Thank you for your reasoned reply, I appreciate your clearly argued points.
Thanks. Nothing's more fun than bouncing ideas off each other, IMO, especially when we disagree. Who knows when something good might be shaken loose?
I accept that there are times in a game when research is the focus of my economy and I said that the Liberalism race is one such time. But there are other times when it is not like the middle of a war when gold and EPs are worth more than beakers. Hence my economy is about more than research and it is most definitely not properly defined by only considering the beakers it produces or the technologies I gain.
Oddly enough, I do the same at times. But I've always viewed it as "shutting down my economy," to produce gold, culture, and of late espionage. In other words, I'm sacrificing my long-term strategy to achieve a short-term goal. But it's always a temporary measure.
If I need 5000 gold to upgrade my units right before I invade, then I shut down everything (research, espionage, and culture) to produce the gold ASAP so I can return to my economy to normal. If I need 500 extra espionage points to ensure that my pair of spies in that border city with the castle can successfully perform the "incite revolt" mission, then I shut everything down to produce the espionage points... except for just enough gold so I don't go broke.
Gold and espionage are means to an end, not an end in and of itself. In the end, it's the techs you have that helps the empire grow... and wins the game.
Forgive me I am not familiar with the term "form" I suspect this is something like a subsystem. I was trained as a systems engineer many years ago
so I'll stick with my own terminology
I can't see how an economy is just a strategy and not a "thing" or subsystem that performs a task. It has inputs and outputs. My economy has its own "economic strategy" so it is an aspect of the game like diplomacy or the military which also have their own strategies.
Subsystem is probably a better term. As I said before, we seem to be approaching the same thing from two different directions. You seem to be focused on the input and the output.
I seem to be focused on how the subsystem itself... what I use to turn the input into the output.
My economy is based mostly on my cities and takes their tiles and population plus civics as its inputs and produces beakers, gold and EPs for global use and culture and GPPs for local use. Stricty it should also include hammers as well but let's leave that extra complication for now and discuss that later
My economy is based mostly on the resources and land I have, and what strategy I should use to exploit them for maximum effect. Long before I settle my second city, I've already decided what tile improvements I'll be using and where, what buildings will be built, what civics I'll ultimately be running, which technologies will have priority, what specialists I will be running, and where cities will be founded and in which order. The dot-map of a future CE looks a lot different than the dotmap of a future SE.
And I agree that we should keep hammers out of this discussion.
I am indeed considering it as a thing (game subsystem) that outputs beakers, gold, espionage globally plus culture and GPPs locally. I think that is akin to the standard definition of a real economy in the real world. The US economy is quantified in terms of trillions of dollars of GDP but in real terms that is a host of manufactured goods and services along with small amount of research that is produced each year. The economy in Civ4 is a much simplified analog of that.
Like I said, we're approaching it from two different directions. When I think of the US economy, I don't think GDP. I think of terms like "capitalist," "free market," or sometimes "Social Darwinism." The economy isn't about what you produce, but how you produce it (and how many people you step on to do so.)
In my terms I use my economy to produce a mixture of beakers, gold and EPs depending on what I want to do in that game at that time, expressed in terms of my diplomatic, military and other strategies. I use an economic strategy to determine where the various commerce sliders should be and what specialists to run and also whether I should build courthouses, marketplaces or universities in my cities to boost one or other of the economic outputs from my economy in the longer term.
You seem to be defining what I would call only one part of my economy as the whole of your economy. Tell me what do you classify gold as? Is there a gold economy in your definition?
I classify gold as a necessary evil.
When I need it, I get it. When I don't need it, I get enough to pay my bills. Keeping a treasury just doesn't make sense given the fact that we don't earn interest on our treasury... but we certainly have to worry about inflation!
That is an interesting idea, though, about a gold economy... after acquiring currency and alphabet, maximize gold output and buy your techs rather than research them yourself. It would certainly reduce the number of buildings you'd have to build, and has the advantage of flexibility as well. Given that there is no equivalent of Representation to boost the output of merchant specialists, this strategy almost requires cottages.
( Still wouldn't call it a CE though.
)
Disadvantage is you have to have someone else research the tech,
and they have to be willing to trade it to you. Unfortunately, you'll probably hit the WFYABTA wall fairly quickly.
Beakers can only be used for researching a technology and so are the least flexible output of my economy but gold and EPs have a variety of uses. They can be used to acquire technology in certain special ways. With gold I can boost research by deficit spending or just buy a technology from another civ (if they're willing to sell). With EPs I can see what the other civs are researching and adjust my own research strategy and with enough EPs steal a technology. But both gold and EPs have other uses that affect the other important strategies in the game, my military strategy (unit upgrades, city revolts and seeing where troops are), my diplomatic (bribes and seeing what is researched).
All quite true... except I'd say culture is the
least flexible output from commerce and specialists... and the one that gets wasted the most. Beakers may not be as flexible as gold or espionage... but if nobody has a tech you need, you can't buy it nor can you steal it. That leaves direct research or 'bulbing if you have the right Great Person.
Beakers may not be flexible... but IMO they are the most powerful.
As I said before, unless you're planning on a lot of espionage missions, you don't need many EPs. The cost for "view demographics" and "view research" passive missions are low, and usually within the reach of the EPs you get from courthouses... which are practically required buildings these days.
You say "economy" = "technology aquisition strategy" is the standard
That is a strange arguement. Looking at it the other way around it is easy to test your argument. My "technology aquisition strategy" includes gaining technology from goody huts, by self research (part of my economic strategy), by trading (diplomatic strategy), by extortion (military strategy) and by stealing (espionage strategy). I can see trading with other civs has an impact on the self-research strategy and thereby the economic strategy (since you don't need to produce those beakers) but it also has diplomatic and possibly military implications. Do you consider trading to be part of your own economy? I consider it external and outside of my control a bit like goody huts or extortion. Stealing a technology (via an espionage strategy) requires lots of EPs and so like research is part of my own economy that I can control to a considerable extent.
Goody huts are random, so you can't control them. They're not a strategy... just like hoping to get the Truffles random event isn't a strategy. Trusting to luck isn't a strategy. It's what you do when a strategy
fails. 
Acquiring technology militarily is almost as bad IMO. You might get the tech you want. You might also end up with a vassal rather than the tech. You also might find yourself at war with your bigger neighbor because you refused to accept your enemy's capitulation without the tech, and your neighbor wasn't as picky
I go to war to take the land I need. Getting a tech or two in the process is a bonus.
To trade techs, you need a tech that other Civs don't. And that means you need to acquire techs. You can't rely on goody huts, and acquiring them military is almost as bad IMO.
So where does that leave you? What are your options? research, buy, or steal
Researching a tech requires a
lot of beakers... often to the point of neglecting excess gold and espionage. Your options for acquiring beakers are converting commerce from cottages (and other sources of commerce), scientists, and 'bulbing great people. The civic Representation boosts the output of scientists (and increases the beaker yield of other specialists) and the civic Caste System divorces the number of scientists, merchants, and artists a city can run from the buildings it has built. The civics free speech and emancipation boosts the output of cottages.
Buying a tech (without a tech of your own to sweeten the pot) requires a lot of gold... often to the point of neglecting espionage and research. Your options for acquiring gold are converting commerce from cottages, merchants, and Trade Missions from Great Merchants. Unlike scientists, merchants don't have an equivalent of Representation to boost
their output, so cottages yield more gold than merchants... but merchants generate Great Merchants for Trade Missions. But if you want merchants, then Caste System allows you to have as many as you can kept fed.
Stealing a tech requires a
lot of EPs... often to the point of neglecting research and excess gold. Your options for acquiring EPs include converting commerce, spies, and the "infiltrate city" mission of Great Spies. Spies are as bad as engineers: they aren't influenced by Caste System so you need buildings to run them, the buildings you need to run a
lot of them come late in the game, and there's no Civic that boosts their output. Even more so than gold, cottages are the way to acquire EPs.
There are three different ways of acquiring techs through research. There's two different ways of acquiring techs through espionage. There's two different ways of acquiring techs through gold. Cottages are viable options for all three methods of acquiring techs. Specialists, as a method of acquiring techs, are a viable option only through research. Great People have utility as both 'bulbing and their special abilities.
Code:
Table 1 - Methods of Acquiring Techs vs Sources of "commerce"
cottages specialists 'bulbing mission
research good good good N/A
purchase good poor N/A good
steal good poor N/A good
As you can see, your definition of "cottage economy" doesn't tell anyone what your primary method of acquiring techs is, either for personal use or for trade. Are you building all those cottages to research the techs you need? Are you buying them? Are you stealing them? More information is needed to know
what you're doing, as opposed to what your inputs are.
As you can also see, your definition of "specialist economy" really only suggests one method of acquiring techs: research. 'Bulbing using the output of a GP farm is random, so you can't plan for getting a specific type of Great Person, while 'bulbing using Great People generated by many cities running specialists is highly predictable, and thus can be part of a plan.
You don't need multiple cities running specialists to acquire Great Merchants and Great Spies for their missions requires a single city running specialists primarily for the purpose of acquiring a Great Person. The normal output of those specialists is incidental to their output of GPPs.
How you get gold doesn't tell us anything about your strategy unless you're buying your techs. How you get espionage points doesn't tell us anything about your strategy unless you're stealing techs.
But how you aquire techs? That can tell us a lot.
