Basic economy help

[estotro]

Hey guys,
I am a newbie at this mod and more or less at civ4 in general. I am now trying to lose what I have been told is absolutely the wrong thing to do and that is automating my workers. I was not able to find a guide that is aimed at someone who is doing this for the first time in the forum for this mod, however I found a few articles on "Cottage economy" and "Specialist economy" in the general civ4 strats forum. Do these strategies apply to this mod as well or is there a similar guide/thread that exists here?
Thank you.

 

[Bitwise]

I understand the basics, though I'm not that good at implementing them yet myself. The premise is how you generate commerce: through cottages or specialists.

A cottage economy grows moderately sized cities and uses a lot of cottages to generate commerce. The science and culture sliders are used to determine the output of the economy.

A specialist economy grows larger cities, usually with lots of farms instead of cottages and assigns specialists to generate science, culture, gold, etc. It's a bit trickier to set up but is generally less vulnerable to pillaging.

There's some debate over which is better, but I seem to notice that it's hard to set up a 'pure' economy of one type or the other, usually mixing the two to some degree. Also, in FFH2 there are some civs that have advantages in one type of economy, the Sidar for example get bonuses to their specialists making that economy preferable for them.

Hopefully a more experienced player can provide better details than this.

 

[pvt chaos]

For me the main difference between a cottage and a specialist economy is the management issue. A specialist one needs more attention to assign the specific specialists, and often the governor of the city will interfer and assign things different than you want. So a specialist eco can be a pain in the ... to micro, compared to just building a cottage and only having to manage the research/culture slider.

Also it can depend on your tech strategy, for example in some games if I want to be the first to find a religion I will skip the tech to build a cottage. This means that my research has to come from other sources, which are often elder councils with one sage assigned.

And dont forget leader traits, if you have a financial leader it would benefit you more to go for a cottage economy than a dedicated specialist one.

 

[dagorkan]

I would just build near rivers and coast to get trade, then boost it up with building improvements, academies etc. Cottages seem like a waste of time. I had a Lanun island city producing 160+ science per turn (at 80%, so 200 trade) just through my ocean squares and World Wonders, but I managed that without sacrificing shields or food. Pure trade cities might sound good on paper but then you have to use other cities to defend them and they won't be able to produce Buildings or Wonders (like those giving +50% Science/Tax) to take advantage of their high trade.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

not a problem really. just rush those buildings with slavery and/or gold, and you don't need hammers

 

[dagorkan]

But then you need to take those inferior civics and also have the ability to maintain a high population and get your population back up again quickly. Might be worthwhile as an evil civ who take slavery anyway but otherwise I don't see the point in specializing that much. All my cities start off relatively balanced with only slight differences in overall food/shield/trade potential. I specialize them via what kind of troops they'll produce (1 archer, 1 cavalry, 1 infantry etc depending on resource access), which will be the port, which produce settlers/workers (the more agricultural ones), which will be building wonders (highest shield) etc. If I have several higher trade cities I'll specialize half of them in tax raising and others in science (many buildings are a trade-off between the two).

As for gold rushing, the costs have always seemed exaggeratedly high to me unless you wait until very late in production, in which case it doesn't help much and you'd be better off having chosen a more balanced city to start with.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

personally I LOVE gold rushing, it allows me to turn my newly built/conquered cities from useless to good in a relatively short amount of time. basically, the less hammers a city has, the more useful it is. and new cities have very little hammers. yes, it's costly, but I'd rather do that than have to go through the hassle of nurturing this infant city until it actually becomes useful why do you call the gold-rush-allowing civics weak btw? IIRC, the last 3 or 4 of the economy civics ( I guess it's economy, or maybe labor? actually, it doesn't matter. they are all in the same column ) all allow gold rushing. I don't think Arete, Guilds and Caste system are weak. neither is military state btw

 

[estotro]

Thanks for the help guys. So this is what I think I am supposed to do when deciding where to found a city. Of course I am probably wrong, so please correct me if i am. I need to look at the 'cross' that my city would work eventually and taking resources into account make sure I have enough food to provide 2 food per square. Then (after building resource specific improvements), I see if there is an abundance of hills, if so I build mines and make it a production specialized city, else I cottage spam.
If this is a reasonable way to do it, doesn't all the worker management get tedious, especially when you have >5-6 cities? or do you guys automate the workers, mid-late game?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

well, it all depends on your personal taste if you want to automate them or not. and difficulty level of course matter since automated guys are not exactly super smart. but if your just in for the fun, automate them and focus on more interesting stuff like war for example . I always automate my workers once I get my basic infrastructures up and running, but there's people that just hate doing that. it's all up to you really.

 

[brucedecatz]

Needless to say that taking control over the workers is always better than automating.

However, when you have a 10-city empire, it is really frustrating to move your 20 workers around. So by the time when I am almost sure of winning, I automate (or rather, I restart another game).

 

[Caradoc]

Worker management becomes slightly less tedious if you stack them into groups. Rather than having four workers each building a farm, have them all work on one then go to the next. At the end of the 12 turns, you still get 4 farms, but you will have had one already in production for 9 turns, one for 6, and another for 3.