Specialist Economy: Surviving the late game

[futurehermit]

I've noticed that games where I run a specialist economy, I tend to get a massive boost in power right around the time when I can put that power to best use. This lets me get a big empire (1.5x to 2x the size of my AI opponents) and I can then finish the game quite nicely because of the power of my empire without having to worry as much about the quality of individual cities since
2 medium quality cities > 1 pretty good city and
2 very good cities > 1 outstanding city

...plus, I still have my few super cities (Iron Works city, Oxfordcity, Wall Street corp/religion city, super-military city or three).

I find that an empire with 10 excellent cities full of towns will do better than a specialist empire with 10 excellent cities full of specialists, but the specialist empire would probably have had 15-20 cities to compare to the cottage-empire.

It's important to validate your comparisons as apples-to-apples, but cottage economies are so very different than specialist economies that you can't compare them directly.

this is true, but once you have that larger empire imo it is a good idea to cottage everything and 'lo and behold that tends to be around the time that CE civics are coming online...

 

[Roxlimn]

Trv016:

Generally speaking, Production Cities are pretty much the same whether you're running a mainly Cottage or Specialist commerce base, since the function of production tiles and buildings are usually not dependent on either of the two. Exceptions exist: for mid to large cities that surpass their tile allocation, you can use Engineer or Angkor Wat Priests to boost producition to good effect, and Workshops will usually be exceptionally good after Chemistry on Caste System.

This is typically the way to generate a bit of a boost mid-game production (Caste System) using Workshops for the late Medieval or Renaissance push.

Also an Angkor Wat powered National Park Specialist City will be exceptionally productive and happy and unpolluted under Environmentalism.

 

[Bast]

I've been playing SE games for quite a while now (always in Prince) and I've been unable to sustain a tech lead during the modern times. It seems that after Scientific Method, my research gets really slow; plus, once somebody builds the UN and starts passing all those "anti-SE" resolutions (eg. Free Speech, Environmentalism, etc.), my research plummets. I'm guessing the only way to maintain a lead is to have the game practically won before the modern times, by having a massive empire through conquest.
Any ideas?

Hmm... just played my second Prince game and I ran what I think was a SE with Pericles. Got Pyramids and ran Representation. I was behind in tech most of the game and only really caught up after Scientific Method. So I was the reverse.

I never really switched to a CE and never really had that many cottages in that game.

But I ran plenty of specialists. Ended up getting the Statue of Liberty too and before that ran Mercantilism for awhile.

In the end I was making around 950-1000 raw per turn. I don't know if that's good or not.

Throughout the game, I found that I could have my science slider at 20% and the research finish rate was the same as say 70%. I found this surprising. Does this mean, I had a lot of raw science and that no matter how much gold I was going to convert to science, it wasn't going to make a difference?

Also, I settled a whole heap of specialists. Pretty much all except the engineers whom I used to rush wonders.

I still don't think I have the SE down but I'm practising with Pericles.

 

[OKScientist]

In the end I was making around 950-1000 raw per turn. I don't know if that's good or not.

What speed is that? I play Marathon, and I usually make 3-4k beakers at the end with SE (I do cottage the floosplains/grassland river tiles though, but just them).

 

[Bast]

What speed is that? I play Marathon, and I usually make 3-4k beakers at the end with SE (I do cottage the floosplains/grassland river tiles though, but just them).

Normal speed around year 1960. Yeah, maybe it's not good but I had no trouble keeping up in tech late-game.

I did get the Internet which gave me a few techs but didn't give all from the tech leader. But I think by the end, I had taken over as the tech leader.

 

[OKScientist]

Bast, I play Prince too. You 're doing just fine since you are in the lead, but keep in mind that it's possible to do much better science-wise. Once I won space race while the others were still teching Chemistry (that's my best though, usually they make it past scientific method).

You need as many cities as possible, and all of them except 3 or 4 (military/production cities) should be as scientific as possible (libs/unis etc).

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Very intriguing thread... I definitely want to give the SE economy a try now, particularily in the early game!!!

 

[paulthebug]

i used to run CE on every single one of my game back in vanilla, with cathy, lizzy, and pretty much all the financial leaders. but after a while i got bored.

i no longer run CE at all in BTS since learning that a single spy can sabo a town into nothing. running SE is really really fun.

 

[hal08]

One thing that I have not seen mentioned yet is the flexibility of using the culture slider in a SE to combat unhappiness. Since beakers and gold come mostly from specialists, using the culture slider has a negligible effect on your economy. Besides that, once other civs start using emancipation, the slider becomes mandatory. (At least in my experience so far.)

The counterpoint would be that in a CE your commerce cities aren't as large so they don't need as much happiness, however a counterpoint to that is that production cities in a SE won't need to build as many happiness buildings due to the culture slider.

Also, workshops using state property and caste system with the proper techs are great for production cities with plains tiles.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

paul - the rumored patch will make it so spies only knock your towns down one notch per spy... like town will go to village, hamlet, cottage

 

[Darth Meanie]

Why I think SE CAN live in the Late game::

Biology- With this civic a grassland farm pays for not one, but TWO specialists. The extra fluidity specialists offer outdoes the towns, and you can use all of the tiles and still have even more specialists. Add in a few food resources and you can support a very large city + extra commerce from rivers, etc.

Cottages- You CAN have commerce cities in an SE, in fact you should! cities with high possible food yields should be specialist farms, but commerce is a great back up.

 

[futurehermit]

How does a biology grassland farm feed 2 specialists? It only gives 2 surplus food to support one specialist. The farm still has to feed itself!!!