Caste System?

[RattieUK]

Hi

New to Forums been playing about 6 months now and I think I'm missing the point on the caste system. I think I have used it about twice.

I know you can assign unlimited artists scientists etc. And I am assuming that’s the bar on the right in city screen. But unless you have huge populations I cant seem to justify the extra expense.

Could you Civ Gurus give me a few tips on when best it is used; btw I almost exclusively play online now. So if you could restrict answers to online play dynamics I'd appreciate it.
.

 

[cabert]

i'll restrict my answer to a welcome to the forum, since i never play online.
I believe that caste system is strictly inferior to slavery in MP, but it's just an opinion.

 

[HiroHito]

one of the main reasons i play total realism mod is that it gives +1 FREE specialist in the case of caste system and it much more balanced this way.

 

[JimT]

Hi

New to Forums been playing about 6 months now and I think I'm missing the point on the caste system. I think I have used it about twice.

I know you can assign unlimited artists scientists etc. And I am assuming that’s the bar on the right in city screen. But unless you have huge populations I cant seem to justify the extra expense.

Could you Civ Gurus give me a few tips on when best it is used; btw I almost exclusively play online now. So if you could restrict answers to online play dynamics I'd appreciate it.
.

Welcome

The usefulness of a civic often depends on the style, for you I would assume it will be pretty minimal.

I find caste system has two main uses

Specialist Economies: I rarely use these and I am assuming your not since you don't find caste system useful.

Cultural Victories: Generally disabled in online play and pretty much useless IMO if they aren't. I do use regularly go for these offline.

In online play I would go for slavery every time. It helps in building up armies and assists a quick response to enemies. The only time I see caste system being particularily useful is if you over expand and maintenance costs are killing you, then running merchants may be the way to prevent a strike.

JT

 

[futurehermit]

If you play online, forget about caste system. You will be at war often and at war you want to be in slavery.

This especially applies if you play with fewer people on smaller map sizes.

Personally when I play online I only play 4 total players on small pangaea map. Anything else is intolerably long for me.

In my single player games I run caste system to push the amount of scientists I can run per city past the limit of two afforded by a library. This helps my research keep clipping along since I don't run many cottages. It also produces more GSs which I use to lightbulb tech. This is fairly standard in a specialist economy.

 

[Polycrates]

Caste System isn't really a long-term civic, but it's good for spiritual civs who can switch back and forth between it and slavery with ease. Essentially you use it in quick bursts where you only work enough high-food squares to prevent starvation and put everyone else as scientists (you can starve them a bit too if need be). You'll get much improved research and get a great scientist or two very quickly (especially if you also switch over to pacifism). It's especially useful to run masses of specialists in a city with lots of GPP but no real chance of ever catching up with your main GP city and getting a great person otherwise - that way the points don't go to waste.
The other benefit is running great artists in new or conquered cities for a couple of turns to pop the borders out.

If you're spiritual, there's no harm in doing that for maybe 10 turns then switching back to slavery/theocracy or whatever.