Good SE article?

[OneBinary]

Hi All,

I've been reading a lot on the SE/CE game style, and I think I'd like to give SE a try, or at least learn more about how it's used/implemented. I did a few searches, but I don't see an SE strategy article. Are there any good SE articles that I can read?

 

[futurehermit]

Just do a search for SE/specialist economy. You'll find many of the threads a number of us have participated in over the past year or so. They should make for very educational reading.

 

[DaveMcW]

The real power of specialists is the great people they generate. So the optimal strategy is to have cottages and one "gp farm" city with specialists.

 

[Sisiutil]

JackOfClubs has started writing a Beginner's Guide to the Specialist Economy in the Strategy Articles sub-forum. Check it out!

 

[JackOfClubs]

And please let me know if it proves helpful. It is a work in progress so I want expert critiques, of course, but I especially want to know if it is useful to beginners.

 

[futurehermit]

The real power of specialists is the great people they generate. So the optimal strategy is to have cottages and one "gp farm" city with specialists.

Incorrect imo. The "real" power of specialists is the fact that you run FARMS in order to work specialists, and farms allow you to regrow faster after whipping and also to emphasize production in parallel with beakers. You can also generally sustain a larger empire since you don't have to rely on the science slider for your research. Running multiple specialist cities allows you to generate more gp, especially if you are philosophical (the financial of the SE).

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Incorrect imo. The "real" power of specialists is the fact that you run FARMS in order to work specialists, and farms allow you to regrow faster after whipping and also to emphasize production in parallel with beakers.

I don't buy this for a minute - not after reviewing Acid IV.

One, on the face of it the claim here is completely silly - you could get the same fast regrowth with those same farms, and cottages available for your "specialists" to work until the next whip or whatever. Your production is also the same. If there's an advantage to running the specialists it must be either the higher commerce yield or the GP points.

Two, I'm very suspicious of the notion that an economy focused on whipping out production is appropriately described by the term "specialist economy". (Which is not to deny that it is effective - indeed it may be the most effective method of play; but quite frankly I have trouble pretending that you are running a specialist economy when a Great General pops before you reach 100 GPP in any of your cities).

 

[futurehermit]

One, the cottage econ won't have those farms for regrowth, especially in high population cities.

Two, the economy isn't focused on whipping out production, it is a byproduct. You can whip more often (see point one), thus you get more production, it has more synergy. The "economy" of course is not your production capacity (although acidsatyr disagrees and I see what he is saying), so the primary benefit is of course lightbulbed beakers (and hence traded beakers).

 

[JackOfClubs]

I think part of the confusion is due to the fact that there are at least two distinct strategies when using the SE.

If you run Caste System then you can assign as many scientists as you have food to support and therefore whipping is just as costly as with a CE (especially since you have to pop in and out of Slavery to whip and this may cost you some turns of Anarchy). This, I think, is the more appropriate definition of an SE. It has an underlying food economy, but that is only a means to the end of maximizing research.

Or, you can run only the specialists that the buildings can support and just stay in Slavery permanently. In this case the extra food will not result in more research, but you can convert it to hammers and it will, as noted by futurehermit, grow your pop back quickly. This is more of a Food Economy (FE), and is not directly comparable to the CE or SE but it will probably share a lot of the civics and other characteristics of the latter.

I would like to see some detailed analysis of these three strategies so I can have a better understanding of the tradeoffs. I suspect that it will turn out that neither is superior overall, but that they each are better adapted to different circumstances, but without numbers, I can never tell whom to believe.

 

[futurehermit]

Although whipping does temporarily affect your # of specialists, the point I continually try and emphasize is that because your city's *tiles* are farms, you will grow back *faster* to working those specialists, whereas in a CE your *tiles* are cottages you will grow back *slower* to working original # of cottages. Thus you return to pre-whip state faster in SE thus making whipping more synergistic with SE.

 

[frob2900]

I don't buy this for a minute - not after reviewing Acid IV.

One, on the face of it the claim here is completely silly - you could get the same fast regrowth with those same farms, and cottages available for your "specialists" to work until the next whip or whatever. Your production is also the same. If there's an advantage to running the specialists it must be either the higher commerce yield or the GP points.

Two, I'm very suspicious of the notion that an economy focused on whipping out production is appropriately described by the term "specialist economy". (Which is not to deny that it is effective - indeed it may be the most effective method of play; but quite frankly I have trouble pretending that you are running a specialist economy when a Great General pops before you reach 100 GPP in any of your cities).

For small size cities, yes. But one the city is over about 7-8 it gets pretty different.. Obviously so, just look at the contrived example of a city with only grassland tiles at size 10.

For specialist economy you have 30 food growth/turn.. for cottages 20.. so thats 10/turn regrowth for SE and nothing for CE. With a few plains added the situation gets even worse for CE. And after biology the comparison just gets silly (biology can easily be gotten as a midgame tech with proper bulbing.)

Great Generals are obviously useful for their +3 beakers/turn under representation Seriously, though, I think generals should at least be able to bulb military tradition...

 

[acidsatyr]

Once population gets high, it is obvious why more farms brings in more shields. Which brings me to next point.

There is a lot of confusion between what's FE and what's SE. I don't consider economy just from research standpoint. It involves production. Economy with a highly advanced reseach with very poor production is as bad as economy with extremly good production, which cannot do any research.
FE, meaning farm economy (which is just a name for something, don't get lost in it), means that you'r moslty using farms for your production (more production from farms than mines, total.) and research, for your economy. Research, obviously comes from specialists since your running farms, therefore, from research standpoint, your economy is SE. SE naturally follows FE, if you see what I'm saying.
CE production can never be as good as FE production, which also naturally follows. And in most cases, it is production thats more important than research.

 

[futurehermit]

^^^so acidsatyr, do you mean that running more farms allows you to work more mines OR that you are getting hammers from plains farms (or both)?

 

[acidsatyr]

No I'm saying that in FE most of your production will come from whipping.
Farms = food = whipping

 

[futurehermit]

^^ok, right, thanks.

 

[TheCorsican]

I find that the beginners guide to the specialist economy, written by JackOfClubs, is a very good one to begin with.
I'm an average Monarch player, and have some problems with military units management.
I made some experiments at emperor level following what he suggests in his guide and obtained very good results, especially in terms of military flexibility.
One thing I did was to make SE games on great lakes maps (small size, and duel), in order to better understand the deep mechanics of a SE game played with Gandhi, and also in order to be sure to get Pyramid and/or Parthenon and/or GL in the same town, which is not compulsory for winning but helps a lot !!!. Of course, I'm sure you can't do all those wonders at higher levels, since you have more urgent things to do than buiding all this wonders, and also because the AI builds much faster than you; try, try again, experiment...

If you're a peacemonger (like me, some months ago), I'm sure you will soon become an early warmonger playing this kind of game, thanks to the flexibility you get with such games.

If you want to understand how it works, you can also learn a lot from succession games played SE style in this forum.

 

[JackOfClubs]

I find that the beginners guide to the specialist economy, written by JackOfClubs, is a very good one to begin with. I'm an average Monarch player, and have some problems with military units management.

Thanks! glad you found it useful. I have been struggling myself lately with military timing on Monarch. I find that I am much too cautious and tend to go to war several turns later than I should have. Also, I don't like attacking people that are pleased with me and you can't make arrogant demands to try to get them to attack first. Sentimental, I know, but it is a real psychological challenge.

I made some experiments at emperor level following what he suggests in his guide and obtained very good results, especially in terms of military flexibility.

Glad to hear that. I think, in general, the guide works better up to Monarch. At Emperor and above, the settled scientists I recommend should probably be replaced by constant lightbulbing, according to what I hear from more experienced players. But I haven't really played too many Emperor level games so I don't know from personal experience. My general feeling is that techs prior to, say, Alphabet should not be lightbulbed because the research cost is so low that it wastes the excess from the lightbulbing so the GS could be better used making an academy or settling for long term advantage. But that perception is based on my experience at Monarch and below and above Emperor, early seems to be better in all cases. Or so they tell me. I would be interested to know more details about your experience in this regard.

One thing I did was to make SE games on great lakes maps (small size, and duel), in order to better understand the deep mechanics of a SE game played with Gandhi, and also in order to be sure to get Pyramid and/or Parthenon and/or GL in the same town, which is not compulsory for winning but helps a lot !!!.

Be careful of putting the Parthenon in the Science/GP Farm city. It produces Great Artist GPP and that can screw up your lightbulbing. The Parthenon is a great wonder that can be built anywhere because its benefits affect all cities.

In my current game, I put it in the GP farm since I didn't have a city with better production at that stage of the game. (Lots of forests were there for chopping and I was going to clear them anyway for the farms.) But I got 2 GA in a row at less that 15% odds! Not a game killer but disappointing. And one of them wanted to lightbulb music, which gave me ... another Great Artist!

 

[Wodan]

And one of them wanted to lightbulb music, which gave me ... another Great Artist!

Yeah but that's a freebie one and Music gives you Notre Dame.

Wodan

 

[Khanate]

One, the cottage econ won't have those farms for regrowth, especially in high population cities.

But a CE will have more citizens working the tiles (and floods have extra food), while I thought the whole point about running SE was to emphasize great people (which have no food). Both styles of play need large populations to be efficient, so I don't really see your point about slaving and regrowth. And it is now problem to whip important buildings in a floodplain commerce city in CE. You'll have enough food for regrowth with an extra fish or wheat nearby, as you will usually have.

 

[Wodan]

I agree that high population cities it's dubious whether SE has better regrowth.

To me, however, where SE and slavery have the best synchronicity is for small population cities. The farms allow you to whip the cheap but necessary buildings (Library, Courthouse, etc.) whereas the CE doesn't have this option without making farms and then cottaging them over. Not a huge problem (in fact that's what I usually do in my CE), but without a doubt a minor advantage to the SE.

Your point about floodplain or food resource CE cities doesn't make sense. Whether the city is running CE or SE, it gets those benefits. Unless you're saying that the presence of this in either case allows fast whipping regrowth for small cities, no matter the economy. That's true, though the SE will still have somewhat of an advantage there (unless there is a LOT of food... more than a couple).

Wodan