Specialist Farms...

[MAS]

Thanks for an interesting discussion on a different style of play than I use. However, have you determined whether it is more efficient to build that many cities, each costing a settler to build verses building fewer and larger cities yielding the same number of specialists?

Assuming the normal epic game: (without modifications to the corruption system)
Yes, its definitely better to build more small farms than a few big ones. (assuming there is a choice)

The settlers will be build by the very same corrupt cities, don't use your core cities for it. If you have 30 of these cities building a settler, you are basically building 1 settler per turn. This production will only increase, until you have enough cities to fill the land. You can jumpstart the process with a couple of cash-rushes. Each new city adds unit support and one more commerce per turn, and later one more gpt through wealth.

Imagine an all grass continent.
A metro working 20 tiles produces 82 food with rails thats for 20 pop working tiles and 21 scientist.
This will net you:
21*3 = 63 beakers
4 free unit support in republic, 8 in monarchy.
1 uncorrupted commerce in turn
1 uncorrupted shield per turn, for 1 gpt with wealth
And it costs:
1gpt maintenance for aquaduct
2gpt maintenance for hospital
2gpt maintenance for mass transit (its cheaper than the upkeep for the cleanup-crew, trust me)
1gpr maintenance for a market place , for happiness (it would be wasteful to turn scientist into entertainers)
8 lux and a market generate 20 happiness effect, this is enough to keep the 20 non-specialist pop from uprising, but if you gain WW, you'll need contentness from wonder effects or other structures as well, adding even more to the city maintenance.

Also, after size 7 it takes 40 food for a city to gain pop, and after size 13 it takes 80 food.

Now on those same 21 tiles, you plant 7 towns of size 5. 2 working 3 scientist each town:
you get:
3*3*7=63 beakers
7 free unit support in republic, 14 in monarchy.
7 uncorrupted commerce.
7 gpt from wealth.
And it costs:
No maintenance.
0% chance of pollution.
you only need to keep 1 pop happy. without WW, only one lux resource can do that, with WW, even 3 lux resources can keep them under control.

All pop will grow with 20 food, and multiple pop can be gained at the same time in different cities.

If the land isn't a perfect grass landscape it gets even better, building cities on top of hills is the only way to increase the food output of the hill tiles.

 

[Tone]

Thanks for an interesting discussion on a different style of play than I use. However, have you determined whether it is more efficient to build that many cities, each costing a settler to build verses building fewer and larger cities yielding the same number of specialists?

...vs the cost (and time) of building hospitals (and 'ducts where required) plus markets to keep them happy? So in answer to your question, yes! BTW these settlers can be built in corrupt areas so once the settler farms are established they just grow by themselves

My own preference is to modify the game with most buildings giving some happy faces, so that even at a long distance, I can keep corruption down by WLTK days. I also make sure that there are plenty of luxuries around.

Possibly I am being a bit of a pedant here but I think that the following is relevant. WLTKD reduces waste (loss of shields) but not corruption (loss of commerce). That means that your far off towns might be producing more units and improvements under WLTKD but they will not be helping you research or gain taxes, which is the whole point of specialist farms. Net effect? You have more units and more improvements which increases the drain on your finances whereas specialist farms add to your financial power. It is difficult to comment on how your modded game plays out without seeing it but I suspect that if you want to replicate the power of specialist farms, I think that you'll probably need to make some further adjustments.

 

[Aabraxan]

Thanks for an interesting discussion on a different style of play than I use. However, have you determined whether it is more efficient to build that many cities, each costing a settler to build verses building fewer and larger cities yielding the same number of specialists? I can see it in areas where you have conquered the cities and have very limited production. My own preference is to modify the game with most buildings giving some happy faces, so that even at a long distance, I can keep corruption down by WLTK days. I also make sure that there are plenty of luxuries around.

No, I've never sat down and worked through the math. Overseer's screenshot had me wondering that very same thing. Looking at MAS's and Tone's posts, though, it certainly appears that somebody has worked through the math. MAS and Tone have pretty well worked through the question, but I would like to add a comment or two three four.

First, the power of science farms is largely based on the fact that neither food nor specialist output is subject to corruption. Gold from tax collectors and beakers from scientists goes straight into your empire, either research or coffers, as appropriate. Building maintenance is also not subject to corruption. An aqueduct costs 1 gpt, whether it's in your capital or 30 tiles away. MAS has already gone through those numbers, so I won't trudge through all of them again, but when you begin to multiply those numbers out over a large number of farms, you can see how they add up.

Second, growth time. . . Anything over size 12, as you know, requires either a hospital or Shakespeare's. Because Shakespeare's only affects one city, it can be largely eliminated from the question of specialist farming. You might capture it, but if you were going to build it, you'd most likely do it in your core, not out in the totally-corrupt hinterlands. Hospitals require Sanitation. That means that nothing passes size 12 until the Industrial Age. Science farms take a while to set up and "mature," so waiting even longer to use their full power doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I guess you could set up "camps," which you would abandon later, but that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, either.

If you have a settler pump or two to get the process started and also begin building settlers from the first few farms, settling them begins to accelerate. As MAS alluded to, once you get a few started, each one of them begins to grow and can (at least theoretically) produce settlers faster. I'm not sure if I'm being clear on this one, so let me use an example. If you have ten size-10 farms, the maximum number of settlers that you could produce on any one given turn is 10, regardless of how much cash you've got in the coffers. On the other hand, if you have twenty size-5s, the maximum number of settlers that you could (at least theoretically) produce on any one given turn is 20, if you have enough cash. Obviously, actual game play will not be so neat and tidy.

Third, building time . . . Even if you only want to build up to size 12 (eliminating the pollution and hospitals problems), in some cities, you're going to have to build aqueducts. Even ignoring the maintenance problem, you've got to either: (1) wait forever and a day for a 1 shield town to build it; or (2) sacrifice one or more scientists/taxmen so that they can become civil engineers. That speeds up the process, but sacrifices beakers or gold.

Finally, happiness. . . With smaller farms, it's largely a self-correcting problem. Specialists don't count in the "happy vs. unhappy" math. In my screenshot, most of those cities will eventually have 1 or 2 people working in the fields and the rest will be scientists. If I do happen to have a city large enough to suffer unhappiness, I build settlers out of it. Every so often, I rush a settler to reduce the pop, and hire the specialists back.

 

[TheOverseer714]

It's a numbers game, and big metros need lots of expensive buildings to keep the people happy. One metro of 24 or 2 towns of 6 and one city of 12 is the same number of citizens, but the 3 smaller ones are much cheaper on maintenance and easier to keep happy. If you are a builder and are a peaceful player, the bigger makes more sense, an empire of 12 metros can be very powerful in its' own right. For a warmonger who wants dozens or even hundreds of cities, specialist farms are the logical response to the corruption model(which is silly, but that could have its' own thread). I've done both styles, and there are rewards either way, but the specialist farm method has greater rewards for me.

Edit: X-post to infinity and beyond!

 

[PaperBeetle]

A metro working 20 tiles produces 82 food with rails thats for 20 pop working tiles and 21 scientist.
This will net you:
21*3 = 63 beakers
4 free unit support in republic, 8 in monarchy.
1 uncorrupted commerce in turn
1 uncorrupted shield per turn, for 1 gpt with wealth
And it costs:
1gpt maintenance for aquaduct
2gpt maintenance for hospital
2gpt maintenance for mass transit (its cheaper than the upkeep for the cleanup-crew, trust me)

Such a metro will get more than 1gpt uncorrupted. In Republic, it should be making between 40 and 50 gpt gross. In C3C that will shake out to 5gpt net, 6gpt if there are some tiles with commerce bonuses. When running a high tax %, the market will add a couple more gpt to that. As for building transit, did someone pass Emancipation while I wasn't watching? Cleanup crews don't cost upkeep, they are slaves.
Of course, the numbers still add up in favour of towns and cities, rather than metros.

 

[MAS]

Such a metro will get more than 1gpt uncorrupted. In Republic, it should be making between 40 and 50 gpt gross. In C3C that will shake out to 5gpt net, 6gpt if there are some tiles with commerce bonuses. When running a high tax %, the market will add a couple more gpt to that. As for building transit, did someone pass Emancipation while I wasn't watching? Cleanup crews don't cost upkeep, they are slaves.
Of course, the numbers still add up in favour of towns and cities, rather than metros.

He, nitpicking

I like it!

 

[Othniel]

The "specialist farm" style seems to be an accountant's way to play a war game. And about as interesting....

Let's see. Using specialist farms I can do dumb stuff like...research Modern Age techs in 4 turns with the SCI slider at 0%. All that gold coming into my empire to rush units and improvements, to make my people happy, to help me obliterate the enlightened AI civs who know better than to use specialist farms?

Boring. None of the kewl Civvers would dream of it.

 

[MAS]

The "specialist farm" style seems to be an accountant's way to play a war game. And about as interesting....

It is no more "accountant's way" than accounting for each and every commerce generated by citizens working tiles, in order to waste as little as possible of them.

A specialist farm needs none of you attention once its set up. You can set up and forget!

Switching all, or some of them to tax collectors at the end of a research project doesn't have to be done. You can ignore such MM and still make good use of specialist farms.

There are chess players who carefully calculate every possible move several moves ahead. up and including the value of the pieces they or their opponent lose, in order to maximize that as well, aside from trying to win.

Does that make chess an "accountants" game? Yes!
Does using the pion to its maximum usefulness, instead of losing them as fast as possible to use the more interesting pieces instead, make chess an accountants game? No!

For the same reason, using specialist farms doesn't turn civ3 into an accountants game, because if you just set up and forget, you're not doing any accounting!

 

[TheOverseer714]

Using a renaming system simplifies it further, so you can change scientists to taxmen within the domestic advisor screen. I'm lazy, and specialist farms are easier than not using them. I guess some players don't have any measure for success, so score and winning, and winning well have no meaning to them. I personally like winning, and I personally like winning well with a high score, so I use specialist farms as one set of tools to achieve my goals. If a player chooses to not use those tools, then that is their business.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I would appreciate it if you stopped leaving little sniping posts after mine. It's childish and adds nothing.

How old are you? 12?

Using your own words.

 

[MAS]

Here is the full context

Spoiler :

Specialist farms an exploit? I don't think so. They are the rational players response to the ridiculous corruption model, much less an "exploit" than getting into the editor and tweaking everything in sight. Communism having lower corruption than Democracies or Republics has to be Firaxis' idea of a joke. I guess you OCP players must like lower scores, because waiting to go commie before your empires are worth a damn is a sure way to lower your score. Sure, scores aren't everything, but it's sure nice to see Ugh the Warrior hit the top rung, and being on top of the list is the reward for playing well. I'm still waiting to see an OCP player make the top 50 in the hall of fame on this site.

Rubbish, using the editor to modify the game is not an exploit, it's creativity. Try it sometime, you might become a happier person and less right wing. I actually use the editor to remove exploits that I can. Some people play the game for fun, not because they have some childish notion getting a high score makes them a superior person. Or worse, a macho doood.

I'll bet you even mod the Infantry to have 3 movement and an attack of 20. Nah, that's not an exploit....

How old are you? 12?

Anyway, I agree with pot: The kettle is just wrong!

 

[Bartleby]

What's a cpa?

 

[Rodent]

Bah, Childish Quarrels.

Specialist Farms are a matter of choice on lower levels, you use them or you dont, if you do use them it may sometimes make the game feel too easy . A must on levels higher than Emperor because of the Research Speed.

 

[Aabraxan]

What's a cpa?

A Certified Public Accountant.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Not worth it.

 

[darski]

I do have a question about the farms.

I have been setting them up and the minute I turn my back they are all out of whack and doing things I did not tell them to do.

I find it hard to believe that you have to organize each and every city each and every turn. What am I missing that will keep them going without my MM'ing every turn?

Most of mine are set to wealth but a few are building something....

 

[TheOverseer714]

Growth. Every time a city grows, the governor jiggers your MM'ing. So do something to differentiate farms from other cities. Add a number or a punctuation mark to the front of your farms, say *New Baghdad, *New Mecca, etc., etc. Renamed, your farms will be at the top of the list, so each time they grow you can know they are out of whack. Once they hit size 6 or 12, they will stop growing and you can balance them.

 

[darski]

Growth. Every time a city grows, the governor jiggers your MM'ing. So do something to differentiate farms from other cities. Add a number or a punctuation mark to the front of your farms, say *New Baghdad, *New Mecca, etc., etc. Renamed, your farms will be at the top of the list, so each time they grow you can know they are out of whack. Once they hit size 6 or 12, they will stop growing and you can balance them.

i saw that in your pic but I didn't realize that it was to put them at the top of the city list. i will try that next time. i abandoned the game I was playing with them all set up but acting badly.

Thank you for your prompt reply and it makes sense - it was those that would grow that turned nasty.

 

[Rodent]

A little bit of pointy-stick research can do wonders as well. just go whack all AI civs one by one

 

[Aabraxan]

I do have a question about the farms.

I have been setting them up and the minute I turn my back they are all out of whack and doing things I did not tell them to do.

I find it hard to believe that you have to organize each and every city each and every turn. What am I missing that will keep them going without my MM'ing every turn?

Most of mine are set to wealth but a few are building something....

TheOverseer714 is correct. It's the governor trying to do his (or her) job on growth that's messing up your MMing. I haven't been using Overseer's naming conventions to keep track of my farms, but it seems like a pretty good idea and I may try it soon.

FWIW, here's what I do: When I get to the point where I'm setting up farms, set them for high food. Grab all of the excess food that you can so that they grow quickly. Build settlers and workers out of them until you get your farmlands filled. Then start "zeroing out" growth in some of them. IOW, If you can get a farm to hit zero extra fpt and zero growth, do so and set it to produce artillery units. If it's a farm that won't zero out properly and always winds up with an extra food or two, keep it producing settlers and workers. I'd rather have extra workers and settlers than to continue to waste food. You will have to repeat this process and tinker with farms as rails are laid, but once your farmlands are fully railed, you can zero some of the farms out and only the remaining ones will require monitoring.