Specialist Economy

[Pentalog]

So I've been reading quite a few articles on employing a specialist economy (I think I'm calling it the right thing - utilizing specialists to generate commerce, production and science), but I still have some pratical questions that I struggle with during the game.

1. When do I start to specialize? How big should a city be before I really start to crank on the specialists? Is this something that you start at size 2 and sacrifice growth time to get it bigger or is it more of the type of thing where you grow the city to size six as quickly as possible and then start the specialists?

2. What do I build in the specialists city when I can no longer build items that would benefit the specialization? For instance, if I have a science city and I've built all the library, monestaries, temples and granaries/aquaducts - but I have not yet reached Education - should I switch it over to research? Or should I build market places, forges, and other city improvements?

Other tips?

Thanks!
Pent

 

[madscientist]

Generally and SE in terms of what's discussed here and what I am used to is using specialists to produce beakers for research, thus using commerce for costs of the empire. It is based on farms for food rather than cottages, the more farms you utilize the more "Classic" SE game you are running (if that matters mush to you). Thus the commerce you get is from tiles, resources, trade routes.

Some basic ideas

1) You start a SE as soon as your get writing and build a library to run 2 scientists.
2) Look to up the happy cap if possible though resoruces or monarchy early. This allows you to run more specialists
3) Aim for Cold of Laws and Caste system earlier than later for the unlimited scientists
4) If possible, nab the Pyramids for Representation. Sure you can run an SE without it, but it sure as hell makes the game easier.
5) If you need gold, consider those expensive markets in key locations and run merchants in those cities. Under representation you still egt 3 beakers per merchant.
6) Beeline Biology.
7) Emancipation is not the end of the world, just make sure you get some obervatories up and going for the third scientist.
8) Oxford allows you 3 additioanl scientists, so make sure that city has the food to run them.
9) Plan your National Park city properly, make sure you have alot of forrests there.
10) BTS makes late game SEs very strong, thus consider buildings like Industrial Park. Get at least one of the food corps.

PS: Welcome to the Forums!

 

[Iranon]

1.) You generally grow to your happy cap or the maximum size where you have enough food to support the number of specialists you're shooting for. Generally, you grow to your health/happy cap first, then worry about what you want to do.

2.) You never run out of useful stuff to build. Units and seize some more land, infrastructure you don't really need, even things like missionaries and spies are useful. If you plan to use Slavery, a few filler cities will make whipping more efficient by tile shuffling around so you can work all the good land without struggling with the happy cap.

Turning perfectly good hammers into commerce-like stuff with inferior modifiers is beyond poor unless your hand is forced (say you overexpanded, are close to a strike and building research allows you to salvage the situation by teching Code of Laws or Currency).

In fact, there's a style of specialist economy that will aim for a lot of infrastructure everywhere... Food can always be turned into hammers if need be (if there are no hammers tiles, there's always the whip), you'll be channeling commerce mostly into gold so markets etc will do something anyway.
Flexible cities everywhere, but they require a bit of investment.

if you play a more austere SE that cares little about modifiers and lives entirely off lightbulbs, you probably have a plan to leverage your ridiculous if temporary tech lead (this style gets off the ground a lot faster because it focuses on the resource with the greatest short-term returns: GPP. You don't even need the Pyramids).
Since you'll have a grand overaching plan, do whatever secures the win as soon as you have teched to a game breaking advantage.
Example: build some cheap melee units that can take City Raider promotions, beeline Rifling and try to pop a Great Merchant just before you get it. A trade mission pays for a mass upgrade, excessive drafting/whipping will finish the job of giving you an instant army that can walk all over anything the AI is likely to have.
Pretty much any Renaissance unit can work for this. If you

 

[Pentalog]

So - how would you do things different? (See attached...)

 

[Skallagrimson]

In fact, there's a style of specialist economy that will aim for a lot of infrastructure everywhere... Food can always be turned into hammers if need be (if there are no hammers tiles, there's always the whip), you'll be channeling commerce mostly into gold so markets etc will do something anyway.
Flexible cities everywhere, but they require a bit of investment.

I lean in that direction, especially when recovering the economy from a conquest or rush. It's against the grain of most experts here, but I actually dip into the heresy of long-term planning rather than immediate short-term gain. If I had a dime for every time I'd been unable to build Oxford because I had been rigid about the "never EVER build science buildings in a production city", well, I'd have a lot of frickin' dimes! And that goes for all the other national wonders that require N number of cities to have some ghastly expensive infrastructure in-place. 8 cities ALL devoted to "commerce" means you won't have a defensible empire early on, and, you lose. Less than 8 cities with good infrastructure in-place and ...you lose. The resolution to this dichotomy is that the rigid rules against building have to bend at certain points where they *can*. To me where they *can* is in the phase of a war where more unit-builds will just boost the maintenance costs above what I can afford, and food output (whipping, SE) is greater than hammers output (research, CE).

Besides, even a unit-pump often has excess food that can flip to specialists (especially scientists), so why is that heresy? If they COULD flip to engineers I could see the point for the religious devotion to specialization, but, y'can't.

When I have an empire with 10 cities, 4 or 5 of which are full-commerce and busy with infrastructure, the rest of which are production which can quickly build infrastructure *anyway*, I'm still not in jeopardy of losing militarily. 1 city at a minimum is still unit-pumping at all times, if for nothing else to replace the obsolete defenders or old cats with cannons, etc. If they were ALL unit-pumping, hello STRIKE ZONE, and, how was that a winning strategy again?

Just venting about the millions of times I see people ranting against building, which, yes, there is a time not to do so, that time is also not "always".

 

[Supr49er]

Hey, Welcome to posting Pentalog.

 

[slobberinbear]

There are lots of good articles on this subject.

The first thing to know: your SE cities need food. Preferably, 2 or more bonus food tiles. Coastal cities with junk land but 2+ seafood are great for this. Seafood start capitals are even better. Two fish with a lighthouse will support a size 7 city running 5 specialists (2 citizens working the fish, 5 specialists).

In many instances it's easier to run an SE under caste system, simply because of the time and hammers it takes to build the SE-enabling buidlings othersise. This is one of the reasons why code of laws is such a popular tech.

Once you have your SE city going, it will have poor hammer production generaly. Just set it to build research.

By the way, you chose a good civ to use a SE. Both Alex and Perry are Philosophical. Alex, in particular, can do great things in the early game -- going wild on conquest while tanking his economy and relying on SE cities for research.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

2. What do I build in the specialists city when I can no longer build items that would benefit the specialization? For instance, if I have a science city and I've built all the library, monestaries, temples and granaries/aquaducts - but I have not yet reached Education - should I switch it over to research? Or should I build market places, forges, and other city improvements?

Disposapults.

If you find that you are actually finishing your infrastructure, you may need to improve your tuning of production to other concerns. There's a sharp change in value between the hammer that creates the last building you need, and the hammer that starts the first building you don't need. If this change crosses the value of one of the alternatives (running another specialist, collecting more food); then maybe you should be juggling your yields differently.

Also, because the research bonuses affect built research differently than research generated in other ways, you may be better off building wealth.

 

[batavier]

So I've been reading quite a few articles on employing a specialist economy (I think I'm calling it the right thing - utilizing specialists to generate commerce, production and science), but I still have some pratical questions that I struggle with during the game.

1. When do I start to specialize? How big should a city be before I really start to crank on the specialists? Is this something that you start at size 2 and sacrifice growth time to get it bigger or is it more of the type of thing where you grow the city to size six as quickly as possible and then start the specialists?

For the GP Farm I have the following rules.

Work all food tiles that give at least 4 food unless the city is already at happy cap.

Work tiles that give 3 food if (food surplus of city before working another tile) < (eventual city size) - (current size) unless you really want a GP as soon as possible.

Eventual size can be limited by happiness or food/health, if you work all
the 3 food tiles. pre -biology sparta has an eventual size of 12, post-biology
it will be 18.

Don't work anything that gives less than 3 food unless it's a special
resource or if you really need another building.

What to do with your excess hammers is a non-problem, because there
won't be much.

If your GP farm didn't work all those windmills and plains farms you could run more scientists earlier and you wouldn't need so much health and happiness.
Sparta could run 6 specialists at size 12, and you could build a forge and run an engineer because great engineers are always nice.

The nice thing about a specialist economy is that you can fire most of the specialists, and switch to production as soon as you reach grenadiers or curassiers or rifles or cannons, or someone declares war. If a city with specialists can have good production build at least a barracks.