Observations/Questions from a chronic lurker.

[tymshok]

First let me say thanks to all the folks who make guides/share knowledge. I greatly appreciate it.

BTW.. When I came to the board recently, I didn't understand what Specialist Economy (SE), Farm Economy (FE), or Cottage Economy (CE) were exactly. I felt I was a Cottage Economist, and then I saw DaveMcW put a cottage on a hill, and I realized I was not quite as extreme.

I have tried to do SE and to be honest, I think both SE and CE suffer from the same issues if you take them to their most extreme extents.

Basically CS (cottage spam) will have very poor production.. SE will also as you typically get two 5+ food tiles for 4 scientists in caste.. Two food tiles makes for very bad production. (At least if I cottage a hill I get one production.) Also I see a running theme of "I don't know how to control my population unless I SE". Controlling population is just as easy for a cottage spammer as it is for a specialist economy -- work plains or green hills. Balance it out and you can stop growth..

Anyway:

(Side Note: And then I saw Obsolete do things that made me completely rethink the game. (But that is another story.. Any game I have stone and marble, I adopt his strategy.. And the priests are beyond awesome. Now all I need to do is read a guide by the guy who only loves great artists and uses them like crazy.. I swear I felt only scientists were worth anything. Maybe artists could be useful for culture flipping everyone?))

At any rate, I watched FutureHermit open up a "Calling all Cottage Economist" thread.. And I watched as DaveMcW made a super cottaged city.. I try to employ this same technique and I cannot -- there is stuff going on under the covers I am not understanding. Basically if you cottage up, you have very bad production, and even FutureHermit was asking DaveMcW how he got production when all his tiles were cottaged up -- He said to settle near three production tiles.

I don't know.. I like the CE spam idea and I merged Obsolete's strat with CE spam and its like a super charged unstoppable muscle-car (if you have all the pieces).. If you don't have stone or marble or hills -- forget it.. You can CE spam your home city, your next city has to be production which is less than good in my opinion because my second city is usually religion founder and shrine for a stock exchange city.. Hammers don't make commerce (well, they can, but cottages are way better.)

Well that's how I play anyhow.. And of course my play style has changed a lot (sometimes for the very very bad.. After seeing VOU's (Voice of Unreason) production guide, I couldn't stop myself from workshopping waaaay before it was reasonable to do so.. Gimme the 63 hammers!) At any rate if there are CE spammers of the hard core variety who can enlighten me or who would like to do a walkthrough like obsoltete (plz ) I do better with pictures.. Otherwise a brief runthrough of what you do to survive and excel would be appreciated.

Id also like to see a FutureHermit runthrough for SE strict adherence..

If this is already out there please direct me to it..

Thanks in advance.

 

[Carnage04]

It seems you are pretty advanced and I might be stating the obvious to you, but I think the thing about both the SE and CE is the need for city specialization. You'll have those food mills that run mobs of scientists that you really only need to build Library/University/Observatory/Granary in....Cottage spammed cities that you build Banks/Markets/Grocers and have merchents, and then those high production cities with Forges, Factories, and Engineers.

A food Mill that is running tons of great scientists that needs some production can rely on a single mined plains hill and dropping the scientists down to workers or priests (Engineers if you can, of course) to get hammers for a few turns to build a building or wonder that is needed immediately. Chopping, Whipping, and buying can also result in production for those cities, although as the game progresses and the buildings start to cost more hammers, whipping 10 of your 15 population in your SSC may not be the best idea, IMO. Cottage spammed cities can be looked at in a similar fashion. Gold/Silver/Gems are nice to have around a cottage city as you can use that for cash AND production. A few windmilled tiles later in the game can be a decent compromise between food, commerce, and the hammers needed to build new buildings.

 

[madscientist]

Tymshok, Welsome. I was a lurker for a longtime then jumped in recently to start posting. After playing all 32 leaders on marathon/huge maps I can say each situation is different, what you play depends on the leader, traits, starting techs, may type, resources, land. Starting with Shaka and several neighbors sort of screams for some early military work, especially with his Unique Building. Isabela on the coast or a lake seams like a good early reiglion setup. Industrious with Stone or marble sort of calls for frequent wonder building. Financial is best for a CE, while phil is great for a SE economy. The last few games I have played arround with new techniques posted on this forum until BTS comes out. But I am thinking the best general strat is a balanced one with a strong food/production capital with specialists, one strong production city for military and heroic epic, the rest food/production/cottages as best fit.

 

[tymshok]

When I first played I fell into a pattern of gameplay which can be characterized as:

(Play Washington for Fin/Org which was totally awesome to begin with.. I tried all the others but really like this combo)

Settle around rivers, mine hills, cottage everything but where the wheels would go (minus special resources if available, I just grabbed them for whatever they had.. unless it was rice or elephant.. waste of a tile)

Get one city with GL and NE, have those GS make academies and have like 4 or 5 citys with 300-350 beakers..

That got boring, so I eventually stopped playing.. Recently I got Warlords, and revisited this site.. Needless to say, it was eye-opening..

At any rate I have been playing different styles now.. Which really says a lot more to me about the re-playability of the game..

I do think the best strat is a balanced one.. Extremes are not efficient at all things, just one thing usually.. But its not as fun because you can have a city with 700 which makes me

Anyway I digress.. I am going to keep tooling away at it and see if I can tweak my strat to more efficiently do an extreme economy.. Maybe they juggle improvements on the tiles in early game or use slavery (slavery is bad as CE spammer tho..)

I had to break down and Direct2Drive BTS Noone has it in town.. I will pick up another copy for the shiny manual tho.

 

[Harbourboy]

Now all I need to do is read a guide by the guy who only loves great artists and uses them like crazy

Read any of Jesusin's high level cultural discussions, such as the one where he gets a cultural victory on Diety around 1000 AD. That requires a full-on Great Artist spam-a-thon. Great Scientists need not apply.

 

[Brota]

It really depends on what map and which leader you play as. Some map/leader work better with cottage spam, others work better with the 1k hammer city.

But if you play with certain map/leader all the time, then you could settle down on a specific strategy that will take the most advantage of that leader's trait.

 

[mystiqblackcat]

I had to break down and Direct2Drive BTS Noone has it in town.. I will pick up another copy for the shiny manual tho.

I bought mine through D2D as well although I also have warlords through D2D from a few months ago. Personally I like it, I have too many game boxes/discs lying around as is. PDF manuals are so much easier to find when you need them too

I've been reading forum posts on here for a long time as well but I can't say that I have had the success at higher levels that you've had. Somehow I seem to lose the big picture or I am trying to wait one more turn before attacking or making that military unit and it ends up killin me.

 

[LedHead]

Unless you need to see that "pies need to die" your not missing anything in the manual...

 

[Divaythsarmour]

When I first started reading these threads, I went out and tried to purposely create specialized cities, economies etc.. In my case, it was sort of like a little bit of knowledge was very dangerous. It was as if my approach to the game became contrived and more often than not, I found myself paddling up s___ creek. I would characterize it as crisis, because I really love this game. Eventually, I was able to return to my original style of gameplay. I don't purposely create one type of city or economy, so much as I make decisions based on the circumstances at the time. I've noticed that some cities can become very powerful in terms of production, commerce or science. And I know how to manipulate it further. But I don't usually recognize those strengths until way into the game.

 

[Jet]

Now all I need to do is read a guide by the guy who only loves great artists and uses them like crazy.

Cultural Deity before 1000AD is possible

 

[xanadux]

The longer I've played this game, and the more I've read here on the forum, the more I realize there is no 'best' strategy.

There are many strategies that work, and almost always, to do well, you need to pick a good strategy for your traits and situation.

I've used CE, SE, HE, and the WE (obsolete's wonder economy). All of them work well under the right circumstances.

It doesn't seem to matter so much which kind of economy you use, but knowing how to use it well in the current situation. I usually have no problem winning on Monarch without bothering very much with close micro-management. I don't constantly monitor my cities and the foreign advisor to always make the perfectly correct plays technically. But Monarch is still fairly easy because I have a decent understanding of economy, production, and efficient city and empire growth.

People win at all levels with many different methods. Is any particular economy better than another? I don't think so. I think Firaxis did a pretty excellent job at balancing this game (so well, I think they got lucky).

It's not so much which strategy you pick, as making sure you have one! And once you have one, follow through efficiently. If you don't have a game plan, you are just randomly making decisions and struggling to do much better than win at noble.

Having a good plan, has 3 key concepts IMO:

1. How am I going to generate commerce (science, and however much gold is needed)
2. How am I going to generate enough production?
3. How am I going to win the game?

Keeping these 3 questions in mind should keep you somewhat on track in general strategery

Of course there are a few other skills involved in being a relatively strong civIV player:
1. Sensible teching (having a research plan and a reason for it is crucial)
2. Profitable tech trading and diplomatic skill
3. Knowing how to get off to a quick start
4. Handling your military well

 

[The Bowman]

I've used CE, SE, HE, and the WE (obsolete's wonder economy). All of them work well under the right circumstances.

I understand the terms, except for the HE?

The word Hero Epic keeps jumping out at me, but I know that can't be it. Nor could it be Hamlet Economy or Hero Economy, unless you mean GG farming?

I'm sure I know it but the term Hero Epic when I see HE keeps blocking my train of thought.

And now, for my own 2 cents to this and the OP.

SE players and CE followers seem to always get into some sort of debate over just about anything and everything with each other.

But sometimes these economies are not as apart as people think, and other times they are.

As the OP mentioned, he tried combing the EC from Dave and merged it with the WE from Obsolete. I don't know if that is a good move or not, as it seems paradoxial.

As mentioned, Dave goes to the extreme of things, and if he wants to cottage hills, then he is allowed to cottage hills until the rules of the game change. Most of us wouldn't want to, but maybe he knows something that we don't. Or maybe he's just gone a bit over-board.

The walkthroughs Obsolete does, goes to the total opposite, but still extremes. If he so much as capture a fully made cottage/hamlet/town/village, he tends to either destroy it right away, or slowly by having workers remove them. And so again, this is something most of us would not want to do, but to each his own.

It is interesting how two totally opposite strategies yet at the extreme ends can both run circles around the AI at any level of the game. But since each city acts as its own unit, I suppose you can get by with intertwining different systems.

But then, there are hybrids. People do try to mix CE with SE, which is questionable. And then there are those who totally convert to CE from SE as the game progresses, which is interesting in itself.

And then you have other strange hybrids. Most people use the SE primarily for the science part, but the WE also uses a form of SE primarily for production power, though it benefits from science on it as well.

Now, before I make a fool of myself trying to act smart, I think I should head over and re-read the big CE thread.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

HE in this context is Hybrid Economy which as far as I know means multiple great person farms combined with cottages elsewhere, which can be questionable I think (as you say), because civics tend to favour one economy over the other (except beureacracy is good for cottages in the capital even in a pure SE, and capitals normally have a big food excess anyway). I expect Liz is good for this because she is financial and philosophical.

 

[tymshok]

HE in this context is Hybrid Economy which as far as I know means multiple great person farms combined with cottages elsewhere, which can be questionable I think (as you say), because civics tend to favour one economy over the other (except beureacracy is good for cottages in the capital even in a pure SE, and capitals normally have a big food excess anyway). I expect Liz is good for this because she is financial and philosophical.

HE can also mean a Hammer Economy.

The number of acronyms that the Civ 4 community have come up with is dizzying. It almost deserves its own guide.