National Epic plus...National Park or Globe Theater? (Also, an aside: improvements)

Wade.

Chieftain
Joined
May 26, 2007
Messages
51
Location
California, USA
I'm having a dilemma.
What are some opinions on which combination is preferable;
National Epic plus Globe Theater, National Epic plus National Park, or would even Globe Theater plus National Park be nice for no unhappiness and no unhealthiness from population?

National Park gives free specialists for each forest preserve at the city. Also, each forest preserve gets a happiness bonus. If this city has much food and forests that might be preferable.

From all the buildings and resource bonuses available I don't think that unhappiness and unhealthiness should be much of a concern though in these combinations. Thus, the main concern is for specialists. Thus, right now, I'm favoring National Epic plus National Park in a city with much food and many forests.

(An aside: improvements)
Also, I rarely, if ever, now chop forests on a grassland. LUMBERMILLS ARE AWESOME!

These are my general guidlines for improvements. I also build improvements based on trying to balance food, hammers, and gold from scroll over the city information. I sometimes throw in a workshop or watermill.

grassland: I build cottage
plains: I build farm
grassland with forest: I build LUMBERMILL!
plains with forest: I (usually) chop and build farm
hills: I build windmills
 
They all have a place depending on the circumstances of the game.

In a city worth of the National Park (i.e. has plenty of forests) it is far less likely that you will ever have need of the Globe Theatre because you have correspondingly less farmable tiles.

The National Epic is a worthy early game national wonder, but I find that it is often superceded late game by the National Park city. However, a full food city is generally going to need the happiness of the Globe Theatre, so I find that NE and GT tend to have more synergy than other combinations.

My general plan now is to look for a borderline tundra city with a few food sources, settle it early to build up infrastructure, use lumbermills when possible and then switch ALL of them to forest preserves to suddenly gain a truly amazing GP city for the late game.

It's too game situation dependent to make any rules about it though.

Compared to you, my preferred improvements are:

grassland with river ---> cottage if early game, watermill if a bit later
grassland without river ---> farm to support other tiles
plains alone ---> workshop
grassland with forest ---> mostly chop, especially if it's on a river
plains with forest ----> lumbermill - I always do this if there's food to support it.
hills ---> 99% of the time it will be a mine
 
Now I'm reconsidering again. I like the idea of the National Epic with Globe Theater and much food. I'll do this combination in my next game. Does unhealthiness become an issue in this type of city? How about Globe Theater plus National Park? The National Epic could go with Iron Works. My Iron Works cities often have alot of engineers.

improvements: Looks like you focus on hammers. I like to focus on food with hammers as additions. If the city grows fast then specialist can be more easily used.
 
NE+GT sounds good and all until you start popping GAs (even at only 5% he'll come out) but I haven't used it in BtS yet with the changed which GPP is chosen formula.
 
improvements: Looks like you focus on hammers. I like to focus on food with hammers as additions. If the city grows fast then specialist can be more easily used.

Yes indeed I do! :D

For me, Production is King! :)

Aside from specialised cities for GP, Commerce.... the rest of my cities are placed and tweaked to production - with a little commerce to pay for themselves.
 
I tend to delay my national wonders, unable to decide where to build what. Wouldn't advise that of course :), on the contrary, build them as early as possible!

So with that out of the way, I'd say GT+NE is usually the way to go, since the National Park comes ages later.

I usually build Ironworks + National Park (I know, no coal, but still ...), and Industrial parks, and stuff like that, and run engineers. Makes for a good production site usually.

The unhealthiness of forge + factory + Ironworks + Industrial parks usually kills every other city until ecology, but with the park, you can do it.
 
I have building the NE in cities with a couple of good food sources that have lots of forests, if I can find one. In my current game I took a capital that was on the coast and it had 3 seafood tiles. I made sure to pillage the non-forest tiles to get rid of their roads since you can't do that in your own territory. Then I build mines with no roads on the hills for some production and build the NE. On just three seafood resources you can run ~5 specialists. Then once you get to Scientific Method start putting preserves on the forests. After you build the National Park then pillage the mines and wait for forests to grow back there. You get decent GP production early and then it really takes off with the NP. You don't have happiness issues since the city really isn't that big, it just has a lot of free specialists.
 
National Park's best effect isn't with cities that has lots of forests. It's with cities that have mega-productive squares and thus LOTS of unhealthiness. Add Sushi Company, and you could have a HUGE hammer-producing city.
 
So many of you are so logical and thoughtful and efficient in your playstyles. I do things like always build the Globe Theatre because I love Shakespeare. But this is certainly why I can't win on much above Warlord level.

But it is nice to have one large, powerful city where you never have to worry about making people happy. Who would want to be leader of a nation or civ in real life? All those ingrates always whining and wanting more happiness, more health, you just built the aqueduct two turns ago but what have you done for us lately. In the later game I find it near impossible to keep people happy and as for the Health forget it. Later on even if you build every blasted happy and health improvement. Give us more, make me happy, make me well. Sounds like, well, like reality, modern day American in fact.
 
I disagree, Plato90s. I find multiple free specialists concentrated in one city far more useful than not having to build a few improvements in a high-production city. With a well-developed Sid's Sushi in your production city, you can eat (no pun intended) that extra food per citizen if you go over the health cap without much problem.

I don't like pairing NP with GT because in a well-crafted NP city, you just aren't working that many tiles or supporting that many natural specialists, and thus don't need much population in the city. In fact, you don't have to work any to get the benefit. The important thing is to get specialist-allowing buildings up in the city. The free specialists from preserves don't count as unhappy faces, and don't eat food, so, hypothetically at least, a size 1 city with the proper improvements could support 21 specialists, for 126 GPP/turn with just the NE boost. It works with preserved jungles, too, in which case your city isn't going to grow very large at all. Combine the relatively small population with the fact that the preserves add happiness, and you're just not going to have happiness problems in that city, with or without the GT.

In short, NP isn't needed to have a HUGE production city with Sid's Sushi, and its major benefit is wasted when used that way, and GT isn't needed to have a good NP city without happiness problems.
 
Okay. Solomwi's and others ideas sound good and match my statements in my original post. I favor National Epic in a City with many Forests; add lumbermills to them; then build National Park and switch the lumbermills to forest preserves.
Even if this city has 10 to 20 forest preserves (free specialists!) and only 1 population it will still be one of the top cities, if not the best!

Globe Theater can go by itself into a city with much food planned. Happiness buildings can be skipped.
High amounts of food and no unhappiness; ideal for slavery rush buying (whipping, although this can also be considered as slave wages or minimum wage with people leaving) and drafting.

Dilemma solved. My mind is at ease. I thank you all.
 
The important thing is to get specialist-allowing buildings up in the city.

that's the thing. i've only had 2 BtS games last that long so far. i'm intrigued by the idea of putting it in a tundra/jungle city that might otherwise be useless, but in both games i've been running representation and slavery. so i can't buy the buildings (not that i'm mega-rich), and i'm not in caste. so i've ended up putting it in an old city that still has forests (i'm not a "chop 'em all early" type) and already had some wonders. otherwise the specialists wouldn't do me any good. and chopping the forests to make the buildings to allow specialists seems, well, even this permanoob knows that would be silly!

in one game i built a hospital in my national park city. i didn't need it there, but i needed to have one more somewhere to qualify for red cross and i wanted it quick, to start RC during a golden age. my other cities were busy and NPark didn't really have much to do, so... *giggle*
 
I feel your pain, KMad. If I put NP in a jungle city, I'll mine a couple of hills and sacrifice those specialists to get a modicum of production, if necessary. Once I have everything built, I could pillage the mines and hope the jungle spreads, but I doubt that would be very efficient. I've been seeing a lot of jungle lately, and my NP cities tend to be forest/jungle mix, which makes the production problem a lot easier to solve. Lumbermills are great for the pre-NP buildup of your eventual NP city.

Another thing to consider is Mining Inc./CreateCon to get production up. It's not ideal, since waiting for one of those (a) carries the risk of being beaten to it, and (b) drastically shortens the window for building the buildings before you get biology and want to get started on the NP itself, but it's better than nothing.
 
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