Hybrid Economies the way to go in BTS?

[DarkFyre99]

With the inclusion of the espionage slider in BTS, it's really starting to look like to me that hybrid economies are even more viable than before.

Cottage economies, where the goal is to get as much commerce as possible and divide it up between the various sliders as needed, has become even more hammer heavy than before. To maximize your output, you need to build espionage multipliers, as well as gold and science multipliers. In addition, having to touch the culture slider to deal with unhappiness greatly hurts you economy.

Specialist/Farm economies still have that late-game "cottages are king" problem, and the AI tends to lag in techs now thanks to allocating part of their research to espionage, making lightbulbing and backfilling more problematic. Still the best strategy when you're planning an early domination win, though. Since your Civ is commerce poor, you can crank up the culture slider to generate more happiness. It requires the Pyramids for maximum effectiveness, unfortunately.

I've played several games now where cottages provide the bulk of my research as per CE, but specialists provide the gold, espionage, and occasionally culture points I need. I eventually switch to Caste System to run many merchants in my food heavy future Wall Street city, and one food heavy city becomes the HQ of my global spy network. When I settle/conquor a third food heavy city, I get a scientist city up and running as well, for my future Oxford city. My remaining non-production cities run a spy specialist from the Courthouse, and get cottaged per an CE. If I need more gold and have a fourth food-heavy city, it also goes the merchant route.

I've been putting the National Epic in my future Wall Street city, to turn out Great Merchants that can be settled/trade missioned, but I'm tempted to move it to my spy city to turn out more Great Spies. Especially since I sometimes have multiple merchant cities, but only one spy city.

Civic tend to be:

• Government: Hereditary Rule or Representation (with pyramids) early, with a switch to Representation later
• Legal: Bureacracy mid-game, with a switch to Free Speech late-game
• Labor: Slavery early, with a swtich to Caste System mid-game, and Emancipation late-game
• Economy: Merchantalism mid-game, with a switch to Free Trade late-game
• Religion: Organized Religion early, with a switch to Free Religion late-game. Theocracy mid-game if I'm planning on doing a lot of conquoring.

This strategy has many of the advantages of the Specialist economy, without the "universal sufferage" shock that comes from dropping out of Caste System. By that time, you should have Oxford and Wall Street built, so you can still run two cities with a lot of specialists. In addition, it isn't dependant upon the Pyramids and an early switch to Representation. Finally, this strategy minimalizes the number of civic switches, which is good for non-spiritual empires. Especially if you time things in order to make the switch during a Golden Age.

The main disadvantage of this strategy remains using the Culture Slider for happiness, in order to combat war-weariness. Since you still have a scientist city, your research doesn't take quite the hit that a pure CE does. In addition, finding three food-heavy cities can sometimes be problematic. Fortunately, spy specialist buildings come late in the game, so a heavily farmed city can work.

edited to correct for brain farts

 

[Percy]

Minor corrections to an interesting point of view:

My remaining non-production cities run a spy specialist from the Courthouse, and get cottaged per an SE.

You mean CE, right?

• Government: Hereditary Rule or Republic (with pyramids) early, with a switch to Republic later

• 
  Republic is Representation, in fact.
  
  

  [*]Labor: Slavery early, with a swtich to Caste System mid-game, and Universal Sufferage late-game

  Universal Suffrage (not Sufferage, unless you keep whipping your population =P) is in Government. The last Labor option is Emancipation.
  
  
  Anyway, interesting formalization of the generally given advice, especially the part where Science is obtained through cottages, while Gold is obtained through specialists in a few locations, which kind of goes against the generally accepted idea that SE = Scientists.

 

[DarkFyre99]

thanks for the corrections, Percy

That'll teach me for posting an idea in way too early in the morning with too little sleep...

 

[Carnage04]

I've posted before about this, but I have been more successful running my SE games in BtS then I had been with Warlords. It could be a function of me simply being better at the entire concept now though. I have done well at Prince and Monarch and have even won my first Emperor game.

A. Leaving a heavily forested city for a later game National Park to give yourself a horde of specialists.

B. Research Park (Ugh, or whatever that thing is called) gives you a free engineer later in the game. A specialist is a specialist...right?

C. Sid's Sushi.....Free Food, more Specialists.

The biggest problem I have had is the entire Emancipation thing. Although I read in a thread recently that it is not programmed to be any worse at causing Unhappiness in your cities than before, I seem to get hammered by it pretty badly when I am trying to stick it out on Caste System.

The one thing I have found is that I have to gear more cities to be commerce type cities. That's ok, with Representation, a Merchant is helping out your science and economic situations. Statue of Liberty is a must have. If you are War Mongering and keeping the cities....perhaps going for Banking after you hit Liberalism and sticking with Mercantilsm for a long time is helpful, too.

 

[DarkFyre99]

I've posted before about this, but I have been more successful running my SE games in BtS then I had been with Warlords. It could be a function of me simply being better at the entire concept now though. I have done well at Prince and Monarch and have even won my first Emperor game.

A. Leaving a heavily forested city for a later game National Park to give yourself a horde of specialists.

Yep... heavily forested tundra cities are now worth a lot more.

B. Research Park (Ugh, or whatever that thing is called) gives you a free engineer later in the game. A specialist is a specialist...right?

C. Sid's Sushi.....Free Food, more Specialists.

The biggest problem I have had is the entire Emancipation thing.

Argh... I meant Emancipation, not Universal Suffrage in the original post. Fixed.

And yes, the food corps are useful late game.

Although I read in a thread recently that it is not programmed to be any worse at causing Unhappiness in your cities than before, I seem to get hammered by it pretty badly when I am trying to stick it out on Caste System.

That's why I've been employing the hybrid economy above. By the time I have to switch to Emancipation, I've got Wall Street and Oxford built in my merchant and scientist cities, so I can run nearly as many specialists as I could under Caste System. The remaining cities, who were cottaged and usually ran scientists when they reached their happy cap, aren't affected by the switch.

The one thing I have found is that I have to gear more cities to be commerce type cities. That's ok, with Representation, a Merchant is helping out your science and economic situations. Statue of Liberty is a must have. If you are War Mongering and keeping the cities....perhaps going for Banking after you hit Liberalism and sticking with Mercantilsm for a long time is helpful, too.

Especially without Solver's Unofficial patch, you're better off with Free Trade once you're ready to found your first Corporation. The maintenance costs are too high not to.

 

[UncleJJ]

I seem to run a HE in BtS now, either by intention or design, and it seems the most viable form of economy. Adding Espionage seems to have changed the game balance and makes the pure forms of SE and CE relatively less effective (although that is me speculating here rather than having tested the assertion).

I use the SE flavoured variety of HE rather than the CE one DarkFyre99 is describing here. That means I build some cottages in some cities as well as keeping any towns I capture. But most grassland tiles are turned to farms after Civil Service, it is the plains tiles that carry the cottages. A plains farm is pretty useless in a SE giving only a hammer which can easily be gained from Slavery or Caste System workshops anyway. A plains cottage and particularly the plains town is quite a nice tile despite not having Free Speech, 1F1H5C is not bad considering the alternative and the lack of commerce in a SE.

I like to run my HE and SE with a high research slider%. That is due to the fact that almost all my cities will have a library and university for cultural as well as commercial reasons and it is easy to turn food to beakers and GPP with scientists early on. In contrast many cities will only get markets, grocers and banks (MGB) later on. So commerce is worth more when taken as beakers than as gold. The high research slider means a lot of my commerce from trade routes, coastal tiles, spice and the plains cottages is getting a favourable 50% research bonus. Of course it can be hard to keep the slider high during wars and periods of expansion but I do that by several means and it is a high priority because my whole economy is designed that way. Turning commerce to gold is inefficient before you have a majority of your cities with MGB. I use all the traditional methods of raising gold for keeping the slider high such as selling techs, pillaging, extortion, capturing shrines and so on. However, the most reliable and expandable way is to methodically build MGB in cities with food for running specialists and then change from running spy specialists or scientists to running merchants. Each city with MGB and 4 merchants raises 24 gold and that raises the research slider everywhere making commerce more efficient throughout the empire.

Another nice side effect is that this gives an increased chance of these cities producing a GM rather than another sort of G Person. I find GMs to be very useful in the mid game whether they're settled in the eventual Wall Street city , sent on a trade mission, used for Sushi or Cereal Mills, or consumed in a Golden Age. I settle most early GPeople so they get the Representation bonus either from the Pyramids or later from Constitution (which I research as a high priority with or without Pyramids). An academy and scotland yard in my capital is a possibility but not certain. Mid game Golden Ages are very powerful and help gain more G people through the 100% bonus and a switch to Pacifism (if not already there).

I used to be a confirmed advocate of Slavery and against Caste System for an SE in Warlords, but in BTS they are much more evenly matched now. Caste System with Pacifism in a Golden Age is an astounding way to generate (nearly) enough GPPs for the next Golden Age. That works for the first 2 Golden Ages and particularly with the Mausoleum or if you're Philosophical or have the Parthenon. I find several of my highish food cities (say 8 to 12 spare food) can run enough specialists to build up a nice GPP pool that a Golden Age will boost to pop out another G Person. These other cities compete effectively in GPP production with the city that has the NE.

The main difference between DarkFyre99's HE and what I'm advocating is the civics run in the mid game and end game. The preferred civics for my HE are Representation, Nationhood, (Slavery or Caste System), (Mercantilism or State Property), and any of Org Religion, Theocracy, Pacifism. If I used Corporations then Free Market would be the preferred option instead of the other two. Corporations are optional and can be used or avoided.

An advantage of the SE flavoured version of the HE. You can run effectively with Corporations or after Biology using Caste System, SP and workshops or watermills is very productive. If a city can't produce another GP then you can change its farms into workshops and watermills to increase it's hammer output dramtically. Other cities with Biology fueled farms can run more specialists from Caste System and make even GPs faster.

That's enough for now... but there is more to say

 

[Polycrates]

I've been experimenting with a Spiritual-based, religion-heavy hybrid approach, which has been giving me good success on Emperor, though I haven't refined it fully yet. Hatshepsut is my #1 choice for this, with her nice traits, great UU for early land-grabbin', and very useful UB.

Before Representation/Free Speech/Emancipation etc (let's just say pre-Liberalism), there's no real penalty for playing the hybrid.
A couple of cities with focused food (lots of high-food specials) go specialist; cities with dispersed food (lots of grassland, flood plains etc), little/no freshwater, and commerce specials (gold/gems/etc) go cottage. Couple of specialised production centres too, of course.
Slightly more overlap than a full CE setup, particularly trying for overlap on food specials. Riverside priority goes to farms (even for flood plains), and cottage cities want a couple more farms than you would usually have.

Early-game priority is Code of Laws via the religious path. The next priorities are a Great Prophet for Theology (much easier with Hatty's or Saladin's UB) and a Great Scientist for Philosophy. Once Monotheism arrives, quickly whipping the spread of a religion (doesn't matter which, preferably a diplomatically-useful one) to all the major cities is a pretty high priority. Switching between OR/Theocracy as needed, and focusing most of the empire on the relevant production gives decent buildings and a good army for a-warrin'.
The important thing is bulbing Philosophy as early as possible, and having a fully-spread religion by that point. Short bursts of Caste System/Pacifism are then used to full effect, with pretty much every city switching to their farms and running as many specialists as possible (going into minor food deficit in the process is okay). Priority is engo (where available)/spy/scientists. A few bursts of this with appropriate prioritising of cities, and most cities should have produced a GP. The least-suited to GP production (production cities, food-poor cottage cities) can generate 1 each and then permanently go back to what they were doing, the others can stick around for a second go.
And the couple of specialist-heavy cities are running their specialists permanently to keep the GP count ticking over (priority engo/spy/scientist/priest/merchant).

The goal is liberalism via bulbing paper and education, but avoiding Civil Service if possible (using bulbed theology to get to paper). It's such an expensive tech that always slows me down considerably. Better to delay it a bit (while maybe researching eg construction or music instead) and then trade for/steal it. A quick burst of serfdom later can make up for lost time.
At Liberalism, take Nationalism, bulb/research Printing Press and run cottages and grow all the way to Constitution. Trade/steal most of the lower path (MC/machinery/optics/guilds/banking). At Constitution, lock in Rep/Pacifism, ignore cottages and run massed specialists for research. Mostly CS, with a couple of 5-turn bursts of Slavery/OR for whipping buildings (jails then uni/bank/market/grocer/observatory). Non-whipping cities can run spies in Slavery. Scientists go towards bulbing Astronomy/Scientific Method/Physics/Biology. Great Spies steal whatever is useful. Go nuts with the whip at Biology, then rebuild and run CS towards Democracy.

At Democracy, switch to Emancipation and maybe Free Speech (but stay in Rep), mass cottages everywhere except a couple of specialist cities running scientists and spies. With all the new spying buildings (and the fact that spy specialists give 2/3 the research of a scientist under Rep, plus a whole hell of a lot of espionage points) there's really no need to run Caste System at all. Switch to Universal Sufferage when there's a whole bunch of towns.

So yeah...horribly convoluted, but seems to sort of give the best of both worlds. But since it ends up using pretty much every civic in the game at some point (and lots of them multiple times), it's really only suited to Spiritual civs.

 

[Cookie Crumbs]

With the inclusion of corporations that allow you to add food to cities, a hybrid economy appears to be the inevitable result of spreading Sushi/Mills corporations if you have high-food cities to begin with. Obviously this approach only works with Representation, but if gold-rushing is that important to your strategy you can always go for the Cristo Redentor and have the best of both worlds.

 

[Underdawg]

Funny, I was just about to make a thread discussing Hybrid Economies, which are BTW, the way to go.

Most SE's aren't without their cottages anyways (though most SE's rely on their super Science city producing 1000+ beakers a turn with scientists specialists, Oxford, and many many settled Scientist GP's).

 

[Thalatta]

To be honest I've always considered hybrid economies the way to go, period, in civ. Part of that, though, is the way I conceptualize my start. I don't look for a cottage city, a production city, a mixed city, etc. - I look for grabbing as much good land as possible by 1000 BC with as few settlers as possible. (Which often translates into as many settlers as needed...) This involves two things: I send settlers out towards the AI and try to push them away from me so that I can fill in the space between my early cities and my capitol later; my dotmap cares about getting all those floodplains cottaged, but it doesn't matter which city as long as they're in one. Once I've secured more land than the AI it also won't matter whether or not my cities are optimal; because I'll have several more cities, I'll be able to out-produce and out-tech them.

I think a city should pay for itself; even if it's productive, it can still run some cottages. I tend to cottage grasslands and farm plains as I like to be able to keep cities growing at around the same rate. Maybe I could squeeze more commerce and production out of doing things differently, but I like to play large/huge maps and tend to err on the side of being militaristic, so it's a lot easier to keep 20+ cities running more or less the same way. By simply taking space and resources I tend to have cities that have decent starting food and production so as the cottages come online the cities have no problem building libraries, universities, markets, etc. to take advantage of their hybrid nature.

 

[Martinus]

Is there any detailed strategy article about HE? It seems like the best strategy indeed (although I love SE personally too) but I never seem to strike the balance right when I try it.

Is the general rule that you run 100% (or as close to 100% as possible) science and you use specialists for the other commerce-related stuff (like gold, espionnage, culture)?

If so, how many cities usually run cottages and how many specialists? I suppose the capital gets cottaged since you do it often even in SE, but what's the percentage beyond that? Off the top of my head, I would follow a spread like this but don't know if it is off:

Per every 8 cities or so:
- 3 run cottages (and build libraries, universities etc.),
- 2 run production (and build forges, factories non-city-specific wonders etc.),
- 2 run merchants/priests (and build markets, banks, preferably shrines),
- 1 runs spies (and builds spy specific buildings and wonders).

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I think the idea of HE is that you let your land and resources dictate the type of economy you run.

Sometimes your capital makes a good GP farm, and sometimes your capital really lends itself to lots of cottages. Usually you can tell which is which at the start, but this to me helps dictate whether I cottage the capital and aim for bureaucracy or put specialists in the capital and aim for philosophy and a lot of GPP.

Then I get a mix of specialist, cottage and production cities.

Good early specialist cities are cities with a couple of food specials and mediocre terrain otherwise. They can usually run a couple of scientists and a spy with appropriate buildings and may generate a single great person out of your first 5 or so. Often they get converted into production cities later, or with biology can run more specialists.

Good early cottage cities are grasslands, especially river grasslands, but not many food specials. Farm one or two grasslands for growth and build cottages.

Floodplains usually favour cottage cities due to unhealthiness but with Expansive or lots of health resources make good specialist cities too.

Cities with iron/copper and a food source plus hills and forests usually become production cities.

If I am financial I will tend to have more cottage cities. If philosophical more specialist cities. But I will tend to play the terrain I have rather than adopt any hard rules about how many of each sort of city I have.

 

[UncleJJ]

Nicely written InvisibleStalke. I agree with all of that and would only add that with an HE at some stage towards the end of the game you do have to decide which side you will favour according to which civics you choose to run most of the time (although not necessarily exclusively).

Your civics will probably either include US and Free Speech and Emancipation to favour your cottages and towns and not help your specialists; or they will be Representation, Nationhood, Caste System (or Slavery), Mercantilism (or SP) and maybe Pacifism which all favour specialists and do little for cottages. So it depends on how equally balanced your HE is between the two basic flavours it can have. There is also the strategy that starts as more SE orientated and then with Emancipation converts farms to cottages and becomes a CE.

HEs have many nuances and sub strategies that, as you say, do depend on the tiles you have to work but eventually civics will (usually) force a preference towards either cottages or farms (and later watermills and worrkshops).

 

[Thalatta]

My logic for hybrid economy is that a city with lots of commerce tends to need more buildings to take advantage of it (library, market, grocer, university, observatory, etc. - not to mention forge, granary and courthouse) while a production city needs less. That's all well and good for making military or wonders in the production cities, but the whip only does so much in the other cities, and a fluctuating population is suboptimal for your GNP. So, if a city is going to run a lot of cottages then having it near horses and cows is handy, to get a mix of food and production at the start and then you just add the cottages as you go. A GNP farm works well with bronze/iron in range because the 4/5/6 production will help a lot and a few grassland hills work great as mines early and windmills later. A very productive city still should make some commerce buildings when it's not making anything else to take advantage of revenue like trade routes, and it might as well have some cottages to work if it's going to have a library and university anyway.

 

[fed1943]

I usually play as InvisibleStalke said:

Let terrain tell the way.

Best regards,

 

[futurehermit]

yes, follow the terrain. HE is the way to go imo, but it is a good idea to try to get commerce cities if at all possible in BTS because you can outtech the ai fairly easily and then destroy them with superior units.

i like dave mcw's rule that any city that can support 10 cottages (and still grow i presume) prior to biology is a commerce city and the rest become production, gpfarm, or espionage cities.

 

[JujuLautre]

i like dave mcw's rule that any city that can support 10 cottages (and still grow i presume) prior to biology is a commerce city and the rest become production, gpfarm, or espionage cities.

Just to make sure; do you mean "without any farm but using food ressources to support the cottages"? Or something else?

 

[futurehermit]

I would say without farms, yes. If you have to lay down farms then it is probably better to be a production or gpfarm city.

 

[Martinus]

Ok, maybe I asked for too definitive answers. But here's a couple of questions about HE which I am still unclear about:

- is HE more about city specialization (i.e. one city runs specialists, another city runs cottages) or mixing (i.e. most cities run both specialists and cottages),

- how's the commerce slider set in most HEs (is it science, or a mix)?

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, maybe I asked for too definitive answers. But here's a couple of questions about HE which I am still unclear about:

- is HE more about city specialization (i.e. one city runs specialists, another city runs cottages) or mixing (i.e. most cities run both specialists and cottages),

- how's the commerce slider set in most HEs (is it science, or a mix)?

HE is about city specializations. Mixing leads to jumbled cities and inefficiency.

Commerce slider should still be pushed to high science as you should still be dedicating commerce cities wherever possible.