help needed for GP farms

[xxxusernamexxx]

i read about city specialization from the war academy. the problem is i got confused somewhere in between about building wonders in them. The question is should i even build any wonders in my GP farm since they may pollute the kind of GP being produced. If I can build wonders, should i build only those that produce great engineers and scientist?

Note that i usually have my capital as my GP farm

 

[Refar]

A good GP farm needs lots of Food. Sometimes the Hammers will suffer from it...Spending Food on working high-Hammer tiles means you are running less specialists... A low hammer city does not seem quite right for Wonders.

If you have the hammers / can reconfigure for a while - Great library is great for a GS farm. National Epic obviously has a synergy with GPPs... But it pollutes with Great Artist - i sometimes choose to postpone NE for that reason - the first couple of Great People are cheap enought to be popped without.....

 

[Molybdeus]

I would not worry about polluting your great person pool. Almost all of the great people are useful in one way or another. Great Prophets are fine until you get too many of them. (So a couple of points from the Oracle or Apostolic Palace are fine.) Great Artists can culture bomb an opponent and cause him to lose cities and resources to you. And of course they can all lightbulb techs or settle. Settled great prophets are actually pretty nice.

 

[Sisiutil]

Let's not forget Golden Ages, but only if you have BtS.

 

[xxxusernamexxx]

hmm.....my capital usually have around 4 hills for me to mine and the rest is grasslands and rivers, with some food resources. therefore, i usually have more than enough food to work all my tiles and maybe extras for specialist. with bueracracy and the 4 mines, i can normally win the race for wonders(on noble level). when i am not building wonders i can switch the mines into specialist.....theres no need for cottages since other cities will take care of it....is that possible?

 

[oyzar]

See obsolete's games for how it is defiantly possible to turn the capital into a wonder focused GP farm...

 

[xxxusernamexxx]

can i have the link to his game?

 

[UncleJJ]

Here is a link to obsolete's most recent game. Without the Mids (SSE/WE Immortal wt) He has played several of these walkthroughs (about 8 I think) and they all follow a similar pattern. Here is another link to an earlier game that might be easier to understand and follow what he's doing. The INSANE Walkthrough


He plays at immortal level but the technique is applicable at any level. He advocates building wonders that give priest and engineer GPPs and then he settles the GPs and GEs to produce a high hammer capital that can build further wonders even easier. Well worth a read although it is an extreme form of the GP Farm.

 

[Iranon]

I'd like to point out that a wonder-fueled GP farm can work for other play styles as well; a pathological dislike for cottages is by no means a requirement.

I deviate a little from what seems the usual playstyle and put a heavy emphasis on wonders if circumstances allow (when Industrious or with early stone/marble in the absence of AI wonder addicts):

In a Cottage Economy, I will spam wonders in my capital and forgo a traditional GP farm which frees up a food-rich city to become another commerce monster.
In a SE I will spam them my best non-capital city (the capital will often be cottaged for Bureaucracy for a long time) with high food surplus and a few high-hammer tiles: Emphasise production for wonders, run specialists in the downtime.