SE to CE convertion

[Caldazar]

Hiya!

I've always been very fond of CE, but lately I've been leaning more towards SE. Mostly because I feel that my cities are more ready to switch to war if somebody decides to invade me. I like the possiblitiy to switch from specialists to production if need be. Slavery is also handy!

As things are now in my game, I have built GL, Parthenon and a couple of other wonders because I could. I decided against building the mids even though that would have given me a nice boost, because I didn't have any stone at that time. My question is: is it effective at least when it comes to my science city where I'll soon build Oxford, to cottage the land instead? How about other cities? Should I wait until emancipation before I do this??
Is it viable option?

I would appreciate any suggestions

Thanks!

 

[Caldazar]

Furthermore, I play a Philosophical leader.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

I used to always put Oxford in my most heavily cottaged city. However, I don't do this as often now, since my games tend to end early enough that using a heavy scientist specialist city as my main science center tends to give earlier rewards this way. I'd imagine ultimately that a city with 16+ mature towns will outdue specialists in terms of beakers, but it takes a long time to get those 16+ mature towns.

Being philosophical makes this an even more attractive option, as you will be popping many GS. I'm no SE expert, but I believe switching to cottages after PP/Emancipation is definitely a decent option. There are ways to keep they SE running strong, but at this point, cottages are given every advantage to shine.

 

[futurehermit]

If your capital is suited for bureaucracy, there is nothing wrong with cottaging it up and putting oxford there in the long run. However, if you are settling your great people, then oxford goes nicely in any city (that has all the settled great people), assuming you adopt representation at some point.

 

[Roxlimn]

If you've got a city with cottages, building the Oxford there could pay off, especially if it's a Bureau capital working on a generally CE plan (meaning most of the Bureau commerce is going into tech, not maintenance).

Changing a city's focus midstream from food/specialist to cottage/commerce is generally not advisable before the advent of Emancipation to facilitate the quick changeover, and even then you gotta figure if it's worth the trouble.

Generally, if you're leaning SE, your cottaged cities are providing maintenance, not tech, so in the short term, it's better to build your Oxford where you're farming GS's under Caste, preferably in a city that's amenable to cottaging sometime down the road.

 

[Caldazar]

Good and valid points! Cheers!

Unfortunately, the science city is not my capital, nor am I running Bureaucracy. (I was hoping to run vassalage and pacifism, but Monty declared war so I needed extra military). In it I have 4 settled scientist + academy. In my future wall street city I have 4 settled priests as well, so at some point, preferably sooner rather than later, running representation would be a good idea.

I like the concept of SE, but eventually it will kind of "ebb out" since it won't give me specialist as frequently as before. Although it's still churning out impressive numbers so a switch now wouldn't give me anything extra, but I like to plan ahead.

I recon I ought to aim for representation and emancipation a.s.a.p. independant of which future strategy I'll be going for. They will help me no matter what.

Thanks everyone!


PS. What about vassalage and pacifism? I don't want to look to weak to my neighbours, but still want to take advantage of those extra GPs.

 

[Roxlimn]

Artichoker has a series of threads and games on that Civics combo. Very effective if you're aiming for a low-number high quality military in the midgame.

Vassalage is good for two things - unit maintenance and XP. If you're not using both those qualities, you're probably better off with Bureau.

 

[DarkFyre99]

If I'm running a specialist-heavy economy, and am planning on switching over to cottages late-game, I like to take advantage of city overlap so that another city can mature cottages for the future mega-cottaged cities.

For example: Let's say I have two cities that I intend to be my main science producers. A third city that shares a lot of tiles with the other two can grow cottages into towns while the other two are running a lot of specialists.

 

[Artichoker]

Good and valid points! Cheers!

Unfortunately, the science city is not my capital, nor am I running Bureaucracy. (I was hoping to run vassalage and pacifism, but Monty declared war so I needed extra military). In it I have 4 settled scientist + academy. In my future wall street city I have 4 settled priests as well, so at some point, preferably sooner rather than later, running representation would be a good idea.

I like the concept of SE, but eventually it will kind of "ebb out" since it won't give me specialist as frequently as before. Although it's still churning out impressive numbers so a switch now wouldn't give me anything extra, but I like to plan ahead.

I recon I ought to aim for representation and emancipation a.s.a.p. independant of which future strategy I'll be going for. They will help me no matter what.

Thanks everyone!


PS. What about vassalage and pacifism? I don't want to look to weak to my neighbours, but still want to take advantage of those extra GPs.

Hello, from my experience, the best window of opportunity for using Vassalage+Pacifism is when you've just defeated the armies of your most powerful neighbor. It also helps to take some of his cities as well, because this directly increases the threshold of units for the Pacifism 'military unit' cost.

To do this properly, your timing needs to be good. Ideally, under Vassalage+Paganism you should rush to build a powerful army, but just large enough to defeat the enemy armies. Unit attrition, especially from Catapults, will help keep your army size small, while your surviving units gain more experience and keep your army strong. Once the size of your army becomes small relative to the size of your empire, it will then become affordable to make a switch to Pacifism, with an extra civics switch available for something like Representation.


If the situation is inconvenient to run Vassalage+Pacifism, then the two main alternatives are Vassalage+Organized Religion and Bureaucracy+Organized Religion. When doing the switch to Bureaucracy, use the time under Vassalage to build a Palace in the best possible capital location for Bureaucracy.

 

[oyzar]

Oxford is only good in a cottage city if you are running a high slider.. if you are not putting wall street in your bureaucracy city is a better idea. Converting to a CE is more effective with emancipation, with some beelining this can be gotten rather early though.... After the 20th GP getting more GP's is quite expensive...

 

[Caldazar]

If the situation is inconvenient to run Vassalage+Pacifism, then the two main alternatives are Vassalage+Organized Religion and Bureaucracy+Organized Religion. When doing the switch to Bureaucracy, use the time under Vassalage to build a Palace in the best possible capital location for Bureaucracy.

In my game, I had about 13 cities while running vassalage and I paid 10 gold in unit upkeep. Switching to pacifism would cost an extra 10 gold for my units, but also save me some because it's such a cheap civic. Would you be running vassalage+pacifism if you considered Monty a mild threat? In this game I was more concerned about diplomacy so switching to my own religion wasn't an option. Instead I was running free religion, which isn't half bad either.

Cheers!

 

[Caldazar]

Oxford is only good in a cottage city if you are running a high slider.. if you are not putting wall street in your bureaucracy city is a better idea. Converting to a CE is more effective with emancipation, with some beelining this can be gotten rather early though.... After the 20th GP getting more GP's is quite expensive...

That is true of course... and it's one of the reasons why I like SE. I don't mind micromanaging and I absolutely love the flexibility.

 

[Artichoker]

In my game, I had about 13 cities while running vassalage and I paid 10 gold in unit upkeep. Switching to pacifism would cost an extra 10 gold for my units, but also save me some because it's such a cheap civic. Would you be running vassalage+pacifism if you considered Monty a mild threat? In this game I was more concerned about diplomacy so switching to my own religion wasn't an option. Instead I was running free religion, which isn't half bad either.

Cheers!

I take it you've unlocked Free Religion by having S. Paya? Otherwise it would be through Liberalism, in which case you could run Free Speech for accelerated research. Free Religion is a great civic to use in combination with Vassalage, nevertheless.

Now, regarding the potential danger from Monty, you need to look at it from two angles simultaneously:

1) Diplomatic - If possible, use the same religion as Monty, otherwise Free Religion is the next best thing.

2) Military - Focus on building the right units to counter Monty's armies. As long as he is a threat, you'll probably want to stay in Vassalage until you've built up an army that can confidently defeat him.


If you have the means to use Monty's religion, then you can still use Pacifism without gaining the diplomatic penalties for having a different religion. Since you have 13 cities, which I consider a lot, unit upkeep costs and military unit upkeep costs (from Pacifism) are greatly dampened by your large empire size.

 

[feralminded]

Honestly SE really starts to wane when you get into Constitution (or rather cottages really start to thrive) and you should just go full throttle CE from here as it will have the advantage. I mean the comparison is a grasslands town is 1 Hammer, 7 commerce (+1 for river or +1 for Fin) vs a Bio farm supporting a scientist who is 6 beakers or a merchant who is 3 beakers, 3 gold and the GPP likely don't much matter this late. Now the specialists do benefit from slider independence so even late game an SE SSC can possibly produce more beakers than a CE SSC since your slider may not be at 100% Science ... but still as long as your slider isn't at 50/50 you're probably going to perform better with the CE and certainly if you have some rivers and/or are FIN.

One of what I consider the strengths of playing a 'Mids SE is that you can avoid the entire democracy line and wage continual war starting with Cuirassers and ending with ... well ... victory. You can basically start at Cuirassers and tech right up through infantry very quickly and be WAY ahead of the AI while crushing them mercilessly as you upgrade through rifles, calvary, cannons, and infantry and they reel trying to figure out how you went from Liberalism to crushing them while they're busy teching up the Feudalism/Engineering line.

The other strength is as you pointed out the ability to really swing your production prowess around. That said those US towns do add up to a decent amount of hammers themselves so its not like CE is completely without production. Both economies will have production dedicated centers anyhow which should do the bulk of the work. The only advantage the SE has is in total war scenarios where you just drop everything and crank out units nationwide.