The Hybrid Economy

[DarkFyre99]

Overview

The Hybrid Economy is a type of economy that combines the best elements of the Specialist Economy and the Cottage Economy, while minimizing the disadvantages of both types of economies. This article assumes use of the Beyond the Sword expansion, but it should be easily adapted to both Warlords and Vanilla Civilization IV. Like a Specialist Economy, a Hybrid Economy's cities are highly specialised. Like a Cottage Economy, a Hybrid Economy relies on cottages as it's primary source of beakers. Unlike either a Cottage or Specialist economy, the goal of a Hybrid Economy is to keep the science slider at 100%.

Characteristics
Attributes

• most common improvements: farms and cottages
• beaker source: primarily commerce, some specialists
• espionage source: specialists
• gold source: specialists
• optimal slider position: 100% science
• best civics: Representation, Free Speech, Caste System
• best traits: Financial, Philosophical

Advantages

• high degree of city specialization
• no economic crash with switch to Emancipation
• high GPP production
• not as much micromanaging as a Specialist Economy
• high degree of predictability in Great People produced

Disadvantages

• using the culture for happiness causes research to slow down, but not as much as a Cottage Economy
• more micromanaging than a Cottage Economy
• unable to use Slavery Civic after Caste System to boost production

Cities in a Hybrid Economy

Cities in a Hybrid Economy are heavily specialized, just as in a Specialist Economy. Few buildings are constructed beyond the necessary ones, allowing the greatest number of specialists or cottages to be worked for the longest period of time. The city types are:

Capital

This city tends to become a "Jack 0f All Trades" city, usually having ample commerce as well as production, additional happiness, which often makes Bureaucracy attractive mid-game. Of course, if you start with Mysticism and you have a lot of extra food in your capital, you might want to consider founding an early religion, making it your Wall Street city, and running some other legal civic instead. Or moving your Palace to better location.

Production Cities
Production Cities produce your military and construct most of the wonders your empire needs. Most empires need only two or three. Improvements are mines and other hammer producers, plus the necessary farms to support the citizens to work the hammer tiles. Buildings are, naturally, hammer multipliers. National Wonders are Heroic Epic, West Point, and Ironworks.

Wealth Cities
Wealth cities produce the gold necessary to pay for costs of your empire, whether it is maintenance for your cities, civics upkeep, or pay for your military. Small empires only need one. Improvements are farms to support merchants. Buildings are, naturally, gold multipliers. The city with the highest food output gets Wall-Street. Ideally, this should also be a Shrine city. These cities produce a lot of Great Merchants, which should be settled in the Wall-Street city so you can keep that science slider at 100% for most of the game.

Science Cities
Science cities produce the beakers your empire needs to research new technologies. These cities make up the majority of your empire. Improvements are cottages and other commerce producers. Buildings are, naturally, beaker multipliers. The city with the second highest food production will eventually get Oxford University, and gets farms to support scientist specialists.

Espionage Cities
Espionage cities produce the espionage points your empire needs to conduct espionage missions, both active and passive. You really only need one in your empire. Improvements are farms to support spy specialists. Buildings are, naturally, espionage buildings. Due to the lateness of most espionage buildings, this is a good candidate for a late game forested tundra/National Park city.

Strategy by Age

Classical Age
The classical age is when you'll be getting your core cities established. By the end of this era, your HE city will be churning out units, your future Wall-Street city will be churning out gold and Great Merchants, and the rest of your cities will producing beakers, primarily through cottages. Civics would be slavery and organized religion, and Hereditary Rule, or perhaps Representation if you snagged the Pyramids. Hopefully, you'll be able to snag The Great Library in your future Oxford University city.

Middle Ages
Congratulations, you've just made the switch to Caste System. Get used to it, because you'll be sticking with it for a while. By now, you'll have enough improved tiles to switch citizens to hammer tiles while building infrastructure, and back to cottages or specialists the rest of the time.

During this age, your science cities should be slowly building banks after they've finished their Universities, so you'll be able to build Wall-Street as soon as possible. Needless to say, you probably won't have to build any unnecessary Universities in your wealth cities.

Renaissance
With Liberalism comes Free Speech, and with Democracy comes Emancipation, so it's time to start prepping your Wall-Street and Oxford University cities for the post-Caste System era. Start building cottages until one-turn from completion over your farms, and do the same with windmills over any mines. Once another Empire switches to Emancipation, it's time to do likewise, before unhappiness cripples your Empire. Switch as many farms to cottages as possible, and mines as windmills, until your city is growing while still running seven specialists.

Industrial Age
With Caste System no longer viable, you're going to get some beakers in your wealth cities, so it's time to build some libraries and observatories in your wealth cities. If you've been expanding aggressively, you might want to build some grocers in your science cities as well, since your science slider might have to drop below 100%. Fortunately, you already built all those banks.

This is also the Era of the Corporation, and you've been producing a lot of Great Merchants, so you should save one to found one of the Food Corporations in your Wall Street city. Spread it to your Oxford University, your production cities, and your capital. If you're lucky, you've saved a Great Engineer to found Mining Inc. in Wall Street, which you can then spread to your production cities and capital as well.

Modern Age
You haven't won yet? Then what are you waiting for? Build whatever you need to reach whatever victory condition you've been aiming for.

Other Issues

The National Epic
Unlike a Specialist Economy, which relies on Great Scientists to suppliment your beaker production, or a Cottage Economy, which uses this National Wonder to create a GP farm, you get to decide which Great People you want the most of. If you want a lot of Great Merchants, build it in your future Wall Street city. If you want a lot of Great Scientists, build it in your future Oxford University city. Maybe you'd like a lot of Great Spies late in the game, so hold onto it until your Espionage city is up and running, or Ironworks to get some Great Engineers to found Mining Inc. and rush some late-game wonders. Or pair it with National Park and get a super GP farm up and running. The choice is yours!

 

[DarkFyre99]

The Caste System -> Emancipation Switch
If your game runs long enough, sooner or later you’ll have to switch out of Caste System and start running Emancipation simply to deal with all the happiness caused by other Empires running that civic. In a Specialist Economy, this causes your research to crash, because there are no mature cottages to take up the slack for all those out of work scientists. It takes 35 turns (normal, Emancipation) to mature a cottage into a town, and since you’ve been relying on cottages to produce most of your gold, you probably won’t be able to run your science slider at anything over 60% until they’re fully mature. That means 35 turns before your economy recovers back to its pre-Caste System state... and those cottages need to be built first.

Since a hybrid economy means you’re getting most of your science from mature towns anyways, this switch doesn’t cause your research to crash. Only two cities are primarily affected: Your Wall Street City, and your Oxford City. These are the only two cities that need to be cottaged, which can be done very quickly if you prebuilt them before the switch. Furthermore, since your science slider is set at 90-100%, your Oxford city recovers after only fifteen turns.


The Care and Feeding of your Wall Street and Oxford Cities

These two cities are your primary Great People producers throughout the game. So the name of the game is to run as many specialists as possible, for as many turns as possible, while working as few tiles as possible. Because these are the cities most similar to a Specialist Economy’s normal city, they also require the most micromanagement in the game.

The Wall Street City

Early game, this city is quite simple. You want to build this city in an area that can produce a lot of food early, which means a lot of food resources and hopefully a lot of rivers or flood plains. Having a shrine in this city is a bonus, but not absolutely necessary. An enemy’s capital that holds the shrine to Buddhism or Hinduism is ideal, allowing you to cottage your capital to take advantage of Bureaucracy’s bonuses later.

Focus on building farms to support more merchants later, and build or whip the necessary infrastructure, including granaries and courthouses. Build some mines or workshops so you can build more infrastructure later. Settle any Great Merchants that emerge from this city back into the city. They’ll help keep your tech rate at 100% plus produce extra food.

During the Middle Ages, with the switch to Caste System, you’re going to want to keep an eye on this city. You want to grow the city as large as the happiness cap allows, while running as many merchant specialists as possible. When you get more happiness, send a few your merchants into the fields to grow the population. There are also two important buildings that will need to be built: a grocer and a bank. Immediately when grocers become available, set all those merchants to work in the mines and the workshops to build those buildings ASAP. Repeat this procedure with the bank. Don’t be afraid to starve your citizens a little in order to do so, you can always produce more food later. Plus they’re getting fat from laying around and counting money. Great Merchants still get settled back into the city.

The Renaissance signals the approach of the end of the Caste System Era. Sooner or later, you’ll have to make the switch to Emancipation, so it’s time to start pre-building some cottages. Don’t complete them, simply build them until one turn from completion. It’ll save time later.

The Industrial Age will likely see the end of Caste System. It also signals the approach of Corporations and Biology, so it’s time to consider the Switch. After the Emancipation Switch, your city needs, at most, a population of 27, so it’s time to consider slowing or halting its growth. During this age, you’ll stop settling Great Merchants in this city. You need one to found one of the food corporations, after all. Check how many turns it is until the next Great Merchant (don’t forget to check your Oxford city… it may produce a Great Scientist before Wall Street does) and compare it to how many turns it’ll take to get the tech for your chosen Food Corporation. If one will emerge before you research the tech, then settle that Great Merchant. Otherwise, save it to found the corporation. After that, send those Great Merchants on Trade Missions.

The Industrial Age also gives you levees, so if you placed your Wall Street city in an area with a lot of rivers (which seems likely), then you might want to send a few of those farmers to the mines and workshops to build them whenever you need to stunt your growth due to the happiness cap. The Industrial Age is also when you give your Wall Street city finally lives up to its name, and you build Wall Street. Building Levees will help you with that.

Hopefully, Wall Street will be complete before you have to switch to Emancipation. But after the switch, you’ll need to cottage as many farms as possible until you’re running food neutral while running seven merchants. With the extra hammers, you can start building science infrastructure. When you found a Food Corporation in this city, you’ll be able to cottage even more farms. Build about four so you can spread the Corporation to your Oxford city, your production cities, and your capital.

If you make it this far, the modern age is pretty much the same as a Cottage Economy.

The Oxford University City

The same strategy used with the Wall Street city works well with the Oxford University City... only you build science infrastructure buildings rather than wealth infrastructure. The main difference with this city is what you do with the Great Scientists the city produces. Settling a Great Scientist in Oxford rarely produces as much a benefit as building an academy in one of your science city, or rushing a tech.

In addition, unlike Wall Street, Oxford usually doesn’t need wealth infrastructure late in the game... though building a bank in the city makes sense, since you need a few of them to build Wall Street.

edited to expand upon the idea behind Oxford and Wall Street, especially post Caste System.

 

[DaveMcW]

The city with the second highest food production will eventually get Oxford University, and gets farms to support scientist specialists.

If you can maintain 100% science slider, Oxford will be far more productive in a cottaged city.

 

[DarkFyre99]

True. But you're forgetting two things:

1) Without Caste System, the highest number of scientists you can run in a city is three... four once Laboratories come online, so if you're trying to maximize the number of scientist specialists, you'll need Oxford university.

2) With Food Corporations like Cereal Mills, it becomes possible to work as many cottages as allowed by a city's big fat cross, and still run six or seven scientist specialists.

I included a pic of my Oxford city from my last game, right before a domination win. I was still in the process of cottaging over the last wine tile, but if that worker had finished, the city would've worked seventeen cottages, while still having enough excess food to run seven scientists once I'd finished computers and built a laboratory. The eighth specialist is courtesy of the Statue of Liberty.

 

[DaveMcW]

1) Without Caste System

Middle Ages
Congratulations, you've just made the switch to Caste System. Get used to it, because you'll be sticking with it for a while.

2) With Food Corporations like Cereal Mills, it becomes possible to work as many cottages as allowed by a city's big fat cross, and still run six or seven scientist specialists.

This sounds like a cottaged city to me.

 

[DarkFyre99]

Dave,

Oxford University usually becomes available right before the dreaded Emancipation switch. Well... dreaded if you're relying on Caste System to run as many specialists as possible in multiple cities. If you're running a cottage economy, you probably relish the switch, especially if you have a tech lead.

Before I made the switch to Emancipation, due to growing unhappiness, I was running about fifteen scientists in that city IIRC. It already had a population of 24, which meant that either I had to kill off two population points somehow (Statue of Liberty), or I had to build Oxford so I could continue running as many scientists as possible in my Great Scientist "farm."

Sooner or later, if the game runs long enough, you're not going to have the option of running Caste System any more. Once other Empires start running Emancipation, unhappiness becomes a problem, and any cities you've been running 10+ specialists in get cut down to, at most, four. The "emancipation crash" is a huge problem for Specialist Economies, since you have few, if any, mature cottages in your science cities to take up the slack for all those out of work scientists.

However, since most science cities in a hybrid economy have been working cottages all this time, the change from Caste System to Emancipation doesn't affect them. It only affects your wall street city, scientist (future Oxford) city, and any other wealth cities (if any). In other words, you only have to cottage two, maybe three cities, rather than all of them except your production cities and your capital.

In addition, thanks to Oxford and Wall Street, you've can still have two cities producing great merchants and great scientists at a decent rate. Furthermore, since you know they're unlikely to produce anything except great merchants and great scientists, and you know when they'll produce them, you can make plans based upon them... unlike the great crap shoot of the Cottage Economy's GP farm. If you know you're getting a Great Scientist in five turns, you can put off researching Computers and light bulb the GS instead, shaving off half the time required.

Is it optimal to put Oxford in a city with three food resources rather than the cottaged grassland city at the junction of two rivers with five dye tiles? Not if you're running a cottage economy. After all, you have a GP farm to produce Great People.

But this isn't a cottage economy. It's a Specialist/Cottage hybrid economy, so you don't have a GP farm. You have a scientist farm, and a merchant farm, and a spy farm... plus a whole lot of cottages. Oxford University isn't just a beaker multiplier. It also allows you to add three more scientists, and that function is as important as its beaker multiplier. If you're not using those scientist slots, you're not taking full advantage of Oxford.

The ideal science city in a cottage economy has a population of 20. The ideal science city in a specialist economy has a population of 40... practically impossible to achieve in most cases, especially after Emancipation. The ideal science city in a hybrid economy has a population of 27 wherever Oxford University is.. without the Statue of Liberty, of course . Without a lot of excess food, it's pretty hard to grow a city to that size.

If you build Oxford in one of your cottaged cities, you're probably going to have to plow a couple of cottages down and put up farms. It makes far more sense to put Oxford in a very high population city that is primarily farms, and then cottage them over, than it does the other way around.

It takes 35 turns (normal speed, Emancipation) to mature a cottage. If you prepare your Oxford site properly by pre-building cottages over the farms, then the switch can happen in a couple of turns.

How many turns does it take to grow a size 20 city to size 27 without demolishing any more cottages than are absolutely necessary to maintain a +4 food surplus? About 70 at normal speed, IIRC.

Anyhow, thanks for the input. I'll have to revise the section on science cities. I'll include a few screenshots of cities at various times to better illustrate the idea.

Tomorrow, though.

It's waaaay past my bedtime.

 

[Dairuka]

I had to read what DarkFyre was saying about three times before I finally understand what he means.

It makes sense to run cottages on a 'scientist specialist only' city. You can't use Caste System because of the Emancipation Happiness issue - which leaves you with only what the Library, University, Laboratory and Oxford University offers in terms of Scientist Specialists.

The cottages boost the commerce, which boosts an already high science bonus given to you by the scientist specialists, scientist buildings and scientist national wonder.

Leaving it as a primarily farmed city will cause the city to grow far beyond 27, which leaves only two choices.

A. You'll be running specialists OTHER than scientists in your scientist specialist only city. This will often leave you not getting a Great Scientist in the city that was meant to farm Great Scientists.

B. You'll be running 'Citizens' for a whopping +1 hammer, which badly pales in comparison to the benefits of a fully mature cottage.

----

Great read Darkfyre. For a long time I've been dabbling in Hybrid Economies - but specializing 'specialist specialized' cities is definitally a unique idea that I haven't fully implemented yet. Usually my specialist specialized city is a mish-mash of specialists on a highly farmed city.

I also like the idea of putting those forested Tundra's to good use. Puts a normally mediocre city to very good use. I guess this'll cause me to stop dumping roads/improvements on nearby tiles to the forested/preservations for the extra chance of gaining a new forested tile.

 

[Diamondeye]

I really like the article, but I have one note here:
You mention that the ideal goal is keeping the slider at 100%.
When I usually refer to a hybrid economy, all I mean is a semi-specialist economy, and I usually run scientists, not merchants. I then keep the slider at 100% when the techs are important, and at 0% to "refill my coffers" once in a while. I can do this on Noble and still be in the techlead. Also, I do, especially early in the game, prefer Slavery Labor civic over Caste System Labor civic.

 

[DarkFyre99]

Thank you, both!

Dairuka,

Having played a few Specialist Economies, I really enjoyed having cities dedicated to producing specific Great Person. Being able to make plans knowing that I'll be getting a Great Scientist in X turns is an advantage IMO, especially with the new content from Beyond the Sword.

Diamondeye,

I think the power of Great Merchants is severely underrated. Great Scientists may get the spotlight for being able to rush techs, but settled Great Merchants beget more Great Merchants, thanks to the bonus food they provide.

 

[Percy]

Agreed. I have overlooked the power of GMs, and will try and use them more.

Also, it's often better to use a few merchants which allow you to raise the slider by 10%, than to lower it and use scientists.

See this article for reference.

 

[Enigma256]

just wondering: why 7 specialists?
is there a reason for this "magic number"?

 

[Dairuka]

I had to read what DarkFyre was saying about three times before I finally understand what he means.

It makes sense to run cottages on a 'scientist specialist only' city. You can't use Caste System because of the Emancipation Happiness issue - which leaves you with only what the Library, University, Laboratory and Oxford University offers in terms of Scientist Specialists.

The cottages boost the commerce, which boosts an already high science bonus given to you by the scientist specialists, scientist buildings and scientist national wonder.

Leaving it as a primarily farmed city will cause the city to grow far beyond 27, which leaves only two choices.

A. You'll be running specialists OTHER than scientists in your scientist specialist only city. This will often leave you not getting a Great Scientist in the city that was meant to farm Great Scientists.

B. You'll be running 'Citizens' for a whopping +1 hammer, which badly pales in comparison to the benefits of a fully mature cottage.

just wondering: why 7 specialists?
is there a reason for this "magic number"?

7 is the magic number, because it's the maximum number of scientist specialists you can run on a scientist specialist city. You 'could' run caste system; but of course - if your enemies have emancipation running, and you're not 100% Specialist Economy, you're going to get hit hard by the happiness penalty. Going down the slider will hurt you much more than it'd hurt a pure specialist economy.

 

[DarkFyre99]

Yep... without caste system, the most scientist specialists you can get is 7:

• the Library can give you two
• the Observatory can give you one
• Oxford University can give you three
• the Laboratory can give you one

The same is true with Merchant specialists:

• the Market can give you two
• the Grocer can give you two
• Wall Street can give you three

IIRC, that pattern of seven maximum specialists holds true for all other specialist types except priests.

 

[Dairuka]

My great engineer farm wasn't much of a farm. I just dumped GE wonders in there, ran that gimpy single engineer (Forge) specialist and hoped that it'd catch up to the Merchant and Scientist city. It did once and earned me the Statue of Liberty. Of course, in comparison my Great Artist farm was unstoppable, since I was able to put the Parthenon and the National Epic in that city without soiling the GP production line. It was literally pumping out GA's every 30 turns without PHI or Pacifism.

BTW - I won the game with a resounding boom. I played as Pacal II (Random Leader), and grabbed a Cultural Victory in 1200 AD on Monarch Difficulty, Standard Map, 8 civs, Normal Speed.

I adopted the other continent AI's state religion to keep good relations - and I vassalized my two northern neighbors Shaka and Justinian.
The AI didn't have a chance to switch to Emancipation due to the early win.

I was easily able to keep up in technology at 70% slider, earning at least 100 gold per turn for upgrades - no espionage - no tech trading done through the entire game (AI's could trade though) - six cottage cities - four SE cities (Science, Artist, Merchant, Gimped Engineer/Wonder dump.)

My second game on Emperor didn't go so well since I didn't have either Philosophy or Financial as my leader traits. I got stuck with Asoka (Random Leader) who is Spi/Org. I was about 8% land away from dominating the world, when Russia managed to eek out a Space Race victory while I was in the midst of conquering Peter's land. Sadly I was more of a SE than a Hybrid Economy - since I was at war from the word go. I just couldn't commit my workers to switching my whipping city farms into cottages.

Personally I think there is a lot more micromanagement to a Hybrid Economy than there is to a Specialist Economy. It's not easy keeping GP production % pure, and even worse is finding three-four city locations that are suitable within your original land grab of 6 cities (standard map). Taking the good city locations from the AI is the only option - which delays the whole start of the Hybrid Economy process. After that, you're stuck playing catch up with the AI without the huge boost that you'd get from a pure CE economy's cottages maturing the moment you pick up Liberalism and Printing Press. It's more of a moderate bonus.

I'm going to try the hybrid economy again, this time with only two cities specialized for Scientists and Merchants.

 

[omglazers]

EXCELLENT post. I love it love love love it.

Now, how about talking about leaders? Who would rock it in a hybrid economy.

It's no surprise that financial and philosophical characters seem like they would do the best. Perhaps Elizabeth or Pericles in the front.

 

[hoLLo]

This is good stuff...

A couple notes, I have run this economy a couple times using Elizabeth on monarch and it has worked very well. I am most impressed with taking advantage of 100% GP chances, as in knowing exactly when and what type of GP i'm about to get. Priceless. I also like how this build is not dependent on the Pyramids, which although is (always) nice to have, the time spent building it can easily be spent building other important improvements and units. In my first try at this I built an army instead of the Pyramids, wiped out my only neighbour on my island, and turned his capital (with shrine already built) into my Wall Street city. I gained more from conquering my island than I probably would from having the Pyramids. Besides if you do this properly you'll be switching to Representation sooner than you think. My opinion is that if stone is in your capital radius OR you happen to be expanding towards it already then build them. In my last game I beelined medicine at around 1400AD which was probably my personal best, then once I grabbed Sid's sushi the rest of the game was actually too easy. In that same game I aimed at making my capital commerce heavy to run Bureaucracy all the way until I began switching over my GM and GS farms to cottages. I grabbed a coastal spot for my capital as well and built Globe Theatre to let it grow for the trade route bonus. Between cottages, bureaucracy and 5 trade routes all at about 12 commerce each, my capital was producing some serious beakers without Oxford. The beauty is that with a proper Wall Street city, my science slider stayed between 90-100 all game. My next game I'm going to try saving National Park for my capital, save about 4 forests, then build all the dirty buildings (except coal plant)

I prefer to play on standard maps(pc not that sharp) so the only drawback I can say about this build is it's dependency on the map. A half version of this economy can be run anywhere I guess, but to truly see it perform you will need a very suitable starting spot. This means a lot of green, food resources, and rivers which of course you may already be looking for but to really work you need a very big radius of good food spots around your capital. This means regenerating maps, but once you grab the good one i hope it works well for you. Great article.

 

[AndiD]

Indeed, this article was a kind of "breakthrough" for me, being regularly competitive on Monarch now so that I can consider trying Emperor in the near future.

I had a few problems getting the concept humming - never bothered much with specialists before so the idea of "cultivating" two "throrughbred" GP farms (Oxford and Wall Street) did not work out right from the start so especially the Wall Street was quite late up and running as intended.

An eye-opener was my last game as Peter (the first Philo leader I ever played with actually paying attention to specialists), had marble and got both Parthenon and the GL. Scientists (and a few merchants in between) every few turns it seemed until Scientific Method.

A few lessons learnt from me which may not be obvious at first:
- It took me awhile to actually settle my merchants - they "pay" for themselves in three ways, gold (multiplied), more research later (higher slider) and food.

- I needed a few games to iron out common mistakes of national wonders in the capital. I'd recommend neither Oxford Uni nor Wall Street for the capital, since the second long-term benefit of these wonders is running seven scientists/merchants. In a "jack of all trades" capital (which I usually tend to, sometimes even staying Bureaucracy all game) there is often too much else to do for the rest of the game so that keeping the seven specialist guys is difficult and may hinder production.

- Caste System allows Merchants without Markets and Grocers. Never thought of that until now...

- The "espionage" national park city is a neat idea, had one in the last game. Thanks to a GSpy for scotland yard I had 200 EP without paying much attention to that city before (half desert, half forest plains, was there just for a gold mine and three wines...)

Edit - one more issue:
- The predictability of a Great Merchant is awesome in combination with "The Power of Sushi" (see other article). In all the games I used Sid's Sushi (instead of State Property) there were just a few turns between Medicine researched and a GM appearing.

 

[Roxlimn]

Darkyre99:

We have markedly different ideas on what makes a Hybrid economy run. In my opinion, a Hybrid Economy should be using a highly cottaged Bureaucratic Capital to fund the entire Civ, then use Specialist cities everywhere else at variable Science sliders to generate whatever is needed at the time.

The benefits of running Cottages heavily in the capital are these:

1. The Commerce output of the Capital is boosted by 50%. That includes Cottage output. Being the capital, Cottages in these sites will have the greatest possible number of turns to mature.

2. Your capital is generally the most heavily defended site so is harder to pillage.


If you can fund your entire Civ's expenses on the capital's output alone, it leaves all the rest of your cities available to focus on either production or science. Running Specialists in the rest of your cities allows you to tailor Specialist output as you see fit - you can generate a long string of GSs to punch for the Liberalism line, for instance, running at 0% slider.

The Oxford city is best placed in a GP Farm with multiple Scientist output, rather than cottage, because the Scientist output isn't slider dependent, so you can preserve the core of your Science output even when your slider is forced to 0% when invading (for instance).

The Palace is unimportant, then, except as a center for determining maintenance. By the time you run a Merchant City with an eye to making it your Wall Street, you should also be able to put Globe Theater in the same city, making the happiness limit a moot point.

 

[AndiD]

EXCELLENT post. I love it love love love it.

Now, how about talking about leaders? Who would rock it in a hybrid economy.

It's no surprise that financial and philosophical characters seem like they would do the best. Perhaps Elizabeth or Pericles in the front.

In my experience, Organized leaders do exceptionally well. Half upkeep means even with a medium sized empire (11 cities), one Wall Street/GM city is sufficient for a 100% science slider long before Wall Street itself appears and all other cities (except Oxford) can work cottages or do production. After Wall Street I found it easy to go beyond 50 gpt profit with 100% science with an Organized guy, even more with your favourite food corporation.

In terms of leaders I'd say Frederick and Darius especially (Phi/Org or Fin/Org). Freddy gets tons of Great People as well as his Assembly Plant at half the cost, Darius has a great early UU and should shine with good, green land or coast in terms of cottaging / traderoutes - but only if you have decent land and trading partners.

Cultural victory should also be interesting / easy to pursue with a HE: perhaps beeline Music and Sistine Chapel gives all your specialists / settled GPs extra culture, switch Oxford to a National Epic & GA city some time later, build the Hermitage in Wall Street, doesn't sound too difficult... Opinions/experiences?

 

[vanatteveldt]

@OP, Roxlimn

I think the whole 'hybrid economy' thing is a misnomer. The merchant-funded cottage economy is a cottage economy: if you have 100 cities, 99 will be cottaged and one will be running merchants. The buro-capital funded SE is an SE: if you have 100 cities, 99 will be farm and specialist-filled and one will be cottaged.

In a CE or SE, it makes a lot of sense to have one city doing something other than the rest. In the CE case, one GP farm gets 90% of the GPP an SE gets at 10% of the cost. For SE, the capital-buro bonus does not help specialists, so the capital is best served with cottages or mines.

A true hybrid economy would have a decent proportion of cities running both types of science/money generating. This would be difficult, as you need other civics and techs to optimize both, and one of the great advantages of SE is that you are free(er) to play with the culture slider, which doesn't work in a hybrid. Reasons I can imagine for going truly hybrid is for warmongering with a cottage heartland and farmed borders (assuming not enough hills and no workshop techs), or heavy seafood terrain, preferably with Lizzy, where you run specialists because you have too much food anyway (and even Dave can't cottage Fish )