Specialist Economy

[lilnev]

What about a GP farm generating the wanted great people at will, and then join just about every great person into the capital (instead of light-bulbing techs) and revolt to bureaucracy asap? Wouldn't it pay off better to join them to the capital and run bureaucracy, instead of light-bulbing techs?

Keep in mind that Bureaucracy affects commerce before it is converted to gold or beakers. So any hammers contributed by settled super-specialists get the bonus, but beakers from a GS or gold from a GM wouldn't benefit. They do benefit from Libraries/Markets etc, however, which is why GSs are sometimes settled in your Academy/Oxford city, GPs in your Wall Street city, and so forth.

peace,
lilnev

 

[JackOfClubs]

A SE does require a good knowledge of many aspects of the game (so it is for experienced players or people who want to learn fast )

This is a good point, but my own early experience was exactly opposite. Since I was coming from many years playing Civ3, I didn't immediately grasp the significance of cottages evolving to towns and considered them a waste of time (along with workshops which I still have trouble finding a good use for). Since I did know about mines and farms, that was what I mostly built for the first couple of games (with the odd camp or plantatation which was new but fairly intuitive). So my late games tended to overgrow their workable tiles and I sort of defaulted into a specialist economy without really knowing that's what I was doing.

I eventually did get a clue, however, and I now tend to prefer cottages to farms except in one or two cities (GP farm and Globe Theater whipping station usually). But it is ironic that I stumbled through sheer ignorance onto a strategy that most people consider advanced.

 

[mnf]

Keep in mind that Bureaucracy affects commerce before it is converted to gold or beakers. So any hammers contributed by settled super-specialists get the bonus, but beakers from a GS or gold from a GM wouldn't benefit. They do benefit from Libraries/Markets etc, however, which is why GSs are sometimes settled in your Academy/Oxford city, GPs in your Wall Street city, and so forth.

peace,
lilnev

Ouch. I keep on forgetting that.

I started a game and wanted to try this specialist economy thing, but I find I'm having huge problems even starting one. Perhaps I'm too set in the cottage playstyle, seeing that was what took me from Warlord to Noble.

I understand that sometimes there are tiles that aren't worth the pop to work when population is capped. But now it seems my cities always grow so slow I don't find the opportunity to assign specialists. There's always another tile that I want worked. I can never resist the urge to work those grassland tiles instead of leaving them empty and assigning specialists.

This has always been a problem for me---city growth vs specialists. Suppose the city is at size 4, and happiness cap is at 7. You're working all resources and there are some plains and a few grassland tiles around. You're growing at 3 food surplus. Would you assign a specialist and let the city grow slowly at 1 food surplus? What if the city has 5 food surplus? Wouldn't you, then, want it to grow quickly to the population cap first, and only then assign specialists?

It feels like there's something in me that just steers away from specialists. Would someone be able to put down a few rules of thumb, so we can try out at say Noble or even drop down to Settlers and actually get a feel for what "getting a SE up and running" is like?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

This has always been a problem for me---city growth vs specialists. Suppose the city is at size 4, and happiness cap is at 7. You're working all resources and there are some plains and a few grassland tiles around. You're growing at 3 food surplus. Would you assign a specialist and let the city grow slowly at 1 food surplus? What if the city has 5 food surplus? Wouldn't you, then, want it to grow quickly to the population cap first, and only then assign specialists?

I will normally grow the city to max happy, then rehire the specialists.

The model in my head: Suppose we have a grassland city with pastured cows (+2F) and pigs (+4F), and no other food bonuses. At size 6, this city can support 4 specialists, so lets start there.

Now, with no extra food lying around, we have to build our own. That means farms (+1F assuming we havn't discovered biology yet), and we need two of them to support the fifth specialist. So we need to grow 3 sizes in all; let's assume a full granary, so the growth requires 16, then 17, then 18 surplus food (51 total). Each specialist turn you give up is +3 food.

OK. So if you surrender a single specialist for 6 turns, that will grow you one size (with 2 left over). You can then rehire the specialists, and grow at +1 for 15 turns, then at +2 for 9 turns. 30 turns total.

Compare that against firing all four specialists. You'll be at +12 F for two turns, then at +13 F for one turn, then at +14 food for one turn. You've spent 10 extra specialist turns growing to size 9, and as a result you have the new specialist 26 turns sooner than you would have. Assuming the marginal cost of a specialist is constant, the second case shows a profit.

In practice, we don't normally jump from 6 happy to 9 happy. So what should we do in the mean time? In essence, each surplus food is 1/3 of a specialist turn, so parking on a farm for slow growth is contributes to your goal, right up to the point where you cross the happy cap. At that point, you can switch to a neutral tile(s), either on their own or micromanaged in pairs.

But this is the area where the pure specialist economy begins to lose some of its oomph. You are essentially investing 3 population to produce one specialist, where you could instead invest that same population in 3 cottages, using the same tiles. Without some additional vigorish somewhere, that math is difficult to sustain.