Another form of SE? Brainstorming

[Hackapell]

With the US, I was thinking one could use it to buy infrasturcture in newly conquered cities(defensive units,theatres, courthouses,etc.). Also, I guess I forgot to mention two things in my summarizing post; one, like slavery, US is only to be used in short spells, and two, I find I use slavery less and less as I move farther into medival times; by then, most of my cities can either chop-rush or self-build. also, most of the gold to buy-rush with is coming from the GM, so excess is likley, and most of the money for buy-rushing is not coming from the merchants, but the Great Merchants.

 

[Underdawg]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=178607&highlight=saladin+cottages

Lo and behold. And in such fashion.

 

[JujuLautre]

I really not understand your point nor "Lo and behold" (not that good in english); could you enlighten me a little bit more?

 

[Alsn]

I really not understand your point nor "Lo and behold" (not that good in english); could you enlighten me a little bit more?

"Lo and behold" basically means "gather around and look at this! it's amazing!". Its used to get attention to something and would probably be considered to stem from "old" english.

Edit: I have not read the entire link that he posted but i would guess that its a game with saladin where they use merchants to generate income

 

[Martinus]

This is an interesting strategy. Some comments to people who commented (sorry, won't name the authors).

Re: Representation: You need Pyramids for that if you want to run Representation early - and if you skip Pyramids you get a lot of extra hammers. So comparing Merchant Specialists vs. Science Specialists under Representation is not always viable. Early on you can run Hereditary Monarchy and later Universal Suffrage pretty much comes at the same time as Representation (1 tech difference) so you can run US pretty much as early as Rep.

Re: Currency: Instead of Currency, beeline for CoL and run Caste System. In fact, this may be a good alternative to building Pyramids - build Oracle instead and get CoL as a Free Tech. On the plus side, you also get Courthouses this way.

 

[Martinus]

A 'classic' SE already suffers in the tech deptartment; and requires accurate lightbulbing and active trading to compare to a CE. If you are foregoing techs for money, you will compare unfavorably to both.

A pile of cash is only semi-fungible with other advantages you might want, and techs are worst.

If the above remarks seem unconvincing to you, start a game at your normal difficulty -- then open worldbuilder and give yourself 1 million gold*, and all the other civs will get the techs up to oh, say, Liberalism. Then try to win a space race. Or survive. Just getting to 1000BC will be educational.

And it gets worse! Give yourself 1 million gold -- and the AIs 20 macemen. Then try to reach 1000BC.

Piles of gold are only useful to a developed empire. In my evaluation, it is much better to be a developed empire working on cash management than a fledgling empire with piles of cash.

- O

* or even more gold - ironically, despite the intuitive feel that gold is a very linear and discrete resource, once you have a sufficiently high amount more is useless (you can't run science slider at more than 100%; nations fear you are becoming too advanced and won't sell further techs; etc.)

I think you are wrong here re cash/science deficiency. SE slows down in the end because it cannot generate enough beakers - whereas it is pretty self-sufficient when it comes to cash. By moving science-generation to commerce, and generating cash from specialists, it means this approach has the science output grow in the same way as the science output of a typical commerce economy - as it grows with the maturation of cottages.

So, if balanced right, the Merchant SE will have a better science output in late game than the Scientist SE, not the other way round.

 

[Martinus]

Also, I think it is a widely accepted conclusion that in BtS lightbulbing is going to be less useful for SE and instead settling the great people is preferable.

A settled Great Merchant generates 1 food and 6 coins, a settled Great Scientist generates 1 hammer and 6 beakers. Assuming 1 coin = 1 beaker, that's 1 food vs. 1 hammer. Since a SE rarely suffers from hammer deficiency, 1 food is much better to have than 1 hammer.

 

[xanadux]

I'm going to give this strat a try. I still only have vanilla, and think Lizzy would be a decent leader for this. It's really a hybrid economy, and phil/fin helps in both ways, and the cheaper buildings are great.

My take on this: The way to go may be to settle all those GM in the primary specialist city. The +1 food will be a great benefit ... for every 2 settled, you can afford to run another specialist. In the long run, a settled specialist will outperform any other use in most cases until about midway through the game. In addition, early in the game, you may not need the bigger windfall of a trade mission ... the merchants you are running will probably already be supporting your research.

Don't overlook a big benefit the financial leader has for this strategy ... cheap banks. This makes wall street much easier to get, and if you use the settled merchant method, wall street will be huge.

It seems CoL will need to be prioritized, as otherwise a lot of merchants will not be able to be used.

Spi/Fin could be the best trait for this. Even in a specialist economy financial is useful ... all coast squares worked give extra commerce. Financial for cheap banks is great, and will greatly help the capital and any other city that is cottaged. The benefit of being able to change civics at will may well outperform the benefit of philosophical.

I can see an extremely powerful strategy here for a spiritual/financial leader that gets an isolated start. CoL and Phil will be priorities for caste system and pacifism. If these 2 religions are founded, you will have 2 cheap temples to build for +2 happy in each city. Additionally, spiritual is to me almost as usefull as phi for a SE. Specialist cities being food rich benefit greatly from slavery. But you need caste system too. Changing civics is far too expensive to do often.

Additional benefit of spiritual for this strategy ... get the pyramids, and you can switch back and forth between representation and Universal Sufferage, turning your cash into production at key points.

 

[Alsn]

Since a SE rarely suffers from hammer deficiency, 1 food is much better to have than 1 hammer.

Not to mention the fact that 1 food is 0,5x specialist right there :>