GE to good use:

So Frankfurt is now the Science city. I built a Granary there to get its population growing quickly.

My next Great Person came out of Hamburg and was also a Great Engineer! I'd been hoping for that and had tried to rig it by juggling specialists, but I could only run one engineer and at times ran 2 scientists, so it was never certain. I briefly contemplated using the GE for the Parthenon, but decided against it. For the rest of the game, I'll want as many Great Scientists out of Frankfurt as I can get, and the best way to guarantee that is with the National Epic, not the Parthenon.

So that's where Heron went, and that's what I used him for. I mean, look at how many turns the NE would have taken without him. Granted, the only tile iwth hammers being worked was the city itself, but still:

Shortly after this, I had enough of a stack put together (5 Swords, 1 Axe, 1 Spear) to go after Cyrus, who was nipping at my heels in terms of score, population, and research the whole round. He even managed to beat me to Code of Laws and founded Confucianism, to which he converted. (Arbella became the holy city, but in spite of that, Cyrus' creative trait, and Stonehenge, it's having no luck claiming tiles from Frankfurt with its Library, GL, and NE. Heh heh heh...)

First off, I went to see Cyrus to see if I could squeeze him for something, since I was slightly ahead of him in terms of power. City maintenance was still low, you see, so I had diverted research towards Construction rather than Code of Laws. I managed to get Sailing from him, gratis. Then I wasted no time:

This reminds me of the previous ALC (Louis), when I took tribute from Isabella right before declaring war on her. As I said then, I did not do this in Civ IV for the longest time because in Civ II, doing this earned you the emnity of other civs. That doesn't seem to be the case any more in Civ IV, so what the heck. The advantage is that I don't necessarily have to pause for peace to extort some techs.

My stack is currently parked outside of Susa, which is just northwest of Hamburg:

Granted, Susa has a 40% defense bonus, but 5 Swords ought to be able to handle it, especially since that Axe only has a City Raider promotion and the Archers have none. I should be able to take Susa and lose 1 to 3 Swords in the process. Most of my cities are now building Catapults (and 1 War Elephant) to augment the stack. Since I'm going up against two Creative leaders, I wanted to get Catapults available soon, and the high defense bonus here seems to validate that decision.

Should I keep Susa? I'm awfully tempted. It's well-positioned to get the second iron tile, both gold mines, and to work two more floodplains which I can farm in order to work the gold mines. I'll shortly be able to build courthouses now to offset maintenance costs. If I don't keep it, given its proximity to Kublai, he'll likely swoop in there and build a city to claim the territory. I'll also likely be keeping Persopolis, though, and Arbella, the Confucian holy city. Even so, keeping Susa seems the best course.

My stack would then sweep south. The nice thing is that given the way my territory is parallel to Persia's, it will be easy to reinforce the stack. The bad news is that makes it very easy for Cyrus to counter-attack. He had a couple of Axemen just west of Frankfurt, guarding his silver mine, but they've vanished--I suspect he'll use them to reinforce the defense of one of his cities, but I can't rely on that. I plan on shifting a couple more units down to Frankfurt to protect it--probably the Axe from Cologne, and maybe I'll build an Archer as well. I do like the idea with a specialist economy that the AI's usual predilection for pillaging will not do it nearly as much good as if there were cottages everywhere.

Here's a look at the southern half of my continent in 25 AD:

And, just for interest's sake, the northern half:

I am just starting to shift to a specialist economy; the slider is at 20%, yet still maintaining a decent amount of research. In fact, I went from 70% research and a -6 GPT deficit to 20% research and a +15 GPT surplus without losing a turn for researching CoL. I have libraries in most of my cities and am starting to shift the population to scientists as the cities grow. Most of the resources are hooked up, so my Workers are mainly building farms and roads.

Neverthelss, I keep reminding myself that this is the first time I've run a specialist economy. So I'm going to follow up this post with another one a little later today, showing screen shots of every city to get input on how I'm managing this particular strategy (among other things).

The saved game file is below.

 

[Quotey]

Yeah, keep Susa. The Gold will be great once the SE gets up and running. I tried an SE (On Quick Warlord, had little time) and it worked out amazing. Great change. Also, it says 'Round 4: To 50 BC' instead of to '25 AD'.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well I'd keep Susa, and Tarsus as well (you are running at +15 right now and will get some good capture gold)... Throw in Pasagardae as well (6 pop means it will be pretty easy to whip a courthouse and that is prime Real estate... you don't want to raze whatever buildings he may have there, and 6 pop is a definite time advantage in development)

All of those cities are well positioned, and you will have CoL soon enough

Tarsus and Susa can fairly easily pay for themselves (Tarsus with water commerce, Susa with Gold)


Yeah, I'd take him and Not raze anything


One final tactical consideration.... you are attacking an Axe with Swordsmen?... It would probably be better to use your Axeman in the Attacking Stack to hit them, but I'm guessing he's defensive

If you hit Susa with a Swordsman (assuming they are CR I), your odds are
6 v. 5 (+50melee +40 city +25 fort -20CR -10 sw)=9.25

You can take Susa, but you will have to stop while you replenish your Swords... and I'd include some CR Axes for this circumstance in another city AND get your Cats ready.

(of course the alternative is to wait for the Cats, so basically it is just taking Susa because you can, since you will have to wait to take city 2 no mater what you do). After you get CoL I would concentrate on Production rather than Scientist specialists everywhere but Frankfurt.

 

[Eqqman]

I think we can see how helpful SE can be in the early stages of the game. Regardless of how many turns you actually spent working on it, your screenshot shows that you now have the science output to handle Code of Laws in 6 turns. That seems pretty good (but not great, we were shooting for 5 turns). Something to think about is your temptation to fiddle with the science slider. I'm guessing that the 20% you discussed is the highest you can have it without running a deficit, which is an entirely instinctual move. I would abandon this instinct and drop the slider down to 0% and leave it there, probably for the rest of the game. You'll be tempted to raise this up to try and shave a turn or two off of tech research, but instead to make this adjustment you should be increasing your specialists. We want to squeeze every gold deutschemark we can out of our commerce, both for the maintenance we'll be racking up and to save for unit upgrades. If we're not running a deficit for prolonged periods then you can start by upgrading the Chariots (if they turn into War Elephants) or starting to save up for your Macemen upgrades that might come in the next 500 years or so. Commerce should be going 100% into gold production until we need to raise the culture slider to fight unhappiness.

It's a tough call for me on making a 3rd GE over the first GS. With Great Library out, we now need an Academy ASAP.

One thought on the war plan. Some people have complained that it's impossible to get the AI to agree to give up a city in peace talks. To a large extent this is true. I've found the only circumstance I've been able to get a city is when the proffered town has been cut off culturally from the rest of the AI's empire. Not only that, in these situations it's even been my opponent's idea to give up the city! So, if you attack Susa and swing south, Cyrus might be willing to part with Tarsus without a fight. As the fighting goes on, check every round to see if he'll part with it as you head towards the doorstep of his final city in the south. If he never does, no big deal, just crush it later at the end of the war when you want troops to be handy in that area to face Kublai anyway.

 

[Sisiutil]

Yeah, keep Susa. The Gold will be great once the SE gets up and running. I tried an SE (On Quick Warlord, had little time) and it worked out amazing. Great change. Also, it says 'Round 4: To 50 BC' instead of to '25 AD'.

Fixed.

I haven't been whipping much since the Pyramids got built, so I think I should also switch to Caste System as soon as CoL makes it available.

Krikkitone, I got kind of blind-sided by the Axe in Susa. Last time I checked, he only had a couple of Archers there. But that's a good suggestion, Cyrus has a few Axes running around, so I will build a few CR Axes to counter them, and lots of Catapults too. I may wait for a Catapult or two before taking Susa, given how lousy the odds are. I could see losing almost every unit to that Axe.

I noticed, though, that there is a worker on the silver hill just within reach of Frankfurt's Chariot. I may snatch him away.

And looking at the map, every one of Cyrus's cities is, indeed, desireable and in a good location. I don't think I'll be razing anything, so I'm going to have to build plenty of city defenders along with my offensive units.

Now for the run-through of each city so everyone can comment on how the specialist economy (among other things) is coming along.

First up, the capital, Berlin:

I haven't seen any mounted opposition units so far, so I will probably get rid of that Spearman in the queue and build a CR Axe, as suggested. At 9/6 on both happiness and health, Berlin has plenty of room for growth. I may move a citizen from one of its plains farms to that grassland farm to encourage just that. It has its library and one science specialist, but it occurs to me that I haven't taken advantage of the early discovery of Metal Casting yet. Specifically, I haven't built forges anywhere but Hamburg.

Well, I've had other priorities: getting cities founded, the libraries built, and a military up and running. But a forge for Berlin is definitely in the plans for the near future--once I have enough units in the field. Berlin may wind up being the military city in this game.

Now for Hamburg:

As you can see, I've had to watch Hamburg's health carefully. The addition of each health resource has allowed me to increment its population, but then I've had to stagnate it. This is why, after it finishes that Catapult, it's going to build an Aqueduct. After that, I'd like to have a go at the Hanging Gardens. All my cities--Hamburg in particular--will benefit from the health boost, the specialist economy should benefit from the population boost, and who knows, I may get another GE out of it.

On to Munich:

I must confess, I haven't given Munich much thought. It's just a good, productive, non-specialized city. It will benefit a great deal from Calendar and a plantation on that banana tile; Civil Service will also irrigate the rice and help its growth and # of specialists further. So those are priority techs.

Munich could also benefit from a Forge, and a Granary, but I've had to keep it building units thus far. I'll have to sneak those in when I can.

Cologne:

Cologne, thanks to its iron mine and ivory camp, is my #1 production city (by 1 hammer). I'd like to put a Forge here soon, but the library is next--I have enough extra food to run a specialist here.

But a forge would be good too, and maybe I should swap it into the queue. My thinking is that with two coastal cities, each with a food resource--and more to come once I capture all those Persian cities--the Colossus may make sense as a wonder to pursue. I'd like to have copper accessible first. Fortunately, Persepolis has some. How convenient.

Finally, Frankfurt:

In 3 turns, when Frankfurt's population grows, I should be able to add a 2nd allocated scientist. That would raise the city's GP production from 36 points per turn to 45. It currently has 266/400 GP points. In contrast, Berlin has 320/400 and is producing 10 GP points per turn; Hamburg has 38/400 and is producing 22 per turn. Either way, my next GP should be a Great Scientist from Frankfurt in 4 turns. So I think I'll assign the city's next citizen to the mine to help production.

It occurs to me that having this city build a barracks is a mistake. I think I threw it in there for lack of anything better. But now that I have Sailing, I think a Lighthouse would be a much better build. So I will probably switch that when I get back to the game.

I must confess that using that 3rd GE for the National Epic in Frankfurt, rather than building the Parthenon, was based entirely on the idea of running a specialist economy. Normally, like most players, I rely on commerce (through cottages and science and commerce multipliers) to take care of research. In that situation, I probably would have gone for the Parthenon to balance out the GP production in my various cities.

In this game, however, I'm relying on specialists for research, which means I want as many Great Scientists as possible. So it made sense to rush the Great Library and then the National Epic to make that possible, especially since I'm not going to have access to marble for quite some time.

 

[Eqqman]

It might make sense to prioritize units over Forges until you get Forge happiness resources.

Frankfurt's only purpose in life is to run as many specialists as you can squeeze into it. After making the Lighthouse I would get that second scientist up ASAP and not care if you ever finish the Barracks. Really if you can spare the food I would work the second scientist now. We really need that Academy in Frankfurt. Since you already have so many hammers in the Barracks, you might as well finish it eventually. But start on the Aqueduct and Colesseum before making units. We want growth in this city to be as unlimited as we can make it, and running specialists over working hammers it will take longer to finish these things, so it will help to start them well before we really need them.

Colossus is a nice, but commerce-increasing Wonder. Since we are not focusing on (but perhaps not entirely ignoring) commerce this Wonder is very low priority. I would certainly not try to build it and Hanging Gardens in different cities at the same time when we need troops. And I definitely agree with you that it perhaps unwise to start it at all without having Copper handy.

Slavery vs Caste System is a tough call. You can certainly switch too soon. Slavery benefits every city, Caste System only benefits cities that can afford to feed at least three specialists. I would continue to try and maximize your gains from slavery until you are ready to switch to Mercantilism. Now that you have Construction I would get Machinery, Civil Service, and then make Banking your number one priority. To keep up with the tech rate we have to run mercantilism as fast as possible. Obviously, look for tech trades that advance research to Banking over other avenues.

 

[pigswill]

Life in Sisiutil's shadow is different at 25ad. Went for old fashioned CoL slingshot,prophet for CS, prophet for shrine. Had my first war vs Cyrus c 500bc, took two cities, he's got 2 left. Now up to 7 cities and paying hefty city maintenance which is denting my finances. Tech wise you've got metal working and construction while I've got CoL and CS. I haven't been playing that well which hasn't helped but atm too close to call.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Frankfort? Are you kidding me? Can anybody persuade me that isn't a significant strategic error?

In Frankfort's fat cross, you have:

Four coastal tiles: in a GP farm, those might as well be desert - they can never support a specialist.

Two hills: again, they can't support a specialist. Not worthless; the ability to improve production speed is something, and the grassland hill can be a permanent home if you have odd food.

Five plains tiles: worthless until Biology, then worth half a specialist each.

One food bonus: the crabs are +3 when you get the lighthouse built.
Seven grasslands with fresh water.
One grassland without fresh water.

So you are looking at... six specialists at size 15 pre biology, 13 specialists at size 25 afterwards?

Compare this to Hamburg, which can run five specialists at size 9, without even touching any of the seven grassland tiles not including the one with the forrest that you are trying to hold onto.

Hamburg also had the upside of combining the National Epic with the engineering wonders.

Frankfort, on the other hand, was destined to be a fine shipyard (ooh, watermills!) in the modern era, and in the meantime was going to be a perfectly reasonable commerce center (harbor for trade routes, space for cottages).

I'm perplexed, is what I am. My best guess is that you spooked at the temporary health crisis.


Second thought - the Parthenon; I think it should be much more prominent in your strategy than you seem to have it right now. If you are running specialists everywhere, then a wonder that improves GPP yield everywhere is a very good thing. The artist points are an issue, so tuck it out of the way, but you'll want to have it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

One point, since in a Specxialist Economy, Commerce= Gold, then High Commerce Cities (Capital+Gold cities) should run NO specialists, and No Libraries, just Markets (especially the Capital once you start running Bureaucracy)

The main advantage of a Specialist Economy is that you only have a few cities that have anything to do with science (since Science buildings are useless unless you have Science... unlike Gold buildings which also give happiness and health)

Stick with the current level in Frankfurt until you grow, that will guarantee that you can continue growing, even if slowly (and for a building, Lighthouses, Monasteries, antything else to get more pop+Science bonus)

I wouldn't worry too much about the Forges, unless you're Industrial, the only real bonus is the Happiness and the Slavery exploit.

I'd probably wait til COL is done before going to 0% science, but I would do it at that point... it'll help you to maintain a solid empire.

Overall I'd say
1. Finish CoL

2. drop science to 0% and focus all non Science Cities on Production of units [tech towards Macemen... C.S., revolt then Machinery]

3. Save Great Prophets for Shrines... if Berlin gives you one, otherwise build the Academy and Settle other GSs and GEs in Frankfurt. [I wouldn't burn either of them for techs over time the settling will be far better]

4. once your Army seems big enough, and you are crushing the Persians, then start restoring some of the 'Secondary Science' cities.


Note, you may want to start turning Berlin into a massive Gold Center (Towns there to benefit from Bureaucracy) all other cities can be Secondary Science/Production.

 

[Eqqman]

Frankfort? Are you kidding me? Can anybody persuade me that isn't a significant strategic error?

Don't blame me, I voted for McGovern!

Aside from that, I wouldn't take any steps to boost empire-wide GPP production unless it's a side effect of efforts to boost it in the super-science city. With science specialists and settled GSs, this city should be making increasing levels of GPP that prevent any other city from generating a Great Person. While I'm not thrilled with this decision, it isn't game-breaking. The specialist econ write-up says that even late game we only need to feed 6 specialists in the super-science city, so as long as Frankfurt can handle that, we're okay at least on that score.

 

[Eqqman]

3. Save Great Prophets for Shrines... if Berlin gives you one, otherwise build the Academy and Settle other GSs and GEs in Frankfurt. [I wouldn't burn either of them for techs over time the settling will be far better]

I'm flabbergasted anybody would ever recommend settling a GE. If one pops out, then save him for Statue of Liberty since that is a key part of the late-game plans. If more than one pops out, then there's bound to be something he can build or tech-rush that gives more advantage than settling.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Aside from that, I wouldn't take any steps to boost empire-wide GPP production unless it's a side effect of efforts to boost it in the super-science city. With science specialists and settled GSs, this city should be making increasing levels of GPP that prevent any other city from generating a Great Person.

I think your math is broken here. First, the settled specialists don't generate any GP points (I think you knew that, but the sentence you wrote implies otherwise).

Second, if a specialist economy is going to have an edge, it's got to be in GP generation, and that's going to come from running GP streams in parallel (you may not, ultimately, get more GP that way; but you will get them sooner). Parthenon, Pacifism, and Caste System all fit together for this.

A specialist economy may be able to meet it's artificial targets without parallel GP creation, but I don't think it's going to beat a commerce economy to similar milestones.

Sidethought: cutting Berlin over to commerce will have the additional benefit of killing off the Prophet points. Sounds like one wonder per commerce city unless it generates the kind of points you want.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I'm flabbergasted anybody would ever recommend settling a GE. If one pops out, then save him for Statue of Liberty since that is a key part of the late-game plans.

And be certain to rename him, so that you don't forget his purpose in life.