Questions, CE, FE, SE?

[DaveMcW]

Also, you mention that CE is best for advanced players. In your mind, at what level does a player become advanced?

CE is best for a new player.
CE is best for an intermediate player.
CE is best for an advanced player.

It's quite difficult to prove in writing, but try it out ingame and it's obvious.

 

[MrCynical]

CE = Cottage economy.

FE/SE = Farm/Specialist economy.

There's no real distinction between farm and specialist economies. The name farm economy seems to have appeared recently but it refers to exactly the same approach of using farms to support specialists (and produce great people) as your primary research source.

As to which of CE and SE is more effective, it has been argued on numerous occasions, and to the extent where both sides have members too entrenched to actually bother with logic or results. There have been a few head to head attempts, but none of them has been very productive. One side usually drops out for whatever reason before the head to head is completed (see the earlier incarnations of the threads DaveMcW has linked to).

As to my personal opinion, CE is the more effective in a long running game (e.g. a space race win), SE is better for things like rapid domination (but suffers more than CE at high difficulty level).

 

[Ankh-f-n-Khonsu]

CE is best for a new player.
CE is best for an intermediate player.
CE is best for an advanced player.

It's quite difficult to prove in writing, but try it out ingame and it's obvious.

Right, I had a hunch this was your opinion. I suspect you also believe CE is best for intermediate-advanced players, and new players who thought they were buying the latest RTS, and little old ladies who prefer canasta but occasionally turn out praetorians.

You didn't answer the question, however. At what level do you define an advanced player? Somebody who wins at Emperor? Immortal?

 

[Unconquered Sun]

That one?

I will only quote my December post in that thread (which I actually wrote in defense of CE after a comment of acidsatyr):

"CE wins Immortal consistently from my experience. So does SE. Immortal is just not hard enough to gauge, and the level this challenge was played on (Prince?) even more so."


My definition of "best singleplayer strategy" in Civ is the one that wins consistently on Deity. There might be a strategy that launches the spaceship at 1 AD on Settler; but I don't care about it.

I play both CE and FE, and I play both Immortal/Deity. From experience, I can say FE has advantages in happiness management and production that CE cannot duplicate.

And looking at Deity experience on this forum: Snaaty and Mutineer&team won vanilla with FE-ish play. Acidsatyr&team played an amazing FE game vs 2.08 + more Blake mods AI. I took a game all the way to a winning position by playing pure FE and posted the save, since then lilnev finished with a space win and I went for a domination win. On the other hand, we had an impressive CE game by uberfish.

It's a bit early to declare the race finished. And if you actually want to make advanced players CE v. FE experiment, then play Deity and invite players that do win on Deity to represent the sides.

 

[bardolph]

Has anyone written up good treatments on how to run a "PE," or Pillaging-economy?

I think there's great potential in this one...

 

[uberfish]

There's no such thing as a strategy that wins consistently on deity, you will automatically lose to bad luck a significant proportion of the time. Deity is not a good testing ground for this reason.

The thing with CE and FE is they cater to different playstyles - warmongers will generally find they do better with FE and economists with CE, the difficulty level has very little to do with it.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

There's no such thing as a strategy that wins consistently on deity, you will automatically lose to bad luck a significant proportion of the time. Deity is not a good testing ground for this reason.

Some games are plain bad luck. Others could have been won - in hindsight. There's room for improvement and I believe a reasonable % of deity games can be won with optimum strategy. Besides, go a level down, and Immortal will be successfully completed both ways and all will boil down to "arguments" about dates and theoretical advantages.

IMO both economies are interesting and worth studying and playing. To give an example, when lilnev took over my deity save he said the economy is very different of what he is used to. I liked that, I like it when people see new perspectives. That is why I oppose attempts to play down either FE or CE.

 

[Jet]

My definition of "best singleplayer strategy" in Civ is the one that wins consistently on Deity. There might be a strategy that launches the spaceship at 1 AD on Settler; but I don't care about it.

Why Deity? Because it's the level you enjoy the most? Because it's the hardest that comes with the game? If they had provided a harder level, would you care more about that? Personally I don't think there's anything that special about the levels Firaxis provided. They made them up, playtested them some, and then released the game. But I appreciate that the built in levels have a valid symbolic value, and my questions to you are not rhetorical.

I think CE and SE are well balanced, although to disclose , I'm more of a CE believer. One should recognize that hybrids are possible; for example, by building farms instead of or in addition to some cottages and using them for growth and regrowth.

I'd love to see an Alex vs Ragnar challenge - same map for each, no play restrictions - but I think it would be hard to choose settings and to get many people to play. I'd post one if I thought people would play it.

 

[bardolph]

Another advantage of a Farm-based economy is that you can pave over the farms with cottages once you outgrow slavery. The opposite is less true, unless you're willing to tear down perfectly good villages/towns.

Also, with Emancipation comes double-growth cottages, but you can't take advantage of this if all of your cottages have already grown into towns!

 

[druidravi]

I use se in my first 2,3 cities heavily then cottage one city and try to research with slider at a high level with war plunder till atleast constitution enabling repesentation. And all those captured AI towns retain their matured cottages. I will start cottaging enmasse in cities which already have cottages after I get emancipation , this combined with AI's mature cottages allow me to transform myself into a hybrid in late game.

 

[30+]

CE vs SE space race: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=196783

All the strongest SE supporters gave up before ever launching a spaceship. The best CE beat the best SE by 120 years

Dave had the GL, ran Caste System/Pyramids/Representation for maximizing specialist, and adopted Pacifism in order to maximize GPP and light bulbing prior to switching to a CE. There was already much discussion in the thread posted above if Dave actually ran CE instead of SE at points in the game due to civic choices and beaker research.

If you are making a CE vs SE/FE comparison game to see which is better that is good! Using a dedicated GPF for the CE during the contest is good too! Even getting the GL for scientist which will be used to create Academies for your largest CE cities is good!

Running Early Representation with Pyramids/Caste System/Pacifism and Light Bulbing techs is to clearly be in a SE/FE state. It's apparent in the above thread that a HE (hybrid economy) was the winner.

Also, here is the link to a walk through I recently did using a SE/FE Economy

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=208993

The strengths of SE/FE comes in the source of early tech lead and production gained from the whip. Early tech lead = superior units to fight with. Greater production comes from having mass farms and ability to whip an incredible amount of units from ALL cities. Simply let your cities grow into an unhappy state some time before you plan to Whip units then Use the culture slider to adjust happiness while your unhappiness due to the whip slowly deminishes. Six size 10 cities who have 5 unhappy citizens each for a total of Fifteen population can Whip 18 Musketmen in FIVE turns (wait 1 turn to accrue hammers on each musketman per city, 2nd turn Whip for 3 population points, 3rd turn wait 1 turn to acrrue again, Fourth turn whip for 2 population(whip overflow), Fifth Turn whip straight away for 4 population points). A typical farmed city would grow back one population point in Five turns which means you would lose a total of 8 population points. Subtract that from 15 and you now have 6 size 7 cities(which would grow back very very fast) with 30(normal speed) turns of unhappiness with 18 musketman(at around 800 AD). That's alot of production in Five turns at this stage of the game imo.

A Pure CE, something not shown in Daves link won't get truly rolling till universal suffrage and Rush Buy, the great equalizer. Until that point, at least IMO, SE/FE is superior. However, I am slowly beginning to favor HE as I am working on a Hybrid style myself. One which uses lightbulbing techs suchs as Paper/Education in conjunction with mass cottages to achieve a much much faster liberalism time (faster than normal CE).

IMO, SE/FE is superior on duel/tiny/small maps. Quicker tech/greater units/more production in combination with a small map allows SE/FE to leverage their full advantage and gives the CE a much much more difficult chance to even survive.

Standard(perhaps!)/Large/Huge maps IMO favor a CE base due to greater land mass and distance from potential civilizations. By the time your early SE/FE war machine reaches the other side of the world that CE would have enough time to outresearch you and leverage Universal suffrage and Rush Buy + kremlin combo to get you!

I have also begun work on a game style which incorporates fast cottages/fast big cities/fast lightbulbing techs/and a Few all Farm cities to maximize the whip. It seems like an impossible hybrid but it's something I plan to make work!

That is why I oppose attempts to play down either FE or CE.

AGREED! Love them both actually! Poping techs is sexy! So is rush buying 12 units a turn!

 

[Snaaty]

To tell you the truth, I don´t really care what is better / more used:

CF, FE/SE (or even PE)

All will work out (except of PE maybe) when played right no matter what civ and settings...

...

Btw, we are just having a nice open emperor game, where we are trying to win dom. after starting isolated on a tiny ugly island, to compare different strats and openings:

The threat you can find here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=208028

4 players are using CE
1 player is using HE
1 player is using FE

All games are competitive, so not much difference can be notices in terms of better/worse...

 

[30+]

Competitive games are fun! Isolated start though? Scary. I don't play continents/fractal or island maps due to too much water and slow war . Seems CE or HE would be best on isolation or continents due to lack of trading partners (loss of trading income) , and along with that, fewer AI's around (loss of income-no capturing and razing cities for cash to fund research). I'd be curiou to see a comparison game played on a standard Pangea map! Then again, I'm still new and may in time, learn to play island maps. I just like to beat one strategy and one map into the ground before I move to different level and or situations.

 

[MKElderGod]

Another advantage of a Farm-based economy is that you can pave over the farms with cottages once you outgrow slavery. The opposite is less true, unless you're willing to tear down perfectly good villages/towns.

Also, with Emancipation comes double-growth cottages, but you can't take advantage of this if all of your cottages have already grown into towns!

THIS IS ALL BS

 

[MKElderGod]

In a SE/FE do you incorporate tech tradin? Because thats just plain stupid. You would be using AI as your tech support.

I saw hermit use SE/FE and was like 7 techs ahead while being behind 6 old techs. Now is that good?. On a CE economy i could be 7 techs ahead, no techs behind, 100% science, wage war and no tech tradn.

Also SE/FE pops techs whats the big deal, you sacrifice your production while trying to GP Farm. CE city researches at a faster rate at the same time never hurting production.

 

[Wodan]

Good grief, MKeg. That's a bunch of unsupported statements.

First off, I agree with you about tech trading. It has its use, but I think people tout it too much without pointing out (or considering) the negatives.

Secondly, in FE/SE, you don't sack your pop in order to pop techs, which is what you imply. Sacking pop to get production is at the expense of GPP. It's a parallel strategy, not a supportive one.

Thirdly, CE researches at a rate which is dependent upon number and growth of cottages, as well as civics and tech advancement. We can't throw out a straw man saying "CE is faster" without saying when/why/how. That's sheer nonsense.

Wodan

 

[30+]

@kelder

Most people play with tech trading. Most people play predomin SP over MP http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=190502&highlight=poll The SE/FE lightbulb of techs is far superior to the CE early game. Better tech with better production from the whip translates to better potential early game for teh SE/FE to proceed however they think is fit. The big deal of lightbulbing is 1 scientist will get you 1500 beakers(?).

Philosophical trait means you get faster GP. Faster GP translate to 1500 beakers a pop. Oh boy, you have a cottage. You have maybe even 15-20 cottages by CS. That translates to 60-90 rpt if slider is @ 100% (good luck). It's going to take you over 15 turns to research a tech that cost 1500 beakers with 100% slider! SE/FE could easily have 3-5 GS by this time and that = 4500 to 6000 beakers (potential) !

Anyways, I support the SE/FE threads because it's a strong game style. I typically do play w/out trading technology myself, and normally use a HE as well......but I do enjoy pure SE/FE economies too. Besides, I have been reading all your post and they don't make any sense. You just ramble out incoherent sentences with no substansiation, and to make it worse, 90% of what you say is simply false.

 

[MKElderGod]

Good grief, MKeg. That's a bunch of unsupported statements.

First off, I agree with you about tech trading. It has its use, but I think people tout it too much without pointing out (or considering) the negatives.

Secondly, in FE/SE, you don't sack your pop in order to pop techs, which is what you imply. Sacking pop to get production is at the expense of GPP. It's a parallel strategy, not a supportive one.

Thirdly, CE researches at a rate which is dependent upon number and growth of cottages, as well as civics and tech advancement. We can't throw out a straw man saying "CE is faster" without saying when/why/how. That's sheer nonsense.

Wodan

Okay let me restart because i wasnt clear. But before i do i want to state everything i say past this is true.

1. SE/FE wastes tiles such as river grasslands and flood plains.
2. Your also not teching even close to a CE or HE.
3. It cant be denied that GP Farming requires time to get going while CE is early and quick.
4. Gp Farmins Requires more cities and more cities to do differnet jobs. CE All cities can produce commerce and production at the same time.
5. Wipping and drafting isnt something that SE/FE out classes a CE in. Flood Plains and Grass Plains with rivers give you a better balance of whipping and teching when you cottage them.
6. SE/FE Requires tech tradin. THAT SUCKS.
7. SE/FE Isnt good in MP due to the production limits while gp farming and the time it takes to gp farm.
8. SE/FE requires war, tech selling and building wealth to manage.
9. On Harder difficulties the unhappiness and unhealthiness starts to make SE/FE more difficult.
10. If you want to survive with SE/FE you have to switch it to CE or HE later in the game.

CE/HE has no problems at all due that yo can incorporate everything in it. I also see that CE is never really CE due that you can add a gp dedicated city and farms and pastures in it.

Now some people will try to refute what i have just said but you cant because these are cold hard facts.

The only thing i like about SE/FE is that its fun to use and challengeing. I play with no tech trading. When i use CE i find my self 300 points infront of the comp at the start or middle of classical era. Never seen that with SE/FE.

 

[MKElderGod]

Show me in one of your games without tech tradn and cheats off that ull have enough GS to out tech CE. Doesnt one GS pop one tech? Ive seen Hermits SE/FE economy and i thought playing like that sucks alot.

 

[Wodan]

I'm all out tilting at windmills today.

Wodan