SE Help

[Cornhog]

I've been trying to play a few SE games and for the life of me I cannot begin to see how anyone makes it work. I always fall so hopelessly behind by 0AD its pathetic.

Apparently I'm missing something. I'm playing on Emperor by the way. By the time I get a granary and a library in each of my three or four cities, my two scientists could easily be outpaced by a couple of cottages. Even with the two scientists the majority of my research is coming from commerce. Is it entirely dependent on getting the pyramids?

The only other thing I can think of is that I'm not whipping efficiently enough. It seems that going primarily CE but throwing in a couple scientists here and there would be infinitely better.

So, what's the best way to learn this? Should I post a game or something? I've read the guides and view threads about games and it all seems to make sense. It just never works in practice for me. Time after time the AI has more units, more land, more research than me.

Or am I just panicking too much? I'm usually in the lead at this point (or near to it). In my current game its 200 AD, I have 590 points and I'm sitting in dead last. The next person has 880. The top person has 1200. This isn't typical for me.

 

[DaveMcW]

You aren't being aggressive enough.

Kill everyone before their cottages grow into towns.

 

[Cornhog]

Ah! I was about to edit my original post and ask that. How does SE have such a supposed synergy with warmongering? All my city workers are on farms, making food to make more specialists. Where am I supposed to get all these units? Whipping them? I have to wait 10 turns between whips. I don't get it at all. Can you tell I'm frustrated?

 

[Jerrymander]

You aren't being aggressive enough.

Kill everyone before their cottages grow into towns.

That's a general simplification of all playstyles.

What you should do, Cornhog, is designate a few cities to do nothing but produce units. Military units. These are production cities, and are part of city specialization. This goes hand in hand with an SE.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Lol Dave, that is kind of the reasoning behind SE...leverage the early advantages it offers into late game ones...but that doesn't really help me understand using it either! (not that I'd mind winning on emperor using any method short of cheating/WB).

 

[Cornhog]

Even in a SE there are a couple strictly unit production cities? And every other city is just "general purpose?"

What's a good leader to try this on. I had a semi-successful game with Peter. It started out quasi-SE then diverged into a universal suffrage/cottage game. I won, but not very SE like.

Then I had a Toku game that I lost when Gandhi and Mansu got together and teched my pants off. Actually it was De Gaulle that did it. He was between the two and apparently played off of them. I was surprised when he beat everyone to liberalism. And he loves to sneak attack. You wouldn't expect that. Apparently Firaxis managed to capture De Gaulle's douchbaggish nature in the game. I thought Toku would be good cause I could use an SE-ish approach until I got samurai. Even though I more or less beelined to it, the AIs beat me there.

Anyway, I'm trying it now with Pericles. I figure creative and philosophical would go well together.

 

[DaveMcW]

Tokugawa works best when you cottage his capital - you can even research pottery on turn 1 if you get a floodplain start.

 

[Bleys]

SEs can be tricky to get a good balance on. I suggest you move down to Monarch for a couple games, and pick a leader who has strong SE traits. PHI is the "Poster Boy" trait for SEs, since the most basic SEs rely on bulbed tech beelines to trade your way to tech parity. The more GPeople you can generate the easier the SE seems to flow.

Also, it can be a financial nightmare. Quite often I was forced to run mostly Merchant specialists just to stay in the black with the slider at 0%. Eventually I learned how to glean a few extra commerce or gold here and there to keep the economy afloat.

Warmongering is often a primary source of income for many SEs. You can REALLY make a bundle by carefully stripping out a bunch of the enemies improved tiles before razing their cities. Often, you cannot keep many cities in a war, either, you just cant afford them. Thats why certain techs are pretty critical to the system, CoL, Currency, etc. Be sure to pillage all the cottaged tiles right down to the bone before they flip into your culture if that is likely when you kill the city in question.

I dont know what your overall skill level is, but if you are trying to learn SEs at Emperor, you must be fairly experienced. CEs tend to be easier to play overall, because there is less micro-managing involved. With SEs you need to be conscious of every tile every city works. Check often, especially work those riverside food, that single coin is pretty large, LOL.

The Pyramids are not absolutely essential to running an SE, but to be perfectly honest, if you dont get them, its BARELY worth the effort to try, so why bother? With that in mind, the Mids become a pretty important target if an SE looks good on that map with that leader. Thats why IND leaders also make strong SE leaders. Stone in the BFC or close also makes the SE a much more viable option. Again, the Mids are NOT essential, but without them, why go with a weaker strat? Cottage up, farm a GP generating city, and play a CE.

I play SEs when circumstances warrant playing it. Force-feeding any strat just because you "want to play it" barely works at Monarch, much less Emperor. If you can get the Mids, either with Stone, an IND leader, a PHI leader and lots or forests, or even with an Oracle-MC-Forge-pop a GE slingshot, whatever, then sure, go SE. But it sounds to me like you are trying to run it under less than optimal circumstances at a pretty high level. One of the biggest things stronger players say about beating the higher levels consistently is the ability to mold your game-style to fit the situation.

 

[Grinnenstadt]

Try a philosophical leader. Build an early wonder like Stonehenge or Great Wall and settle all your GPs into one GP farm (usually capital) Have your second city spam units and try to grab stone or marble with a third city. Having a start with plenty of forests is very helpful for me. I like to chop chop chop my way into wonders and more GPPs. I am still not a fan of whipping, but that's just me. Also, your difficulty level might hinder you if your trying a new strategy. Pull it back a notch until you get the hang of it.

 

[Iranon]

I actually found dedicated production cities less important in a SE, since cities with many farms are quite flexible... working hammer tiles or whipping isn't much much of aproblem if you need hammer rather than beakers in the short term.

Cottaging your capital might be a decent idea. Bureaucracy is a powerful civic if you get it early but it doesn't do anything for specialists.

Early Pyramids are of paramount importance... not that you can't play a SE without them, but they will affect the way you play. With them, you can be a scientific superpower and will probably want to settle your Great People for a permanent advantage.
Without, your main advantage lies in aggressive lightbulbing and trading: This allows you to keep up without actually doing much for the sake of science... attractive for warmongers.

 

[vicawoo]

I find it hard to run scientists really early, building libraries doesn't work well with REXing.

 

[zombiestomp]

industious i find to be a better trait for the SE than philosophical. double speed to oracle for CoL, then go after pyramids.

bulbing techs is nice, but settling Gpeople has a greater long term payoff. only bulb for something really good. otherwise, settle in the capitol then hit bureaucracy for a big boost.

the SE lends itself to war. but only keep the best cities and raze the rest. currency is important to this approach. if you want to play nice, CE is probably better long term.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

Maybe you don't hoard enough resources. Successful expansion = more resources to use or trade (for even more resources). If your caps are low and your SE cities are as big as your CE cities would've been, then what's the point to farm instead of cottage?

 

[Polobo]

bulbing techs is nice, but settling Gpeople has a greater long term payoff. only bulb for something really good. otherwise, settle in the capitol then hit bureaucracy for a big boost.

In an SE a cottaged capital is usually going to be producing massive amounts of gold due to high slider rate you can dedicate when running specialists. This gold will significantly help fund you empire so you can run scientists instead of merchants in other cities. High demand for markets/grocers/banks coupled with less food for specialists (and no need for a library+) means settling a scientist in the capital is not a good idea. Bureaucracy DOES NOT affect settled great scientists; the only ones it affects are priests and engineers who generate hammers. Settle him elsewhere, yes, although if you are trying to catch up in technology to a couple of research fiends a well-planned bulb can be worth it both short term and long-term (a lonely great scientist now is worth two making out in the bushes when they get older).

 

[Roxlimn]

Settled Great Scientists also produce 1 hammer. Just saying.

 

[Polobo]

Touche

Now, aside from caste system the only way to run more scientists that early in the game is to build more libraries, which requires more cities. An SE almost NEEDS to expand until you are running 80-90% gold slider in order to have enough scientists to keep up in technology. If you are running 50-60% science slider you are more closely running a hybrid economy at that point, and an ineffective one if you are forgoing cottages in all but your capital.

 

[Roxlimn]

Again, I must report a similar experience at a lower level. Even in Monarch, you sort of have to "max the slider" down almost to 0% research using Scientists just to get in range of trading techs.

The nice thing about running SEs, IMX, is that it trains you to look for gold every which way you can manage. Without Cottages giving you an easy out, and Grocers and Markets being inconveniently up the tree, you really get to value the +5 Gold that early Great Prophet can give you. When you switch back to using CE-leaning hybrids, you often find yourself tapping into the same resources and being able to max the research slider to 100% a lot more often.

 

[MrBrown]

The SE is good with warmongering because of your independence from the science slider. Thus, you can use the culture slider to combat unhappiness from war weariness. In my SE games, it's not uncommon for me to be have it at >50% during wartime. This, obviously, is only a good idea when you don't have commerce cities.

In my opinion, the most important techs for an SE game, after Writing, are Currency and Code of Laws. The extra commerce routes and lower city upkeep from Courthouses help keep your income on the plus side, since you aren't using commerce improvements on tiles. However, the more important thing is Caste System, which allows you to run more scientists than those two from Libraries. Finally, the ability to produce Gold that comes from Currency helps; I use it when I have trouble with upkeep. Better than running Merchants, IMO.

I rarely try to build the Pyramids; I use that time for aggressive expansion. Constitution is naturally a priority, though.

 

[futurehermit]

First you want to pick a good leader for SE. Cre/Phi/Ind/Spi/Agg/Cha are all good traits. Military and specialists.

You want to farm EVERYTHING in your empire. Exceptions are mines and other production tiles. Unless your capital is an amazingly food-heavy city you could cottage it for bureaucracy, but you don't have to.

The great library is an important wonder in a SE. Pyramids are handy (and easy to get if industrious) but not necessary.

In a SE you have military phases and research phases. During research phases you should be in slavery and whipping/building troops empire-wide. Then you should be taking out an opponent. Whenever you run into a military deficit (e.g., when your opponents get longbows) you will want to switch into caste system and go into a research phase and gun for the next level of military tech (bulb and trade or settle and self-research; on emperor probably best to bulb and trade).

Then switch back into military production.

You can see why a lot of SE experts like spiritual as a trait.

Hatty or Ramesses are a good choice when you are first learning. Gandhi is also very good.

 

[Quotey]

I also LOVE Justinian due to the Hippodrome allowing MASSIVE cities. Also, Imperialistic for the edge on the early expansion where you REALLY need to go for it.

Also consider the Aztecs. The sacraficial altar is amazing!