King Younk's Questions thread

[NothingBesideRemains]

I’m doing a specialist economy - I built mids and gw, so I had peaceful early expansion on an isolated start.

Personally I think over-specialization can be crippling, in that it works towards "future hypothetically perfected economy in turn x" instead of "biggest benefit quickest". There's an ongoing discussion of the 'specialist economy' not being currently standard meta on the forum, here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/when-did-the-specialist-economy-fall-out-of-favor.672865/


Losing accumulated population from working specialists does hurt (related - you have unhapiness in a few cities at 700AD - maxing pop size using monarchy likely has immediate benefits above the beakers you are getting from running scientists). In particular, for cities which will never pop a Great Person, the biggest benefit of running specialists is lost, and at bear minimum those 'low-output' cities would benefit from running cottages (both for immediate commerce and storage of whipping hammers when you declare war).

 

[sampsa]

If "running a SE" leads to having relatively small, unhappy cities close to 1000AD on marathon making some 80 per turn, there is something seriously wrong with either the strategy itself or in the implementation of the strategy. I know that it's mostly the latter, but the biggest weakness of specialists is that they eat two , while grass cottages can support themselves and allow the cities to grow. Just grow bigger working cottages and farms and you will easily generate way more -points during a golden age vs "running a SE" with tiny cities.

 

[Fippy]

Yup running SE ofc involves using Caste too, so you get ~5 Rep. Specialists in bigger cities.
At this point they make lots of beakers, but no matter which strategy: basic city management comes first

 

[Fish Man]

I’m doing a specialist economy - I built mids and gw, so I had peaceful early expansion on an isolated start.

As @sampsa said, this doesn't quite make sense. You don't have stone, and there's food in this start but not enough to support the volume of specialists that would make rep really worth it. The number of cottages you sacrifice to force this to work, pretty much cancels out the beaker gain from rep. So you build a 1500 hammer wonder without the resource, for no reason, and you don't get a payoff until much later, when police state maybe comes into play.

If you're roleplaying or whatever then feel free, but if you're adamant that your way is "the best way" or even "an objectively good strategy compared to most others", then I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you're missing a lot lot of things.

Also your capital location makes no sense - giving up so many river tiles for, what, some coast and brown tiles?

 

[krikav]

Oh, an iso map!
High health cap, very few happines resources. Only real happy seems to be wine.
That tilts clearly toward cottage and warrior-spam. Probably in more cities than in the capital too.

It's rare that you go for alot of specialists in iso. Sometimes there is an ridiculus amount of food and a bunch of happines resources and then you can go CoL.

Most of the time iso is severely inhibited by lack of happines resources (since there is no AIs to trade with), and in such situations you can do more with cottages.
Compare 2 grassland farms and a rep-powered scientist. Thats 3 pop to give you 6 bpt.
If those 3 pop work 3 hamlets instead you still get 6 bpt, and you also have 2 food per turn surplus to either waste or to do something with. And they will soon enough mature to villages.


Granted that in all iso plays (I have yet seen) you still do some GPeople generation with specialists, but thats for the great people.
I would still run scientists even if they gave me 0 bpt

 

[pigswill]

@Fishman. How are you going to cover expenses? Looks like you're breaking even at 30% atm.

 

[Fish Man]

@Fishman. How are you going to cover expenses? Looks like you're breaking even at 30% atm.

Just a heads up, you keep tagging the wrong person...my name is "Fish Man" with two caps and a space.

Also, I'm pretty sure I break-even at about 50%? -28 gpt, 60 bpt...math checks out, more or less.

Once I get monarchy, I can grow my cities big to work quite a lot of riverside cottages, wine, and scientists.

 

[krikav]

I see 7 cottages in that screenshot.
If that means break even at 30%, then it will soon be break even at 80% with a whole lot of more bpt with 27 cottages and improved wines etc.

If you would have an empire like that on deity at 1200BC, I'm sure you would be losing gpt even at 0% btw.

And from that position that @Fish Man is in, me personally would probalby go for a ToAR/Parth failgolding bonanza and drop down GLib somewhere to take care of the scientists.
But in that case, oracle would have done monarchy or aestethics.

But the island is rich and nice and multiple paths forward is probably possible.
Agg leaders always have the door open to amphibious grenadiers. ^_^

 

[pigswill]

@ Fish Man. Apologies. I look forward to the next installment

With Library 8 commerce = 10 beakers.

 

[pi-r8]

ProveTheNerdsWrong.CivBeyondSwordSave

A+ save file naming skills, at least.

 

[King Younk]

I'm switching over to a cottage economy asap. I'm thinking I can get to Astronomy first and take over some weaker neighbors - either the Arabs or Vikings or someone.

 

[sampsa]

I'm switching over to a cottage economy asap.

Cottages should mostly be built in the BCs.

 

[Fish Man]

I'm switching over to a cottage economy asap. I'm thinking I can get to Astronomy first and take over some weaker neighbors - either the Arabs or Vikings or someone.

You're still in the mindset of "I'm going take as literally as possible the last piece of advice I heard and ignore everything else". On this map, yes you SHOULD have cottaged earlier, but now you're 1000 years too late for cottages, and "not cottaging enough" is a big issue but also the least of your problems when you still don't understand basic game mechanics and how to form a strategy for common situations like isolation, etc.

Here, I generated 2 great scientists to bulb astronomy as soon as it was available - usually the best plan for isolation, and one that requires careful planning. Now it's 120AD, I'm making easily over 250bpt, and am on track to win well before 1000AD. That's why we keep trying to teach you how to build a HYBRID economy, settle cities, use the whip, and tech properly, etc. - so that you can play at this level, since you seem to want to improve.

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[sampsa]

Compare 2 grassland farms and a rep-powered scientist. Thats 3 pop to give you 6 bpt.
If those 3 pop work 3 hamlets instead you still get 6 bpt, and you also have 2 food per turn surplus to either waste or to do something with.

I assume this is a brainfart or I'm not understanding what you mean. 2 grass farms + spec = 6, 3 grass cottages = 6.

 

[krikav]

I assume this is a brainfart or I'm not understanding what you mean. 2 grass farms + spec = 6, 3 grass cottages = 6.

You are right, in the farms+spec situation I forgot to account for the citys inheirent +2 food, which I did take into account in the cottages case.

 

[sampsa]

Yep. Anyway, a specialist needs to beat three cottages, not two, like I thought for the first 10 years playing this game.

 

[Fippy]

In theory sure, but the bigger picture with GP, GA starving or faster city development with more (while not using a specialist yet) makes calculations much deeper.
At least in non-capital cities.

 

[krikav]

Don't think there is any calculation that doesn't break down on closer scrutony, everything is so map (and leader) dependent.
And even if I'm a huge fan of farming almost everything I like to recommend cottagespam since it's way easier to succeed with.
No savvy tech trading needed. No whip-overflowing-failgolding required.. No tech extortion and pillaging... Just relax and watch cottages mature into tech superiority.

 

[sampsa]

In theory sure, but the bigger picture with GP, GA starving or faster city development with more (while not using a specialist yet) makes calculations much deeper.

Oh yes, -points are very valuable. But because golden ages provide such a huge boost to -points, I find mass running specialists outside of golden ages not that tempting (though it does have it's moments, especially with SPI+Mids). Thus at least for me the baseline is 1.get philo (usually GS bulb) 2.get a means to start a golden age (usually music artist) 3.generate as many as you can during the golden age 4.worry no more about -production.

 

[King Younk]

Alright, trying out another map on standard, even though they kinda suck. I am Ragnar, whom I find to be pretty easy to play as - take out an early neighbor or two, and develop one's economy.

In this game, I have taken GW, and the Holy Cities for Hinduism and Judaism by conquering Asoka. I should be able to easily conquer my little island with about 10-15 cities, and then set sail to conquer neighboring islands.

What should I prioritize in this game? I think, at this point, peaceful development - cottage spamming, plus focusing on economic/exploration technologies would be my best bet. Maybe focus on getting Priesthood so I can build temples, and produce Great Prophets.