SE without pyramids , does it really work?

Shadzy19

Warmonger
Joined
May 7, 2005
Messages
537
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Belgium
Current game I decided to gave Shaka a first try , pangea , epic speed and monarch level .

Axe rushed the Ethiopion guy fast for some easy city's and got around 6 city's around 1000 BC.
Had marble and 2 of the early happy's and since I was planning to go for domination I figured I would try a SE since im going to war a lot anyway .
Here come the problems , even with around 8-9 specialist my economy is a complete mess .

I figured I would just recover a bit , get some specialist up and move on to the next victim , every time I hit happy cap or I didnt have a grassland farm or hill or special resource to work I switched the city's to a specialist.

Since I had the marble I decided to go for the great lib which costed me ages to discover aestics , poly and lit .
Used my first GS for a acedemy and build the great lib but even now my economy is very slow (around 30~ turns for civil service)

Because of all this recovering I couldnt build my army since I was already running only at 20% and most of my production went into scientists .

So what happened , its now 400 AD and I get a double backstack from my "friends"
Im sure I can defend them off since I have plenty of production etc but I was in a very nice position in the early game and messed something up , I just dont really know what .

The maintenance isnt over the roof cause of the zulu UB.

Ive played quite a lot of SE's before but in all of them I got the pyramids early , If I dont have stone or im not indus I usually just dont bother and go hybrid or CE but just because this is a test game I decided to give this a try and I must have missed something up bigtime .

Im normally able to win about 70% of my games on emporer but I very rarely war before cats ( most of the time my first war is with maces and trebs)

So what should I do diffrend ?

Dont go SE?
Stay with 4 city's?
Tech fast to CoL or cats ? ( I went for currency > aestics > poly > lit > col > about 10 turns from CS now , I think im second in tech atm)
Lightbulb techs this early in stead of the acedemy ?
Dont go for the great lib?

Any help would be appreciated , im always trying to up my game a bit and try out new things .
 
While an SE is indeed a lot better with the Pyramids (due to early access to Representation), it's not absolutely necessary. The trick is to lightbulb techs, and then trade them. If you're good at diplomacy and a shrewed tech trader, you can easily keep ahead of the AIs.

Your biggest mistake, IMO, was not going for Code of Laws early. Caste System is one of the two key civics for a SE. The other is, obviously, Representation. The Great Library is a nice bonus, but it's not worth delaying CoL for.
 
SE without Pyramids is still perfectly possible. Although in most cases it would probably be a bit weaker, it is still a viable strategy.

As opposed to enjoying 3 extra happy faces and +3 beakers per specialist, you can instead extra specialists with (infinite) happy faces through Monarcy - Hereditary Rule. It could be sometimes that you end up being able to run so many more specialists, that you get more beakers than with representation (not to mention even faster GP growth).
 
Thx for the advice , il try getting CoL asap next time but I doubt it would have been a huge help since I was stuck at 7 happy cap for my capitol and 6 for the other city's , so at most I could have added around 2 maybe 3 scientist .
I normally always lightbulb but got the scientist after I got aestics so all I could get was a lousy compass on a pangea map :/

Now that I have the ability for 4~ scientist in 2 city's I need my production since i got backstabbed by yet another "friend"
(funny game all 3 of my buddhist mates backstabbed me while the 2 hindoes who i have worse relations with and very close borders are now helping me in the wars after I went to the hindoes side)

HR is a very good civic indeed but its so far out of the way , I didnt had anything other then mysticism for ages untill i got masonry to hook my marble up , monarchy was still 3 or 4 techs away and beelinging would mean no CoL / Currency / Great Lib / Construction , I wish I saved the game earlier so I could have tried the diffrend paths and see what would have been the strongest tech route to follow .
 
Thx for the advice , il try getting CoL asap next time but I doubt it would have been a huge help since I was stuck at 7 happy cap for my capitol and 6 for the other city's , so at most I could have added around 2 maybe 3 scientist .
I normally always lightbulb but got the scientist after I got aestics so all I could get was a lousy compass on a pangea map :/

Now that I have the ability for 4~ scientist in 2 city's I need my production since i got backstabbed by yet another "friend"
(funny game all 3 of my buddhist mates backstabbed me while the 2 hindoes who i have worse relations with and very close borders are now helping me in the wars after I went to the hindoes side)

HR is a very good civic indeed but its so far out of the way , I didnt had anything other then mysticism for ages untill i got masonry to hook my marble up , monarchy was still 3 or 4 techs away and beelinging would mean no CoL / Currency / Great Lib / Construction , I wish I saved the game earlier so I could have tried the diffrend paths and see what would have been the strongest tech route to follow .

Mysticism - Meditation - Priesthood is the cheapest but most useless route to Code of Laws... and it also leads to Monarchy if I'm not mistaken. I say it's useless because most of the time you aren't endowed with religion, so inexistent monestaries and temples are not that useful.
 
Thx , I even forgot that path excisted , im a big fan of always rushing out maths and currency is usually not far behind , maybe I should try the priesthood route , its much quicker indeed but risky if u have no religion you can safely switch to .
 
SE without Pyramids is still perfectly possible. Although in most cases it would probably be a bit weaker, it is still a viable strategy.

As opposed to enjoying 3 extra happy faces and +3 beakers per specialist, you can instead extra specialists with (infinite) happy faces through Monarcy - Hereditary Rule. It could be sometimes that you end up being able to run so many more specialists, that you get more beakers than with representation (not to mention even faster GP growth).

This strategy manages to circumvent the happiness cap but instead slams into the health cap. I suppose if you are not well endowed with happiness resources but have a surplus of health resources, this would be an excellent plan. And, those three happy faces do allow extra high powered specialists in your three largest cities, which will likey be big specialist centers. The map really determines which route you go here.
 
SE without Pyramids is still perfectly possible. Although in most cases it would probably be a bit weaker, it is still a viable strategy.

As opposed to enjoying 3 extra happy faces and +3 beakers per specialist, you can instead extra specialists with (infinite) happy faces through Monarcy - Hereditary Rule. It could be sometimes that you end up being able to run so many more specialists, that you get more beakers than with representation (not to mention even faster GP growth).
Early game, health also tends to be limiter. Sure you can have as much happiness as you need, limited only by your production level and your treasury, but unless you're blessed with six food resources, you're still limited to about 10-12 citizens. Any after that just produce food to support themselves. Great for AP votes, but bad for maintenance fees.

In addition, you need six specialists (and thus six units) just to equal the output of the extra three specialists you can have through representation. Multiply that by five cities, and you get thirty units. I can think of far better uses for thirty units than crowd control. :mischief:

Not to mention that's just for the bonus happiness Representation brings. I can usually run 3-4 specialists in my non-production cities by the time I can get access to Hereditary rule. Since non-Representation scientists are only 1/2 as effective as under Representation, you need twice as many. Again multiply by five cities, and you need another 15-20 specialists to keep up... and another 15-20 units. Again, I can think of far better uses for twenty units than crowd control. :ar15:

It's easy why an SE with pyramids is much more effective than SE without.
 
Mysticism - Meditation - Priesthood is the cheapest but most useless route to Code of Laws... and it also leads to Monarchy if I'm not mistaken. I say it's useless because most of the time you aren't endowed with religion, so inexistent monestaries and temples are not that useful.
I've never had a problem with having early religions spread to my cities, unless I'm totally isolated. There's always at least one religious nut out there, and I'd have them found an early religion, and then turn their capital/shrine city into my personal Wall Street city.

Plus, if you found Confucionism by putting CoL on your priority list, you'll have a religion, and thus a use for Monestaries and and Temples.

I usually go the mathematics-> currency route if I'm running a CE. A CE requires more infrastructure, so I'm likely to stay in slavery longer, and thus won't need Caste System quite that early.
 
don't try it without the philosophical trait. without pyramids, CE is far better (assuming decent land)
 
It's possible, but will be an inferior *economy*

If you lightbulb to military techs and don't care so much about the economy because you are going for an early domination/conquest win then you can be just fine.

As an economy, though, you're probably better laying down cottages
 
I agree with the last 2 posts.
You simply need more and more commerce for city maintainance + inflation as time goes by.
 
don't try it without the philosophical trait. without pyramids, CE is far better (assuming decent land)

This is a statement, but not an arguement.
 
I don´t think anyone denies that Representation is the superior choice for a SE. However, an early 500 hammer investment could have gone into a game-changing offensive or any other good use.

Forgoing the Pyramids voluntarily while still runnning a SE isn't necessarily a mistake, but it's a dedication to a heavy warmonger approach... Bulb&Trade to keep up (and rush important military techs to trounce someone if the opportunity presents itself).
Changing gears to a peacetime economy, settling specialists and researching in a respectable way has taken a major hit.
 
BTW...
Mysticism - Meditation - Priesthood is the cheapest but most useless route to Code of Laws... and it also leads to Monarchy if I'm not mistaken. I say it's useless because most of the time you aren't endowed with religion, so inexistent monestaries and temples are not that useful.

I always go this (useless route) to CoL. And I don't even do it for RELIGIOUS reasons at all.
 
Monarchy is also good and sometimes getting to CoL quicker instead of through two expensive techs (math/alpha and currency) is the right move.
 
I am well aware of the health cap, and I do not disagree that representation is usually the best SE trait. I just mean to say that you can gun for an SE through Monarchy as well and sometimes (probably rarely) it can actually be better.

If your situation is that you could run 4 specialists empire-wide with representation, but hereditary rule allows you to run 10 specialists empire-wide, then obviously in this case it's better with monarchy (but not for long). If you've got plenty of health, then this will probably work. However, as you expand and find more happiness resources, the infinite happiness become weaker (ironically), as you'll soon get to the point where you can max out your specialists through representation+resource happiness.

Yes, Representation is amazing for an SE, but it's still possible without the Pyramids simply because of Monarchy and the "infinite" happiness limit.
 
I actually just pulled of a SE without the 'mids with Ghandi. It certainly isn't as powerful early on, but it can be done. I don't know if I could have done it without Philo, though. All the GS made the lack of early Rep workable.

I think Philo is more important than the 'mids, since this was my first time actually doing a SE. It worked incredibly well.
 
SE without pyramids , does it really work?

It depends on your definition of "work".

Yes, you can win the game.

No, you won't have as powerful an economy as someone who actually uses cottages.
 
It depends on your definition of "work".

Yes, you can win the game.

No, you won't have as powerful an economy as someone who actually uses cottages.

En Garde!

Depends on what traits your leader has. If financial is one of them, then most likely you're right. However, if philosophical for example is one of them, then an SE would be more powerful than a CE (lay of the land is a factor as well).

Sidetrack: If you have both, then you have my all-time favourite leader Elizabeth. With her, you can use both economies: specialists for food-rich and/or rapidly happy capped cities, and cottages for grassland-rich and flood plains-rich cities (once you subtract the dedicated production cities, of course).
 
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