It's All About The Numbaz: CE vs SE

[DarkSchneider]

Alright, I'm a little out of my depth here, since I've never run a successful SE. But looking at the numbers, why bother?

Ok, let's say you have a city, and you have the choice between working a grassland town, or supporting an additional science specialist. Let's also say you're running representation and free speech.

If you work the town tile, you get 2 food and 7 to 8 commerce.
With the scientist, you get no food and 6 science.

Working the town you will continue to grow the city, allowing you to work more tiles and have more specialists. Running the specialists, growth is at a standstill.

Since all GPPs are with decreasing returns to scale, how exactly is the SE supposed to compete with a CE?

 

[DaveMcW]

Generally by winning before there are any towns on the map.

 

[DarkSchneider]

I play on continent maps, so getting astrology before getting towns is not an option

 

[Quornix]

I play on continent maps, so getting astrology before getting towns is not an option

Sure it is. A GS can pop Philosophy, Paper, and Education. Research through Optics and get Liberalism. Astronomy for free.

If not, research to Optics and pop GS towards Astronomy.

Maybe you'd have a town or two by then, but not many of them.

However, remember that the tradeoff is a bit different in a SE.

1 Town = (post-biology) 1 Specialist -1 -1 - population-based civic upkeep.

 

[KMadCandy]

i don't think you can compare them the way you seem to want to. when you start the city, you don't have a choice between a scientist or a town. you have a choice between a scientist and a cottage. cottages pretty much suck. they grow up cool tho.

GPPs come faster early. commerce from cottages kicks in faster later on as they grow, and gets bonuses when you get printing press and free speech. the strengths come at different times, and you don't have to stick to only specialists or just cottages. heck, you can run a hard-core SE and then change to cottages when you have access to emancipation so that the cottages grow up quickly. you can get Sid's Sushi and add specialists galore to cottage-heaven. it's all flexible, which is fun. but heck if i know what's optimal ... i'm a permanoob. sometimes i put whichever improvement will look prettiest on the tile.

 

[kakitadairu]

Alright, I'm a little out of my depth here, since I've never run a successful SE. But looking at the numbers, why bother?

Ok, let's say you have a city, and you have the choice between working a grassland town, or supporting an additional science specialist. Let's also say you're running representation and free speech.

If you work the town tile, you get 2 food and 7 to 8 commerce.
With the scientist, you get no food and 6 science.

Working the town you will continue to grow the city, allowing you to work more tiles and have more specialists. Running the specialists, growth is at a standstill.

Since all GPPs are with decreasing returns to scale, how exactly is the SE supposed to compete with a CE?

#1)
100 GPP = 1200 Beakers for bulbing, therefore
1 GPP = 12 Beakers, therefore
1 Scientist = 3 + 3*12 = 39 Beakers without Philosophical
1 Scientist = 3 + 6*12 = 75 Beakers with Philosophical

Working scientists for your first 3-4 Great People is flat out the best ratio of getting Beakers in the game (even without Philosophical). After your 4th Great Person, then Towns take over. Also by then you get to the Town production bonuses like Printing Press.

That's why you see a lot of recommendation of running SE early, and then switching to CE after Liberalism.

There's no way a CE can beat a SE to Liberalism.

#2)
A Specialist Economy can also "cash out" food storage from Granary much easier and much more efficiently than a Cottage Economy. Like CE you can use slavery to convert Food to Hammers. But once you get your surplus Granary food from a population pop, you can then starve down to 0 storage by working specialists, quickly converting the Granary bonus into Gold, Beakers, Hammers, Espionage Points or Culture.

#3)
The civics and Wonders that reward SE are super efficient: Caste System, Representation, Sistine Chapel, Angkor Wat.

#4)
Your research rate becomes more independent of your Slider. Therefore you can use your slider (and your commerce) for Culture or Espionage with much less drawback than with a Cottage Economy.

#5)
More Workshops. Instead of Towns you have more flatland for Workshops. Workshops are much, much, much better than Towns, and converting Hammers to Beakers (1:1 by building Research) is SO much stronger than converting Commerce to Hammers with Universal Suffrage.

Cheers,

Dai

 

[oyzar]

I great scientist is 1500+3*pop which is often quite alot more than 1200 quite far into the game... Of course with representation scientists also give alot more beakers.

 

[Zanttu]

Okay, let's compare 1 single cottage (growing to town) and 1 single scientist specialist.

The cottage gives 1C for first 10 turns. Lets assume you run 100% science so 1C=1 beaker. Next 20 turns the cottage (a hamlet now) gives 2 beakers. Next 40 turns the cottage (a village) gives 4 beakers(with printing press). So after 70 turns it has grown to a Town which gives 7 beakers (with both printing press and free speech).

For the first 70 turns while the cottage is growing, it gives a total of 200 beakers. In 70 turns a scientist specialist gives 420 beakers (with representation). As you can see, this is a huge boon in the early game, since the scientist doubles the beakers given by the cottage for first 70 turns.

As a town the cottage gives you 7 beakers, which is 1 more than the scientist under representation. So how long do you need to work the cottage to get more beakers than the scientist gives?

10*1+20*2+40*4+X*7 > 6*(70+X)
200+7X > 420+6X
X > 420-200
X > 220

220+70=290 turns.

So you have to work the cottage for 290 turns to get the same amount of beakers compared to scientist. I know this isn't really much, but there are few things to remember:
1. Without Printing Press and Free Speech the cottage will never overproduce the scientist in beakers. So in the early game the difference is much bigger because you don't have those bonuses.
2. These calculations assume that in CE you are running 100% science whole game. I have never had a game where this would've been possible. Where do you get your gold if all of your commerce goes to beakers?
3. The doubled amount of beakers for first 70 turns is not something to neglect. By using this advantage properly, you have possibility to win the game much earlier than with CE.
4. What if one evil monty attacks you and pillages your beautiful towns? To prevent this you need bigger military. If you have bigger military, you have to drop the slider lower.
5. These calculations assume that in SE you are running 0% science after assigning your first scientist.

OTHER NOTES:
1. Food makes things much more complicated. By running specialists, you cant grow as quick as you could. This is the weakness of SE and these calculations. But we were talking about beakers now, weren't we?
2. I didn't contain river tiles on these calculations.
3. I'm bit tired, I hope I didn't make too many errors.

 

[Indiansmoke]

If you build the pyramids then early scientists are 6 beackers (9 settled) which is more than any commerce tile can provide.

Also you get more great people, which you can use to buld your way through the tech tree and build tech lead or you can settle them to be able to compete (or even be better) when your cottaged opponents mature.

The basic problem is very early on (around the time you discover writing)when you have to chose between working food to run scientists or working hammer tiles. When this is no problem with CE especially with flood plains.

So matching production and science in early SE I have found to be the problem.

 

[duende29]

What about Financial leaders with cities built on Rivers? You get 3c Cottages from the start, and 3c on non river Hamlets. Would it be advisable to go SE then?

 

[Indiansmoke]

With Financial leader obviously not I would think

 

[Zanttu]

What about Financial leaders with cities built on Rivers? You get 3c Cottages from the start, and 3c on non river Hamlets. Would it be advisable to go SE then?

With financial leader you dont go SE obviously.

 

[madscientist]

The point of the thread starts from the previous thread about the second best trait assuming financial is the best. I sort of evolved into comparrisons of ORG vs. Fin and SE vs CE, not the first time the conversation has occurred.

My views on CE vs. SE

1) I will run a CE if financial. Rivers are prime but in my experience it's not as common as wemay think that you get a very nice river system to do this. Also rivers tend to go with jungles too often, which stymies growth.
2) I run SE IF I get the pyramids early. It gets you way too many beakers early which is independent of the science slider. SE let's you expand further and really test the limits of the scinece slider. You can go down to 20% science and still tech very well. This allows you to gain alot of land and tech currency and CoL to fix the economy. YOU STILL WANT COTTAGES, as the commerce is converted into gold.
3) If running early representation, you can run a hybrid economy. With a few good food sources, you can cottage as you want and run a few specialists in each city. They need not be all scientists, they can be engineers for production, priests for gold and production, merchants for gold, artists for culture, spies for espionage. That gives you ALOT of flexibility, meaning you can concentrate on wars, expanding, teching, wonder building. This is why Elizabeth, Hyuna, Williams, and Darius are the strongest leaders; the second trait for the first three can get you an excellent hybrid economy while Darius can produce a brutal economy.

Seams to me in this post and your others that you favor financial which is fine. But perhaps using a different approach would balance out your game. USed correctly I think ALL traits are just as powerful as financial, it is not always easy to see at first and take some practice.

 

[Zanttu]

Seams to me in this post and your others that you favor financial which is fine. But perhaps using a different approach would balance out your game. USed correctly I think ALL traits are just as powerful as financial, it is not always easy to see at first and take some practice.

Exactly. Financial isn't the best trait, it's the easiest to take advantage of.

 

[DigitalBoy]

Civilization is a game of numbers, but it's not nearly as simple as you make it to be. Great people points isn't so much about getting more great people (since the more you get, the longer it takes to get the next one), it's just about getting each next one faster. A single great person can have a dramatic effect early in the game, and the faster you can get them at that critical part of the game, the better. Later on in the game, great people can have significant importance in starting golden ages and founding corporations. Specialists also let you squeeze multipliers for everything they're worth. Having Oxford University in a cottage city makes the usefulness of the wonder dependent on your science slider. Even post-printing press and with Free Speech, a town at, say, 60% science is still only giving you about 4 science towards that go towards Oxford, while a Representation scientist will have all his beakers affected. Then you have to take into consideration that towns need to grow, and SE and CE have different crucial techs that come at different times on different parts of the tech tree. And SE and CE benefit differently from different civics and game mechanics (for example, a SE probably pigeonholes itself into not using slavery mid-game, but is at more liberty to use the culture slider for happiness since less of the economy's productivity is "squandered").

 

[futurehermit]

Early game SE > CE

Late game CE > SE

Conclusions:

Transition economy is most ideal

SE works better for (especially early) domination/conquest while CE is best for space race where you will be running the table in terms of technology (clearly not necessary for domination wins where you only have to tech into the renaissance/industrial)

 

[DarkSchneider]

Another thing that bothers me about the SE, for it to be effective you pretty much have to get the Pyramids for early Representation. Can this be done consistently on Emporer level and above? I've found that in general building any early wonder severly limits early expansion.

Also, if you assume that you have gotten early representation with pyramids, you should also assume that all of a CE economies cottages have at least turned into Hamlets in that time. And yes, I almost always play financial, and very often get a starting spot with rivers and grassland/floodplain.

 

[futurehermit]

You don't need the pyramids at all (shows your limited understanding of SE).

However, it is possible to get it consistently on high levels of play (see Obsolete's games).

Lightbulbed GSs provide a ton of early game beakers that can be leveraged for early liberalism which can be leveraged for renaissance military tech which can be leveraged to expand your empire which translates into even more overall beakers. People always forget to factor in lightbulbed GSs and although a CE will have a gpfarm, a SE will have more GSs overall and will generally have them in greater numbers EARLIER as well.

EDIT: A SE is also about FLEXIBILITY. You can transition your ENTIRE empire from whip/draft-driven war-machine into specialist-driven research-machine depending on what you are trying to achieve. CE is consistent growth whereas SE goes in cycles: Run mass scientists to get the next level of military tech then use your entire empire to create many more military units in a short period of time than a CE empire can, conquer territory, then back to research. At a certain point (usually renaissance) you forget about research altogether and just focus on conquering completely.

 

[DigitalBoy]

Another thing that bothers me about the SE, for it to be effective you pretty much have to get the Pyramids for early Representation. Can this be done consistently on Emporer level and above? I've found that in general building any early wonder severly limits early expansion.

Also, if you assume that you have gotten early representation with pyramids, you should also assume that all of a CE economies cottages have at least turned into Hamlets in that time. And yes, I almost always play financial, and very often get a starting spot with rivers and grassland/floodplain.

I tried a recent game with a specialist economy (still had cottages, but ran science specialists extensively in cities with sufficient food) without building the Pyramids. I waged war extensively and practically killed my economy with maintenance costs (getting so bad as +7 beakers/turn at one point, my first two cities were production cities and my cottage and scientist cities weren't mature yet) but was still able to get Constitution for Representation at about 1200AD. And since Nationalism was on the way, I was able to draft early as well.

And if you can build the Pyramids, I'd say a SE is clearly preferable if you have a handful of food rich cities. My +10.5 beaker/turn scientists laugh at your measely hamlets.

 

[Zanttu]

Another thing that bothers me about the SE, for it to be effective you pretty much have to get the Pyramids for early Representation. Can this be done consistently on Emporer level and above? I've found that in general building any early wonder severly limits early expansion.

Also, if you assume that you have gotten early representation with pyramids, you should also assume that all of a CE economies cottages have at least turned into Hamlets in that time. And yes, I almost always play financial, and very often get a starting spot with rivers and grassland/floodplain.

Yes it can be done consistently on Emperor+.

My example was of course theoretical, and you got a point there. But there are so many other factors I didn't include, that I think it's not necessary to add this to my example.