Specialist Economy Questions

[Tonheuru]

I've just got a few questions regarding a specialist economy. I am a newb, and so it might be the case that I haven't grasped the principle at all .

In any case firstly although I think I understand that with suitable food resources and plenty of grassland it would be possible to get a huge food surplus to support loads of specialists, what happens if you start in an area that is just completely plains, full of mountains and without humungous food resources? Does this basically completely ruin a specialist economy?

Secondly does a Specialist Economy work as well on the higher time levels? I'm sure it's great on Normal, but how about marathon?

Finally, assuming that you did have a load of grassland, loads of food and loads of space for specialists in your system, it seems you have a choice. You can either use caste system and have thousands of specialists and no production or use slavery, have 2 max at the start and just whip the rest of the blighters. But only 2 scientists in a city surely can't keep up with the entire fat cross full of cottages. Has anyone got any advice about how one reconciles these two difficulties?

Sorry for sounding like a complete noob

 

[noto]

You just have to calculate how a city or multiple cities will benefit you the most. Yes, one way to figure out what to do with cities is to look at the land you have available to you. Another thing you need to do is think about what kind of a strategy you are going to pursue, what kind of civics do you want to run, what kind of techs are you going to research. Certain things have synergy. For example, if you know that you are going to try to expand through warfare and have a huge empire, the state property civic would benefit you, and as such, you should be more inclined to making workshops and watermills. You mention that it seems difficult to run a specialist economy in the beginning, given you can't run specialists. Yes, this is true. Some things you can do about that: a) there are a few ways to grab early specialists. A temple allows you to run a priest. Some UB's like the obelisk allow you to run specialists. Writing really doesn't take that long to get, and if you plan for it, code of laws can be obtained quite quickly as well. That pretty much solves the problem for you, as you'll mostly be using scientists anyway. Also, a forge is nice for the engineer. And B) keep in mind that it's okay to make a city do one thing at first and then change its purpose as the game progresses. For example, let's say I'm playing Cyrus. I know want to war early with the immortal and I settle a city surrounded by high food tiles like floodplains and corn, etc, and also some brown hills. I know that high food city is going to be my GP farm - eventually, but at the moment I can use it as an immortal pump. I can work the high hammer tiles for good base production, and I can also use the whip on the quickly growing population. Once I've built or captured some more cities I can then allow the city to start functioning as a GP farm, especially since by that point I would have researched writing and/or code of laws. yes, if you have no food resources and all plains surrounding a citiy, it won't make a good GP farm, but then again, that city wouldn't do much of any good at the beginnign of the game. Plains tiles by themselves are fairly weak early on.

 

[futurehermit]

You have to play to the terrain. It won't work to force a SE onto 6 cities that are better suited to be production or commerce cities. If you happen to have 6 production cities at the start (rare, but it happens) then look for opponents to beat up on. If you have commerce cities, put down cottages.

For a SE you want caste system, pacificism, and high-food cities. As many 4+ food tiles as possible. It's pretty inefficient to be working a specialist off of two grassland farms (yuck). Usually it is coastal seafood cities that make the best early specialist cities and they should have some farmable grassland that will be 4 food come biology.

I don't usually play on marathon so I'm not sure how it differs for a SE.

 

[JackOfClubs]

You don't need humongous food resources, just enough to support your specialists. Having 2 scientists per city in the early game is adequate, which can be done with a single food resource per city. Not efficient, perhaps, but possible. You shouldn't even worry in the very early game about what type of economy to run. The first priority is to grow your cities up to the point where they can be productive. As noted, early Writing and then Code of Laws are very helpful.

 

[futurehermit]

In an early game CE your capital pulls in most of the science with bureaucracy, an academy, cottages. Later the other commerce cities start to contribute. In a SE a variety of cities can contribute gp early then the GL/NE city starts to take over, then the focus is more on running masses of scientists under representation to pull in big-time beakers with less frequent appearances of great people.

So, yes, early on you can run a couple specialists in each city, but eventually you want to get a nice city set up that can run oodles of scientists under caste system and pacificism. When I run pure SE I like to have 2 cities dedicated to mass specialists and the rest usually production. Lightbulb your way to military tech (having 1-2 good trading partners helps a lot) then conquer the world.

If planning space race it is good to have some commerce cities with the goal of transitioning to a CE later in the game.