SE + Warmongering questions.

[Razzlesnaff]

I've searched the forums for answers to these questions. If you know of a post that answers these questions feel free to link it. If any of these questions sound stupid, forgive me as I am not the best at this game. I only win about 60% of my Noble Games when I focus on war.





I've been running Representation civic and absolutely love it. When I first saw it I didn't quite understand it's usefulness. It is easily my favorite civic to run, I only wish I could run police state at the same time. Anyway on to my questions.


Question 1: Is an SE economy good for war? I've been trying to get a Dom/Conquest victory as Napoleon and I'm wondering if it would be best to just lay down cottages as him. (Even though Napoleon's favorite civic is Representation )

Question 2:Any tips for warring specifically as Napoleon? His UU doesn't seem especially useful. Perhaps I'm just not utilizing his uu very well. I do love the Salon UB though. A free specialist is a happy specialist. His Organized/Charismatic in case anyone doesn't know off hand.

Question 3: Is SE economy okay even though I'm not philosophical?

Question 4: Is there anyway to turn the World Builder option off? I struggle really hard trying not to give in to that cheat device.

 

[javidbing]

1) I think SE is better for war than CE because the you can run a lower science rate but still have a good amount of beakers/turn.

2) Using musketeers special of having one extra movement mean you can stack them with knights to have a better all round and fast moving stacks to romp through your enemies lands.

I usually use them with a stack of knights and then a seperate stack with mace/trebs.

3) SE economy works good even without Philosophical if you run Caste System and run as many scientist (or merchant/artists depending what you're looking for). To boost your GP pop build the Parthenon to get the 50% boost to GP rate.

4) Just be strong! I never use world builder

 

[Cashew]

In general I say that early game warring is more important than mid-late game warring. And in the early game you often end up sacrificing a lot in the way of your economy to build units anyways; so, at least while your on Noble I'd say you should focus on building enough units to kill our nearest neighbor immediately and taking his land rather than worrying about what kind of econ you run.

 

[Razzlesnaff]

In general I say that early game warring is more important than mid-late game warring. And in the early game you often end up sacrificing a lot in the way of your economy to build units anyways; so, at least while your on Noble I'd say you should focus on building enough units to kill our nearest neighbor immediately and taking his land rather than worrying about what kind of econ you run.

Well that's typically true at least for me. I am actually a pretty damn good warmonger before feudalism. I'm not a very good warmonger again until I get things like artillery and the such.

 

[DaveMcW]

4. Check "Lock modified assets" on custom game setup.

 

[Crusher1]

1. SE is best for war. Cottages take time to reach full steam, go through the slider, and offer less production - obviously working mines or farms (whip) in the early game gets you better production.
2. His UU might seem weak but it's pretty handy. That extra movement gives you a lot of versatility and lets your strike really fast, cutting down the AI's reaction time. Besides that let the Charasmatic trait shine.
3. Yes, but imo it becomes Pyramid dependent since you won't have the power of so many GS bulbs.
4. What dave said.

 

[Kerran]

Well that's typically true at least for me. I am actually a pretty damn good warmonger before feudalism. I'm not a very good warmonger again until I get things like artillery and the such.

Try taking a short detour and pick up engineering on the way to lib; trebs are very nice siege weapons against LB/muskets and when the AI gets rifles you should already have cannons. If you're playing Spain, Engineering unlocks your UB too - can't go wrong with CRIII siege fresh from the barracks =) (3 XP from barracks, 5 from UB, 2 from vassalage/theo unless you have GGs in all your military cities).

 

[Agramon]

SE 's got many advantages for warmongers. Fast to set up (lil cottages, but farms). Less buildings because you specialize. Markets in Merchant/Cottage Cities), Libs in Scientist Cities, Rax and forges in production cities. Slider to 0 gets handy gold for expensive upgrades, slider to x gives nice happyness. So don't forget theatres and cols to combat war weariness or AP unhappiness, you warmongering villain ;-)

Concerning Musketeers they are draftable, thus built your Globe theatre city accordingly ;-)

 

[PhroX]

Less buildings because you specialize. Markets in Merchant/Cottage Cities), Libs in Scientist Cities, Rax and forges in production cities.

Not quite sure why this is an advantage of an SE. You should do exactly the same with a CE...

 

[Kerran]

Not quite sure why this is an advantage of an SE. You should do exactly the same with a CE...

In theory, yes ... however, in practice you often find yourself dragging the slider up and down for various reasons; be it REXing, warpath or a tech rush after selling off some old techs for cash. The point is that over time the same city will be producing either or , so it will benefit from having both type of modifier buildings. Whereas with an SE you should (again, in theory) be getting from cottage cities and from farm cities.

 

[futurehermit]

I've searched the forums for answers to these questions. If you know of a post that answers these questions feel free to link it. If any of these questions sound stupid, forgive me as I am not the best at this game. I only win about 60% of my Noble Games when I focus on war.





I've been running Representation civic and absolutely love it. When I first saw it I didn't quite understand it's usefulness. It is easily my favorite civic to run, I only wish I could run police state at the same time. Anyway on to my questions.


Question 1: Is an SE economy good for war? I've been trying to get a Dom/Conquest victory as Napoleon and I'm wondering if it would be best to just lay down cottages as him. (Even though Napoleon's favorite civic is Representation )

Question 2:Any tips for warring specifically as Napoleon? His UU doesn't seem especially useful. Perhaps I'm just not utilizing his uu very well. I do love the Salon UB though. A free specialist is a happy specialist. His Organized/Charismatic in case anyone doesn't know off hand.

Question 3: Is SE economy okay even though I'm not philosophical?

Question 4: Is there anyway to turn the World Builder option off? I struggle really hard trying not to give in to that cheat device.

Check the threads in my sig. Also search the forums for threads on SE. There certainly is no shortage of them.

1) My highest-scoring game right now in my hall of fame is a conquest victory (on a hemispheres map with an overseas continent) with Napoleon. SE all the way. He is a strong warmongering SE leader imo.

2) His UU goes well with mounted units to blitz quickly through enemy territory. The UU provides stack and city defense. It is also a very good pillager although I don't usually pillage much.

3) Yes, of course. Cre/Phil/Ind/Spir are the best SE traits imo. But as long as you are not financial (which really begs for CE) then if the map calls for it a SE is still strong.

4) Will power ftw.

 

[popejubal]

The biggest reason why I see SE as good for warmongers isn't the you get from specialists. It's the you get from farms.

Specialist Economies run lots of Farms. Cottage Economies run lots of Cottages. That's pretty obvious. Whipping in cities that are size 6 or lower is insanely efficient and when your city is size 6 or lower, you're probably also working only really excellent tiles and ignoring tiles that are marginal.

If you units in cities that have Barracks under a +2 XP civic, you'll be getting lots of decently promoted units. A well cottaged civilization is going to tech much more quickly than you if you keep whipping away all of your specialists, but you're getting units instead. Hopefully you started mostly even with your neighbors in military techs (because you were running scientists, etc before your big military push), so your units will still be effective when you decide to go to war.

When you gear up for war, your science per turn is going to absolutely fall into the toilet. You'll get 2 per turn for your entire empire and you'll like it. On the other hand, you'll be pumping out your best military units at 1 unit every 2-3 turns, so as soon as you have a big enough military to almost take your neighbor, you can start your invasion. You'll still be cranking out units fast enough to finish the job if you attack smart and have enough siege units.

Your economy will certainly crash, but once you recover from the angry citizens and absorb the new empire, you'll be able to regrow your economy and you now have about 2x the land you had before. You might want to keep any developed cottages in the AI's former territory to help keep you afloat, but the important thing here is that you have just taken out a neighboring AI with little real risk to your own empire by interrupting your economy temporarily. Once you get back up and running, you're running at twice the speed. The thing that makes this work is the fact that your cities can regrow so quickly. If you keep running specialists, you won't have the massive food surplus that you need. During peace times, you have a specialist economy. During war times, you have a massive amount of food that you can convert into hammers with the . Your science stops completely during these times, but you get the when you need them and you get the during the times when you don't need the .

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The more you want , the less you build cottages. Cottages aren't illegal, however, and they're optimal for gold at low slider %. You don't need many of them if you're just going for mass war though. If you have rep the rest of your cities are probably going to run library scientists. This is good for about 15 per city doing it, but REMEMBER:

If you're running scientists, you're cutting into a whip cycle or taking citizens off mines. There isn't a magic economy. You're not going to see a drastic improvement by going with "SE" (a convoluted term) unless you are otherwise overbuilding cottage improvements in war games.

With that being said, spec cities convert into more rapidly, but with planning ahead on which cities will produce units the difference in hammer potential isn't anywhere NEAR what "SE" (again, ridiculous terminology that means different things even within this thread) advocates imply. If you don't have caste or currency, use cottages for $$$ and scientists for research. That's "SE" by most people's standards. In a 6 city empire, 1 cottage, 2-3 hammers, rest scientists. The "CE" has an extra cottage city, I guess? OP and vast majority of replies are focusing on the wrong thing. The guy wants to war successfully.

Frankly, for struggling with warmongering on noble it's probably way too soon to start thinking about overarching "economies". Specialize on a per-city basis, improve tile micro, tech priority, and diplomacy (to avoid dogpiles), and go from there. The vast majority of your cities are going to be hammer cities for early conquest. Don't get wrapped up in pipe dreams ---> your non-war cities are just fine no matter what "economy" you're running assuming you set them up well. You DO want to accumulate some GPP though, since early great people are very favorable.

Edit: Musketeers are underrated and can strike/reinforce very quickly. I personally like them with cannon, since they can kill a unit and return to their stack w/o getting picked off, and are a dominating field presence vs all but knights and post-musket gunpowder. Nap doesn't have much specific though, he's just a solid all-around warmonger---> good xp and expansion.

Again I emphasize though, get away from "SE" and more how things work at the city level and specialization. That will include running specialists. You might even run more of them than cottages, but thinking "SE is good for warmongering" isn't going to help you because it carries minimal meaning on its own at best.

 

[michmbk]

Funny, I just saw this thread and was going to comment that Nappy is one of the best warmongers to me - 2 of the three top warring traits IMO (SPI is the other), and musketeers are fantastic when paired with horse units. He's one of the few civs where I'll go bottom half of the tech tree...race to guilds and gunpowder, flank with knights and kill with musketeers. pay for it with organized and earlier banks (since I usually get guilds later when going top half of tech tree).

If you're on noble, TMIT's guidance is right on though - no need to try to define a specific economy, just specialize each city appropriately and you're on your way.

 

[Crusher1]

Yep, Asoka is a beast.

@ OP,

If you are lucky enough to have the MIDS combined with Charasmatic you can do quite well. Something as simple as running 2 scientist in every city with everyone else working 6-8 farms/mines can produce a whord of units from 6-10 cities while teching more than good enough to land yourself a bunch of "land". Newly conquested cities do the same thing and you can have surprisingly good results. Mind you, you're not going to be seeing 500-800 bpt like you do in some cottage economies by 1000-1200 AD but all the land you grabbed at an ealier date can usually be pushed into a much faster Winning date nonetheless. If not, Biology is your friend.

 

[Bleys]

The Mids is a good addition to a time-release-warmonger, access to PS early in the game can be killer, but building it may mean you lose the window for Swords/Cats, and have to wait til Maces and Trebs to really use PS to crank out units. I play this way sometimes.

 

[Crusher1]

Any kind of Cat war is pretty late for an early war. I don't make use of trebs because that's normally a transitional period which occurs from a REX or earlier war/s as I'm pushing up the Liberalism beeline while emphasizing infrastructure and research. I'll have access to cannons before or shortly after 1000 AD so I don't see the need to sacrifice research and hammers into trebs.

 

[futurehermit]

The more you want , the less you build cottages. Cottages aren't illegal, however, and they're optimal for gold at low slider %. You don't need many of them if you're just going for mass war though. If you have rep the rest of your cities are probably going to run library scientists. This is good for about 15 per city doing it, but REMEMBER:

If you're running scientists, you're cutting into a whip cycle or taking citizens off mines. There isn't a magic economy. You're not going to see a drastic improvement by going with "SE" (a convoluted term) unless you are otherwise overbuilding cottage improvements in war games.

With that being said, spec cities convert into more rapidly, but with planning ahead on which cities will produce units the difference in hammer potential isn't anywhere NEAR what "SE" (again, ridiculous terminology that means different things even within this thread) advocates imply. If you don't have caste or currency, use cottages for $$$ and scientists for research. That's "SE" by most people's standards. In a 6 city empire, 1 cottage, 2-3 hammers, rest scientists. The "CE" has an extra cottage city, I guess? OP and vast majority of replies are focusing on the wrong thing. The guy wants to war successfully.

Frankly, for struggling with warmongering on noble it's probably way too soon to start thinking about overarching "economies". Specialize on a per-city basis, improve tile micro, tech priority, and diplomacy (to avoid dogpiles), and go from there. The vast majority of your cities are going to be hammer cities for early conquest. Don't get wrapped up in pipe dreams ---> your non-war cities are just fine no matter what "economy" you're running assuming you set them up well. You DO want to accumulate some GPP though, since early great people are very favorable.

Edit: Musketeers are underrated and can strike/reinforce very quickly. I personally like them with cannon, since they can kill a unit and return to their stack w/o getting picked off, and are a dominating field presence vs all but knights and post-musket gunpowder. Nap doesn't have much specific though, he's just a solid all-around warmonger---> good xp and expansion.

Again I emphasize though, get away from "SE" and more how things work at the city level and specialization. That will include running specialists. You might even run more of them than cottages, but thinking "SE is good for warmongering" isn't going to help you because it carries minimal meaning on its own at best.

Some good advice here. I would only add that when running a warmongering SE it's all about cycling. Your whole empire swaps between military production and teching as needed. Spiritual is obviously great here. When warmongering you only really need enough tech to get you to parity and then you use your superior burst production to take down your opponent. Rinse-repeat.

 

[nullspace]

If you're running scientists, you're cutting into a whip cycle or taking citizens off mines. There isn't a magic economy.

It's true that a SE doesn't magically game more hammers than a CE, but it does have more flexibility. The SE can instantly change from specialists to mines, to all farms depending on whether you need techs, hammers, or regrowth. Cottage cities typically don't have enough tiles to do a full switch from cottages to farms, so if you whip the cottage city, it will recover slower than a SE city.

The advantage is that you can research quickly to a military tech like engineering by running lots of scientists in all your cities, and then switch all cities to producing or whipping the new trebuchets.

Another neat trick with the SE is that happiness from the culture slider is cheaper than it is for a CE. The happiness depends on the position of the slider, not on how much commerce is actually converted to culture. Since the SE has less commerce, it doesn't lose much gold or science for each happiness gained. This is a very flexible (again) source of happiness since it can be adjusted whenever you need more or less. This is great for covering up temporary unhappiness from whipping, drafting, or war weariness.

So I like Kublai Khan for a warmongering SE. Aggressive combos very well with nationalism because the drafted units get combat 1 for free, and the cheap barracks give two happiness. Plus, creative's cheap theaters and colosseums enhance the happiness from culture to let you draft a whole lot.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

IMO "cycling" is better early than late. Early on you only have limited spec slots and multiple cities can put up GP's, and cities are small enough for the whip to be efficient.

Later on you gain access to strong workshops, more food through CS and eventually bio, and access to GP pops comes from fewer cities as some cities go food-crazy.

But, you can approximate output with strong GPP from an early city and just using hammer cities to build wealth and bump the slider. You're going to have river commerce, seafood, and possibly commerce resources usually, not to mention trade routes, and the wealth will let you funnel that into research to clear bulb requisites.

I'm not known for using a lot of specs but I'll make a showing of it in PYL ladies night ---> I took brennus and that start is ridiculously food heavy in the capitol. No pyramids for me there, just heavy bulbtrades, and I won lib and am still @ tech parity, just about to do some cannon invasion . Probably overexpanded early on but oh well. More hammers, smaller tech window.

The advantage is that you can research quickly to a military tech like engineering by running lots of scientists in all your cities, and then switch all cities to producing or whipping the new trebuchets.

Don't get lost, the value of specs is in their GPP. With rep they're serviceable, but I'd like to point something out:

Building wealth/research with a grassland mine (or workshop caste/guild) handily beats normal specialists unless you account for the all important GPP! Even under rep the mines are not DRASTICALLY behind, which is incredible if you think about it. Rep is a nice boost but it isn't end-all-be-all. Going heavy on specialists can be quite stout w/o rep if you can put up enough GPP.