How do you restore your economy after an early rush?

[El Bogus]

Hi everyone!
I'm proudly playing my second Emperor game as Louis XIV of the French.
I chariot rushed my close Incan neighbour and have now 5 chariots left. Did I build too many units? I have 6 cities now, three of them captured former Incan cities. My capital has no river tiles but three very strong health tiles (2x watered corn, 1x pig).
I discovered writing and sailing, so GLH is an option (4 coastal cities on what appears to be pangaia).
Should I mass Scientists? Where do I tech next, literature or marketing/CoL? Do cottages help out this early without being financial?
Is it even possible to rush my next neighbour Isabella? She has 2 (of 3) cities on hills, though.

I won my first Emperor game with an early immortal rush as Persia, too. But for the rest of the game, I couldn't turn my science slider above 50% without making a deficit. Any tips for an advancing beginner?

 

[traius]

The critical techs for getting out of the hole economically are currency and code of laws. That being said, code of laws is only really important if organized. The GLH is an amazing economic wonder, even if it affects only 4/6 cities, and if you think you can chop it out, by all means go for it.
Currency truly is the be all end all to ending the deficit. It gives "free" trade commerce and allows you to build wealth, the latter often not being used by new players, but actually being more valuable than most buildings.
Don't get too hung up on the slider. What matters is the beaker output, not the slider percentage. 100% on 2 cities is often less than 60% on 10 cities in terms of beakers.

 

[Htadus]

I couldn't turn my science slider above 50% without making a deficit. Any tips for an advancing beginner?

Having to drop to 50% is not bad. What matters is how many bulbs per turn you generate.

You definitely have to run scientist to keep the tech rate high and get to Currency which is the most powerful economics tech. If you have alpha, then you can build wealth to speed up to currency.

Also you can attack Hatty and pillage tiles and raze bad cities to get some funds to keep the science slider up. GLH is not a bad option either. Specially if there are other civs around and/or there are islands to settle new cities.

I usually let my economy drop to 10% before climbing out of it with 2-3 cottage cities and up to 10-12 hybrid cities. So take that chance as long as you have writing, alpha or/and currency, and CoL. Once you have these, you are set.

 

[El Bogus]

Thank you!
A few more questions.
Why do you value wealth higher than research in cities? Does any of these benefit from percentage bonus buildings (library or market)?
Who is Hatty?

 

[Bjarkov]

building research/wealth do not use gold or beaker multipliers like Library and Market, but rather hammer multipliers (Forge etc)
Because of that, and because you're usually more likely to build Libraries than Markets in your commerce cities, you generally need more commerce to generate one gold coin than one beaker, meaning you get more bang for your buck by building wealth rather than building research

Hatty is forum slang for hatshepshut, an Egyptian queen. She likes building cottages and is easy to make friends with even though you have attacked her once in the past, making her a good pillage victim

 

[Gwynnja]

That being said, code of laws is only really important if organized.

Correct. Running merchants with caste system is in no way helpful for economic purposes.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Currency, CoL, bulb Philo. Road to a nearby neighbor if you don't already have foreign trade routes. Once currency is in, sell older techs for gold. Check the resource trade screen every turn to see if you can sell excess or unneeded resources to the AI. Choose one hammer heavy city to build wealth. Once Philo is in, consider a CS/Pacif run to get a GS or 2 and a GM for trade mission. If you have access to wonder multiplier resources, consider building a couple of wonders for fail gold (build up hammers but don't complete the build and let the AI finish). That takes care of the gold so you can run 100% slider for extended periods of time. But you'll need commerce for that to matter. With few riverside tiles, commerce mostly comes from trade routes so TGL is good though I wouldn't say 4/6 cities is worth the massive hammer investment unless you can settle several more coastal cities or at least grow those 4 cities nice and large. Unless you can breach 10 citizens in each city, you'll only ever see 16 from TGL so make sure you maximize it if you invest those hammers. If going for TGL, you'll want Compass eventually to build Harbors and further extend the bonus from TGL. You might consider going Aesth -> Lit and build the GrLib and run some scientists to get a few GS for bulbs.

 

[traius]

Correct. Running merchants with caste system is in no way helpful for economic purposes.

Running merchants is bad. Scientist > merchants. Scientists give better great people. Scientists get bonuses from useful libraries, instead of crappy markets. Therefore, you only need writing and libraries. Caste blows for all but sprirtual/GA.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Running merchants is bad. Scientist > merchants. Scientists give better great people. Scientists get bonuses from useful libraries, instead of crappy markets. Therefore, you only need writing and libraries. Caste blows for all but sprirtual/GA.

Very rarely am I running scientists purely for research. Caste/Pacif + mass scientists = GS spam. That combined with the bonus to workshops and in no way does caste "blow". Additionally, caste/Pacif + merchants = fast GM for a trade mission which can fuel a helluva lot of turns at 100% slider. Merchants can also bulb some fairly powerful Econ techs. Once I have a GS for academy, 1 for Philo bulb and maybe 1 to bulb education, I often strive for GM.

Also, those libraries are only giving non-Caste scientists a 1 boost (since you only have access to 2 scientists). If you run 5 caste merchants, you're getting 15 potentially allowing you to bump your slider up (possibly a significant amount). Depending on your economy, you might get more out of running merchants and bumping your slider than running just 2 scientists. Additionally, if you are nearly running a deficit at 0% (which can definitely happen with too much expansion), then caste merchants can make sure you avoid strike and get some research while you rebuild your economy.

This definitely all depends on how the game has progressed. Sometimes, I have currency before CoL (so build wealth > caste merchants). Sometimes, I Oracle CoL (caste merchants can be great depending)

 

[Gwynnja]

Running merchants is bad. Scientist > merchants. Scientists give better great people. Scientists get bonuses from useful libraries, instead of crappy markets. Therefore, you only need writing and libraries. Caste blows for all but sprirtual/GA.

Bulbing philosophy with a great scientist is good, but what tech do you need to bulb it? Hint: it's code of laws.I never said markets were good buildings. I want a library and an academy so I can set up my bureaucracy capital and run my slider at 100% How do you get to bureaucracy? Hint: it's through code of laws. GTFO of here with your "dur hur code of laws is only good if yer organized dur hur" nonsense.

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[blitzkrieg1980]

Bulbing philosophy with a great scientist is good, but what tech do you need to bulb it? Hint: it's code of laws.I never said markets were good buildings. I want a library and an academy so I can set up my bureaucracy capital and run my slider at 100% How do you get to bureaucracy? Hint: it's through code of laws. GTFO of here with your "dur hur code of laws is only good if yer organized dur hur" nonsense.

Markets may be crap but running CS/Pacif merchants for a GM isn't (just another good use of CoL/CS). I'm guessing he undervalues workshops as well.

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[elmurcis]

Great Merchant is like "global Wealth" so you can run 100% research (for many turns that can give more beakers than 2 Great Scientists together) AND build units for some attack.... Still its timing here... bulb is right here and right now... but even 100% research will take some turns to get things done... Because I build GLH often (on coastal games), 1st GPerson is GM - can REX even with negative gold at 0% research but when empire engine finally gets to full power nothing can stop me anymore (except stupid mistakes... like always)

 

[traius]

Bulbing philosophy with a great scientist is good, but what tech do you need to bulb it? Hint: it's code of laws.I never said markets were good buildings. I want a library and an academy so I can set up my bureaucracy capital and run my slider at 100% How do you get to bureaucracy? Hint: it's through code of laws. GTFO of here with your "dur hur code of laws is only good if yer organized dur hur" nonsense.

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GTFO is pretty pointlessly inflammatory. But I still say the same as before. Merchants < Scientists. Running merchants to allow higher slider is self-defeating. If you have a library and don't have a market, scientists net more usefulness than a merchant does, AND it will give me a better GP.

As for allowing higher slider for the bureau-cap, that is all POST economic recovery, not how you acquire economic recovery, and so I think all my comments still stand. For getting OUT of the hole, code of laws is not very useful, unless you are organized for those half price courthouses. As for caste workshops, they DO suck. A green hill mine is straight up better until pretty deep in the tree. If you are just going to use those workshops to convert into gold or w/e, you may as well have just built a cottage. When you want to get some units out, whip the cottages away for the break-out. It would still be better than any slow-build with a crappy early-game workshop.

Once you have chemistry, caste workshops are awesome. With state property, workshops (and watermills) are the best tiles in the game. But this is so far past the economic recovery stage that the OP was asking about to be pointless. As for GM's, I do think they generally suck. They are only useful to me if I did some chariot (read: War chariot or immortal) or HA rush early and want to turn them in to Cuir's later. Otherwise I whip out my cuirs, as I find it to be a much better use of resources to do that then mass-upgrade, as upgrades are simply too costly.

 

[Seraiel]

It definately depends on the game and on the map. I'm currently playing a Large / Highlands / Conquest game, and I needed exactly 2 GSs (Academy + Education bulb) , and since then prefer Merchants vastly. Highlands mapscript has so little Commerce and good land, while maintenance on large is so high, that I'm running deficit at 0% the whole time, and only keep alive via tech-selling, GAs, trade-missions and running Caste-Merchants. I have 3 Libraries in my whole 30+ cities empire, because I need 50+ units to conquer an AI.

I've gone away from bulbing Philo btw., because AI just techs it too often too early.

Best economy btw. is Trade-route-economy because it doesn't cost anything, and I rarely build Courthouses if not Organized and rarely before I have conquered at least 1 AI.

CoL is still an awesome tech, easy borderpops via Caste, unlocking Civil Service, speed up by Currency and Priesthood.

Workshops before 3 are btw. really not good, the Food that the tile is costing is usually giving more benefit then the 2 from the Workshop, so yes, build Cottages, Farms and Mines early.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

It is a fairly regular occurrence where cottage spamming a bunch of cities is not possible. In those situations, it's much better to run merchants than to be putting your units on strike. Again, the biggest bonus comes from the great merchant that you will eventually pop from running those cast merchants. And also, you keep pointing out the "bonus" that scientist get from the library however you only get one extra science from the library because six science comes from your two scientists. Since you're not talking about running cast system you can only have two scientists in any given time in a city.those two scientists get very little bonus from the library. The library is get bonus to big commerce from cottages and that's great and your cottage cities but, again, it's not always and usually isn't efficient to have a bunch of cottage spam cities and little production. Yes sure you can whip those commerce cities but that is incredibly inefficient.

 

[traius]

It is a fairly regular occurrence where cottage spamming a bunch of cities is not possible. In those situations, it's much better to run merchants than to be putting your units on strike. Again, the biggest bonus comes from the great merchant that you will eventually pop from running those cast merchants. And also, you keep pointing out the "bonus" that scientist get from the library however you only get one extra science from the library because six science comes from your two scientists. Since you're not talking about running cast system you can only have two scientists in any given time in a city.those two scientists get very little bonus from the library. The library is get bonus to big commerce from cottages and that's great and your cottage cities but, again, it's not always and usually isn't efficient to have a bunch of cottage spam cities and little production. Yes sure you can whip those commerce cities but that is incredibly inefficient.

3 things:
1, and most important, this thread is about digging out of the early-rush hole, and the way to do that is to build science and use scientists to get to currency and maybe code of laws.
2: science can come in non-integer values, so it can handle giving 7.5 beakers from 2 scientists, not 7 (it truncates only after summing the BPT of all cities). 7.5 bpt vs 6 gold, and that gold is really only to support higher slider in science, so it gets transferred into bpt. If you can use that gold in your bureau city to get a better rate than that, than that can be a plan. But if you get gold from trades, and gold from selling crap techs and gold from building wealth, and gold from failgold, then ideally you can more or less always run at 100%. And if you can get 100% all the time, this superior conversion is unnecessary, so you can get more BPT "right now" if you go scientists.
3: Whipping of the cottage cities only occurs at the point of going for domination or at least major expansion through the sword (gun). At that point, the most efficient use of that pop is to turn it into cuirs or rifles and use them to secure more land and pop. The returns on conquest are way better than the return on any cottage tile, of that I'm sure we can agree. Then ideally it everything goes well and you just keep whipping to secure victory, and you try to get to rifling to make the attack better.

 

[pigswill]

Looking at the opening post it looks like an early economic hole through over-expansion, probably somewhere between 1500 and 500bc.
In this scenario maybe whip out some libraries for scientists while researching alphabet. Alphabet lets you build research, build some research and run scientists to get to currency. Once you've got currency you can build wealth and may have a chance to tech trade including some cash deals. By that point you should be out of the early game tech hole.

 

[guermantes]

building research/wealth do not use gold or beaker multipliers like Library and Market, but rather hammer multipliers (Forge etc)
Because of that, and because you're usually more likely to build Libraries than Markets in your commerce cities, you generally need more commerce to generate one gold coin than one beaker, meaning you get more bang for your buck by building wealth rather than building research

I am not sure I follow the thrust of the argument here. If hammer multipliers are used when building wealth/research rather than gold/research multipliers, then the existence of libraries/markets is irrelevant. How can the respective benefit of converting to or be gauged by comparing with the often greater yield of turning into rather than ? Why would the fact that is better spent on lead to the conclusion that are better spent on ?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I was more referring to whipping out of cottages for a declaration of war against you keeping on the defensive while you're trying to rebuild your economy. Furthermore You're trying to compare the output of two scientist to that of two merchants which is incorrect. The argument was about cast system being of some use to digging yourself out of economic hole. And for that you can run as many merchants as the city can feed. Which means you can feed three merchants in one city and five in another getting you much more gold. I don't even play deity, but I can tell you that there are plenty of times I have expanded enough either through early rush or from fast settler expansion that I am running negative gold at 0%. Scientist simply cannot help you with that especially pre-current see when you can't sell techs for gold. A little more food for thought is that you don't need to build libraries in order to run scientist with cast system so you can have a couple cities running merchants and one running scientists (potential more than two because you're not limited by the library).

Finally, the main advantage to cast merchants is the eventual great merchant you're undoubtedly going to get. That great merchant can be used to fund your empire for many turns with the trade mission. of course you're going to want to work towards currency for partial recovery. But still if you're running really low gold at a really low percentage slider, you are going to want more gold.

 

[drewisfat]

Because running at 100% slider will give greater total GDP than 50% slider, assuming you have more beaker multipliers (good assumption). So build wealth so you can run the slider higher.

To get out of a hole after early war expansion you beeline currency and then do resource trades for GPT + build wealth in some cities and maybe disband unimportant military units. Courthouses are rarely worth building early even after overexpanding. CoL is an important tech but is usually not beelined. Great merchants aren't bad, but are usually worse than scientists. Seraiel makes a good point about caste, even early caste, in that running an artist for a few turns to immediately pop borders can be really useful.