Second Wind

[Molybdeus]

Most economies hit a rough stage after initial expansion. Specifically after you have about three cities. At this point your science rate will dip down to about 50 or 60 percent. In order to begin your second stage of expansionism, you will need to improve your wealth intake.

I have always used one of two strategies. If you are playing a financial leader, you can quickly build up your commercial base with cottages. If you are playing a non-financial leader, you can build the oracle and grab Confucianism, then burn a great prophet for a shrine. However neither of these options are particularly attractive for specialist economies, since you want to rush the Pyramids rather than the Oracle, though Code of Laws is obviously nice for Caste System.

For people running a specialist economy and planning to avoid the Oracle, how do you establish your economic base? You can't run merchants until Currency, and barring the Egyptian UB can't train priests without a religion.

 

[tycoonist]

you don't need to. the whole point of the SE is that you don't need the "strong" economic base. run your science down to 10% or 0%, and just run scientists for research.

 

[Molybdeus]

But won't your units go on strike and buildings be sold?

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

You cottage your capital so you can run bureaucracy later. Your capital will fund your empire. Then just run library specialists to get you to col and currency, after that you should be fine.


Also you can micromanage, squeezing commerce out of anywhere you can. Working coasts or farmed calendar resources just for the extra 2c.

 

[Nuwan]

With a specialist economy you can afford to expand and drop science to 20% or so. Stop expanding at that point and wait until you can build some infrastructure with courthouses. You shouldn't need more than 5 cities in the early stages. Form a border and fill in the remaining locations later.

 

[DaveMcW]

If you are playing a financial leader, you can quickly build up your commercial base with cottages.

If you are playing a non-financial leader, you can quickly build up your commercial base with cottages.

 

[Artichoker]

Cottages are a unique tile improvement in that they improve further the longer they are worked. They don't start out with high returns, but 10 or 40 so turns in the future, watch out...

 

[Guardian_PL]

Agreed, recently I started to build them literally everywhere after Emancipation, grown Towns are superb tile, running US and firing Golden Age makes them sth like 2, 2(three if we have Levee and Town on a riverside) and 6-9

 

[Mesix]

The other benefit of running a SE is that it is easy to recover from being pillaged during wartime. Cottages take time to mature again after the enemy pillages them, but a bunch of workers can rebuild farms to full capasity to run the SE in a very short time.