CE vs SE Head-to-Head Experiment Part II

[futurehermit]

When did you get computers and Peter's UBs up and running in your cities?

 

[frob2900]

Ok, I checked -> Computers at 1660 AD, pretty late.. that could definately be fixed.. I seem to remember trying to set up a bulb beeline ->Physics->Electricity->Radio->Computers but chose to make a few golden ages instead (since I think Fission jumps in and distrubs the beeline)

One major fault was that I popped A LOT of engineers in the beginning.. I think the first 6 Great People were engineers... Thats good of course but 3 GS, 3 GE would be much nicer

 

[frob2900]

BTW, I had and idea for a good SE vs CE challenge that would really illustrate the economy types strengths and weaknesses:

Multiplayer, 1 player SE/Philo, 1 player CE/Financial, last person with any cities left has the best economy type

 

[futurehermit]

Yeah that's pretty late for computers imo. I'm planning on beelining and hopefully will get it sooner than that.

 

[frob2900]

Just try to avoid getting Fission in the way of the bulb beeline (I'm too tired to find out what the prereqs are), I'm pretty sure one can bulb directly from Sci Meth to Computers if one is careful.

Computers COULD be online realistically ca 1500 with labs 1530-1550, earlier than that would be pretty amazing (Because I dont think there will be any trading opportunities above Sci Meth at that time).

Still, then you'd need a rocketry beeline but industrialism is also nice since I think there is Aluminium inside the empire...

 

[futurehermit]

Yeah, I'll see what I can come up with and post back here.

 

[ungy]

The problem with this contest is that the SE really cannot compete in the space race. Getting enough tech to win is another story, especially at higher levels where the player has to lightbulb in order to trade.

 

[futurehermit]

Well, this is what we're trying to see Intuitively I feel that SE is better for domination whereas CE is better for spacerace, but we shall see...

I really wish acidsatyr would play this one as well, but he's pretty busy with a lot of games

 

[BCLG100]

Its Difficult, ive played a couple of practise games and i generally hit a bump between about 500-1000AD, this leaves me not launching till about 1800 or so.

Its also a bit of a challenge getting used to warlords and not vanilla which im normally on

ill probably end up playing this either in the next day or after new year

 

[tibbles]

Hehe, don't use my cruddy 1929 finish as a comparison for SE vs CE I don't even win more than 75% on Monarch to begin with.

As to the whole SE vs CE debate, since everyone seems to be in relative agreement that SE-ish gives the best early game power and CE-ish gives the best late game research, maybe instead of debating which "pure" form is best and what even consititutes a pure form, debate the best point and method to transition or hybrid?

Using this challenge scenario, we know we want the earliest possible space race win and domination is out. So when would you switch to cottages?

(Ok, so this still leaves 'never switch' as a valid conversion point, but I think many would be more interested in what scientist/cottage mix gives the best economy, regardless of semantics and if it is considered a pure CE, pure SE, or hybrid.)

 

[SpreadTheWord]

Wrong Thread

 

[uberfish]

Hybrid style:

I generally start off building neither cottages nor farms. My first priority is to work resources, build mines, getting a couple of production cities up and running. The capital will generally fall into one of two roles - Heavy production + part time GP farm (in which case it gets farms+mines) or super commerce city (in which case it gets cottages.) In either case it runs specialists when it has nothing important to build.

Outside the capital I tend to run specialists at fp farms and food specials, and generally tend towards cottaging grasslands.

 

[mice]

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)

On the other hand the final frontier crew got Education at 500AD on diety.

It seems that to make any useful comparison you have to limit the paramaters, for example, Immortal level domination, can cottages compete with food based econ ?
Monarch space race, can a food based econ compete with cottages?

It seems the econ you need depends on the level and victory condition you have in mind.

A set of head to heads would be good, but they would need tight parameters to make them useful.

 

[frob2900]

SE does not necessarily suck at space race... My poor result in this example game (1888 AD) made me consider what circumstances are pro-SE / pro-CE.

The strength of an SE is the ability to build infrastructure while under slavery. The strength of a CE is, well, cottages. They are really good, as eveyone has probably noticed

So, not to seem off topic (since this test is about Monarch with this specific map), I ran a test game as Gandhi / Prince / Marathon so I could get these points clear:


1. Territory. An SE should be able to "tame" territory much more effectively and later in the game (up to 1000 AD) since by growth/whipping new cities can be setup fast. Later than 1000 AD wars are iffy for an early space race.

2. Trading disabled since it depends on diplomacy/luck (the AI doesnt always research well enough to catch up with a space race player). On prince the AI research is next to useless.

3. Effective switching between research/infrastructure building. For a CE this is done by the research slider with Universal Suffrage, but with a SE one switches slavery / caste system. Hence Gandhi, allowing quick switching.

4. Micromanagement. An SE is much more micro-heavy (at least for me) than a CE. Hence marathon speed (yes this also allows quicker conquest, I know..)



With this setup and intensive micromanagement I got a space launch at 1556 AD, my personal best. So at least as far as I'm concerned I consider SE viable for space race.

Taking these observations to the map in question I would assume the best strategy is to use the military power of SE to capture as much territory as possible before ca 1000 AD.

This is of course hard at normal speed but since I think it is clear that the beaker increase in time per city of the CE is more greater, an SE player must leverage their early military potential to even the score.

Get biology as soon as possible (in my test game I got it ca 1120 AD, same turn as Taj Mahal). Use golden ages to grow and increase infrastructure and in between run caste system with aggressive allocation of specialists.

Bulbing is very powerful up to ca Biology/Physics. After that it only augments a strategy already in place and wont "save" ones game..

 

[DaveMcW]

Would you mind posting your Ghandi / Prince / Marathon starting save?

 

[DaviddesJ]

I can definitely say, 1700's CE beats 1929 SE.

More SE games please.

Well, I tend to agree with acidsatyr; your 1700s win is basically a demonstration of SE, whatever you call it. So we already have the 1700s SE as well as the 1700s CE.

Do you really think that if you had avoided cottages you would have done significantly worse?

 

[frob2900]

Didnt have the 4000 BC one, but I had a 3265 BC one where I had taken the Celtic capital (took it with 3 warriors, lol @ the power of prince/marathon ).

Hope its alright, no decisions have been made yet regarding economy.. (I did go for polytheism and got hinduism, which is the only right thing to with india )

 

[DaveMcW]

Do you really think that if you had avoided cottages you would have done significantly worse?

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

 

[frob2900]

A question to DaveMcW:

I'm tending toward agreeing that cottages are a more flexible late game powerhouse than specialists (at least one is never short of cash then.. I hate the cash shortage of SE), however if I take your 1730 AD save and go into worldbuilder and fix up the city of Minoan (162 per turn beakers out of golden age) to size 21, add harbor/supermarket/theatre/colosseum (for health/happiness) then set caste system /representation i get 176 beakers per turn.

This would point to the fact that both economies are at this stage least equal in an "ideal laboratory environment", so the answer to why CE space race > SE space race must lie in the details, not on a tile per tile comparison for some given city under ideal conditions..

So the question would be, what is it about a CE empire that makes it pull in more beakers in the long run, even though an ideal world-builder comparison points to at least some kind of parity?

 

[DaveMcW]

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. The intense cultural pressure didn't help either.

If you push back the borders and build 10 towns, Minoan easily beats your specialist city.

So the question would be, what is it about a CE empire that makes it pull in more beakers in the long run, even though an ideal world-builder comparison points to at least some kind of parity?

I should know better than to talk theory with specialist-fanatics around. But here's a couple hints:
1. CE needs less health and happiness investment in the early game.
2. Towns get better civic bonuses in the late game.