Post-liberalism on emperor

[PMabey]

FE/SE seems to really slow down after Liberalism.

Well done, you've started another CE vs SE thread. Its only a matter of time b4 someone goes on about the advantages of an SE and bores eveyone to death. What you said is true though, at least until constitution and biology

 

[Dirk1302]

FE/SE seems to really slow down after Liberalism. You better have enough land to run all those specialists needed to keep up or convert to a CE through Emancipation. Therefore, I think the best bet an SE player has is to leverage its advantage early and carve up a large chunk of territory. Since much of your research is coming from specialists and lightbulbing, you don't need to worry about 0% science rate. The Organised trait can help too (besides Philosophical, of course), since you pay less for expansion and can build courthouses faster, making Freddy an excellent candidate for an SE game. His cheap UB factories are also great for the extra engineers. More production for a domination push or SS construction.

In my experience you need some 15 cities on emperor to win the space race with a FE economy and indeed i try to get most of them before liberalism. Sure the time after liberalism is somewhat tough but when constitution, biology and communism are in Fe economy thrives as never before.

 

[futurehermit]

FE/SE seems to really slow down after Liberalism. You better have enough land to run all those specialists needed to keep up or convert to a CE through Emancipation. Therefore, I think the best bet an SE player has is to leverage its advantage early and carve up a large chunk of territory. Since much of your research is coming from specialists and lightbulbing, you don't need to worry about 0% science rate. The Organised trait can help too (besides Philosophical, of course), since you pay less for expansion and can build courthouses faster, making Freddy an excellent candidate for an SE game. His cheap UB factories are also great for the extra engineers. More production for a domination push or SS construction.

I agree more or less though others may not. My feeling is that it is important to get a large land mass so you can keep up in tech with lots of specialists. Otherwise, transition to cottages later in the game.

In fact, I feel that there are many compelling reasons to switch to cottages post-liberalism:

1) The CE civics come online
2) Printing press comes online
3) Emancipation starts impacting you and emancipation is a CE civic
4) GL is soon to be obsolete
5) GPs start costing a lot more (GPPs) and the techs cost a lot more so lightbulbing is not *as* powerful

and most importantly imo:

6) At this point in the game you should be determining your victory condition. If it's space then you will want to lay down cottages imo. If it's domination then you should hopefully be at the point where you will win prior to going all the way through the tech tree thus negating the need for uber tech. My goal is to have control of my continent shortly after the renaissance needing only to take out 1-1.5 backwards AIs on the other continent ftw.

 

[HiroHito]

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A guy! Damn, he's one feminine-looking guy...and he still likes me even though I am declaring war on him... :???:

I think that he looked feminine cuz he was a quite beautiful man, and was a very wise ruler; check out this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asoka

 

[aelf]

Sure the time after liberalism is somewhat tough but when constitution, biology and communism are in Fe economy thrives as never before.

Constitution and Biology do help the SE quite a great deal (Communism is pretty much neutral to both SE and CE, IMO). However, I agree with what futurehermit says about CE civics and techs. Printing Press, Free Speech, US, Emancipation - all these help a CE, versus only two helping an SE. Emancipation is often not something you can ignore, and if you don't have cottages to grow, you don't benefit from half the effects of the civic. And if you're not already dominating the world or at least your continent, Free Speech would also be good to help push back the borders neighbouring civs, who might be adopting it and pushing back yours instead if you don't. Moreover, as futurehermit has also pointed out, the increasing cost of techs make lightbulbing very weak. You can't research Physics fully with two GSs on Normal speed. If you're going to count on the by now slow trickle of GPs to help you research, you won't get far.

 

[futurehermit]

^^^exactly. in a recent game i played with peter i spent 3 GSs on computers and it barely budged it...

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

I had the same problem as well in my recent game. I was thinking that maybe getting astronomy right away would offset some of the problems for a bit. Another idea was biology+representation+caste system to overcome the limits on gs you can run. Even then it might not be enough to keep up with CE's. Plus I had to switch to emancipation while warring to deal with happiness, even though I had every happiness resource in the game along with four religions spammed in my biggest cities.

One thing that eventually helped me to regain research momentum was captured cottage cities. Around that time in the game the ai will have some very mature cottages. Before I was able to grab some cottage cities from neighbors I was running at around 30% and the gap in techs (that I was able to close or leap ahead with gs lightbulbs) was slowly but steadily growing.

This could be counted as another vote for hybrids. Maybe the best economy would involve several dedicated farm cities. Make two to three of them gp farms, make one a "grow and draft" city that could double as a gp farm when you are growing it, and you could have the others as whip cities. All other cities in your civ...cottages.

 

[Vynd]

^^^

the reason i mention this game is because i felt like it happened to me again: i hit a post-liberalism stumbling block. i now think the answer is: i put everything i've got into the liberalism race and don't build many units during this time. thus when i try to start up the war machine again i don't have as many units as i should. although my units are cutting-edge, i don't have the numbers.

so, i think the answer really is i need to find a way to keep production of units high during this period so i have sufficient numbers of troops. it is hard because they are costly and a drain on my economy when i'm trying to push for liberalism...this is the main balancing problem i think i'm having...

I have to question why you're pushing for Liberalism in the first place. Of course the bonus tech is nice. But you seem to be a warmongering, domination style of player. Why devote so much energy to researching Education and then Liberalism, nearly worthless in and of themselves in a militaristic game, just so you can get Nationalism or something like that for free? Just research Nationalism directly. And keep fighting in the meantime, even if it slows your research somewhat.

 

[futurehermit]

^^^That's a good point that I will have to consider. Is getting liberalism even important for a warmongerer? My reason for going after it is also to deny it to the ai. Nothing like attacking an AI with maces only to have them get liberalism and all of a sudden fortified city defender muskets start showing up en masse in their cities...

 

[Dirk1302]

Constitution and Biology do help the SE quite a great deal (Communism is pretty much neutral to both SE and CE, IMO). However, I agree with what futurehermit says about CE civics and techs. Printing Press, Free Speech, US, Emancipation - all these help a CE, versus only two helping an SE. Emancipation is often not something you can ignore, and if you don't have cottages to grow, you don't benefit from half the effects of the civic. And if you're not already dominating the world or at least your continent, Free Speech would also be good to help push back the borders neighbouring civs, who might be adopting it and pushing back yours instead if you don't. Moreover, as futurehermit has also pointed out, the increasing cost of techs make lightbulbing very weak. You can't research Physics fully with two GSs on Normal speed. If you're going to count on the by now slow trickle of GPs to help you research, you won't get far.

You're right about communism being neutral, it's important for both economies to get costs down and the people in the workshops feeded (maybe even more in CE). I also agree that there are more CE than SE civics /techs coming online. Then again the 2 SE techs are vital and might be just as important as the 4 civics/techs for CE, hard to compare.

Transforming cottages to towns does take 35 turns at least after emancipation. I have a feeling that it just takes too long. Also i get enough research done by keeping the farms. Compare when all the good civics/tehcs are in for CE/SE:

1 grassland town = 8 commerce (financial)
1 grassland farm = 1 specialist 3-6 beakers on average 5 because caste system is not always the best civic, i switch to rounds of slavery often and i ultimately switch to emancipation when happiness becomes too hard to handle.But i still get lots of gp who don't have as much lightbulb power as before but it's still significant. You can also build academies in a lot of cities or settle in capital, time is too short for this i think but it's an option. I think this might make up for some of the decifit in raw research.

So in raw commerce full grown towns are better. This is only a portion of total research however, trade routes also give a lot of commerce and i think they are more dependent on population than on trade (correct me if i'm wrong here not 100% sure). Another portion of research is working water tiles, financial civs are good at this but they grow slowly so it takes time before all the tiles are worked not in a SE. In an SE it's also easier to whip in late infrastructure and grow back to full size. So research is also hard to compare.

It is often said SE isn't good for space races, i know from experience that this is just not true.

 

[futurehermit]

The thing is though: 1 cottage = 1 pop. 1 specialist = 2 pop (1 for farm). So you have to compare 16 commerce against that 3-6 beakers. Not so good considering late game you should have enough dough to run at 100% most of the time...

I haven't tried out the switch from FE to CE in a game yet but I am going to start. And I'm going to start with Elizabeth and see how it goes under pretty ideal conditions...

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

Is getting liberalism even important for a warmongerer

I think so for a couple reasons.

1. Denial of the free tech to the ai

2. Free religion's extra happiness helps deal with long wars

3. Free speech helps you afford everything if you have lots of cottages, the extra culture helps consolidate your new land

4. The free tech can be turned into money (printing press), troops (nationalism), or extra research (astronomy)

5. Usually I find the best strategy when Im warring is to try to emphasize research when I can because I tend to be behind in tech...my slider is lower then usual to pay for all my soldiers and cities. Plus at this point in the game you wont have many (if any) trading partners from all your wars. So anything that can help me keep up in the tech race is a target for me...that means liberalism, printing press, astronomy, physics first if no one has it, biology if im a farm economy.

Why devote so much energy to researching Education and then Liberalism, nearly worthless in and of themselves in a militaristic game

Even if someone else gets liberalism first, Education is always a big priority. Oxford will increase my research more then several acadamies. I think its that important to get it asap.

Just because youre warring doesnt mean you can ignore trying to be even or ahead in research. Especially when people wont trade with you because "you declared war on a friend". And its no fun when you attack someone more advanced then you...like when I attacked a civ that had tanks to my infantry.

 

[futurehermit]

^^exactly. you have to keep up in tech so you're not fighting wars with outdated troops. it applies at every age. no fun to attack longbows with axes either.

 

[Dirk1302]

The thing is though: 1 cottage = 1 pop. 1 specialist = 2 pop (1 for farm). So you have to compare 16 commerce against that 3-6 beakers. Not so good considering late game you should have enough dough to run at 100% most of the time...

I haven't tried out the switch from FE to CE in a game yet but I am going to start. And I'm going to start with Elizabeth and see how it goes under pretty ideal conditions...

I think it's just 8 commerce against 3-6, SE cities are much bigger than CE. One farmed grassland supports one specialist, one cottaged grassland supports one town. 2 farmed floodplains support 3 specialists, 2 cottaged floodplains support 2 cottages and one specialist.

I also will try this strategy though, see how it works out. You need a capable troop of workers and must be ready just before emancipation i think, to cut down on the time you have neither specialists nor towns. Nice fine tuning here. Pre cottaging in mid game might be a good solution but a lot of micro management.Serfdom will also help. Anyone here who has done a transition like this?

@Aelf, i love your Emperor master challenges, have to read up on the last one and see if i can contribute something useful.

 

[futurehermit]

^^^I disagree. This may be true for a certain period of time, but ultimately all cities will be at size 20(+). It is this point in the game really that I think we are talking about.

 

[Elandal]

Most of the time I would disagree with the two cottaged floodplains supporting one specialist - they're probably supporting two plains cottages instead (or a goldmine if I'm lucky).

Also, I believe SE and CE cities both are about the same size - the happy cap. Unless of course you're using culture slider for higher happy cap in SE - sounds quite plausible actually.

 

[aelf]

I usually play with a toned-down CE (where I pursue max growth first and only focus on working cottages when cities are reaching their happiness caps). I agree with Elandal that the happiness cap means the CE cities are just as big as SE cities. How much more happiness can the culture slider give you? And you do have cottages at least from conquered cities by the late game. Don't you want to have as high a research rate as possible to help research those expensive late game techs that specialists alone take forever to research?

But maybe it's because of the way I play, since I don't like to delay growth. Maybe hardcore CE players out there have cities that don't hit their happiness caps for most of the game because they are working mostly cottages and growing slowly.

 

[Elandal]

I play CE almost exclusively (have tried SE every now and then, but usually don't micro my cities well enough and fail with it).

Happy cap means that no city will reach size 20 for a good while. Some not before biology due to food, and sometimes I just won't get the happiness unless I go for the hit singles / musicals / movies (don't remember which ones came with which tech). That practically guarantees, that cities won't be working 20 tiles. Generally, I consider a dozen cottages to be excellent.

Now, if I won't be working more than a dozen tiles, should I build 20 cottages? Or make it 16 - assume 4 tiles can't be cottaged for some reason (resources I want to use, eg. food, or uncottable tiles like plains hills). Sometimes I do try to have a few extra cottages, so I might be able to mature several cottages to villages for printing press. But most of the time, I will find myself with some tiles that I count as "to be cottaged when the city reaches size 14" or alike. In the meantime, they can serve as farms. Get new happiness resource? Switch to work those farms instead of plains cottages until grown to new cap. Get market online (assumes I do have a resource that is doubled by it)? Again switch to farms for quick growth spurt.

I try to keep my cities close to happy cap. Sometimes I want to keep them a bit below (expecting a happiness hit for some reason soon), but in any case want to keep the cities in such shape that I can take the quick growth spurt when needed. Until they reach a size where they work most of the cottable area and I go cot over the last farms.

 

[Dirk1302]

^^^I disagree. This may be true for a certain period of time, but ultimately all cities will be at size 20(+). It is this point in the game really that I think we are talking about.

Certainly this is the point in the game we're talking about. And yes most cottage cities will go to some 20 pop ultimately. Se cities can and will grow (alot) bigger than that though.

The relation ship 1 grassland cottage means one town, one grassland farm means one specialist basically seems correct to me,but, as others have pointed out, happiness can be a problem. Usually i trade for all the happiness resources and try to build broadway ,rock and roll and hollywood.They all lie along my favorite research line. Temples and cathedrals also help. I can support cities up to 30 pop (and some cities grow that big) with the culture slider at 10% late game. i have to run emancipation at some time though(rule of thump is, if the slider has to go to 30% culture then switch to it).

So the uncertainty is how many beakers i can get out of a specialist compared with a cottage as i don't run caste system all the time so i don't run only scientists all the time.

@Elandal
As for cottages on plain squares, i always build workshops on them or watermills if possible. Running state property you get tons of production without losing too much food. That doesn't mean that cottages on plains are bad btw, just another way of playing the game.

@Aelf, i keep the research slider as high as possible typically midgame science=70 culture=20 gold=10, late game science=80 culture=10, gold=10. I think the notion that peaceful FE economies only get research from specialists is wrong anyhow(It might be right though for warmongering Se economies that have some 40 cities all contributing something).The specialists help but a lot comes in from trade routes and watertiles, also some captured towns(i keep those if they're mature) contribute.

 

[Vynd]

^^^That's a good point that I will have to consider. Is getting liberalism even important for a warmongerer? My reason for going after it is also to deny it to the ai. Nothing like attacking an AI with maces only to have them get liberalism and all of a sudden fortified city defender muskets start showing up en masse in their cities...

Well if the AI beats you to Liberalism and gets Muskets out of it, my advice would be to target a different AI for the time being. If you've beat down your neighbors enough during the earlier parts of the game it'd be pretty surprising for them to be first to Liberalism anyway. It's much more likely that someone on the far side of the world will get it first.

The fundamental point I'm trying to make is that Education and Liberalism are expensive to research, and especially expensive to research if you're racing to get there first. They don't have a lot of direct military applications like, say, Gunpowder does. They aren't prerequisites to Military Tradition or Chemistry, which are probably the two "closest" techs that will give your military a big boost during this time frame. So if you're going to pursue Edu/Lib, expect your military to suffer. It probably won't be in good shape to go on the offensive shortly afterward. If that bothers you, forget about Liberalism. Then you'll have the freedom to research a little slower (being second to Gunpowder is nowhere near as annoying as second to Liberalism) and support a bigger military. And if you head straight for, say, Chemistry, you can get there almost as fast as you would have gotten to Liberalism, and ahve a valuable military technology too.