Super GP farm after Biology

[stachnie]

In my present game I have tried to make a super GP farm. I had a city surrounded by forests (some 16 or 17) so I did not cut them but built National Epic plus a few Great Wonders there, waited until Scientific Method, started to make Forest Preserves everywhere and (after Biology) built National Park.

Result: each Preserve gives one free specialist, with NE each of them gives 6 GPP (no Pacifism, no Philosophical trait) plus one free specialist from SoL, so although a few Preserves are not ready yet, the city is pumping more than 100 GPP/turn. Perhaps it would be more efficient just to irrigate a few River/Grassland cities but I preferred to cottage them instead. Although its size is only 14 and it will not grow further, it is quite productive because about half of specialists are Prophets supported by Angkor Wat and it has a Dike, Forge and Factory

S.

 

[Refar]

But you are right, Natinal Park makes for a good GP farm late game.

 

[ICNP]

Some dedication there to wait so long with all those forests. If you have that much GPP then you might as well pull out Pacifism (Unless your going to war). I'm guessing since your so late in the game your only using them for settling?

 

[The Keeper]

I did this too.

In my most recent game, I came to a point where a domination win was out of the question. I had to change my strategy.

I had a production city with 2 food resources and a whole bunch of forests and a few mined hills. I turned all the forests into forest preserves and built the national park and globe theater. I farmed over the horses (post biology) and put as many artists as I could and began pumping the culture and also a few artists. I did have to switch to caste system (making the GT worthless) to accommodate all the artists. My 0 wonder production city went from >5000 culture to 50000 culture in less than 100 turns.

I pulled out a cultural victory before Mansa Musa launched and before time ran out. Who ever heard of the vikings winning a cultural victory before?

 

[FuRRie]

Forest Preserves can become very powerful when running a SE economy, i'm also trying some new things with them.

 

[Defiant47]

In my present game I have tried to make a super GP farm. I had a city surrounded by forests (some 16 or 17) so I did not cut them but built National Epic plus a few Great Wonders there, waited until Scientific Method, started to make Forest Preserves everywhere and (after Biology) built National Park.

Result: each Preserve gives one free specialist, with NE each of them gives 6 GPP (no Pacifism, no Philosophical trait) plus one free specialist from SoL, so although a few Preserves are not ready yet, the city is pumping more than 100 GPP/turn. Perhaps it would be more efficient just to irrigate a few River/Grassland cities but I preferred to cottage them instead. Although its size is only 14 and it will not grow further, it is quite productive because about half of specialists are Prophets supported by Angkor Wat and it has a Dike, Forge and Factory

S.

The only downside to this is having to hang on to those forests for so long.

However, you should be specializing your GP farm by maximizing your food and specialist output. That means NO cottages!! Farm everything that isn't a forest that could give you a free specialist!

Some dedication there to wait so long with all those forests. If you have that much GPP then you might as well pull out Pacifism (Unless your going to war). I'm guessing since your so late in the game your only using them for settling?

As the game rolls on, settling becomes LESS useful. Early on, settling can be very beneficial, but at the end you'll barely get anything out of them.

 

[Rvil Plum]

A huge problem with keeping forests for so long, is the massive defence bonus they can give to an invading enemy = 50% on lowland, 75% on hills. I usually have to chop forests just to stay alive at Emperor and could not fight off invading enemy civs who made use of those defence bonuses. My typical late game National Park GP farm is therefore some useless city with 70% ice and tundra forests that gives me more specialists than I have food for. Sob.

Regards - Mr P

 

[PibbZ]

My typical late game National Park GP farm is therefore some useless city with 70% ice and tundra forests that gives me more specialists than I have food for. Sob.

Good thing these specialists dont eat, thus dont need food

 

[Rvil Plum]

Eeek, so why do I get so few specialists? I'm usually lucky if I can get just 4 or 5 out of such a marginal city. Are you sure they don't eat anything?

Regards - Mr P

 

[IronCrown]

Yes... I guess they feed on squirrels and berries out of those cozy woods

 

[Thanny]

Eeek, so why do I get so few specialists? I'm usually lucky if I can get just 4 or 5 out of such a marginal city. Are you sure they don't eat anything?

Regards - Mr P

There seems to be some confusion over citizen specialists versus free specialists. The key word with the latter is "free". You don't need a population point for those, and it's population points that require food.

 

[Rvil Plum]

Just had a look at my last six games, and I only built a National Park city once. Yep, it was ice /tundra, and so poor in food it just had the 5 specialists from the "Forest Preserve" tiles and none from food. As you can see I don't use them much - LOL.

Must admit that playing a game with a strategy to have a fertile city with lots of forest tiles in it is an intriguing idea, but would it be game winning?

Space Race
= you can't hurry the ship construction so Great Engineers are no good

Cultural Victory
= yes Great Artists joining a culture city are mega useful, but I have usually won a cultural victory by this point in the game, so I don't really need them.

Domination or Diplomatic
= N/A as I can't see how a few specialist GP could help you win it. Having said that, I have never gifted a GP to an enemy civ. Wonder what would happen if I did? Either they would immediately offer to have my babies, or they would instantly declare war, on the grounds I was insane and unfit to command.

Golden Age
= always useful, and could be game winning. Must admit I tend to use the one GP I get from my ice/tundra "National Park" city towards a Golden Age. It's usually the fourth Golden Age I have bought using GP rather than wonders, so I would need a mega "National Park" city to churn out 5 GP to make the strategy worth it.

Nope, I just can't see it being worthwhile. You would have to preserve the forest tiles for so long, that there must be better things to do with those tiles whilst you are waiting. The long term impact of an early chop and early tile improvement must far outweigh the benefit of keeping the tile as a forest.


Regards - Mr P

 

[stachnie]

I could afford to dedicate a forest city to have the National Park because I had a lot of luck at the beginning of the game. Vedic Aryans destroyed Arabs who founded Hinduism, finally my closest neighbour Huayna Capac captured Mecca (probably from Sitting Bull) but it seems he was too busy to hook his Horses and Copper on time. Just after he managed to do it, my army of CR I axemen was knocking the door of his capital, Cuzco (it was the city that eventually became my GP farm). His last city, Mecca, was taken mainly by my new, shiny CR II Swordsmen.

It gave me a lot of land (I did not settle it for a long time to avoid a complete economic crash) so I could afford to leave all these forests and improve terrain around other cities. Switching to Pacifism is not a good option because I have 2-3 religions per city so I prefer Free Religion. Great People were used to launch a GA (mainly to do a big civic change without anarchy), found 2 shrines and a corporation HQ. Now I have about 3/4 of the greatest continent, MPP with the only remaining neighbour (who is my UN competitor) and a significant lead in GNP, production and military (also in tech, but not so much).

I think I will abandon that game - I rather have no chance to win via UN but I have a guaranteed win via spaceship.


S.

 

[mboettcher]

No point in making your forest city your gp farm. First off the best advantage to a gp farm is early so don't wait pump all your ability into it early and collect super specialists to give it massive production. Yes forests give +1 free specialist. But once you discover biology so do farms which give +2 food. The only advantage is the extra hammers and commerce. No advantage for gp farm. Chop those forests for wonders and build farms. Get your pop up and make them specialists. Build pyramids. Run representation.

Best place for gp farm is city with access to both food resources, grassland and hills (for mines for wonders) and if your lucky flood plains.

I'm attaching the best GP farm I ever built (I got lucky on land). It was my capitol and it had national epic and iron works (because engineers are best), along with every valuable wonder. Yes I didn't check lock modified assets but I didn't use it. BTW Germans are best for GP farming because they can carry their rep gov later into the game with assembly plants and use those extra engineers to generate valuable great people types (up to a whopping 11 in the iron works city, 8 in others).

(Go to my profile, its the only file: 1949 Gen Maximilian under Germans)

 

[mboettcher]

Settling definatley makes a down turn in value mid game, but I try to settle only valuable territory where I can grow strong productive cities fast i.e. acces to either food resources or lots of grassland under caste system in order to generate a lot of science. otherwise I stay away. not worth the dead weight mid game. Late game when universal suffrage swings into effect It becomes very valuable to go after marginal spots because they can be turned into profitable cities fast and you can build a lot of momentum.

 

[rickpstedman]

I have a city that has 3-4 flood plan tiles, some other grassland river tiles, and about 6 forest tiles. It's around 1650, and I don't have biology yet; but I do have the spiritual trait (+100% GP), I'm running pacifism (another +100%), and I built the National Epic (yes, +100% GP). So once I get the National Park, and with the food surplus I have, I'll have a good collection of specialists to keep the GPP flowing... Plus, the city itself has a few useful tiles (mined hills) that make it worthwhile, i.e., it's not just sitting around useless until I get National Park.

 

[Welnic]

Settling definatley makes a down turn in value mid game, but I try to settle only valuable territory where I can grow strong productive cities fast i.e. acces to either food resources or lots of grassland under caste system in order to generate a lot of science. otherwise I stay away. not worth the dead weight mid game. Late game when universal suffrage swings into effect It becomes very valuable to go after marginal spots because they can be turned into profitable cities fast and you can build a lot of momentum.

He was referring to settling Great People, not making settlers for new cities.

I often pick out a heavily forested city with a couple of good food sources early and make that my GP farm. Enemy capitals are sometimes good for this. If I am going to make a captured city a NP GP farm then I make sure that I pillage the roads on non-resource non-forest squares since you can't do that once they are yours. Then I farm any non-forested squares but don't put roads on them, once there are preserves next to them I pillage the farms so a forest can grow.

A grassland forest preserve supports one specialist as does a post biology farm. But it is a free specialist who doesn't cause any unhappiness, there is a production bonus from the forest, and the preserve also spread forests and boosts happiness.

 

[IglooDame]

For a Time victory HoF game I'm running, I just settled a city in the middle of a large jungle. There's a horse square and a uranium square, so I improved those and then built the National Park and made a whole bunch of forest (actually jungle) preserves, getting something like over a dozen free science specialists (one for mercantilism, one for Statue of Liberty, and a lot of preserves) out of it while it's still size 2.

 

[kurtkage]

Yea IglooDude I did that recently as well with an almost complete jungle city with NP. One thing to do with this is get Sids Sushi or Cereal Mills of course, for a food boost to squeeze out some more specialists.

What sucks is it is slow to get enough buildings for the specialists if you don't want to stay in Caste system. A hammer corp wouldn't hurt for this if you managed/happened/was worth it to get one, or rush buy with gold I suppose.

Now whether you would be better off chopping the jungle is up for debate I suppose....

I have to agree tho about using NEpic in a more conventional GP farm as apposed to waiting around for the super NP city with 17/18 whatever forest preserves, tho that is many free specialists.

Over all I enjoy what NP has brought to the game, some fun options.

Oh one more thing to the person who built Globe theatre in the NP city... Is that really needed? You are getting a ton of happiness from preserves. EDIT: nevermind, you were doing it for extra artist slots I assume.