Universal Suffrage Vs. Representation

[Zombie69]

but how do you specialise a capitol? In the early game you need it for every thing so when should you specialise it?

I don't know what you mean by early game. If you mean when you only have one city then i agree. As soon as i have 3 or 4 cities, the capital starts specializing in whatever the terrain allows best. If my empire needs something else, another city can provide for it.

The sooner you start specializing your capital, the sooner it can reach its full potential.

 

[Chris Woods]

I think you're right about Philo, but I'm going with Rome because I want Expansive (Health does become an issue; Expansive = +1 Specialist/City in my eyes) and Organized (Anything that reduces cost is a good thing) Also, the Praetorians will allow me to eliminate my first neighbor easily and give me good room to start up the engine.

My goal is to coat the map with cities until I achieve Domination Victory. I'll raze any AI city I take as it will probably be designed using that silly "make a big city" principal. (Last line a tongue-in-cheek joke.)

Chris Woods

 

[Wreck]

On the plateau, Gato Loco certainly found that. His tests (see here) show on monarch level, increasing marginal cost per city until you get to ~30 cities, at which point, the marginal cost per city is 7 gold.

As for what Civ leader traits are important, I would not think Philosophical is as nice for this as Aggressive (Organized being a given). But it depends on style of play, warlike or peaceful. For the more peaceful way, Mao is the leader to pick. For aggressive, Tokugawa.

On higher play levels, being Spiritual might be more helpful, for kissing up to AIs. In which case, Asoka. Another possibility is Caesar, whose Expansive trait is mostly wasted, but getting Prats makes up for a lot.

 

[Nefelia]

Zombie69, I fail to see how my city is not specialized. It may not be specialized by your particular narrow definition, but I assure you that it is specialized. From the beginning of the game, all GPP Farms focus on producing either Great Scientists or Great Engineers to settle in the capital as Super Specialists. Those particular Super Specialists produce nothing but hammers and beakers, so after 15 or so Super Specialists it kinda makes sense to build Ironworks and Oxford to get a mega beaker/hammer city.

Bureaucracy tends to help as well.

Of course, I could decide to send all Great Scientists to one city and all Great Engineers to another, but then my Science city would be lacking the 30+ Raw beakers from my 5+ Great Engineers, and my Hammer city would lack those 10+ hammers from my Great Scientists, not to menation that one of those cities would not be getting the extra 50% from Bureaucracy.

Besides, its more fun this way, and I play for fun, not to become an elite CivIV Fanatic.

 

[CiverDan]

As an experiment I played 2 games as Russia. Huge Lakes map, Settler difficulty. Marathon Game speed. One as Catherine and one as Peter. With Cathy I cottaged spammed and with Peter I pumped great people. With Catherine I was researching Computers in 900 AD. Compared to 1030 AD with Peter I also had about 35 citie with Catherine vs 25 cities with Peter.

Observations: Without cottages your growth is much more constrained due to lack of income. Almost all my science was from from my capital (running 10% sci often). With Catherine I was running 90% sci by 750 AD.

My main question is will a hybrid strategy work. That is going Phi, Fin (England) And GP produce with ~5-10 (number can vary based on map size) cities and cottage the rest. After all, at some pint a later founding city will never produce enough GPP for even 1 GP. Of course some decisions will have to be made regarding civics. should focus by on gold or GPP? Perhap GPP early, but go to Suffrage/Free Speech toward later game.

 

[Chris Woods]

That's not how it works. If you even care what your science slider is you're doing something wrong. I set mine to 100% Luxury be game end because that's +10 happiness and lets me stay at war forever.

It's the great people that matter. Tiny cities placed exactly two squares from each other and biology + all farms.

And it's working. I gave it another go with Caesar this time (Monarch level difficulty) and had Liberalism in 1100 - over 300 years before I did last time. It just needs to be honed.

Also, Settler is a huge difference from Monarch. One of the advantages of a Specialist based economy is your cities don't grow big enough to acre about Health or Unhappiness. On Settler, you get such sick bonus' it doesn't matter.

Chris Woods

 

[Nefelia]

Observations: Without cottages your growth is much more constrained due to lack of income.

Why did you run no cottages with Peter? If you are going for a Super Specialist strat, you need no more than 3 good GPP farms. Having several sub-optimal GPP farms is not very effective.

Or did you mean you were trying out the specialist-economy farm described by Chris Woods?

P.S. You did run Representation right after building pyramids, right? ;p

 

[atreas]

I can't really understand the purists. For example, I can't understand what would a "cottage spam" player do in a plains area with just a pig and a flood plains tile. Cottages? Not many due to food shortage for the most of the game. Production city? Not much either way and for the same reason. With farms and a few specialists you can easily get a quite good science and production city there, and (that's the better thing) from quite early.

The same way, what would a farm player do in an "ex-jungle" area, with only grasslands and babanas? If you don't cottage such a site, I think you are losing the point of the game - the suffler gave you a money machine, and you use it to pile up your books over it.

And, by the way, specialization is not the goal - maximization is the goal. But scrict specialization is usually the most economical way to achieve it in long-terms strategy, while in some cases the not so strict specialization provides better short-term results.

 

[MrCynical]

I can't really understand the purists. For example, I can't understand what would a "cottage spam" player do in a plains area with just a pig and a flood plains tile. Cottages? Not many due to food shortage for the most of the game. Production city? Not much either way and for the same reason. With farms and a few specialists you can easily get a quite good science and production city there, and (that's the better thing) from quite early.

As a cottage spam player, I'd farm most of the plains, though I'd cottage a few. I might certainly run a few specialists on the food from the pigs and floodplains, but I'd make sure the city kept groing, even if only at +2 food. I'd make sure I got to biology early (which I would anyway) and then replace half the farms with cottages. Since I'd be running emancipation they should become towns by the mid to late indutrial age. No, it isn't essential a purist's strategy, but it'll be more use in the early stages as a specialist city (though I won't change civics just for one city, I might be running representation anyway). In the late game it's better as cottages, so I make the change accordingly.

 

[Chris Woods]

The point of the purist strategy is to investigate the pros and cons of a city design method and then integrate that. If you "mix" - ie some small Specialist cities and some cottages - you can't get any information to report other then "this worked for me and stuff"

With a purist approach it's easy for others to criticize the baseline mechanic you're employing (pure specialist and farm) and identify where it can be useful and useless. It's easy to critique and easy to improve the system that contributes to that part of your empire.

Generally, when developing a strategy you need a purist approach, else you get bogged down in questions like "Yeah, but did that city over there with cottages carry you through this..." and such. By never building cottages we can eliminate those considerations and instead investigate the base system.

Chris Woods

 

[atreas]

The point of the purist strategy is to investigate the pros and cons of a city design method and then integrate that. If you "mix" - ie some small Specialist cities and some cottages - you can't get any information to report other then "this worked for me and stuff"

With a purist approach it's easy for others to criticize the baseline mechanic you're employing (pure specialist and farm) and identify where it can be useful and useless. It's easy to critique and easy to improve the system that contributes to that part of your empire.

Generally, when developing a strategy you need a purist approach, else you get bogged down in questions like "Yeah, but did that city over there with cottages carry you through this..." and such. By never building cottages we can eliminate those considerations and instead investigate the base system.

This is the first step, indeed, but then you take your strategy into the real world (that's not so pure) and try to see if it's fit there. I believe that it's extremely unjust for such a useful strategy to be wasted simply by pure comparison to another extremely useful strategy, as is the cottage spam. Both have their merits and have a place in the sun, in specific occassions (or even together). Even more, since in my games I love Pyramids and usually get it, for the biggest part of the time I use Representation even when I have many cottages around (although I admit I mix both these strategies) - what counts for the switch is the number of Towns and the reason, and in 99% of the cases this reason becomes justified only at the very end of the game.

Let me add one argument in favor of your strategy (one that is usually overlooked). Cottage strategy depends extremely heavily, IMO, on the fact that AI usually attacks and defends very badly. In Multiplayer, I believe (but have neither the time or the ability to check), a cottage player is a sitting duck - since all his "assets" are spread in the countryside and are very difficult to defend and rebuild. I think that if another player wants, he can easily develop a very efficient "anti-cottage strategy" that consists of Attila-like wars just for pillaging - no cats, just fast unit groups that destroy everything (something like 1 maceman+1 Knight: in each turn they move together and the Knight pillages). On the other hand, farms and mines are very easy to rebuild, plus they give better production generally, at least in the Medieval and a bit later...

 

[kingjoshi]

I just used the strategy in a Prince game on standard continents. Not saying its better then another strategy or not, one game is not enough for a proper comparison, but it's definitely viable.

I played on Epic. The turn pace is the same until 2000BC from Normal but everything is slower and takes longer so I couldn't get 4 cities by 2000BC. But at a decent pace. I randomly got Alexander on a continent with Catherine, Washington and Caeser. Napoleon and Kublai conquered the Mali together on another continent.

I made mistakes early because I'm so used to doing certain things. I took forever to get to Banking and I got beat to stone by Catherine, but she built the pyramids for me Anyhow, though I had a slow start, the research space started picking up and I lapped everyone. It was pretty bad. I stopped doing much except just hitting enter and waiting for the techs. After Cavalry and Riflemen (I got them first), Caeser and Washington weren't a problem and I just got all the techs so I can turn off the scientists and got Modern Armor to wipe off the people who were fighting with mixtures of Riflemen and some Artilitery. Napoleon did have Infantry, but I gave him some techs hoping to get a permanent Alliance so I can get a diplomatic victory quickly (we had over 60% of the population together).

So it's definitely a very viable strategy on Prince. I'll try it on Monarch next and see how that goes. It's odd to not build a single cottage, be considered last in gold by the Demographics and have plenty of gold and beakers the whole game...

 

[Zombie69]

Everything is viable at Prince level.

 

[kingjoshi]

I've been messing around with 4otm and first time on emporer, so I haven't tested this on higher levels yet. But I got frustrated playing so I did some analysis instead.

Assuming a Financial Civ with Free Religion, all the buildings bonuses (Library, University, Observatory, Laboratory, Acadamy, Oxford) and having Research at 100%: a cottaged tile that becomes a town gives 9 commerce *3.5 (bonuses)

Representation and Scientists give 9 beakers per specialist times same bonuses.

So the comparison is between each specialist and a cottaged town and there are obvious pros and cons:
1) Having specialists slows growth, cottages don't
2) Specialists speed up GP production (more Super Scientists and Academies)
3) Cottages take long to build and once pillaged, pail in comparison
4) Even cottage spam cities will have resources that will be improved without cottages
5) Theoretically, for each tile, you can put a cottage on it. For each tile, that supports one extra specialist (on average). So a size 20 cottage city can have 20 towns, while only ~10 Scientists.
6) Specialist approach is more flexible with science/culture rates (especially to combat war weariness), whereas cottage approach needs science rate high
7) When in need of cash, cottage approach can lower both culture and science to 0% for a lot of cash. Much more than the number of Merchant specialists can produce, though Merchants will continue to provide research

There are probably more. Definitely not trying to say one is better than the other, but I think Cottage spamming has been talked of so much that the specialist approach for research hasn't been given enough experimentation.

 

[Kenji]

well....dont assume that Cottages built = max income.

and then... Representation + Scientist only 6 beakers.

Farms wont attract Pillagers (assume MP), they only give 2 gold or so, but Towns... phet lewt.

the fun of playing Specialist is... super Early beakers and Great Person, which gives u the tech u want earlier (such as UUs before Cossack)

the fun of playing Cottages is... supreme cash flow in the late game. which u can upgrade much easier. and buy units instead of build. but not as-fast at early stage.

 

[kingjoshi]

I can't believe I used 9 beakers instead of 6 for my calculations

 

[rewster1]

If the land can support 20 cottages, it can support 20 specialists (post biology). Though it can do this more easily if you overlap cities to counter unhappiness/unhealthiness... thus approaching Chris Wood's method (which alas, I still have not gotten around to try out).
I don't see how a cottage->town or specialist can give you 9 commerce though. 6 for a specialist under rep, 7 for a town under free speech.

 

[Mutineer]

In my expirience Specialists are valible strategy especially in border or production cities.
On border cities you can have farms insted of slow grow cottages and use specialists. Farms are easy to replace and you are not loosing mach.

Production cities that have many no food production squears can be quikly switched to specialists and back, giving you a lot of flexibility. You can use specialists to increase your research or obtain more cash or switch to production for war or space race. Specialists give you more flexibility then cottages and less succeptable to problems. From other point of view, cottages are more efficient. So, My strategy often is: Border town = specialists. Core towns = cottages.

 

[kingjoshi]

9 commerce theoretical max from a town:
1 for Cottage
1 for Hamlet
1 for Village
1 for town
1 for river
1 for financial civ
1 for Printing Press
2 for Free Speech

 

[mutax2003]

In my experience when playing against other players on MP, specialist strategy works great under early representation (with pyramid, preferable playing a philosophical civ). Typically, my science would be 4 techs more than the closest civ at medieval, and I would be first to circumnavigate and discovered liberalism. Due to all the farms and mines (I only build windmill for science cities), as well as priest speciast/engineer specialist, my production would be number 1. Therefore, I can win any war I choose to get involved in, since my science is superior, therefore better units, and I can outproduce anyone due to my high production. As the game progress, a lot of people quit when they see how far behind they are. Around the age I get cavalry/cannons, I build a large army and attack the second leading civ, take/raze some cities, they can resist for a while, but eventually my better production overwhelms his defenses. If all the players quit, and I am left with all AIs, with me as the point leader, then I conclude my game won and exit, plus it is not fun to play against all AI in an MP game.