Specialist Economy

[Ashurdan]

I recently just got back into Civ and have spent a lot of time reading up on current strats. I have been trying to make it up higher into the difficulty but I always felt my ignorance of improvement strategies has held me back. By the time I'm in the late game most of my cities have very little direction: I still have forests up with lumber mills an railroads, a few farms and a few cottages. Most of my cities don't specialize in any one area and end up having the production power to pump out modern armor every 5 and stealth bombers every 3-4 turns by the time I get to them. I have been forcing myself to try some new strats so I can go past monarch and so after reading up I chose to try a specialist economy, non-hybrid, in all cities (except for 1 or 2 usually my capital still has cottages.

I still use Vanilla and would like some advise:

1st: Of the Vanilla leaders who is the best for this pure specialist economy? Someone with Philosophical or Industrious? Financial?

2nd: What should my cities look like mid game? all of the forests chopped to aid in the specialization? all farms?

3rd: If I get rid of these forests and put windmills and farms everywhere, where is the production coming from? priests and engineers? buying it if I have the pyramids? Am I going for large population cities with lots of scientists and then only producing defensive units for those cities in a production specialized city?

4th: Is it possible to run a specialist economy with/out philosophical or industrious and with/out many of the useful wonders for such a build?

and lastly: I have a game where many of civs are on another continent and I was able to partly block off the Japanese... is it smart to REX the empty portions of the continent or just stick to my current 6 cities and take them over at a later time?

All of these questions have come up because of a couple failed attempts at monarch and my general dissatisfaction with hybrid cities I leave myself with. Any comments would be helpful thanks,

Ashurdan

 

[MrCynical]

1st: Of the Vanilla leaders who is the best for this pure specialist economy? Someone with Philosophical or Industrious? Financial?

Philosophical is the best trait for an SE, no question. Beyond that there isn't a lot in it. Creative I find works quite well for the cheap libraries.

2nd: What should my cities look like mid game? all of the forests chopped to aid in the specialization? all farms?

Frankly all forests should be chopped in virtually any economy. All farms is however the hallmark of the specialist economy.

3rd: If I get rid of these forests and put windmills and farms everywhere, where is the production coming from? priests and engineers? buying it if I have the pyramids? Am I going for large population cities with lots of scientists and then only producing defensive units for those cities in a production specialized city?

One word: Slavery.

4th: Is it possible to run a specialist economy with/out philosophical or industrious and with/out many of the useful wonders for such a build?

It's certainly possible, but you'll find the SE weaker without the Pyramids and/or Philosophical (Industrious isn't that relevant in itself).

 

[Ibian]

One word: Slavery.

SE without caste system?

 

[Unconquered Sun]

I still use Vanilla and would like some advise:

1st: Of the Vanilla leaders who is the best for this pure specialist economy? Someone with Philosophical or Industrious? Financial?

In vanilla/warlords, Spiritual is the best pure SE/FE trait. Philo is #2, unless you have trouble with the AIs in your early game, if so take Creative.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

One word: Slavery.

SE without caste system?

One word: Spiritual.

 

[DaveMcW]

If you really want to ignore cottages, here's my advice:

Beat up your rivals before their cottages grow into towns.

 

[Ibian]

Even with spiritual you are losing specialist turns. That, and micromanaging a dozen cities or more whenever you wanna build something in a hurry is the stuff of nightmares.

 

[The Rook]

1. Philosophical and Spiritual have great synergy with an SE economy. Philosophical for the Great People specialists, Spiritual is helpful to adapt your civics for boosts of science or military/domestic production. Industrious can be nice if you plan on wonderspamming the capital (check Obsolete's guides), it also helps to build the Pyramids, the most powerful wonder for an SE IMHO. Financial is strongest for CE/hybrid economies, so I would avoid it if you are experimenting with an SE.

2. YMMV. The extent you choose to chop may depend on your leader's traits, availability of health resources, terrain etc. Personally, I don't feel my chopping strategy really varies between CE/SE. Around the mid game, my cities would probably have a mixture of farms and mines (no cottages). If I want science/gold, the farms support the specialists, if I want production, the citizens work the mines. Once I have Caste System and Guilds I will begin building workshops on some of the flatlands, when there is a shortage of production tiles.

3. As I mentioned in 2, you "might" not want to chop all the forests, especially on plains. You will probably want to build mines instead of windmills. The windmills don't produce enough food to support the specialists, and they have inferior production to mines. If you want to produce something, work the mines, if you want research, send the miners to the labs. If you are a Spiritual leader you might wish to alternate between Slavery for production, and Caste System for SE.

4. IMHO, Industrial and Philosophical are very powerful traits for running an SE. Industrial should guarantee the Pyramids, even at higher levels, and the masses of Great People Philosophical generates can't be dismissed. However, there seem to be some learned advocates of the SE who consider the Pyramids not to be worth the hammers, so clearly they are not essential for running an effective SE.

5. If you don't colonise the remainder of the continent, the AI will eventually do it for you. This could be helpful if you want remote AI's to kill themselves with maintenance, or if you plan to infiltrate them with a great spy. It could also be horrible if the remote AI happens to be a military super power, and uses their outpost city as a base for operations. If you can handle the maintenance it might be safer to fill in the gaps, unless the terrain is awful. You say that you have blocked in Toku? Make sure that you have a formidable defence force in the frontier cities, he can't be trusted!

Sorry, I can't be too specific, I haven't played vanilla for a long tme.

 

[eewallace]

I find philosophical/financial one of the best combinations for a SE game. In vanilla, I think maybe Qin??? (You should get BTS--Elizabeth has these traits, plus the redcoats!)

 

[Ashurdan]

The two I have been trying out are Liz and Saladin, I think having the philosophical is alot more important then industrious, but financial seems to be better when I use cottages so Saladin it has been recently (don't like the UU). After going over some of the game Obsolete has done I really like the Wonderspam SE and focus on production(still have yet to get the Oracle-CoL).
Just some background: I was a huge Civ2 player and then played tons and tons of SMAC and SMAX so I still have some of the builder traits that worked in those games(like building every single building possible almost). I was a lot better and more confident at my terrain improving skills in SMAX then in Civ3, and for whatever reason I didn't really get into Civ3. Civ 4 has been great so far, and I don't think I have a huge problem of not being able to win, I am just extremely dissatisfied with my current ability to improve the terrain and very unsure as what to do. I have started to bit-map(not sure if anyone else gets what that is I think I saw someone call it that) and so far I am still 100 times more comfortable with cottage spam then SE. I think the micromanagement is getting to me and CE can be alot more straight forward.

I never got high in the difficulties at Civ3 and now I'm stuck no higher then prince, where as I trashed the AI on the highest Civ2/SMAX difficulties. I don't know how to explain it but I feel like I need my hand held when putting my workers to work and so any advise is more then welcome. I guess I forgot about workshops and it seems Obsolete uses them often.

Ashurdan

 

[Bleys]

I have also been playing vanilla and toying with various SE styles. My fav is Gandhi, SPI is huge for jumping from slavery to caste to nationhood to slavery again, and in and out of HR, OR, or Pacifism. Ind because I wanted to be sure to get the Pyramids. I then beat Monarch pretty soundly with Isabella, SPI/EXP. I like a few more cities, and didnt get Pyramids despite having stone, but still whipped up on em.

I am trying a couple PHI leaders on Monarch now. Qin is IND/FIN in vanilla, I dont like him for an SE, strong CE guy though, I can beat Monarch spamming cottages and lots of wonders, and racing to Democracy with him.

I still have the Isabella save, if you want to have a go. Very winnable. My advice, head west ASAP, and settle your 2nd city by the stone. I waited til my 3rd and it cost me the Pyramids (SE may be doable without them, but they are still a very powerful tool for that style and going without is a PITA for us SE-nubs)

 

[Ashurdan]

" selfish Bump"

I played a game as a random civ just to see how I'd do. I won with a space race win, Continents map as MM. The SPI was great with pyramids and slavery, caste system ect, I built one cottage on the entire map and was on a continent by myself and never had to take an enemy city. I had farms everywhere, was able to chop decently(had no forests at the end) and I was able to pick up almost every wonder I was going(except oracle again). I got my capitol up and running with 2 shrines, oxford, an academy and wall street, I had several good production cities at the end for space parts. I was able to run 100 science most of game from the shrines(I had 3) and the SM. I had my capitol and one other city turning out gp which I used to join my capitol or rush a wonder. I started on a sizable (11 cities only 2 scrub ones) continent by myself and so my UU didn't come into play. the AI was spread out on 3 other continents; 2 others like me and then one large one with all the remaining civs; they only declared war on me once, brought 2 ships and 3 units and then never returned. I built one cottage the entire game so financial didn't seem to help all that much (although was able to found the first 3 religions and COL+GLH meant tech was coming in fast because of my 3 good coastal cities. I feel like it was a good but not great game and I am sure I learned a lot from it. I want to get in there and try to apply some of the stuff I have read and learned first hand now and so....

My question goes out again; Who is the strongest leader for a fairly pure SE? Remember I only have vanilla. And on a side note, how important should I value founding religions over grabbing the oracle-beeline or the worker techs? Should I even go for the beeline when I don't have the SE down just yet? Now that I got my single pure SE game out of the way should I try using some cottages because thats what I am most comfortable with?

Ashurdan

PS: Thanks for the responses, any response is welcome; although I'm hoping Obsolete will pipe in as his walk throughs have been fantastic for a noob like me

 

[Bleys]

Who is the strongest leader for a fairly pure CE? Remember I only have vanilla.

Qin, FIN/IND, is very strong in pure CE mode. I have beaten Monarch easily with him.

Any FIN leader is going to be premium for a pure CE economy. Pick a 2nd trait that suits you and go for it. Also remember that more cities = more cottages = more tiles that pay and feed themselves, so someone like Cyrus would be interesting to try to REX/CE.

Vanilla is kinda old, though, not many playing it. I am planning to purchase BTS myself ASAP, but since I am having a blast with vanilla so far, and my GameTap is paid throught the end of the month, I am not in a huge hurry. Practicing the mechanics themselves is more important. Adaptability, barbarians, rushing other civs, not rushing them, knowing when to and when not too, etc etc etc. These "skills" are applicable across the spectrum of "economic" choices (still dont think thats the correct word at all) and expansions.