fyermind
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2008
- Messages
- 96
Since I started seriously playing civ4 I have noticed a few things about how to manage an economy without needing to build too many buildings. I play on marathon frequently, and I like tropical maps, the combination leaves me with soldiers and workers taking up almost all of my hammers and pure cottage spam leaving me with cities that only had +25% to their commerce (+25% science from library, +25% gold from market/grocer) at Liberalism! Even though my base commerce was fantastic and my empire was strong, I was running with my slider low and slowing to fall behind some of the AIs. This was only at Monarch level too. So I started to play around with things and read up on the forums about hybrid economies. I hope here to encourage a general guide to split economies which allow the slider to be run at 100% (be it science, gold or culture) while still keeping cities happy and coffers filled.
The basic concept is that you don't have enough hammers to build all your important commerce buildings in every commerce city. They are commerce cities because they didn't have a lot of hammers to begin with and slaving in banks is just backwards (if fun). The solution is to specialize your commerce cities to a level I haven't heard anyone encourage yet, although some have hinted at it. Some cities will be science cities, they will build only science multipliers and rely on only one type of input - specialists, commerce, or hammers (note that hammer economy cities build hammer multipliers not science or wealth multipliers) - other cities will be wealth cities, they will similarly build only gold multiplier buildings and rely on a DIFFERENT type of input. Each city will need it's own happiness buildings, but because they are keeping their hammer costs down, they may not need hammer buildings at all.
The reason this works so well is in addition to reducing the number of buildings build, not every city you choose to make a commerce city is golden for cottaging. This lets you use cities for what they are good for while still having them make meaningful contributions to your economy.
Situation 1:
If your empire starts to grow too big for it's breeches, your beauro-cap with and academy and fifteen cottaged squares all being worked may be running only half it's golden commerce through your academy. You are loosing a quarter of your base commerce in beakers each turn!!!!! If this isn't a game changing cost you are playing on to easy a difficulty. To solve this problem you want your slider at 100% science. This means you need to find a way to come up with all that cost your empire has without commerce at all. All the courthouses in the world can't do that for you. You have two choices: Hammer out wealth from "production" cities, or merchant up your high food cities. I am going to say right now I never used to build wealth in any meaningful way until I realized how nice it was to have three production cities ready to switch over to military if I needed them to, but still contributing to my economy while I waited for a target or techs. (rifling is a long ways a way from nationalism, and it isn't going any faster if your production is dead weight on your economy) I have been converted. Having some hammer cities build wealth allows your GP farm(s) to still give you the great scientists you really want for bulbing to (or past) libralism, settling, building academies. But it costs you in units. If your diplo looks bad, it is not the time to neglect your military. (it is never a good time to neglect your military, but sometimes it doesn't have to be your top priority) Using your food heavy cities to train merchants (and priests if you are desperate for hammers/shrines) frees your hammer cities for more important things, and lets you take advantage of banks and grocers which come well before factories and power plants. It also can give you great merchants which you can settle in your (future) wall street city (hey is that extra food for more merchants?) or send on trade runs to allow deficit research or mass upgrades (your production cities have been building macemen and trebuchets and you just teched chemistry and steel. what will you do with your out dated army? CANNON RUSH). Your downside? No more great scientists for you.
Situation 2:
There you are happily running a specialist economy when you conquer your neighbor. Your neighbor has twenty towns and at least thirty villages/hamlets. It would be a shame to waste them, but you don't want to run some halfway shoddy weak economy and you don't have enough production to build up libraries and markets and universities and grocers and banks and observatories and all of these new cities. Solution? Specialize. You already have science multipliers in your science cities and wealth multipliers in your wealth cities (if you even have more than one), but everything is virtually independent from your slider. Your slider can't sit at 100% science with only your old wealth cities unless you had some serious wealth going before, so you probably want to run your slider as high as you can (or into culture to secure your new territory) and build up gold multipliers in your newfound commerce cities. The rest of your cities may want to start pumping out of date units now, because you are about to be rolling in dough. Once you are more or less done building wealth buildings and more or less out of your pillaging gold, drop your slider as close to 100% gold as you dare. Your multiplier buildings are now going full swing and the cash is rolling in big time. If you really want to you can try to switch your economy around now by doubling your infrastructure, (libraries and markets in the same city) or you could just find a way to use all that cash (did someone say chariots spam cavalry upgrade, steal pyramids, rushbuy everything you ever wanted?)
This has hardly been a complete guide, but I hope it opens some minds to a new type of hybrid economy. Please add your own ideas on how to use this to mine. If someone who has dealt with screen shots before wants to add some relevant ones, people using this would probably have a much easier time. I'd also love to hear some reactions from higher leveled players on this. (and anyone else who has thoughts on this)
The basic concept is that you don't have enough hammers to build all your important commerce buildings in every commerce city. They are commerce cities because they didn't have a lot of hammers to begin with and slaving in banks is just backwards (if fun). The solution is to specialize your commerce cities to a level I haven't heard anyone encourage yet, although some have hinted at it. Some cities will be science cities, they will build only science multipliers and rely on only one type of input - specialists, commerce, or hammers (note that hammer economy cities build hammer multipliers not science or wealth multipliers) - other cities will be wealth cities, they will similarly build only gold multiplier buildings and rely on a DIFFERENT type of input. Each city will need it's own happiness buildings, but because they are keeping their hammer costs down, they may not need hammer buildings at all.
The reason this works so well is in addition to reducing the number of buildings build, not every city you choose to make a commerce city is golden for cottaging. This lets you use cities for what they are good for while still having them make meaningful contributions to your economy.
Situation 1:
If your empire starts to grow too big for it's breeches, your beauro-cap with and academy and fifteen cottaged squares all being worked may be running only half it's golden commerce through your academy. You are loosing a quarter of your base commerce in beakers each turn!!!!! If this isn't a game changing cost you are playing on to easy a difficulty. To solve this problem you want your slider at 100% science. This means you need to find a way to come up with all that cost your empire has without commerce at all. All the courthouses in the world can't do that for you. You have two choices: Hammer out wealth from "production" cities, or merchant up your high food cities. I am going to say right now I never used to build wealth in any meaningful way until I realized how nice it was to have three production cities ready to switch over to military if I needed them to, but still contributing to my economy while I waited for a target or techs. (rifling is a long ways a way from nationalism, and it isn't going any faster if your production is dead weight on your economy) I have been converted. Having some hammer cities build wealth allows your GP farm(s) to still give you the great scientists you really want for bulbing to (or past) libralism, settling, building academies. But it costs you in units. If your diplo looks bad, it is not the time to neglect your military. (it is never a good time to neglect your military, but sometimes it doesn't have to be your top priority) Using your food heavy cities to train merchants (and priests if you are desperate for hammers/shrines) frees your hammer cities for more important things, and lets you take advantage of banks and grocers which come well before factories and power plants. It also can give you great merchants which you can settle in your (future) wall street city (hey is that extra food for more merchants?) or send on trade runs to allow deficit research or mass upgrades (your production cities have been building macemen and trebuchets and you just teched chemistry and steel. what will you do with your out dated army? CANNON RUSH). Your downside? No more great scientists for you.
Situation 2:
There you are happily running a specialist economy when you conquer your neighbor. Your neighbor has twenty towns and at least thirty villages/hamlets. It would be a shame to waste them, but you don't want to run some halfway shoddy weak economy and you don't have enough production to build up libraries and markets and universities and grocers and banks and observatories and all of these new cities. Solution? Specialize. You already have science multipliers in your science cities and wealth multipliers in your wealth cities (if you even have more than one), but everything is virtually independent from your slider. Your slider can't sit at 100% science with only your old wealth cities unless you had some serious wealth going before, so you probably want to run your slider as high as you can (or into culture to secure your new territory) and build up gold multipliers in your newfound commerce cities. The rest of your cities may want to start pumping out of date units now, because you are about to be rolling in dough. Once you are more or less done building wealth buildings and more or less out of your pillaging gold, drop your slider as close to 100% gold as you dare. Your multiplier buildings are now going full swing and the cash is rolling in big time. If you really want to you can try to switch your economy around now by doubling your infrastructure, (libraries and markets in the same city) or you could just find a way to use all that cash (did someone say chariots spam cavalry upgrade, steal pyramids, rushbuy everything you ever wanted?)
This has hardly been a complete guide, but I hope it opens some minds to a new type of hybrid economy. Please add your own ideas on how to use this to mine. If someone who has dealt with screen shots before wants to add some relevant ones, people using this would probably have a much easier time. I'd also love to hear some reactions from higher leveled players on this. (and anyone else who has thoughts on this)
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