CE vs SE Head-to-Head Experiment Part II

[frob2900]

Ok, yeah I agree with that. It is hard work to build all the health+happiness buildings in SE cities and yes, the civic bonuses for cottages are very nice..

I get the impression that for a successful CE, cottage growth takes precedence over everything else, i.e. in the early years ignore everything else but getting more and more worked cottages in a city, pushing them toward towns. THEN get universities etc..

Also, I'm not a specialist fanatic, I'm an early space race fanatic (which made me very disappointed when I did so miserably at the Peter/Monarch game) and any technique that would get me faster wins is one I'll use

Reason I got stuck with SE is actually a fluke, since I started playing in earnest post 2.08 and I loved Peters cheap expansive workers. SE just naturally followed.

I think I have done worse at CE because I get greedy for city buildings and therefore work a lot of mines/farms to get hammers. I never used to achieve a massive town spam...

 

[mice]

May I ask a question of DaveMcW. Using the general strat that you used in this challenge,would you expect to get an earlier victory with space race or with domination? I mean if you made a decision about victory type mid game.

 

[Jamppa]

Have you yet come up with a definition for these different economies?


How about that one, if you have only one GP Farm, its CE?

And then again, this game is all about being versatile and making the decisions as the situation calls. In some games it might be that I have no good food site to set up a single GP farm. So its more reasonable to run gp points from multiple cities, and still get very few GP's (If there is very few food resources/rivers). So i'm stuck with cottage economy anyway.

IMO, there is no way to tell what kind of economy will best suit your empire... at least not before you can see what kind of land you're granted in the beginning.

So there is really no point in debating over this topic, since its all situational, and neither economy will triumph over the other in every possible scenario.

 

[futurehermit]

SE can use the culture slider for happiness. Even at 20% with theatre/coliseum, that is a good chunk of happiness.

Health is usually easily taken care of with resources. Since a SE player can sustain a larger empire they usually have more resources and can trade for any health resources they don't acquire in their empire.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Yes. You are welcome to take my 25AD save and try to prove me wrong.

Well, that's not a great comparison, because you've already invested significantly in cottages. Plus, I'm not excited about the idea of playing out the tedious part of the game after you've done the interesting part.

But I do see, from looking at the save, why it would be hard to do as well without the cottages. In the late game, you're certainly getting more research, and that's what the space race in this type of game comes down to.

Other victory types are more interesting to me, though.

 

[lilnev]

Tibbles is right that the discussion about the transition is more interesting than a basic SE/CE debate, but compare Lilnev's game to DavemcW's. Lilnev uses no SE features, no transition. To compare these game would be interesting (no save from lilnev).

My saves are in post #24, from 1760 (launch date) and 920 AD (just after Liberalism).

Minoan was one of the few cases where the no-specialist variant hurt me. I halted growth at +7 food because I ran out of tiles to work, and specialists weren't allowed.

OK, I didn't take it quite that far. In fact I let myself run specialists over basic ocean tiles in a couple of cities, generally engineers. I didn't feel like that detracted significantly from its CE-ness.

When I get home this weekend, I'm going to try this game again as a SE. My cottaging skills are better than my specializing, so I may not post the best SE time, but it'll be interesting (at least to me).

A question to everyone who's posted a result: Did you fight one or two wars? I took out both the Egyptians (first) and the Koreans (second), giving me quite a bit of land to work with.

peace,
lilnev

 

[mice]

Also Snatty in his 'Never give up 2' thread advocates no cottages *and* no speacialists! using population for the advantage.

It would be interesting to see his take on this map.

 

[mutax2003]

No cottages *and* no speacialists, hmm, where is the research going to come from? farms?

 

[futurehermit]

Ok guys, I "finished" my SE game. I thought the game was going pretty well around 1000AD, but it turns out it wasn't I managed to bring in computers at 1430AD and start getting research institutes up, but it still wasn't enough

I really need practice at the late game and going for space race

Ok, here are some problems I ran into:

1) Happiness problems due to emancipation. Picking emancipation would have forced me out of caste system, thus crippling my research. However, I was getting 6-8 unhappiness in some of my cities!!! This was really problematic.

2) Problems with research. I realize now that I needed to do 1 of 2 things: 1) Conquer more territory early (preferably taking out Wang as well as Rameses) or growing my cities to a higher pop much earlier. If I had done either of these things I think I would've been better off. I had planned on booming my pop once I got biology. This was a mistake and I ended up growing too late to beat the CE times posted thusfar.

Anyways, here is where I stand:

1) I believe that in order to compete, a SE player is going to need a larger empire than a CE player. By compete I mean get an early space race victory. Better players may disagree, but I would like to see a game as proof. I admit that I'm not the greatest player. I currently win about 40-60on emperor.

2) After fighting against emancipation, I just feel that if going for space race, a player is better off switching over to cottages post democracy. It's just too much of a pain and I really do sense now that cottages are better for early space race anyways. I'm not sure how other players handle emancipation penalties. Again, I admit I'm not the best player and maybe there are other things I could've done.

3) I think when using a SE, a player is better off going for domination from the beginning. Then, after wiping out 2 rivals (or ideally controlling most/all of their continent), can consider going space. With a much larger empire, perhaps it is possible to use mass specialists to bring home a space race victory earlier. Lightbulbing really does lose power late in the game. I used three GSs on computers and I still had to research it for some turns

Anyways, this was a fun game and I learned a lot. I think a better player like acidsatyr could've made a better showing. I just don't have enough practice with the late game

 

[frob2900]

Futurehermit:
What was your projected finish date?

I agree on your points, the large empire thing is the saving grace of a SE. The emancipation penalty isnt completely crippling for a large empire because

1. The AI has less territory and hopefully will emancipate later
2. More happiness resources
3. No need to make cities uber-huge.. size 19-20 with 6-7 specialists is enough if you have plenty of cities..

I did very poorly on this particular game, but I managed a very early launch with Gandhi using pure SE (I cottaged over everything I conquered) using a deliberately aggressive strategy. I had about 50-55% land at the end.

That game was on prince, however, so it was easier to conquer a lot than it would be on Monarch... At the end of that game I was on 60% culture but was still bringing home ca 150-200 beakers per city (I had ca 12 cities). Capital was at 400-500 and GP farm at perhaps 350 before I watermilled and workshopped it to get the space elevator

Also, for a SE late game broadcast towers are important.. Broadway and similar wonders if you can get them, but I think broadcast towers are pretty much the best bet.

Has anyone noticed that broadcast towers require Mass Media, but you can get them without it through the eiffel tower? Rather convenient

 

[acidsatyr]

This thread is absolutely ridiculous,
First of all most of you still don’t get what SE, CE, FE is,
Second there’s 5 players here who can barely get their shi.t together on monarch/emperor yet they are arguing and basing their conclusions on a monarch lvl game that economy one is better than the other
Please !!

 

[frob2900]

SE/FE: More farms, more production. Smart lightbulbing, smart trading. Post constitution can rely on specialists to produce beakers.

Thats how you defined SE/FE, and I'm sure everyone here agrees with that defintion. As far as I am can see there is nothing unclear with the definitions.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

This thread is absolutely ridiculous,
First of all most of you still don’t get what SE, CE, FE is,
Second there’s 5 players here who can barely get their shi.t together on monarch/emperor yet they are arguing and basing their conclusions on a monarch lvl game that economy one is better than the other
Please !!

Offering a polite reply when clearly none is called for....

1) If the bulk of the community is playing Noble/Prince/Monarch, then "which economy is better on Emperor?" is a question of no practical value.

2) If CE's survive clumsy play better than the alternatives, then that alone is a useful piece of information.


As one drops in difficulty, there's a bit more... call it opportunity... for the human player. With sufficient opportunity available, the human player can establish a commerce driven economy which will out perform the alternative based on the metrics agreed on here.

At higher difficulties, there may not be sufficient opportunity to establish the commerce driven economy. Essentially, the commerce driven economy starves, where the alternative gives you playing chances.

That would be pretty disappointing if it is the case - I would hope that the game would continue to reward refinements all the way up the ladder. The different approaches might end up looking very different at the highest level (in other words, is the commerce driven economy being dismissed because it is being shoe horned into the wrong grand strategy? Obviously, I've got no evidence to offer).

The other possibility, of course, is that the farm driven economy is better at all levels, and everybody who hasn't discovered that by now is an idiot, and a marginally competant farm economist would destroy everybody elses games, if only it wasn't so boring. So please stop wasting his bandwidth.

 

[acidsatyr]

The way I defined it, is because that’s how I see it; SE is just a research part of Farm Economy. Farm Economy is economy which relies on farms for MAJORITY of production, be it from whipping and/or drafting (where farms = units), and as such is destined to run SE.
HOWEVER, if you run SE, it does not mean you are running FE. For example Dave was running SE in majority of first part of game (research standpoint), no matter what other say here, BUT he never run FE. He never relied on farms to help him do production. And I bet he never used slavery in fact, he whipped 10 times, IF that, never used drafting, ETC, ETC. SO, again, FE means you’ll end up with SE , as specialists are natural research booster for FE (how else you’d run research with farms only?). However, SE doesn’t necessarily mean you are running FE in your empire. Therefore when you see FE/SE it doesn’t really mean the same thing.
ALSO, if you are starting your game by cottaging the hell out of your capital, and try to run buearocracy asap, then you are NOT running SE.
If you are doing what I said above to your capital, yet are farming every other city and NOT running any specialists in those cities, then your economy is FE yet you’r using cottages to fuel your research. IF you are running specialists it stops to be CE. PERIOD.

So you see FE is not really SE is not really CE.

Now, why do I think that FE/SE combination is best? Because it allows you to run GREATEST potential production possible in all of your cities. I strongly believe that production >>>>>>>> research. I would gladly give some research power for production. On highest levels you WILL be behind AI’s most of the time, so the question is how many units can you make in smallest amount of time?? Because of the way FE runs, SE comes as only natural solution. Lightbulbing is the name of game. You work in small bursts. You jump ahead of AI for a sec, then you stagnate, then jump again, etc etc. That’s the only way to win most of the games. You are arguing over whether pure CE can build space ship 34 years before SE can on monarch level. damn.

There is no clear cut where “pure” one begins and “pure” other stops , if you were to follow the logic some ppl follow here, everything would fall into hybrid economy, which I think is really stupid.

You could also run FE with almost pure trade route based economy which is what Snaaty is doing, or it seems so, and no matter what he says i don’t agree that that is how you win games on deity (among other crazy things he’s saying)…

 

[acidsatyr]

Offering a polite reply when clearly none is called for....

Oh im sorry are my words so offensive? Dont cry

1) If the bulk of the community is playing Noble/Prince/Monarch, then "which economy is better on Emperor?" is a question of no practical value.

then stop acting like your talking about universal solution. Say, THIS is how this works on Noble/Monarch. Thats it. Thats where story ends.

2) If CE's survive clumsy play better than the alternatives, then that alone is a useful piece of information.

And that is a OK too. Then state that it is clear that FE/SE is hard for majority of plp to run, and that most mediocre players should run CE if they want to win. Thats FINE!

As one drops in difficulty, there's a bit more... call it opportunity... for the human player. With sufficient opportunity available, the human player can establish a commerce driven economy which will out perform the alternative based on the metrics agreed on here.

At higher difficulties, there may not be sufficient opportunity to establish the commerce driven economy. Essentially, the commerce driven economy starves, where the alternative gives you playing chances.

That would be pretty disappointing if it is the case - I would hope that the game would continue to reward refinements all the way up the ladder. The different approaches might end up looking very different at the highest level (in other words, is the commerce driven economy being dismissed because it is being shoe horned into the wrong grand strategy? Obviously, I've got no evidence to offer).

The reason why cottage research doesnt work on highest lvls is because it is LINEAR. You will never beat AI under normal conditions.

The other possibility, of course, is that the farm driven economy is better at all levels, and everybody who hasn't discovered that by now is an idiot, and a marginally competant farm economist would destroy everybody elses games, if only it wasn't so boring. So please stop wasting his bandwidth.

spoken like a true genius, now you get it

 

[frob2900]

A large component of success with early space race, which depends on advanced technologies coming into play is trading. Lightbulbing becomes much more powerful on higher levels (Monarch and above) because the AI can research competently.

However, as difficulty drops, value of lightbulbing drops. Therefore the trend that CE is better on lower levels. I myself have won a few emperor/immortal games but the tech never got higher than riflemen/trebs by the time it was over. This tech level is easily achievable by pretty much only bulbing/trading.

Acidsatyr: At least I agree with your SE/FE/CE definition, and I was operating under the assumption that everyone else agreed with that definition too. No need to get worked up.

Re: difficulty level. For early space race victories the lower levels (prince/monarch) are much more interesting for me, because the key element is not waging war (of course its always a factor, but not the main one). For higher levels warfare becomes important, and lets face it, warfare is more random than empire building. All the various AI leaders and their personalities. Bad dicerolls. Stupid mistakes such as moving a stack one tile wrong etc.

One can hone ones skills to get pretty consistent space wins at a certain date on prince/monarch, but on emperor/immortal I'd say the winning date pretty much depends by 200-300 years on who your neighbors are..

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

A large component of success with early space race, which depends on advanced technologies coming into play is trading. Lightbulbing becomes much more powerful on higher levels (Monarch and above) because the AI can research competently.

The implications being that you (almost) never use a GP for any purpose other than lightbulbing, at least until the point where parity has been achieved? And likewise that GP had better be a scientist, or your winning chances take a serious hit?

Also that if you are in Always War, or No Tech Trading, or err such that your trading opportunities are inadequate, then you are just toast?

Does the AI have Alphabet by the time you need it for trading, or is that a beeline tech (it may be any way, if early war is an essential component)?


I'm getting the impression that, despite the intents of the designers, if you play at a high enough level of difficulty, all winning games use essentially the same strategy (especially flow up the tech tree). Is that impression accurate, a consequence of a limited audience of advanced players contributing to this discussion, the focus of the discussion (on best, or fastest, or whatever), or just that I've completely overlooked the variety possible within the discussed constraints?

 

[frob2900]

Well, I meant that for an early space race you can shave maybe 30+ turns off by trading. Getting techs such as Plastics, Assembly line etc. through trades is good, and if you have high enough production capacity /aluminium monopoly you can trade the AI up to a high tech level without getting beat to the spaceship.

For always war games I'd be guessing an early space race would be impossible, but with no tech trading I'm sure a pre 1750 launch could be doable with a large enough empire.

When I play at higher levels my number one rule is pretty much to avoid extensive infrastructure building until I'm sure my empire is robust enough to deal with the AI. In the beginning, especially on a crowded map, one has to fight a heavily at the start.

I suppose the rule (which i've seen stated by a few expert players) is get 1-2 opponents with swords/axes, 1 (luckily 2) with catapults and then if necessary continue with trebs etc. After that ones empire should be robust enough to dig down and concentrate on the space race. Now I've found that when I'm building an army large enough to actually do this, research tanks, and the best, by far, way around this is to get a few GS and lightbulb..

These techs can be traded for useful techs and even sold (to pay for upkeep etc.). But, yeah, as far I can see, on higher levels one better concentrate on military tech (and of course the philosophy /education/liberalism path were applicable) and just beat the living daylights out of everyone. If one doesnt like war one shouldnt play emperor and above.

I know some people have pulled of peaceful deity wins, but I think my nerves would hold trying to play deity without attacking the AI. Left alone their power can easily be 5-10 times higher than ones own.

I'm sure some people have a different opinion but I think trying out a non-militaristic strategy on immortal/deity will get you stomped.. I find it fun on lower levels (mainly prince) to muck around with different gambits/strategies, since on doesnt have to keep on ones toes there..

 

[tibbles]

1) If the bulk of the community is playing Noble/Prince/Monarch, then "which economy is better on Emperor?" is a question of no practical value.

then stop acting like your talking about universal solution. Say, THIS is how this works on Noble/Monarch. Thats it. Thats where story ends.

But isn't part of the question if whatever turns out to be the optimal space race economy is the optimal space race economy for all difficulty levels? So it would get tweaked by map and settings somewhat, but it'd still be a basline to work from.

Let's just say someone comes up with some dynamite nonFE economy on Prince that gives a space race win 100 turns earlier than any prior method. Sure, higher levels you'll need more production and that would likely lessen your 100 turn lead. But if you knew this particular economy worked so well, wouldn't you try to work around it first rather than dump it as Prince only?

Also, you dismiss much of this because it's discussion about a Monarch level game. But since you can rocket ahead on Emperor, shouldnt the lead be even wider on Monarch?
Since none of us who tried the SE approach managed to do so, we wished to discuss it. You've shown it's 100% doable for domination. It's the space race bit that seems to be sticking.

2) If CE's survive clumsy play better than the alternatives, then that alone is a useful piece of information.

And that is a OK too. Then state that it is clear that FE/SE is hard for majority of plp to run, and that most mediocre players should run CE if they want to win. Thats FINE!

I freely admit I'm a mediocre player. And it does appear a FE/SE is harder to run, fine. But as a mediocre player, I do wish to improve my game, so I don't want to just stick with CE because it's easier. I want to practice with whichever economy will improve my game in the long run whever it be CE, SE, or hybrid. And that's why I read threads by better than mediocre players who are discussing what works best.

 

[frob2900]

As far as I can see, acidsatyr is very good at utilizing great people to get valuable techs, trading them to achieve parity, while at the same time managing to keep up military production so as to keep expanding his empire, making it large and thus offsetting the AI production bonus by gaining more land..

I am not convinced fully of his claims that a FE/SE is universally "better", at least for faster space races and other non conquest/domination wins on ALL levels. On higher levels sure, I agree that FE/SE offers a lot of advantages. I dont know how he translates that into assuming that CE is inferior for space wins on Monarch or even Prince. Perhaps he has played a lot of space race games on Monarch and gets consistent 1400 AD launches... I have no idea...

Since it seems he dismisses anything below immortal, I'd say he is in a sense correct though, since military prowess is paramount on these levels. Techniques which are good at lower levels wont necessarily do well at all on immortal/deity, since the player wont survive to implement them, thats the point, I suppose.

(e.g. any kind of early Wonder based technique, apart from perhaps getting 1 key wonder such as great library, is often doomed to fail since the AI builds everything so damn fast.. )

What gets me about the highest levels is the need to keep fighting and fighting.. I just dont know if theres anyone who can get consistent wins (i.e. say over 80% of the time) on these levels, let alone be able to say "This game I am going for an early space race", without first seeing how the game develops..