The types of Economies

Religious: more of a sub-economy than a "true" economy, the prime goal of getting this set up is to get an influx of gold and cheapen spy missions.

Religious serve pretty well as a prime economy, where it can support the whole empire thru to industrial age.
Specialized gold multiplier in shrine city, then it's totally free on choosing building sci multiplier in all others, or head for a full armament preparation.....
It co-exists with some other "economies", but doesn't make it become a sub (more often that cottage/specialist become a sub to it during the early eras)... I think.

By the way, Anyone want to mention Corporation Economy ? (or it's just a source of income ? )

and good topic ^_^ (I'll definitely try some of those I wasn't aware of in the past.)
 
Oh, in that case, I agree completely, I'm still in the Warlord/Noble difficulty range (that's an approximation, as I haven't yet played a game that has particularly challenged me yet), so I'm still working on balancing my tile improvement, let alone city specialization.
 
Oh, in that case, I agree completely, I'm still in the Warlord/Noble difficulty range (that's an approximation, as I haven't yet played a game that has particularly challenged me yet), so I'm still working on balancing my tile improvement, let alone city specialization.

I'm with you man, though I think once that aspect of the game is mastered your a long ways towards mastering the game itself :p
Which is to say idk if any of us have truly gotten those aspects figured out yet either (except maybe the Immortal/Deity crowd :cool:)

I find that Monarch gives me a good challenge right now (as indicated in my signature :lol:)
 
If all of these things are economies, I nominate the "pillage economy "to the list, whereby you finance your war and what not by liquidating your enemies' assets and using privateers to blockade your friends.
 
Well I guess it depends what most of your economy is powered by. If you have a lot of specialists then you will probably lose a lot of science switching to US. But if you have a lot of towns set up then you might as well get a hammer benefit out of them too. Hammers rock :)
I am curious to know how people use the buying part though, seems like it requires an awful lot of microing!





Hmm I'm sure this is good advice, but could you give some tips on why it is clearly better to go cottages in these areas versus specialists??

I can, but it'd probably start a CE vs SE war. I guess I should have specified that you want use GRASSLAND flatlands - plains are weak tiles for most of the game.

Anyway the long-term output of a cottage > specialist, ESPECIALLY when you take GPP out of the equation. What *usually* happens in games is that you'll wind up with cities that have a lot of food from a couple tiles and otherwise not stellar land (aka 2x seafood and a land food, but then plains or tundra for example), which is very well-configured to run specialists. This city will tend to overtake the others in terms of GPP production, eventually to the point of being the only city that makes any (especially true once you get national epic in there).

If you don't have any high food but otherwise bad sites, then you'll have to "force" it a little for GP's and just run specialists in your highest food city. Some players like a 2nd GP farm but I don't find it too necessary/particularly helpful usually.

Once GP are out of the question, a cottage that's grown even a little will tend to beat a specialist. For example, let's take an all grasslands example where you can either farm or cottage. If you farm, you'll need 2 farms to feed a specialist. If you cottage, each cottage will feed itself. Even before cottages grow, in this simplified scenario say you can have 3 pop. Even with the city tile factored in, you'd be running 2 farms/1 specialist (as is generally the case) for 3 BPT, 6 BPT in representation. 3 cottages are already worth 3 commerce (and that's a bit shaky to compare to direct beakers, but they're similar since you gold has to come from somewhere too!). As cottages grow, it becomes increasingly difficult for even high-food sites to beat specialists, although your typical high-food site will either be your GP farm or a production city (hills are not food neutral) in practice.

AGAIN, THAT'S WITHOUT CONSIDERING GPP. Great people can turn a game, especially if you bulb well and trade/get a shrine etc. This is why you definitely want to use specialists too, but generally cottages are only slightly weaker in the very short term and otherwise stronger once you have enough GP generation in other cities. They even overtake representation scientists after a while, although generally if you're putting up the pyramids you would want to short-term it with more specialists than normal. Civ IV is a complex game.

Hope this helps a bit.
 
Thanks for your reply, I can only skim as I'm in a hurry/half asleep LoL (hey its late :P) but don't things get more complex if you have biology? Because then one farm can support a specialist (and also assuming Rep). They seem quite competitive in that scenario.

Oh and yes, not factoring in the GP points.
 
Thanks for your reply, I can only skim as I'm in a hurry/half asleep LoL (hey its late :P) but don't things get more complex if you have biology? Because then one farm can support a specialist (and also assuming Rep). They seem quite competitive in that scenario.

That's true, but at that point a comparison between specialists and cottages isn't as meaningful, it's more like a comparison of a specialist vs a TOWN, with probably the free speech boost (and definitely at least the printing press one).

If you compare a rep specialist with a FS/US town, it's hard to stack up. By the time 1 farm supports 1 specialist, towns are mature or have a civic available that makes it happen quite quickly. 6 BPT vs 7 commerce/turn (non financial) and a hammer. Or even if you aren't in US it's still 6 vs 7 at equal citizens worked, although there are hidden costs at that point, namely emancipation :mad: and of course the fact that while the food in this comparison is equal, the specialist city needs more pop. Good synergy for whipping and drafting, but then again those things are usually at their high point before biology.

I'm not saying specialists are bad, because they aren't. They just don't match the long term output of simply cottaging if you try to put them in every city.
 
I ask partly because I have a rather peculiar game going atm where I managed to found my first 3 cities each by their own gold or silver source LoL. Needless to say this seems to have given me a considerable tech advantage as it seems no other civ has Democracy, Communism, Physics, or Biology. And the worst civs are even further behind! I haven't used a single cottage, not really on account of trying to avoid them necessarily but partly because a lot of my cities have bad land so I make money in those from trade routes and I guess a few pokes of ocean commerce. My capital ended up being my GP farm and I did a sizable wonder spam there.

Oh well, that's not very helpful as honestly idk where the heck my money is coming from lol. Not cottages though :)
 
If all of these things are economies, I nominate the "pillage economy "to the list, whereby you finance your war and what not by liquidating your enemies' assets and using privateers to blockade your friends.

Yeah, I was wondering why that one wasn't on the list, the first RPC is a good showcase of that economy, if I recall correctly.
 
@ MattX: Rush-buying with Universal Suffrage requires a lot less micro than whipping does because you don't need to keep track of happiness and the city remains the same... and quite a few people whip religiously.


That's funny: I thought it was mainly Monty who whipped religiously... :D
 
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