Specialist Economy Save

[unas876]

Sup!

I come from a couple months forced hiatus from Civ4.

I fired up an Immortal game with my favorite leader (Hatchet). Its a continents map, I have 2 neighbours (Liz, Shaka). I have stone, I built the Mids. It was a seafood start so I thought I'd get an early Rep in and do some sort of a specialist economy. Shaka was aggressively settling everything so I expanded a lot and am now pretty broke around 350BC. I'm trying to remedy the situation by building libraries for running scientists and cottaging pretty much everything to help generate some gold. I'm as far away from CoL as you can imagine because there was no need for Mysticism (CRE). On top of that I don't have Shaka at pleased and he doesn't hate Liz for some reason (Shaka didn't get the religion I share with Liz yet).

I would like to ask someone to have a quick look at my save and see what I can do here to remedy the situation and what mistakes I have made so far. Sorry I didn't make any notes or screenshots before 350BC!

Specialist Economy has always been iffy for me. I prefer the good old Cottage Economy and usually won all my games with it (and even a couple Deity wins with that, but I'm kinda rusty).

The save says its 750BC but its actually 350BC. Thanks in advance!

 

[InovA]

From what I can see:

• Switch to Buddhism soon, you'd like the +diplo with your neighbors
• Whip in all 4 cities available right now
• If your 1st GP is a GE, rush the GLH in your capital the same turn, 5 coastal cities! Otherwise, Academy for GS
• I would have gone for AH sooner, your 2nd city had Pigs (+6, a super food tile)
• You shouldn't have teched Alphabet yourself, better to tech something else, then invest partly into Alpha, and trade for Alpha with w/e else you teched
• Think you know that you were late on directing your
• Specialist Economy is definitely the way to go from here, Representation will make it crazy strong
• Alexandria, with all those FPs, should have been a cottage city, but it can function adequately to run scientists. Could still make it a cottage city
• Don't think I'd start building a Worker in a size-1 city, slows down its growth too much
• You didn't finish your Granary in Elephantine (guessing you tried to queue Research after Granary finished, remember to shift+click when you do this)
• Teching Math does little good for you right now, better to go for Currency (adding +1 or more to every city, enabling Wealth building instead of Research, and allowing you to sell resources for / turn) or Aesthetics -> Literature -> Great Library line. GLib's 2 free scientists in your capital will be fantastic towards specialist economy with Mids/Rep. Currency first is probably better, but you don't want someone else to get the GLib before you, so that call is up to you
• Remember that Skaha is a notorious warmonger, you practically need him to be pleased with you ASAP, and would like him to be Friendly with you, these both reduce the risk of him DoW you. He has a [100% at Annoyed, 60% at Cautious, 10% at Pleased, 0% at Friendly] chance of plotting to DoW you if his random generator triggers chance of war. That 60% -> 10% from Cautious to Pleased is huge, especially since he's already at 9 cities with plenty of room to continue expanding. Buddhism might be enough to make him Pleased.
• Other than the basics (run 2 scientists in every city, use Rep, get lots of farms) for Specialist Economy, the point you need to remember is to make a switch to Caste System so that you can run 5 to 9 scientists in your capital. Along with Rep and GLib, 9 (11) scientists would be 66 alone, along with the points (doubled during Golden Age).
• You want FARMS ONLY near your capital (you're building a cottage north of the lake). Your capital currently has +10 (after lighthouse) so it can run up to 5 specialists and remain stagnant. With 4 more farms it could have +14 allowing 7 specialists. Whipping in the capital will have to start to be minimized as you approach this next step:
• You'll want to be grabbing Music (for the Great Artist to start a Golden Age later), Code of Laws (for Caste System), and Philosophy (for Pacifism civic - spread Buddhism throughout your cities via Buddhist Monastery in capital or Elephantine if you can. May get lucky and enough foreign missionaries will come). Then start your Golden Age while your capital has a high reserves towards its next pop growth. Now that you're in a Golden Age, you can freely change civics w/o anarchy (5 turns at a time) so switch to Caste and Pacifism and set 9 or so GS in your capital (and maybe 4 to 6 in other cities, same idea). You'll have -4 or worse depending on how many of the farms you're able to work and you never want the reserves to hit 0 and cause starvation (you lose 1 whole pop without the reserves resetting, so it'd happen every turn). You may bulb your GS being born and rush towards Liberalism, Military Tradition, and Gunpowder for a Cuirassier rush, or use a few to chain the Golden Age a bit longer (still going for this tech route). You might start going 0% (100%) slider during this, too, while building Knights or War Elephants (if you can get Ivory). Once you have Cuirs available, upgrade the 10 to 30 units you just built to them and boom easy rush! 0% slider can be done much more easily with specialist economy than others!
• If you build the GLH from the GE, I'd try to settle on that island/continent up north your archer found the edge of. Islands give +100% trade route boost, so every city of yours would like it, 2nd only to foreign trade routes. (14 foreign routes available, will likely hit ~22 foreign routes. You'd have 24 trade routes available after Currency+GLH, 28 after this island/settlement)
• Fail gold will be your friend! Start the Maoi Statues in all coastal cities, put chops into them and any whip overflow into them that you can. Finish them once you have several 100s of worth from fail gold available. The +100% from Stone boosts the building of it greatly.
• Because your economy is hurting right now and Specialist Economy is a mid-game strategy (falls off mid-late game after several GP were born) Spy Economy may be the way to save you after you kill a civ with cuir rush. Say you kill Shaka and have 20+ cities from it, but you're miles behind in tech. Leave England alive or make them cap, build courthouses throughout your empire, maybe other + buildings, too, and send spies to steal techs. Can move the slider to 100%, too.

 

[Fippy]

More food sharing, Helio can take corn from Thebes and Giza clams from Memphis.
With 2 scientists maximum currently, getting all cities up for them is better than growing others bigger

I would look into gifting Shaka a crappy city, as mentioned pleased with him is really urgent.
Best done early, costs 1 settler but adds much to safety.

 

[Pedro78]

Not much to add to the above - great advice. But Pi-Ramesses should have been settled 1N or 2N of its current location : allows sharing the corn with Heliopolis (while Heliopolis can borrow Thebe's corn). Whale should not be a part of your settling decision in the early game (not available until Optics and even then it's not much of a tile, and you'll get the resource eventually (in the 3rd or 4th ring).

 

[unas876]

Thanks all, I am now on my way to Optics. Shaka is pleased (gifting a city worked), I have made it to CoL and bulbed Philo. A mighty stack of failgold from GLH (working on same for Moai) came in and I should be able to wing the game from here!

I kinda forgot how strong SE can be but I see it now. Wish I would have saved the starting save so I could iron out some of the mistakes I made (as outlined by you guys) but oh well. The next Mids game will come sooner or later.

 

[Fippy]

Sounds good