Optimal city for caste-pacifism scientist specialists

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Currently Im growing my cities as large as possible but Im not sure that is really optimal. There are quite a few problems with growing large cities:

1. Getting happiness with monarchy don't work too well with pacifism meaning the saving on city maintainment is lost to unit upkeep.
2. Getting health is also problematic with large cities and you can not afford losing food to unhealthiness. This mean you probably need to build infrastructure which cost production that could be otherwise spent on other stuff.
3. Each city produce 2 food from just existing which mean each city can support basically a specialist for free. With mercantilism each city you have get another specialist for free.
4. More cities with less population works better with slavery.
5. Growing population get more and more expensive.

Looking at the math a bunch of relative small cities that run 2-3 scientist can chain generate a great scientist every 4-8 turns for the 10 first great scientists assuming your run pacifism. Getting 4 to 6 surplus food is not all that difficult, a city start with 2 food already and to get 4 more you need 4 grassland or 2 foodplain farms.

 

[sampsa]

As long as you work good tiles and have nothing urgent to whip, growing to health cap is often a good choice.

• Unhealthiness: You can sometimes afford losing food to unhealthiness, for example growing to work a floodplain cottage which with -1 effectively becomes a grassland cottage. A river grassland cottage is a good tile.
• Unhappiness: A warrior costs only 15. That is dirt cheap for mobile +1 . Pacifism is a dirt cheap civic. A few lost won't matter much at that point anyway.
• Small cities generating : Simply inefficient compared to 2-4 +10 sized cities generating tons of -points during GA in caste+pacifism. I'm not sure how you chain generate scientists every 4-8 turns from small cities.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I'm not sure how you chain generate scientists every 4-8 turns from small cities.

If you have 3 scientists in one city with philosophical and pacifism you will get 27 great people points per turn. If you start 10 such cities at the same time the first one will generate a great scientist at turn 4 and all others will have around about 100 great people points with the second great person cost 200 points. That mean the second one will generate a great scientist at turn 8 and so on with the tenth city will have generated a scientist at turn 40.

This give you roughly 500 beakers per turn assuming you bulb around 1500 beakers per great scientist and it use up to 70 people in total (30 specialist + 40 grassland farmers). Having 70 people work towns would bring in 4*70 = 280 commerce a turn with libraries bringing that to 350 science. Naturally as a city have generated a great scientist it can switch its population to work other stuff such as cottages.

The main problem with having alot of specialist is that it become sluggish as great people point cost increase and you can not control bulb as well as normal research.

It is alot easier to use cottages as there is little that can go wrong but my goal here is how to get out several great people, like 10 great scientist around turn 160 (if possible) without any serious damage to other areas. Currently Im far from reaching that goal, I can maybe get 10 at around turn 200 without being philosophical.

 

[SnipedSoul]

Why not use a couple small cities to get the cheap great people while farming up a giant city that gets national epic? Once NE is chopped, pop a golden age and starve your huge city to get a crazy amount of GPP. It's not too hard to get a big city if you make it a priority. If you keep growing onto more grass farms, the additional food helps offset the higher growth requirement.

The extra unit cost for hereditary rule under pacifism is not bad as long as you aren't trying to make every city as big as possible.

 

[sampsa]

If you have 3 scientists in one city with philosophical and pacifism you will get 27 great people points per turn. If you start 10 such cities at the same time the first one will generate a great scientist at turn 4 and all others will have around about 100 great people points with the second great person cost 200 points. That mean the second one will generate a great scientist at turn 8 and so on with the tenth city will have generated a scientist at turn 40.

This give you roughly 500 beakers per turn assuming you bulb around 1500 beakers per great scientist and it use up to 70 people in total (30 specialist + 40 grassland farmers). Having 70 people work towns would bring in 4*70 = 280 commerce a turn with libraries bringing that to 350 science. Naturally as a city have generated a great scientist it can switch its population to work other stuff such as cottages.

The main problem with having alot of specialist is that it become sluggish as great people point cost increase and you can not control bulb as well as normal research.

It is alot easier to use cottages as there is little that can go wrong but my goal here is how to get out several great people, like 10 great scientist around turn 160 (if possible) without any serious damage to other areas. Currently Im far from reaching that goal, I can maybe get 10 at around turn 200 without being philosophical.

Well, there are many assumptions that need to be true so that your math is correct. You need to be in caste+pacifism with a philo leader. You mustn't have generated any GP (i.e. you couldn't have bulbed philosophy). You need tiles that can support 3 specialists. Not a stretch but not always possible.

I can see some merit in all this, I mean this way you don't need any buildings, not even granaries since you are stagnating anyway. I just think that there are better ways to achieve it. In one of my games on T150 I have generated 11 GP + music artist with non-philo leader: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...holy-roman-empire.275191/page-8#post-14648324. It was done in the classical way: Big cities running specialists during a golden age. Check the save for details.

Why not use a couple small cities to get the cheap great people while farming up a giant city that gets national epic? Once NE is chopped, pop a golden age and starve your huge city to get a crazy amount of GPP. It's not too hard to get a big city if you make it a priority. If you keep growing onto more grass farms, the additional food helps offset the higher growth requirement.

The extra unit cost for hereditary rule under pacifism is not bad as long as you aren't trying to make every city as big as possible.

Pretty much the same response as to Denkt. Because mass running specialists during a GA is more efficient. I think NE is nowhere near as good as it looks on paper, since you have +100% from golden age and +100% from pacifism anyway in all cities, thus mitigating the benefit of NE. I rarely build NE if I'm going for the usual "cannon/cuir conquest"-strategy.

 

[SnipedSoul]

Well, there are many assumptions that need to be true so that your math is correct. You need to be in caste+pacifism with a philo leader. You mustn't have generated any GP (i.e. you couldn't have bulbed philosophy). You need tiles that can support 3 specialists. Not a stretch but not always possible.

I can see some merit in all this, I mean this way you don't need any buildings, not even granaries since you are stagnating anyway. I just think that there are better ways to achieve it. In one of my games on T150 I have generated 11 GP + music artist with non-philo leader: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...holy-roman-empire.275191/page-8#post-14648324. It was done in the classical way: Big cities running specialists during a golden age. Check the save for details.



Pretty much the same response as to Denkt. Because mass running specialists during a GA is more efficient. I think NE is nowhere near as good as it looks on paper, since you have +100% from golden age and +100% from pacifism anyway in all cities, thus mitigating the benefit of NE. I rarely build NE if I'm going for the usual "cannon/cuir conquest"-strategy.

NE is pretty cheap, though. Whip a library with max overflow and add a couple chops will do it if you have marble or are IND. I like to use it for fail gold, too, so I need to build it sooner or later.

 

[sampsa]

I like to use it for fail gold, too, so I need to build it sooner or later.

This is a good point. When you build it, you can no longer fail gold it.

 

[Lennier]

But you can't get the fail gold until you build it.

 

[sampsa]

But you can't get the fail gold until you build it.

Yes, my remark was made tongue in cheek. On a serious note, at that point of game there are many more marble wonders to fail, so you rarely need to build NE just to get fail gold.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I can see some merit in all this, I mean this way you don't need any buildings, not even granaries since you are stagnating anyway. I just think that there are better ways to achieve it. In one of my games on T150 I have generated 11 GP + music artist with non-philo leader: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...holy-roman-empire.275191/page-8#post-14648324. It was done in the classical way: Big cities running specialists during a golden age. Check the save for details.

I think the biggest difference is the golden ages. I think the idea of getting music first is a good one and plan to setup that golden age.

 

[SnipedSoul]

Golden ages really do generate a ridiculous amount of GPP. Just make sure the food bar is almost full so that you can starve while working as many specialists as possible. I pull citizens off all but my 5+ food tiles and time it so the food bar is almost empty when the golden age ends.

 

[futurehermit]

Popping a few GSs from early small cities is great, but once a city pops a GS, better to then convert it to a cottaged (or production) city, as it is unlikely to produce a second GS for you, assuming you have other cities running specialists. Once a handful of cities pop GSs, then you are unlikely to have smaller cities beat out your dedicated NE city, which should be set up by then.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

It sounds like an interesting strategy having a whole bunch of small cities generating 1 GS but doesn't this cripple you in other areas? Sounds like a pretty cool trick that'll work out great in very niche circumstances similar to pulling off an Engineering bulb strat.

The first thing I noticed is that you're talking about 10 cities. 10 cities on high level standard games before a breakout is pretty darn rare. Like maybe 5% of games rare. Then, add in the reliance on having both PHI and Pacif. PHI means the 5% frequency of getting 10 cities is further reduced by rolling a PHI leader if going random and Pacif means I've likely already popped 2 GS for academy and bulbing Philo meaning the calculations are also skewed so more like 11 turns per GS. So then, you'll be stunting many of your cities for a long time. Given 10 cities, some of them won't be very productive for 100+ turns! That is unless you totally avoided generating any GP pre Philo which can be really inefficient. At this point of the game (getting Philo), I'm usually planning my lib run and plotting my breakout so production starts to become important. Potentially too important to be stunting my cities for 50 some odd turns.

I'm interested in this, though. I'll give it a shot in my next run. I could be way off. Im curious, what victory are you working towards with this strat? Like what's your next move after all this bulbing?