"GL economy" - where to go from here? :D

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Nov 11, 2009
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I'm currently playing a Hemispheres game as Frederick (random number of continents made 4 or 5 of them (if 5, one is civ free :))) and my civ is on a continent with a lot of surrounding islands and a lot of water all in all.

Early in the game I saw that this might be a good time to try something I almost never do, and built the Great Lighthouse, and I must say, I'm more than impressed. I had almost 200 beakers per turn in 1 CE, which is more than any other game I've played in which I went for cottages. Then I settled a lot of coastal cities, making all other goals secondary, seeing as my neighbour was rather peaceful, Huyana Capac. (the fact that he had no metals also played a part in my ignoring him ;)) Also, I decided I should try a SE of sorts, so I've built the Parthenon, the Colossus, the Great Library.

At some point, I attacked Huyana who had 3 cities and had built the Pyramids, the Temple of Artemis (I got some nice fail gold when he built it, although I'd have rather taken the temple, thank you :)), the Church of Nativity and the Apostolic palace.

Now the war is over, I've met the rest of the world, and I'd like to ask for advice on how to proceed. I'm mainly curious about how to manage my almost complete lack of cottages (7 in the city which will soon become the buraucracy capital and 4-5 in another city), since specialists can't be too good for long. I'm mostly interested, though, in the viability of over sea trade routes, which is why I've named the topic the way I did. I have cities on 5 land masses now (main and 5 islands around it), I've built harbours in almost all coastal cities (and I only have 1 non-coastal city, which I've captured from Huyana)

Will these offer good enough commerce till at least the industrial age? Or should I start looking for another place to settle and fill with cottages?

What would you do from here on?

Thanks! :D

Save is with BUG 4.3 and BULL installed... somehow.
View attachment Frederick AD-0790.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
By the looks of the tech screen, you've already won.

Spam coastal cities with food resources, each one of them is going to pay for itself, as long as you don't have 3+ on the same island.
 
By the looks of the tech screen, you've already won.

Thanks!
But unfortunately, in every game I've tried not to use many cottages, I've lost at some point when the specialists were offering too few beakers and a cottage spamming civ was going far in front with techs, despite having had a large tech lead before that. :) It's quite silly, actually, but from this point, I usually started to lose. :(


Spam coastal cities with food resources, each one of them is going to pay for itself, as long as you don't have 3+ on the same island.

Will these cities pay for themselves, or will they do more than just that and offer good enough commerce to last me for a lot of other turns? :D

Would it be possible, for instance, to run on coastal cities in the industrial age and still be competitive tech-wise? (i.e. Harbour + Customs House + Library, at least)
 
Oh yes... you don't need cottages after either Biology or State Property to shoot ahead in techs.
Rep specialists or workshop spam is just as good.
 
Thanks!

I didn't think about biology in SE, but it makes a lot of sense, actually. :)
Every bio grassland farm can feed one specialist, right? So with rep, that would make it 9 beakers "from" each grassland farm, which really is more than a town with 100% science.
 
^ no. They're similar actually. A normal rep scientist is 6 beakers/turn, a town is 7 commerce with PP and free speech (1 hammer with US), so strictly speaking a town is a bit better if you can 100% it towards your desired output. In practice, they're close enough that a rep spec (which has far less setup time) can compete well enough, especially if you set up multipliers well.
 
Oh... I don't know where I got the 9 from. :) Is that accurate for settled scientists? I might have made this confusion.

~~~
I'd like to ask, how long can the coastal cities' commerce be competitive in a world in which some civs get a lot of cottages?
 
river and financial each gives 1 extra commerce, so a town can maximize to 9 potentially. But, farming river also give 1 commerce, so 6 beakers +1 commerce from rep.
 
While I'm not going to comment on the original topic here, I'm just going to point out this: Your capital has 5 unhealthiness. That's -5 food yield total. Had you settled on the floodplain where you obviously initially started you'd have +2 health from fresh water and +3 food yield from the clam meaning you'd have only -3 unhealth at your current position with +3 more yield (-2 from flood plain, +3 from clam, +2 from less unhealth) making Berlin have a surplus of 4 food at size 12 over the +1 that you have now.

Obviously you couldn't have known that you'd be settling on Iron but all in all your capital would be way better off 1W. Looking at it again that'd be one monster production capital as far as seaside capitals go with access to 3 hills, iron, marble and a plains cow.

I'm against settling on FP myself but sometimes - like this - you just have to bite the bullet and do it.
 
Game looks won, but why do you have so much gold stockpiled at this point in the game? Could have got education ages ago by running 100%.
 
@JFlemme
Yeah, settling cities is, unfortunately, not my strong point, with the biggest errors coming in settling the first city. I usually hate settling FP, thinking that it turns the tile into a desert tile, which sucks if you lose the city... but then again... why would you lose the city? I try keeping that in mind, but it always slips away. :)

Anyway, you are right, it would have been easy to settle in place (you've estimated correctly :) - btw, how did you do that? I mean, how can you tell which of the FP was the starting point?)

@Inso
Some of it came from capturing Cuzco, but all in all, I try to tech with 100% tech rate and to pile up the gold until I can tech something all the way. And unfortunately, in this situation, I was undecided whether to bulb part of education or to tech it all the way, so that also had something to do with it. :(

Thank you all for your input! :D
Well, if anyone's interested, settling cities on other land masses turned out to be quite profitable. I still don't know how to compare this to a straight cottage economy, but up until the industrial age, I've been... more than competing. :)
 
It's obvious that the fp to the west is the starting point given how the clam to the south is adjacent to the cow. Different kinds of resources always have 1 tile between them with the only exception being the capital bfc.
 
GL economies, prioritize techs that will net you more from trade routes. Namely, optics and astronomy. As for the rest of your economy, play it with what suits your fewer land tiles. Whether it be hammer, specialists, or cottages doesn't matter. All the GLH does is help to offset fewer food resources, cottaged or work shopped tiles so that you can remain competitive in heavy sea-based maps.
 
Thanks!

I didn't think about biology in SE, but it makes a lot of sense, actually. :)
Every bio grassland farm can feed one specialist, right? So with rep, that would make it 9 beakers "from" each grassland farm, which really is more than a town with 100% science.

Hiring a specialist takes two citizens, cottage takes one. The correct way is to compare a specialist to two cottages.
 
Much has already been said, all I can say is that if you were still hungry for towns, is that you leverage your tech superiority and conquer some.
 
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