GP Farms: How many do you build?

GP Farms: How many do you build?


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EweezE

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GP Farms: How many do you build?
What is the ideal number of GP Farms to build?
What is your typical set up for producing GP?

Not everyone puts the same emphasis on GP, so it will be interesting to see the mean.
 
One is enough. You can only have one National Epic.

Edit: My second time hitting 700 posts!
 
It was proven mathematically that one is most efficient in one of the strategy articles. Unless you're running specialists in all cities exclusively (in which case any city could be a "gp farm") you're best off with 1.
 
Oh, hey, I'm the only zero.
 
I'm not.


...:(
 
i usually end up with a hybrid economy, so i have a main gp farm, but a high food city with not alot of production usually gets a lota scientists working so, i end up with 2. but the main one usually produces most gp's
 
A distinction should be made in that one is most effective post national epic. Before that you can speed things up by running several, especially with the philosophical trait. The question is, do you need to speed it up? Depends on your purpose..

Edit: I also don't know if that calculation took wonder GPPs into account.
 
It was proven mathematically that one is most efficient in one of the strategy articles. Unless you're running specialists in all cities exclusively (in which case any city could be a "gp farm") you're best off with 1.

TheMeInTeam,

This type of stuff bothers me. If I find an awesome city spot for a GP farm, I'm going to make one. If I can find two spots, I'm going to make a 2nd one. If my empire is large enough to support it, I'll make a 3rd. Why? Because I'll get Great Persons faster. As primaraly a SE player, I find that GP farms often become psuedo science cities, as well. Furthering how useful said city is to my empire.

Also, I hate hanging onto Great Persons. I find it inefficient. And the more GP farms I have, the more I can specialize each GP farm. And done properly, I can hold off getting a GS from GP farm #1 and get myself a GM from GP farm #3 so I can make Sid's Sushi, rather than relying on random numbers.

I find it more efficient to have control over which GP you will spawn. And don't give me this caste system talk. I like to run Slavery for the entire duration of the game.
 
I think a "GP farm" has to have the National Epic in it. If you are running a specialist economy you might have many cities that have many specialists and sometimes produce great people, but I wouldn't call them GP farms. I think the problem with this whole question is that "GP farm" does not have a definition. Is it any city that is running a specialist or produces a GP, or does it have to run as many specialists as possible?

As to the question, I usually try to have one city as my "GP farm," but I often don't get around to it. I tend to run cottage economies and build few wonders, so I don't really base my strategies around great people because I don't get that many.
 
TheMeInTeam,

This type of stuff bothers me. If I find an awesome city spot for a GP farm, I'm going to make one. If I can find two spots, I'm going to make a 2nd one. If my empire is large enough to support it, I'll make a 3rd. Why? Because I'll get Great Persons faster. As primaraly a SE player, I find that GP farms often become psuedo science cities, as well. Furthering how useful said city is to my empire.

Also, I hate hanging onto Great Persons. I find it inefficient. And the more GP farms I have, the more I can specialize each GP farm. And done properly, I can hold off getting a GS from GP farm #1 and get myself a GM from GP farm #3 so I can make Sid's Sushi, rather than relying on random numbers.

I find it more efficient to have control over which GP you will spawn. And don't give me this caste system talk. I like to run Slavery for the entire duration of the game.

There's nothing wrong with making more specialist cities if you have the food. By all means, do it.

However, the most efficient use of GPP comes from 1 city or something odd that I don't remember like every singe city being identical or something.

Too often, the GP farm city creates specialists at such a rate that it laps the other city, so that the other city is never the one to cross the threshold of GP generation.

First GP needs 100, then the next one 200 etc. Even if the 2nd city is at 99 though, it will now need to make 200 after the first GP is made.

Yes, you can hold off one vs the other. I, like you, prefer slavery however, and in many cases this limits what GPP can be generated based strictly on slot limits. You can't keep merchants/prophets/GE's very pure in the early game or all you'll get is scientists from a scientist farm.

You mention slowing one down vs the other, but at some point this will slow down GPP generation enough that 1 city could match all 3, especially if someone is running NE/Great library for example. The NE makes it so that one city has double the GPP of all other cities all things being equal (or with pacifism, which is a situational civic IMO, 3/2). This city will tend to overwhelm other GP farms unless you curtail it, but then you're hardly getting them "faster".

Gliese made a good point about the distinction of pre vs post NE GP farms. Early in the game though I always viewed it less as "here's a GP farm" and more like "I want early scientists or a priest so I'm running some specialists where I can to get it". It's hard to get a spectacular GPP pool, ESPECIALLY a pure one, pre NE anyway.
 
The thing is if you often make literature a priority and often get tglibrary then obv one gp farm is going to be more effective. I often do this. There are games however where I don't go for tgl but do run a specialist heavy economy (at least in terms of gpp+bulb), with col you can run 2-3 cities midgame with about 5 scientists each for example (size 7 w 2x6 food, 8 with 1x5 and 1x6).

Edit: Naturally this is in transition to getting a proper GP farm up, but with philosophical you can rapidly amass Gss this way if the lands allow it.
 
One per player on the team... You can only have one NE per player... Seriously though you can have several cities producing GP's if the sittuation allows it but most of the time you just have one dedicated GP farm... Second high food city is usually the globe city(that is used for drafting/whipping instead of producing GP's).
 
Early game I will try to squeeze in a few specialists in a couple of cities to get as many great people as early as possible. After getting six or seven GP I will run only one GP farm. Late game I will cottage over the GP farm. I feel that GP are very powerful in the early game, but become much weaker as time goes on. Especially once cottages get rolling late Renaissance or your empire has grown to a large size.

The GP farm loses a lot of value in the late game because of the way GP costs ramp up. There is definitely a point of diminishing returns with running multiple GP farms. Three GP farms will not generate three times as many GPP as one, more like three or four extra GP over the course of the game. It takes 2800 GPP to go from 18 to 19 GP, that is the same amount of GPP needed to generate your first 7 GP! And it only gets worse from there.
 
1-2.

I like shiny wonders so my first city usually ends up being my wonder spamming hammer city and doubles as troop production when i run out of wonders. It also gets all my settled prophets and merchants and corps so its a super gold/hammer city by the lategame.

I only ever build a specialist driven GP farm if i happen to get 3+ food resources in the same city (or 2 good ones and a whole bunch of farmable grassland).

I rarely build the NE anymore. I want ironworks and wallstreet in the first city, so its just if i make a 2nd farm i build it.
 
Kesshi: I'm not sure I understand how you run slavery all game and are able to get GP in the early game. Caste system comes pretty early on before you can have any more than 2 scientists (and maybe 2 merchants). The next time you can add scientists is with Astronomy (I believe) unless you're able to build 8 universities and the Oxford before then. So w/o caste system, I'm not sure how your SE gets you by in the pre-Astronomy/Education times. Do you run a hybrid until then? I would fall way behind in techs if I did a SE without using caste system.
 
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