specialist farms

[pickle]

how far from the capital is it that corruption will be so much that a city should be turned into a specialist farm?

also if i am doing this should i make my core cities further apart so that they can grow more and become more productive

 

[gmaharriet]

how far from the capital is it that corruption will be so much that a city should be turned into a specialist farm?

I checked your public profile and it shows you have Civ3Gold, which means vanilla and PTW. If you're using Ring City Placement, specialist farms would probably begin in the 3rd ring. In any event, the worse the corruption, the more useful are specialist farms. I haven't played vanilla or PTW in a very long time, so perhaps someone else could be more specific. I will say that specialist farms are far more effective in the Conquests expansion, where taxmen produce 2 gold and scientists 3 beakers, but only 1 in the Gold version.

also if i am doing this should i make my core cities further apart so that they can grow more and become more productive

As with all things Civ, the answer is "it depends". If your game stays peaceful until you become powerful, looser placement can be very effective. If you're attacked early in the game, tighter placement makes defense easier. There's no single correct answer to your question.

 

[MAS]

also if i am doing this should i make my core cities further apart so that they can grow more and become more productive

Until you get hospitals, cities can't grow past size 12. And hospitals come late in the game, when the game is already set up for victory or loss.

So place core cities such that they can work 12 tiles, but close enough that no tiles go un-worked by any citizen. This is more easy to do in conquest, because in vanilla and PTW, the ring placement interferes.

The specialist farms, it is wasteful to build anything in it that cost upkeep, so don't, don't even build aquaducts. Many of these cities won't grow past size 6, and even then, they don't need to have more than 4 citizens working the land for food. (even less, often) So place as many of them as you possibly can on the map. So that you get the small benefit they give as much as possible.


If your game is going to last until the modern age (space race?), and you want to make an empire of big metropolises, then maybe grow a metropolis area next to the early core, and swap the capital. So you can have a small efficient core in the early turns AND a big efficient core in the later turns.

Or use a special ring-pattern with temporary cities that can be abandoned later to make room for other cities the grow.

 

[pickle]

recently got conquests and saw that the specialists were better, this is what prompted my asking.

also, i came to the conclusion that an aqueduct is a good idea in these cities, as that means 2 more free units in a republic = 3 gold saved including the cost of the aqueduct

civil engineers are great to get the buildings done quickly

 

[WackenOpenAir]

If you don't bother with the aquaducts and keep them small, you can just build more cities. More cities also makes more unit support.

Lets try to compare the aquaduct with a settler:

In farming, it is all about food, we convert all costs to food.
Using a specialist costs 2-4 food. You are speaking civil engineers, so we are in industrial and we have railroading. I'll average 3 food that we miss out on by using a specialist. This makes:
1 shield = 1.5 food

Aquaduct cost: 80 shields = 120 food.
Settler cost: 30 shields (45) + 2 citizens (40) = 85 food.

Aquaduct provides: 2 support (4gpt) - 1gpt upkeep = 3gpt.
New town provides: 1 support (2gpt) + 1gpt + 1 spt + 2fpt.

In total, the new town provides 1spt and 2fpt more while it costs less to build.

Make farms where towns are over 50-65% corrupt or so. What to pick in that range depends on how much of the game there still is to go and how much you have to invest to make the city productive.
To lower core corruption, i always try to build my core slightly tighter than 12 tiles per town and have a little extra space between my last core towns and the first farm towns. If you then start assigning tiles to your cities in the centre of your core and work outwards, the outermost core cities will be using that extra space while the tiles closer to the core are used by the more central cities. This way they can all still use 12 tiles but have closer distance to the palace for slightly lower corruption.

 

[eldar]

I think the thing to realise is (and it this took me a while to work out) is that to grow to size 7+, you not only have to build an aqueduct, you also have to make sure that the town can grow. To do this efficiently (i.e. at better than 2fpt) unless you have food bonanza (floodplains) you're going to have to lose a specialist.

Right so to get from size 1 to size 7 takes 120 food (70 with granary presumably free from pyramids if you're lucky to have grabbed it). That's 40 (24) turns at +3fpt. Which means you've lost out on a potential 120 (72) beakers. Not to mention the beakers lost to engineers who are building the aqueduct. Multiply that by 200 and that's (at least) the cost of two modern-age techs, or 8 turns of research.

If the town's on fresh water it may be better, slightly, to let it grow. If it has tons of food by all means let it get to size 12 ASAP.

 

[pickle]

i started doing it in the industrial age, in an area that was mostly grassland, so irrigated and rr'd size 7 city can have 4 specialists, size 6 can have 3 but is wasting food, so disband units or cash rush library(i was building on the edge of my empire, so need some culture) granary then aqueduct. then grow the city as fast as possible to size 7, and set the specialists

 

[Marsden]

Probably a good rule of thumb is to let it grow if an aquaduct isn't needed but otherwise don't bother building one. This makes settling on fresh water just that much more useful.

 

[Vegasgustan]

Okay, so you have a Specialist Farm going. Do you just put it to Wealth or do you use it to build military units, settlers, or workers?

Side Thought: Is this a good strategy for all types of games or for only games where you are going for a domination victory? Let's say you were going for a Cultural win, would it not benefit you to have these cities at least build a temple or library?

Thanks.

 

[Aabraxan]

Okay, so you have a Specialist Farm going. Do you just put it to Wealth or do you use it to build military units, settlers, or workers?

Again, it depends. If I have a farm that I can hit zero food & zero growth on, I'll usually set it to building my best artillery units. If I can't seem to get food & growth to zero out, I'll use it to build settlers and workers.

Side Thought: Is this a good strategy for all types of games or for only games where you are going for a domination victory? Let's say you were going for a Cultural win, would it not benefit you to have these cities at least build a temple or library?

They're great for science and cash, which should benefit conquest, domination, SS, or diplo. As for culture, well, I'm not very good with culture, so I'll leave that question for someone who knows better than I.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Okay, so you have a Specialist Farm going. Do you just put it to Wealth or do you use it to build military units, settlers, or workers?

Side Thought: Is this a good strategy for all types of games or for only games where you are going for a domination victory? Let's say you were going for a Cultural win, would it not benefit you to have these cities at least build a temple or library?

Wrt to a cultural win that would be putting the horse before the cart.

One of the core strategies of a 100K game is to literally spam the map with as many towns as you can in order to build temples, libraries and stuff. That those probably hundreds of cities also perform semi-duties as specialist farms is no more than a by-product.

 

[eldar]

Farms will build mainly workers & settlers, then wealth. A few exceptions are:
- Food is key; so if a harbour will net you extra food for fish/whales, build a harbour.
- If you want cultural expansion, build the cheapest culture available.

As a general rule of thumb, if all the next citizen would do is work a 2fpt tile and the town is only growing at 2fpt, I stop a town growing. Such a town cannot support any more specialists than it already has. Otherwise I let the town grow as I will be able to create extra specialists eventually.

 

[Vegasgustan]

Thank you all.

 

[scoutsout]

Side Thought: Is this a good strategy for all types of games or for only games where you are going for a domination victory? Let's say you were going for a Cultural win, would it not benefit you to have these cities at least build a temple or library?

In my opinion Specialist Farms are more useful for longer games than shorter ones. If I am pursuing a domination win I might use the technique to manage my more corrupt towns ... but I'm as interested in claiming territory as I am in generating science. Specialist Farms are especially powerful for Modern Era victory conditions (Diplomacy and Spaceshot) because they can help you get to a 4-turn research cycle more quickly.

I would think specialist farms would be very useful in a 100k cultural victory, for two reasons:

1. Having a temple and a library in a whole lot of little towns would pile up culture points quickly.
2. All the scientists and tax collectors would ensure that these woefully corrupt little towns would still contribute something to the empire.

 

[eldar]

My current game-in-progress: illustrating the usefulness of Specialist Farms.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Specialist farms are kind of useful on 100K games. Mainly, though, you are poprushing the hell out of them, so they are so unhappy that they never get big enough to support many specialists. And when they ARE happy enough to support specialists, you want them to grow so you can ruthlessly kill more citizens.

Who says art is all fluff? In Civ, at least, it is built on the blood and sweat (mainly blood) of your citzenry!!

 

[PaperBeetle]

I always have an image in my head of cathedrals built from the bones of my citizens.