CE vs SE Head-to-Head Experiment Part II

[frob2900]

Still, with Mercantilism+SoL+Research Institutes.. You will be a mega-research powerhouse

Another mid-game quibble with Peter is that damn cossack special unit.. I always use riflemen+cannons at that stage of the game and use cannons to wipe out the computers cavalry stacks.. No need for that 50% bonus vs. mounted.

 

[wioneo]

Yeah, Peter comes back into his own late game. It's just that there is that middle game dip that kinda sucks. And I always feel that I would rather have advantages loaded into the early-to-mid game. I just don't like expansive, even with the faster workers. I just think that it's much weaker than other traits (I usually pop rush workers anyways...)

I thought that expansive only gave hammer benefits. So, wouldn't whipping workers be more efficient than normally "building" them?

 

[frob2900]

I thought that expansive only gave hammer benefits. So, wouldn't whipping workers be more efficient than normally "building" them?

Workers are built with both hammers and food, so if you for example have a city on a plains hill you will see an nice increase in speed with expansive when building a worker in "the normal way".. Whipping is still better, though..

 

[lilnev]

I launched in 1760 AD. At the end I was bringing in about 4000 beakers/turn with a positive cash flow, but that was in a Golden Age and with many cities building Wealth/Research. A more sustainable figure, with cities building other things, would be 2500-3000 or about 150-200 per city (I had 16, but mostly maxing out at size 12-15 due to substantial overlap). Can a mature SE match that? Or, can it be far enough ahead from the earlier GSs that it doesn't have to? I'm curious to see how others' games come out.

peace,
lilnev

 

[lilnev]

p.s. to Monty: You cannot invade me with Knights and Grenadiers when I have Tanks. This is especially true if your plan involves transporting them on galleons through sub-infested waters. That guy never learns....

 

[tibbles]

I can't wait to see how Futurehermit's game ends either.

I decided to try my first attempt with an SE off that start and didn't do so hot. Had an easy lead over the AI, but didn't hit liberalism until about 1100 and launch until 1929.
I botched my research bad at a couple points:
1. After my early war I assigned a bunch of scientists and forgot to change from police state to represtentation for a good 15-20 turns.
2. Got most of my GS too late to bulb me to education. Instead settled them.
3. Managed to jump from from 15 to 25 war weariness unhappiness in only a few turns in a late war. Had to run a deficit and 90% culture just to keep from starving until I won. I've neer seen weariness skyrocket that fast before and given how short the war was, I wasn't prepared.

edit: Outside of my Golden Age, my ending research was 2181/turn with positive cashflow.

Still a great learning experience and chance to compare the exact same start vs more skilled players.
I'm eager to hear how far ahead a good SE player can finish with the same start

...Not that I could get 1760 with CE either, but mid-late 1800s.

 

[futurehermit]

1760 is a nice time.

I'm a complete noob at space race since I pretty much always go for domination, but we'll see how it goes

 

[frob2900]

You guys (futurehermit, davemcw) sure know how to fight a war I had lots of trouble wiping ramesses, but I got him smashed in 250 AD.. (same as for futurehermit he had a city way south, so I had to send a stack of axes to deal with him). I had start from the beginning twice though, since one time a stack of 14 axes lost against 4 archers

Got ramesses crushed but my economy was in the doldrums (thats a nice word I think). Luckily enough specialists were able ot keep me afloat. Bulbed like crazy and got liberalism in 1340 AD, however I got Biology from it! (bulbed education, printing press, chemistry, sci/meth).

Now my cities are growing like crazy The reason I dared hold of on liberalism (left it 1 turn from researched) was because everyone on this map is just crazy backward, except for Alexander who has guilds and wants to trade for chemisty. No way I'm giving him that...

BTW. This map is very nice.. I've never seen a city with GP farm written over it like Thebes.. I've popped 7 GS since 250 AD (its now mid 14th century) which is really what allowed me to get the crazy amount of bulbs necessary to get biology from liberalism... I still have scientists left over who shall bulb astronomy and physics.. Then I'm going to bulb all the way to radio/computers (I think radio is very important for SE games since one can get the eiffel tower to keep those multitudes happy with broadcast towers)

My game plan is now to get theatres+colosseums, farm over the 4 cottages in my capital (everything else is SE, just farms) and then swim in scientists with 80-100% culture slider and huge cities...

I take my hat of to daveMCW for smashing Wang Kon so early.. I hate to fight protective civs pre-construction...

 

[DaveMcW]

I take my hat of to daveMCW for smashing Wang Kon so early.. I hate to fight protective civs pre-construction...

It wasn't pre-construction... half my army was catapults.

 

[frob2900]

It wasn't pre-construction... half my army was catapults.

Lol, OK, that explains it I had this vision of stacks of 20+ axemen suiciding themselves against CGIII archers in cities on hills

Did you go to construction before code of laws? I usually take mathematics early and sometimes dont know whether to go the poly->priesthood->code of laws -> bureaucracy first or sidestep to construction since its already available..

 

[futurehermit]

lol.

after a lot of thought, i think i should've spent a GE on NE in Thebes. i didn't do it because i didn't want a GA. however, i think that it would've been worth it in the long run...

 

[futurehermit]

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted another update, I've been playing around with Gandhi a bit. I still have my save though and will try and finish it this week now that I'm on holidays

 

[DaveMcW]

I launched in 1730 AD.


With the insane amount of food in the capital, I decided it had to be my GP farm. After one settler, I built the Pyramids and Great Wall.

That first settler grabbed the grassland/gold spot from Ramses, which eventually became my Oxford/Wall Street location.

I beelined to Construction for catapults, which I used to capture Wang Kon's 4 cities and eliminate him.

Then I went for Bureaucracy, which didn't help much since I wasn't cottaging my capital. But I was only in it for a few centuries until I switched to Free Speech/Emancipation in 1030 AD.

I stayed in Pacifism from the time I lightbulbed Philosophy until I met the other continent and had to adopt Free Religion for diplomatic purposes.

I coverted Roosevelt to Taoism, and got him up to Friendly. He sold me some nice techs, including Plastics.

Moscow produced 17 great people. I also got 3 from techs.

GPs Used
Great Library (Engineer)
Philosophy (Scientist)
The Dai Miao (Prophet)
Printing Press (Scientist)
Education (Scientist)
Taj Mahal (Engineer)
Golden Age (Scientist, Prophet)
Golden Age (Scientist, Engineer, Artist)
Golden Age (Scientist, Prophet, Engineer, Merchant)
Golden Age (Scientist, Prophet, Engineer, Merchant, Artist)

That last golden age was probably a waste (it was still going when the game ended), but this was my first chance to get five GA's in one game.

I expect a pre-1700 spaceship launch is possible with minor optimizations to my strategy.

 

[Mutineer]

So, you were running SE, as at start, practically untill liberalism capital is more then 50% of you r civ.
You were even running SE civics, like Pacifism.

 

[DaveMcW]

You can check my 1000AD save.

Empire-wide research is 369
Capital is getting 24 from commerce, 45 from specialists, +50% from library/university.

So specialists were giving me 18% of my civ beakers.

 

[Mutineer]

research from specialists only responcible of 10% sci specialists provided from ligth bulbing. I am sorry, you just used typical SE, with some outside little cottage help.

 

[futurehermit]

Well, the thing is, a CE is still allowed to use a dedicated GP farm.

As long as DaveMcW didn't run any specialists outside of the GP farm, this is well within the rules of the competition.

SE = specialists everywhere, except maybe capital for bureaucracy.

CE = cottages everywhere, outside of gpfarm.

1730 is a great launch time, good job

 

[acidsatyr]

Hey Dave, don't you ever build corthouses?? None of your cities at 1000ad has cottages, your bleeding -12 in some cities per move, redicilous!!!!

 

[Jet]

(cross-posted with futurehermit) He only had specialists in one city, which was a rule they agreed on. Everyone should have a GP farm. Yes, he ran Representation and Pacifism, but you can hardly blame him. He had Stone in the capital and was Philosophical. They chose to set up the challenge using the same leader for both economies.

DaveMcW, what did you use the Golden Ages for? What were you doing when you started them?

acidsatyr, that's not fair. In 1000 AD he had already built *one* whole courthouse, and was building *one* other one, which only had 82 turns to go!

 

[futurehermit]

this just shows how hard it is to evaluate the two economies imo because there are times when a CE will run an awesome GPfarm and use the "SE" civics (pacifism, rep, even castsys). A SE player like acidsatyr may well choose to keep mature cottages in captured cities.

I just like seeing what we can come up with in these games. Our test won't ultimately prove anything, but it will give us more material for debating.