SE/SSE experts needed!

[m4gill4]

Ok, so having read the forums extensively, including many wonderful write-ups, I've seen the merits of the specialist economy (SE). The problem is, I just cant pull it off

For one thing, I've never been great at assigning specialists in cities. I've also never been great at managing my wonders and choosing my great people, timing them correctly and whatnot.

I've gone back to noble, and am playing with Pericles not even trying to win, just to get a good SE going. I've gotten a bit lost, so I thought I'd try to ask some specific questions that will help me learn more.

#1
Pericles is philosophical. Does this mean that I should leverage this and try to beeline writing to get early libraries and scientist specialists? Or is there another benefit to using stonehenge/oracle to get a great priest first?

#2
If I get a great scientist first, what is the best way to use him? bulb, academy, or settle? What if I get a great priest first?

#3
What types of cities are best to be the "great person farm" Lots of food, and lots of hills? Or water cities? What national wonders are best to accompany the national epic city?

#4
Does specialist economy necessitate building NO cottages ANYWHERE and farming up and using scientists everywhere possible?

#5
Other than the extra great people, what are the ways SE is superior to CE? What are the ways it is inferior?

#6
I thought I heard that SE becomes less effective towards the late game. Is this true?

#7
what is a good early tech path for a specialist economy? What techs should be emphasized?

#8
Is it helpful to found a religion, or should I skip that in favor of more useful techs?

If anybody has any idea about this, I could use the help, thanks

 

[Andvare]

I am very far from an SE expert, but anyway.

The general wisdom seems to be that the best GP farm is somewhere with 3+ big food tiles, like fish, pigs, wheat or corn (or any combo).

The techs to research would be techs that enables you to use specialist, such as metal casing and writing.

The national wonders that helps an SE would be the globe theatre (no unhappy, SE cities are usually big) and national park (same reason, plus extra specialist).

An SE-research function mainly by bulbing techs, and in turn trading those techs away for others, thus alphabet is a prime target for an SE (and writing on the way for those all important libraries). The games I have seen played with SE, it's usually been a Oracle slingshot (with the 'mids as target, representation is very important) followed by an alphabet beeline.
Of course caste system is also nice. More scientist.

As the time goes by, GP's becomes more expensive, as does techs and wonders, which means fewer GP's and less output for each (= bad), thus it's power is reduced. Not all techs and wonders can be completed by one soingle GP.

An important ability is the ability not only to get the most GP's, but also getting the right ones. Having a GP farm, with a chance, be it a low one, of getting an artist instead of, say, an engineer, can really ruin your day.

Founding a religion is, IMHO, not paramount, but it can help to spread it to your cities (more happy). If going for a great priest economy (a subversion of SE), then it is very important.


Just my 0.02$

 

[Darth Meanie]

I can not claim experthood, but I will give some help:

1) Beelining to writing has merit, but SE depends on strong enough food supply to support libraries. Libraries w/ no scientists = bad. Great Prophet are great for SSE. It depends alot on the nation and the start; if you think you can pull any wonders.

2) Scientists should be settled or make acadamies depending on the output of the city in question. They can be useful for bulbing, but it is a waste of beakers earlier on in most scenarios. You can stockpile them for the liberalism race, which can be useful. With Prophets, generally settle unless a religion is VERY powerful and you can build its shrine.

3) For Specialist Specialized cities it is ALL about maximum food output. No idea about food. I prefer to pair the NE w/ the National Park if there are many forests, but the Globe Theater is a popular choice. If it will specifically specialize in say Scientists or Merchant, Wall Street and Oxford are useful.

4) OF COURSE NOT!!! Cottage Cities must still be used. The capital is usually cottaged up, and you cannot always put farms where you can put cottages.

5) SE is more flexible with the slider, making you pay less to put more of your slider into gold, culture or espionage. Since many buildings give happiness based on culture slider, you can lose little science for lots of happiness. Great for warmongering! . You can also have a nice gold reserve built up.

6) Printing Press and Emancipation make CE very attractive, and since you will often use Caste System, Emancipation can tear you apart. Also bulbing, a common strategy, loses steam when you suddenly can't get an entire tech in a single bulb. Towns simply become very powerful at the end stretch.

7)

8) Scenario dependant. Priests are great for SSE, and Angkor Wat + Representation makes priests the most powerful specialists in the game.

 

[DaveMcW]

Did you remember to build the Pyramids and switch to Representation?

 

[shyuhe]

#1 Creative gives double speed libraries. Yes you should try to get libraries ASAP. Basically the math is that if you have 4 grassland farms, you'll get enough extra food for 2 specialists (size 4 city at this point). If you have room under the happy cap, then fire a specialist to grow the city more but you'll want to run as many specialists as you can as you grow to your caps.

#2
Build an academy in your capital with the first GS. Unless another city has a higher science output, in which case you should build an academy there (assuming it has long-term science potential). If it's a GP, just settle him in your future commerce (wall street) city or a production city.

#3
lots of food. Water is actually not useful for a GP farm (unless it has a food special) since it's only food neutral with a lighthouse. You want food positive tiles (floodplain farms being the best early game). Don't bother linking the NE with wonders unless you're building a ton of wonders. Just stick it in your GP farm (less GA pollution).

#4
The pure SE doesn't use any cottages. The degree to which you want to push the SE is your choice.

#5
SE allows for great spurts of production (if you farm and mine everything). You can swap between periods of production and research based on civics and tiles worked. It's part of the reason why spiritual is a very nice trait for the pure SE.

SE requires a lot more MM than a CE. It also doesn't benefit as much at lower levels where you can't tech trade with the AI as much. Early pyramids makes the SE very powerful but it can still tech strongly without early representation too.

#6
I'm not going to touch this one because people get worked up over it. If you choose to continue running the SE long-run, go for biology ASAP. It is a huge plus to your economy.

#7
writing, alphabet (for trading), literature (GL), nationhood (military if you choose to war), education (Oxford), biology (key). I haven't tried running an SE with corporations but I imagine the food based corps will be nice too.

#8
If you don't start with mysticism, don't worry about religion. See if you can found Confucianism but don't sweat it if you don't get it. You'll probably get Taoism from a GS lightbulb (you need CoL + meditation to unlock that bulb).

Hope that helps. Xanadux ran an SE game recently - try searching for it. There are also some older posts that featured SE games as well.

 

[xaka]

#1: Well you sure should leverage the philosophical trait as soon as possible. Whether you want to do that through a library or through wonders really depends. Early Scientist is nice to use on long term benefits (ie. not bulbing) but going the stonehenge-oracle route then beelining writing (or at least making sure you get it before oracle is done) can give you early CoL on a plate, with a religion just begging for a shrine and, oh how nice, a GP on the way. That may be harder to do as difficulty level rises though. stonhenge is not really necessary by the way, pericles is creative after all, and those hammers might be better used on settlers or getting those nice pyramids up and running earlier.
That being said, if your capital is gonna be your GP farm, then you just polluted it forever with a GP generating wonder...

#2 In both case bulbing wouldn't be a great idea, unless it really gives you a cool tech you will be able to sell expensively to the AI. The ideal use of a GP is the shrine, especially in your future wallstreet city. Spread the appropriate religion as far as you can for maximum cash. If not, then settling is probably the best way to go. For a GS, i'd say go with the academy. Your already running scientist specialists so the +50% should be better than +6/9 science normally.

#3 Food is essential here. Flood Plains are awesome early on, but they give you a health penality. The most important thing is having food ressources (corn, pigs,...). You do want to have decent production though cause you'll have to build a lot of happy/healthy buildings and some specialist buildings too. Water is no good : only to food (unless ressource) no production, can't be farmed. And the commerce is less important in a SE.

#4 depends on what level you want to do it, hybrid economy can be pretty powerful too.

#5 SE allows you to be far less dependent on the slider, letting you leverage it for happiness or espionage if you need to. Plus I've never been really able to make a strong cottage economy so...

#6 dunno, didn't feel that way. bulbing certainly does and Great People get harder to get and the risk of "tainted" great people increases with you having more wonders, etc, and emancipation's a b**** but I never noticed a sudden drop in regard with the AI in the end game.

#7 I don't know, early writing for sure, may try an oracle gambit (I like to if I can), other than that, the usual. And it's really land dependant.

#8 Also depends on the situation : if your neighbours a religion-free, sure go for it ! If your playing with Saladin, Isabella or Monty, don't bother. Plus you might just pick up Confusianism if you go for CoL early or Taoism if you really run to liberalism. I have to say, though, that an early-founded widely-spread religion with its shrine might just give you that gold you've been needing so badly.

I'm not that great a player, but I started running specs on noble not that long ago so I hope you can find that usefull.

 

[CivCorpse]

Did you remember to build the Pyramids and switch to Representation?

Shhhh, noone tell dave the Pyramid is not a big pointy cottage. LOL, good thing he only comments at the beginning of a thread and doesn't check back. So I haven't let the cat out of the bag

 

[m4gill4]

wow these have been great replies thanks everyone!

I have great news. Having applied your advice on my puny noble test map, I achieved amazing success!

Map details:

Me: Pericles (phi, cre)
map: fractal
size: tiny
enemies: 3 (toku, qin, shaka)
difficulty: noble (I know, but it was a test!)

I started out with stone and some floodplains. I had my own island separated by coast tiles from shaka and qin, so I had early contact ( and shaka tried to invade me 3 times *of course* but got pwnt).

I built a worker first, and techwise I basically went worker techs --> writing and then spammed scientist specialists as much as I could. I also crammed the pyramid in there somewhere and switched to representation for the whole game so far.

The posts above got me really thinking for the first time about planning for my Great Person production. I therefore designated my high-in-food capital to be my "GREAT SCIENTIST/UBER SCIENCE CITY" city, and my also-high-food second city to be my "WORLD WONDER DUMPING GROUND" for handy wonders that might pollute my "pure" first city, but still kick me an extra "random" great person every now and then. This worked out VERY WELL for me.

Through my scientist spam, I vastly out teched all the AI's. This is no major feat on noble, but I must say it was quite easy and made expanding less of a headache.

I eventually spawned something like 13 great scientists, a priest, and a few others from techs. The first, I had create an academy in my capital/UBER SCIENCE CITY, and the rest I settled there. I eventually combined the national epic and oxford university there in that city and where I am now in 1600 that city alone produces 542 beakers!!! I am currently in the process of exacting revenge on shaka, infantry and cannons vs longbows and impis.

Thanks everyone for the advice! My game has improved drastically from this thread.

 

[futurehermit]

At low levels pyramids should be no problem. You want to be in representation as that will double your economy.

Then you want to prioritize COL and Philosophy for Caste System and Pacificism. This combination will allow you to generate many great people.

At low levels (and even higher levels) the parthenon should also be no problem, but build it in a production city and not your main gpfarm because it will give artist pollution which you don't want.

Then you want the GL which should be no problem on lower levels. You want to put both the GL and the NE in your main gpfarm (possibly your capital although any high food city will do).

Then using caste system and pacificism you want to run as many scientists as possible, preferably 6+

You will need to increase the happiness cap of your cities to run the pile of scientists you will want to be running. Two things help here: 1) You are creative for cheap theatres and coliseums; 2) You are running a SE so the science slider is not a big deal. Therefore, once you hit Drama and Construction, get these cheap buildings up in all your cities and run the culture slider at 20-40%. This will give you the needed to have your big cities running many scientists.

Now, at lower levels I would recommend settling your GSs in your future Oxford city because the computer won't tech fast enough to give you decent trades for lightbulbed techs (However still consider lightbulbing Philosophy for early pacificism). Your first GS should go to an academy in this city.

In terms of end game you have two choices imo. First, you can keep all your millions of farms and once you have a tech edge switch into war time civics (Police State, Nationhood, Slavery, Theocracy) and use your surplus food to whip/draft your way to a domination/conquest victory. Or you can transition to cottages (make sure you have lots of workers and do one city at a time) when the commerce civics (Free Speech, Emancipation) come online. This would make it more of a TE (transition economy).

If you want to play out a SE to a spaceship victory it is certainly possible especially at lower levels, but you will need to understand that you need to run TONS of scientists in as many cities as possible, that you will need quite a large empire, and that you will need to combat the unhappiness from not being in emancipation (this requires control of many resources and a high dose of the culture slider).

One thing that helps if you have BtS is Sid's Sushi. The extra food this will deliver will really help you run a pile of specialists. Biology is also a must asap for the surplus food to help your economy out.

Since Pericles is philosophical and gets cheap universities try and get 6 of them built asap once you hit education and get Oxford up in your Oxford city. This will help a lot with all those settled GSs, the GL, and all the scientists you will be running.

Hope this helps.

 

[xanadux]

A few more tips:

Consider making your capital a pure production city with Bureaucracy. Usually running a lot of specialists means low production, so having your capital focus on hammers can make great use of Bureaucracy.

Often the first GS should be settled, and the second builds an academy. Suppose your science city is running 2 specialists under representation for 12 beakers, and you are getting 2 more beakers from commerce for a total of 14. An academy will give you 7 more beakers, settling gives 9 beakers plus a hammer.

Great Engineers should usually also be settled in the Super Science City for the hammers and science. But if there is no production source in the Science City, it is sometimes good to use a GE on Oxford. Not usually, but sometimes.

Emancipation is not that bad for a SE. The Oxford city will still be able to run 5 scientists, and you will be able to run several spy specialists and an engineer. Other cities can run 2 scientists plus spies and merchants. I have found that a SE can still be quite robust under Emancipation by supplementing the science output with good espionage spending. With all the EP buildings, a city produces 40 EP with the slider at 0 and no spy specialists. Keep an eye on what the AI are researching, and choose a target and steal some techs while you research others.

Pacifism is nice, but not essential. Often a large army is necessary, and OR or Theocracy are better choices.

A religious economy is a nice complement to a SE. Building the AP, Spiral Minaret, and U of Sankore can be very powerful, especially for a large empire. The only really key techs for a Settled Specialist Economy (after Writing) are CoL, Literature (Great Library), and often Civil Service (production capital with Bureaucracy). It is often worth it to get Theology for the AP (often from trade, and I will sometimes burn a Great Prophet or the Oracle on this too), and research paper and Divine Right early for the religious building boost. You can get +4H, +4beakers, +4gold in every city this way.

A transition to cottages is usually not worthwhile with a settled specialist economy. Supplementing with Espionage buildings everywhere and just maximizing production in a lot of cities for military is typically stronger in my opinion.

And of course, build the Pyramids. In BTS, defnitely on Prince and below, and usually on Monarch, you can delay the Pyramids to after you get mathematics for 50% more hammers from chopping. As mentioned before, the Parthenon should be built if possible, and of course the Great Library in the science city.

 

[xaka]

A few more tips:
Often the first GS should be settled, and the second builds an academy. Suppose your science city is running 2 specialists under representation for 12 beakers, and you are getting 2 more beakers from commerce for a total of 14. An academy will give you 7 more beakers, settling gives 9 beakers plus a hammer.

That actually depends on when you think you're gonna be able to run a third specialist. If its soon, go for the academy, if not, then settle.

 

[xanadux]

That actually depends on when you think you're gonna be able to run a third specialist. If its soon, go for the academy, if not, then settle.

Yes. The point is not to do either one automatically. Take a little time and see which is better.

I find that in the majority of the cases, I use the second for the academy. But academy first is sometimes best.

 

[obsolete]

Academy first is almost always best, unless you really need that extra hammer or beakers really really fast.

The main reason is that you may never get that scientist again for many generations. What if you keep getting other GPs that are not scientists? All the beakers from those GPs, or even the city's commerce itself will be without that academy for a long time. That is a huge waste.

You need it anyway, so get it as soon as you can.

Now if you are ABSOLUTELY certain, you won't have this problem to worry about, then that may be another story.


BTW, players suggesting globe theatre to go with an SE city is not optimal to say the least. It doesn't really benefit anything for an SE city, and at the higher levels it makes very little sense at all because your real problems are food/health which is far more important than happiness.

Anyone who uses GT inplace of the oxford or NE for an SE city still needs to learn the basics.

There are only rare exceptions, such as an SE city that you decide to turn into a drafting city because of many floodplains and the need to go to war.

 

[Meserach]

With regard to Emancipation and the SE:

Keep in mind that the unhappiness for not being in Emancipation is based on the number of other civs running it. This is where the "Influence Civics" Espionage option comes in handy. Provided you let your spies rest for five turns (and use lots of them so you can swallow losses due to detection), this isn't all that expensive in terms of EPs, and can be used to buy you extra time for a while.

 

[DrJambo]

Also, by the time Emancipation comes along, you should have the important science buildings in your main cities (libraries, universities, observatories). Being able to run scientist specialists in the absence of the caste system therefore shouldn't be an issue. Once you get to Consititution, Representation can allow you to run other specialists and still maintain science output.

 

[futurehermit]

However, in order to really churn out the beakers later in the game you really want to be running MANY scientists. Otherwise, you will notice a severe drop off in terms of beaker output between a SE and a CE. I am saying this after playing both economies a lot and really noticing this dip. It has led me to my long-standing conclusion that CE is best for space and SE is best for domination; and also that optimally you will want to run a SE for the 1st 3 eras and transition to a CE for the last 3 eras. If you are spiritual and plan things right you can switch into serfdom during the transition period and with many workers transition 1 city at a time in preparation for the switch to emancipation. You can keep Representation and CS or nationhood until you start seeing towns popping up then you can make the move to US and FS. If you're not spiritual you can target the Hagia Sophia instead. Of course serfdom means a loss of caste system and thus for the transition period you would have to run mixed specialists. However, the tech cost in the medieval eras is still ok to do this, but if you are trying to tech industrial and modern techs with specialists you really have to be prepared to run many scientists or it takes quite long.

 

[DrJambo]

Also, I believe that for a true SE you should be settling your great scientists in your main science city. People rave about the power of bulbing, but settling is ultimately more useful and powerful for maintaining a long term SE.

 

[futurehermit]

It depends what you are trying to do. If you are going to go for a Space Race victory then settling makes the most sense. However, if you want to leverage a window of opportunity in terms of getting advanced military tech first to wipe out a rival then bulbing can widen that window of opportunity considerably, especially when coupled with the free tech from liberalism followed by a golden age from the taj mahal.

 

[xanadux]

Obsolete is right that if you aren't sure your second GP will be a scientist, you better go with the academy. But if you are sure it will be a scientist, often settling is better.

Obsolete is also right about NE/Oxford being best for the SSC. The SSC should be the city running the most scientists, so NE will clearly have the most benefit in that city. I actually rarely build the Globe in any game because I take care of happiness issues one way or another for all my big cities. I suppose this would be different if I used drafting extensively.

As for settling vs. bulbing, this is mostly level dependent. I think bulbing is rarely the best option at Monarch, and almost never good below Monarch. It starts to gain more power at Emperor level, but even then, should be used sparingly as bulbing always has a long term cost until late in the game. At Immortal and Deity level, though, bulbing becomes extremely powerful. It all has to do with the relative tech rates between the human and AI, and what is necessary to keep up, and how much you can get in trade.

 

[futurehermit]

If you can bulb your way toward rifling while your opponents still have longbows you are in good shape at prince-monarch. Usually on prince- I think you are better off settling regardless, but I generally play on monarch (I enjoy a more relaxed game) and bulbing can be highly effective still if done properly.