SE + war synergy question

[Crunchtime]

Something that has been plaguing me for awhile...I have a question about the synergy between an SE and warring. I've been going over some threads on SEs and trying them out for half a dozen games, mainly with Frederick. From what I'm reading, SEs do well with a warmonger attitude. As well I've read in one of the ALCs that capturing cities and pillaging fund an SE.

In my usual games, I'm trying for CS slingshots, with the occasional early pyramids when the stone is around (maybe the slighshots are the problem...). In the games where I succeed, I get my cities, usually 3-4, set up with the two science specialists to provide beakers and supercharge the science. That being said:

1. With specialists in play, I'm reducing my working tiles by two to feed the specialists instead of working hills for production. This hampers my production and ends up with 6-8 turns per unit. If I run slavery, that butchers my scientists and makes it harder to maintain tech. If I run Caste, I have no hurry method. How do you effectively bring out an army quickly to start your attack? Where is the syngery with warring if it makes warring more difficult?

2. With so much effort going into the oracle slingshot, I often fall behind in city creation and growth. Less cities means less production overall, and (possibly) less income due to less money cities. Also with no CE, money starts becoming a problem unless you can get warring going quickly (see #1). Are the slighshots a problem due to hampering overall growth to get better use of specialists?

3. Is there an optimum # of specialists? With mass farming it's possible to run quite a few with Caste, but every extra one you use nixes a possible hammer tile worked. Less hammers means longer to build units or civic builds. Under caste, should you only have science specialists in your super science city? What specialists should you aim for in your non-SSC?

Thanks.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1. Sounds like you're going for too many wonders. Take one, maybe 2 if you have the right resource. For SE, that's usually mids as they're a huge boost nearly doubling science.

2. You have to balance running specialists with production. This is actually a little more intuitive than the CE balance version, because you'll have cities in "research" mode just running specialists, while the others work hammer tiles like mines/workshops.

3. Not all SE's are funded by war. You have a number of options to fuel the minimal gold needed for SE. Put cottages in capitol and run bureaucracy for the gold, for example. Grab GLH/settle coastal tiles to work commerce. Run merchants. Build wealth. ETC. Sometimes you get/capture powerful commerce tiles anyway and that takes care of the needed gold.

4. Early on, run slavery and use libraries to run the scientists (actually this part is the same for both SE and CE). Whip is mainly used for infrastructure in new cities, then they grow and work tiles/run specialists. Later (when your cities are mostly settled or are bigger), switch to caste. Caste + guilds allow you turn turn any flatland tile into a mine basically (grasslands can be workshopped to yield 1 food 3 hammers). So early on while cities are smaller you whip, then later you use caste for hammers (and more specialists as cities grow anyway).

I almost always use scientists exclusively in caste (outside of a merchant wealth city). Production cities (you know, the ones that get forges/barracks and NOT libraries etc) don't run specialists at all. Cities intended for research run as many as possible. You want to maximize your multipliers right? This is an extension of the general advice to specialize cities.

I'll point out that emancipation anger and growing cottages make SE weaker as time goes on. There are a number of ways to combat this, but my favorite is to keep getting more cities. Emancipation might be forced, but you can still run specialists like spies, engineers, library/university scientists, priests, etc, and all of them contribute under rep. The ones that give you gold can let you raise the slider and take advantage of your cities' commerce (which will always include at least trade routes, so not insignificant), meaning that leaving caste isn't going to kill you when you have a decent amount of cities (it does hurt production from workshops but by this point you'll usually have chemistry, though one could consider caste longer while using culture until emancipation gets bad).

That's why I like warring with SE. It has a definite tech advantage early, and I use that to take land . SE is also nice because you can run the culture slider without hurting research as much, meaning that expansion is a bit easier via war.

Also nice about the mids early is that you can use police state to aid with troop spam and WW long before you'd normally have access to that kind of ability. Combined with theaters and the ability to run the culture slider higher with less damage to economy, you have some synergy.

Just remember, the SE holds its advantages early when cottages still can't compete with scientists. I suggest if you're going to use SE that you milk that advantage.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

The best thing about specialists and war is that even when your slider is at 0%, you'll still get the science from specialists.

 

[Nares]

The best thing about specialists and war is that even when your slider is at 0%, you'll still get the science from specialists.

Or you can run gold specialists and get research from commerce.

I think the real synergy lies in feeling less of an impact by adjusting the cultural slider. Excess food is used for whipping under HE, then you can bump the cultural slider to replace the HE happy faces when you move the troops out, and fight war weariness as the unhappy slaves forget your cruel oppression.

 

[Polobo]

In my usual games, I'm trying for CS slingshots, with the occasional early pyramids when the stone is around (maybe the slighshots are the problem...). In the games where I succeed, I get my cities, usually 3-4, set up with the two science specialists to provide beakers and supercharge the science. That being said:

To reinforce the point city specialization is key. In order to have scientists drive you research you pretty much have two choices:

1) Expand until you hit 80-90% gold slider, running 2 scientists wherever possible (except your core military cities and maybe just 1 in a couple of secondary cities while running slavery. Recover afterwards.

2) Run Caste System so you dedicated science cities can run lots of scientists.

Either way 3-4 cities seems to be too few by the time you get Civil Service if you profess to have a war-monger footing. Additionally, if you beeline Civil Service you probably don't have Construction yet so no catapults with which to war.

If you run Bureaucracy after getting Caste System then you want your capital to be a commerce/production city. No specialists since they do not benefit from the multipliers.

This mostly applies for the early-mid game. As you near the Liberalism tech area you would need to decide whether to continue with an SE oriented economy to whether you are going to change to a land-based specialization (i.e., hybrid) where each city specializes based upon available terrain and resources, as well as overall needs. Once many of your cities grow beyond 8-9 slavery becomes less useful but your core cities can more easily absorb any new cities while they get infrastructure and population installed. A minimalist SE (what has been described in this thread) can work quite well.

 

[futurehermit]

cycling flexibility

cycle 1: whip/draft a huge army and go conquer

cycle 2: run max specialists to tech

rinse, repeat until you can war full-time, usually in the renaissance

 

[vicawoo]

If you want this warring synergy, skip pyramids and don't try to civil service slingshot. Grow big (to happy cap), run specialists until you hit the tech you want (say construction), then whip your cities to like size 2 for catapults. Don't worry about unhappiness. Then you'll have a fast, high tech army, and you can attack. While you're conquering, your cities are growing back, then running specialists again when the happiness wears off. Repeat.

 

[slobberinbear]

The real issue for me with SE is the happy cap, particularly at Monarch+ difficulty.

If you don't get the Pyramids and Representation, you have to raise your happy caps in some way. Unless you get lucky with gold, gems, furs, or 'phants, you are talking about founding a religion or discovering Monarchy or even taking Iron Working + Calendar to get the jungle happy resources if you're desperate.

With big enough happy caps and a bonus food resource or two, you can run a couple of specialists AND have the city be useful for other things too.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Forget the CS slingshot, but keep the pyramids.

With SE you are strong in science/weak in production or strong in production/weak in science at any given time in any given city. You are strong in production when whipping and strong in science when running specialists.

The trick is to emphasize research to get you to the military tech you want and then switch to all out production whipping off your scientists.

And also make sure you have enough cash income - if necessary that means some cottage cities too. My biggest problem with an SE warring is not production, but paying for my army and conquests. You may be forced to pillage a lot more and raze more cities with an SE. A CE can drop its science slider to zero and get 100% cash income - which I've done on more than one occasion. An SE can't focus its empire entirely on cash nearly so easy and you will need a plan for cash - either running caste system merchants or pillaging a lot more or having a higher percentage of cottage cities.