CivIV 102: Running the Specialist Economy at Prince

[UncleJJ]

I opened your most recent savegame in 1300 AD, but had problems with the 1100 AD one which crashes back to desktop Can you check that it is not corrupted for you?

You have clearly won this game and you can choose how to do that. You could win by Domination which probably needs an invasion of one of the civs on the other continent. That will be a great way to show new players how to assemble an invasion fleet of say 10 galleons and 5 frigates and take out a few cities over there. An alternative is to use the AP and get a religious based Diplomatic victory after you've united your own continent. You only need to send a missionary to each of the other players and wait for a resolution, a bit cheap maybe, but that might give you the quickest victory and highest score.

I would not favour a transition economy for two reasons. One is that is not really a SE (but is more accurately described as a HE game) and that is what you're trying to show here. A well run SE can win a Space race as fast as a transition economy, but might take a bit more micromanagement. Secondly it is highly dubious that it would be better in this case. You have a very strong SE set up with a great combination of cities and wonders. The combination of AP, UoS and SM is incredibly powerful when combined with a SE and a domination push especially when you have the shrine of the state religion.

Criticisms: I have looked at several of your cities in 1300 Ad and wonder why you're doing it the way you are It is all micromangement stuff so feel free to ignore it at the Prince level but it would make a difference at Emperor and above.

Delhi is a major prize and should be developed as fast as possible. It has food, hammers, wonders can generate many GPPs and huge potential as a production outlet. That means granary and lighthouse before bank (even though that is a good build). Food and growth is much more important in a city like that than getting a little extra gold a few turns earlier 9as you can build the bank 6 turns after anyway), especially as you have 2500 gold already saved. Delhi is only size 7 and could be size 15 and it is about to lose 17 food due to growth without a granary

Other cities seem to need granaries and lighthouses too to boost growth. For now, and in a SE generally, food is the most important resource and nearly always comes before anything else (especially as you're Creative and don't need culture). From each 2 food you save you can eventually run a specialist for a turn and that can be turned into 6 beakers and 6 GPPs. Wasted food is wasted SE potential.

I can't see why you're building banks in Sparta and Aristottleville. Neither have barracks and could be useful drafting cities if they had barracks.

Civics change: as this is the last turn of your GA I would change civics to Free Market, Police State (+25% military production and WW) and Theocracy (if you intend to attack Stalin in a few turns). Otherwise stick with Representation and OR (you do have a lot of buildings to finish in a lot of cities) and just change Free market for the extra trade route.

Research: I'm not sure if this is already your plan but I can't see otherwise. I would research Steel after Chemistry. Cannons are the essential ingredient for a very fast conquest of Stalin and Bismark. Three cannons can reduce the defences in one turn and 2 or 3 more reduce the defenders to pulp that your other troops such as macemen and elephants can roll over. With cannons against longbows you don't need grenadiers or rifles or cuirassiers to take cities. This should be a blitzkrieg from now on.

 

[xanadux]

I'm a noob and a bit of a chicken, so I have a question.




In light of this information, I'd be worried about Stalin overpowering Bismark and having a lot more land and cities. Had you already made the decision to join the attack on Stalin before you bribed Bismark? If you had opted to sit out the war, would you have found yourself in a worse position?

I had decided to join Bismarck in the war when he eventually asked before I had bribed him. At the time I was planning on going to war with Stalin, and although I wasn't quite ready for an invasion, had plenty of troops to kill anything Stalin sent at me. I sort of opted to sit out of the first war, as far as I just defended and never invaded Russia.

Then the opportunity to take out Asoka arose, with him completing the Apostolic Palace and the Hindu Shrine. So I bribed Bismarck again, and went after Asoka.

I wasn't much concerned with Stalin taking Bismarck. Stalin was quite a ways from even having macemen, and I could build about 3 units a turn with my empire. After taking Asoka, I wouldn't be far at all from steel for cannon.

I actually fixed it so I wouldn't have to fight Stalin while at war with Asoka. I first bribed Bismarck again, then got peace with Stalin. The Indian war was over and troops were heading back Ease by the time the peace treaty with Stalin expired.

When you have a big tech lead, and a big production advantage, you usually don't have to worry much about an AI getting a little bigger in this case. It is much more worrisome if the war is happening on another continent. It takes a lot more time and production to make an invasion overseas, so an AI could have the time to grow strong.

 

[xanadux]

UncleJJ:

I'll look into the save for 1100AD.

As far as micromanagement, I mentioned this in the CivIV101 thread, but it bears mentioning again. I'm a big advocate of micromanagement in the early stages of a game, and also in close games where it is necessary. A little micromanagement goes a long way early in the game, and can effectively save several turns on everything you do throughout a game. But when empires get large, unless I am fighting for my life in a very close game, extreme micromanagement just isn't fun for me. I would be a better player if I MM more, but I wouldn't have as much fun playing civ. I do however try to show a lot of MM tips in these games as I definitely recognize the importance of it.

You are right about Delhi, I don't really need the gold from the bank, and a granary and lighthouse would be better in the long run. Taking the time to make sure every decision is ideal is hard for me when a game is so clearly won, even though I do my best here since it is a tutorial game.

As for the transition economy, I agree, and made a recent post explaining why in this case just sticking with the SE is better.

As for granaries and lighthouses, I think most of these cities have been building the 2 cheap Hindu buildings for the AP bonus. Aside from the new Indian cities, the only coastal cities I have are Aristottleville and Knossos, and both are running specialists and not working any coast squares other than the Knossos crabs.

Aristottleville is building a bank because it has been running merchant specialists. Sparta is building a bank because of its high commerce from the gold. Sparta has fairly low production, so IMO, a barracks is of limited use.

I've never really used drafting much. I should probably look into its effective use.

As for civics, I am leaning towards Free Market and Theocracy, while keeping Caste System, Representation, and Bureaucracy. Free Market seems clearly better than Mercantilism. Not only are my trade routes all foreign, but Delhi had the Great Lighthouse, so I have 6 cities with +2 trade routes right now. An extra specialist is not going to be worth as much as losing foreign trade routes. Actually, I think most of the important buildings are done, so OR can be left pretty painlessly. I am not much concerned with war weariness. Since my science output is high from specialists, raising the culture slider only costs a little surplus gold. One immediate priority is to make sure all large cities have Odeons and theatres.

You are correct that I am aiming for Steel for cannon. I may be slightly weak attacked in the field, but cannon destroy cities quickly. Chemistry also has the benefit of +1 hammer from workshops which I have been building around several cities. After Steel, probably MS for grenadiers, if only to give my open field stacks good defenders. Cannon are very strong, and a steel beeline can often change the tides of war. Give me enough cannon, and even axemen can dominate in 1500AD.

I think all of your criticisms were valid, and I mostly wanted to show why I was doing what I did, be it correct or not.

 

[Nabe-shogun]

So let me see if I have the gist of starting the SE strategy.

First, You have to do extensive scouting to find an ideal science city (maximum food availability). In the meantime you're developing your capital, military, and (at least) another city.

Next, you make your way toward Writing so that you can build a a library and unlock the science specialists. After switching to Caste System, you then crank out Great Scientits in your science city and cruise to a tech lead.

Specialists in other cities are determined by production and net income.

The Pyramids are desired (but not required) for a quick jump to Bureaucracy.

 

[Roxlimn]

xanadux:

I think it's a little late to be starting out on a transition economy. Normally, you set up a few interstitial cities to work the Cottage tiles for the big cities to work on eventually with the big multiplers, but I don't seem to find any of that in your game.

UncleJJ:

Question:

You have a very strong SE set up with a great combination of cities and wonders. The combination of AP, UoS and SM is incredibly powerful when combined with a SE and a domination push especially when you have the shrine of the state religion.

Why would the AP, UoS and SM combine better with an SE than a more CE oriented HE? Would that be because you lose less gold on the slider when you finally use it to fight WW on a domination push? To be honest, I've never won Domination. I almost always win Diplomatic as I'm pushing for the final few area percentages.

 

[UncleJJ]

xanadux:

UncleJJ:
Question:
Why would the AP, UoS and SM combine better with an SE than a more CE oriented HE? Would that be because you lose less gold on the slider when you finally use it to fight WW on a domination push? To be honest, I've never won Domination. I almost always win Diplomatic as I'm pushing for the final few area percentages.

Basically because a SE would have better production capability due to running either Slavery with farms and good food or Caste System with workshops. There is a strong synergy between the extra production in core cities providing troops for expansion and extra production in the conquered cities getting them to contribute to the empire's economy through using the wonders. Before Scientific Method building a Monastery and Temple in a conquered city is a great way to provide hammers, culture and other benefits and they have to be early builds.

A CE based economy would normally run Emancipation which is no use in this regard. Instead a CE would have to run US and spend a lot of gold to hurry the production of these buildings and the economics of that is much less attractive and could even be wasteful if done in every city.

 

[xanadux]

So let me see if I have the gist of starting the SE strategy.

First, You have to do extensive scouting to find an ideal science city (maximum food availability). In the meantime you're developing your capital, military, and (at least) another city.

Next, you make your way toward Writing so that you can build a a library and unlock the science specialists. After switching to Caste System, you then crank out Great Scientits in your science city and cruise to a tech lead.

Specialists in other cities are determined by production and net income.

The Pyramids are desired (but not required) for a quick jump to Bureaucracy.

Sometimes you can find your super science city fairly quickly, or it will obviously be your capital. Scouting is important in all games, but extra food is especially important in a SE game, plus you can generally afford to expand just a bit more quickly, so finding and claiming the choice sites is important.

Every high food surplus city you can find will make a good contribution.

If your capital is clearly going to be the SSC (super science city), the first priority is usually to get a high production city or 2 founded as soon as possible so the capital can concentrate on specialists. Usually moving the capital is a good idea in this case. Many people like to use the capital for a cottage city, but I really like the power of Bureaucracy in a pure production capital. If you can find a city that can work 6 or 7 mines at size 10 or so, that's a great candidate for a production capital.

After a strategic resource is found, yes, Writing is the first priority. If you are going to REX early, which I recommend, You may need to rely on a few scientists from a library to get to caste system in a reasonable amount of time. When philisophical and the pyramids, even just 1 city running 2 scientists can get you a pretty respectable science rate pretty quickly even with a low science slider. The first Great Scientist shows up in only 9 turns, and the second only 16 turns later. If your SSC is founded and you have the pyramids, you can go from 15 beakers/turn (2 scientists + library) to 36 beakers/turn (2 scientists + lib + academy + Super Scientist) in only 25 turns. At this point, CoL should not be long, and everything accelerates. This kind of city can pretty much match, and even exceed a financial cottage spammed capital under Bureaucracy.

The simple SE I like to run has mostly 2 kinds of cities ... production cities and specialist cities. One of the great things about the SE is that many or even all of your cities can be hybrid specialist/production cities. Especially Argos and Corinth from this game would qualify. Although I have used them as production cities, they could stop working the mines and concentrate on specialists. This is a nice flexibility that a SE can have. Until you have Towns and Universal Sufferage, and levees, it is tough for a CE commerce city to switch to production ... it usually just doesn't have the food available to switch to mines, and it hurts to stop working cottages because they won't grow. Similarly, A high production city can't just switch on commerce because it won't have developed cottages.

I don't recommend lightbulbing below emperor level if you manage the pyramids. I can see it occassionally being useful on monarch if you get caught in a tough situation, or up against an unusually strong trading block of AIs. The one exception I would note is that it is sometimes worth considering lightbulbing philosophy, especially if spiritual. If you have other techs you really need, bulbing philosophy to run pacifism and maybe for Taoism if it will be useful can be a good idea. An extra 20 or 30 turns of pacifism, plus the beakers from the bulb is likely worth more than the GS. I would think this is best when isolated, especially if you don't have a religion yet. Why isolated? You don't need as many troops, and can probably stay in Pacifism for a long time. Rather than spend the beakers on Philosophy, you can beeline optics.

 

[Roxlimn]

Uncle JJ:

Basically because a SE would have better production capability due to running either Slavery with farms and good food or Caste System with workshops. There is a strong synergy between the extra production in core cities providing troops for expansion and extra production in the conquered cities getting them to contribute to the empire's economy through using the wonders. Before Scientific Method building a Monastery and Temple in a conquered city is a great way to provide hammers, culture and other benefits and they have to be early builds.

A CE based economy would normally run Emancipation which is no use in this regard. Instead a CE would have to run US and spend a lot of gold to hurry the production of these buildings and the economics of that is much less attractive and could even be wasteful if done in every city.

I don't see why Caste System would not be run by a CE hybrid. After all, he also has his key SE cities which benefit from the Civic, and he gets just as much production from the Workshops as a more SE Civ. The one reason I can think of is that the SE can run a higher Science output with a high Culture slider to counter Emancipation unhappiness. A CE player can't profitably raise his Culture slider to 30%, for instance, for most of the game, unless going for a Culture win.

Would that be the key reason for wanting Emancipation?

If you have the AP, Temples and Monasteries still provide their usual benefits to a CE Civ, and there's really no reason a CE City would avoid these buildings, especially as he also benefits more from the +10% Science from the Monasteries Civ-wide.

I've run a mostly CE Pacal and Huayna Civ on Police State, Caste System, and Free Speech, and I don't particularly feel that an SE system would have much of an advantage in terms of production. A CE system, by the time Emancipation rolls along, would probably already have mostly mature Towns anyway. There's not much point in getting it for the Cottage maturity bonus. That's really only a big advantage for a Transition economy.

In fact, by running Police State instead of Representation, the CE gets a +25% unit production bonus.

 

[UncleJJ]

Roxlimn, you are right, a CE flavoured hybrid can be run as you suggest and it would have better production than a straight CE. But every additional cottage you run is a lost opportunity to have a farm that is harvested through Slavery for hammers or a workshop paired with Caste System. So by definition the CE cities will have less production if they have more commerce even if the civics are run. It depends on tile usage in the final analysis.

That lower production means that it takes longer for a CE hybrid to build suitable infrastructure. It can indeed build a temple and monastry just as the SE flavoured variant, but at a slower pace due to less production. Take xanadux's Indian cities in this game at 1300 AD, and you can see many useful buildings he would like to build including library, university, market, harbour and so on as well as Hindu temple and monastry. He wants to do other things with those cities as well including raising a fleet for coast protection and for an invasion of the other continent. Running CE civics and working cottages will make that reconstruction process a lot slower than a SE hybrid with either Slavery and farms or Caste System and workshops.

Concerning civics a major difference between a CE flavoured hybrid and the SE flavoured one is running the Nationhood civic instead of the Free Speech one. Without many towns and more food the SE version benefits from the higher happiness Nationhood gives and the higher production allows the construction of the espionage buildings and more food make running spy specialists easier.

I would run Police State when at war and Representation in peacetime. Nationhood and either Slavery (paired with OR or Theocracy) or Caste System (paired with Pacifism) is my usual SE civic arrangement in the late game. Then I might run any of Mercantilsm (with few foriegn trade opportunities), Free Market (either with Corporations or lots of trade) or State Property (reduce large empire's costs and food boost to workshops and watermills). So I have lots of variations and adjustments. I don't really have a favourite SE configuration of civics and I'm still experimenting with all the BtS combinations.

 

[Roxlimn]

UncleJJ:

It does depend on the tile usage. I haven't seen xanadux's savegame because I'm still on the 3.02 patch. I'm somewhat put off by the crash complaints of the new patch, and not entirely sure about switching to Bhruic's modified patch. Is it any good?

Anyways, the thing with SE, as we're discussed in the past, it that it's population intensive, whereas CE is tile intensive. You definitely want more Workers in CEs than you necessarily want in an SE, though with an SE, I typically switch improvements around so much that I usually need the Workers anyway.

While CE cities are tile intensive, I usually do some things to "fix" problem production cities. Slavery whipping isn't unique to SE. Typically, for problem production cities, I farm a good number of tiles for growth while also working some cottages. The excess growth does well under Slavery for providing buildings, and those pop point you would usually assign to Specialists simply work cottage tiles. It's almost a 1 to 1 correspondence.

Once I shift to Caste System with Workshops, I just work over a few Farms with Workshops. It works quite well. Thing is, if you don't have Hills to work for a CE Commerce city, you're sort of forced to use Workshops, so it's not like that's a Cottage tile loss. You would've preferred to have it as a Hill anyway.

While it's true that SE cities are less picky about the tiles they use, given a 1 to 1 correspondence for Cottages and Specialist use, I don't see where a production advantage comes from in an SE. Poor production in a CE city only indicates a poorly developed city, nothing more.

You don't cottage everything even in a CE-slanted hybrid economy because you'll lag behind in infrastructure building, and what you gain from the extra cottages, you'll just lose on buying infrastructure or in not having the right buildings fast enough, not to mention being locked into US.

The Nationhood Civic is probably the one advantage I would cede the SE. That's one major advantage, I'll grant, but it's not straight-up plain production in the usual sense.

Arrayed against that, Free Speech kind of necessitates Representation for the SE to match Science production. If the SE runs Rep and the CE runs Police State, the difference between the "production" of units Civ wide will even out in the long run, though a considerable "surge" benefit for Drafting can't be discounted.

I, too, am still experimenting with all the BTS Civics. I find Environmentalism quite useful for the early Industrial Age. People keep saying to just run Free Market and not build the Factories and Coal Plants, but that's just inane. The production bonus from the Coal Plants and Factories is worth the cost of running Environmentalism in both CE and SE, and the bonus commerce and food from Windmills somewhat offsets the loss of an extra trade route, especially for Financial Civs.

Definitely my fave Civic in that slot for the Industrial Age, whether SE or CE.

My usual SE Civics in the Industrial Age onwards definitely trends to Representation/Police State in the first column, and Nationhood/Bureaucracy in the second column. I actually did Free Speech for an SE in a game once, but that was for the final culture push with a ton of Artist Specialists in the main Culture Cities.

Caste System-Pacifism is a natural combo from early on, but I find that I also use Free Religion for dealing with WW for CE, not so much for SE, since I can always just up the Culture slider. As with your experience, I almost never run Emancipation in an SE if I can help it, but with the great premium on popluation size for an SE, sometimes I run it for especially populous Civs - like one where my SE centers top out at 27 or so.

 

[xanadux]

Just thought I'd mention ...

I almost never use free speech in a CE.

I haven't used slavery in this game.

 

[Nabe-shogun]

Thanks for taking the time to make this thread, and for answering my questions. I have just one more question.

Where do you draw the line between specialists and growth?

I started a game last night on the second lowest level just so I could mess around and get the feel of running a SE. In addition to the SCC, I also had a bunch of merchants in my capital for extra cash with Bureacracy. At first I had a mixture of specialists and growth, but eventually my tech lead was so huge, I decided to work all the tiles and just add specialists as the city grew, which was pretty quick because I had a ridiculous amount of food.

 

[Sabertooth]

xanadux:

Thanks to this interesting and illuminating thread, I'm finally beginning to understand the mechanics of a specialist economy for the first time.

Thank you thank you! Keep up the good work!