When should a GP Farm really get going?

[tibbles]

I've noticed a common trend in my games is that my GP Farm city doesn't really "farm" any GPs

General flow is, capital gets library and starts working scientists when possible. I settle what I decide will be my GP farm. I get a GS from the capital. Farm gets basic infrastructure and library complete. Capital gets 2nd GS. I assign 2 scientists in the farm, assign capital back to working production tiles.

Issue I have here is that now it takes so many GP points my farm takes a while to get a GP. And of course I keep slowing my GP production temporarily to build (often via whipping) other necessary infrastructure, say a temple or university, in order to assign more specialists later. Or I simply don't have the happiness yet to support a high enough pop of specialists. End result, my farm doesn't get to 3+ specialists until like 1100ad...My path to liberalism only has 1 bulb for philosophy and 0 for paper or education, but come modern era I've got like 8 GPs to start golden ages with.

How early should the GP farm be active? What can I do to speed GP production up?
I know I could get mine going sooner if I went caste system, but I generally feel I still need slavery due to having a lot of jungle belt cities with 0 production tiles.

I usually play standard/continents on monarch/normal, but plan to try moving to emperor shortly.

 

[JBossch]

I know I could get mine going sooner if I went caste system

I think you answered your own question.

 

[tibbles]

Dang, that's about it?

Maybe I'm underestimating GP, but I just can't see running caste for 1 city when the rest of my empire benefits from whipping.
That or I'm whipping too much...nah.

 

[michmbk]

It depends for me, and this is a question I'm probably not that well equipped to answer, as I'm often very poor at getting a strong GP farm until late game. I tend to focus on production, whipping and commerce, and forget about GP farms. Having said that, usually by about 1 AD, I've tried to identify my best GP city and start prepping it, but I may not switch to caste until much later. Initially, I'll get a library and maybe a market in the city, so it can run up to 4 specialists, and then focus it more when I do switch to caste.

Whipping for me until 1000 AD or longer is often worthwhile, so I may not switch to caste until then. Other games, when I'm trying to flip to vertical growth earlier, I may switch to caste by 1 AD.

That was probably the long winded way of saying "I don't know that there's an optimal time". In short, if you're relying on production and commerce cities, GP farm can come later. If relying on research through specialists, or if you've built the mids, you'll probably want to be in caste as early as possible, perhaps in the BCs and run specialists in a bunch of cities.

 

[Polobo]

If you limit yourself to scientists only then your GP farm will not really get going until later (education+) - unless you build the Great Library.

If GP are very important for the particular game then caste system is going to be a must - and just figure out other ways to get production.

Otherwise, you get two more specialists with currency+market, one per temple and one each for a forge and a courthouse. Literature gets you the National Epic for 100% GP and you could try and beeline Philosophy or build the "all religions wonder".

GP are really good for vertical growth phases when you don't want to whip and you are not adding new cities that need basic infrastructure; if you are going to heavily expand then mid game you should end up an empire that can really benefit from golden ages and being able to reasonably attain great people for them is a benefit.

There are lots of ways to emphasize great people but like everything else there are trade-offs.

 

[Beamup]

Another important point is that you don't *need* a GPF for the first few GPs, since they're cheap. Having several cities each run a couple of specialists to pop out some early GPs works well early on, then the GPF can ramp up later on when the GPP for each additional GP starts getting high.

Definitely not the only way, of course, but it's pretty effective.

 

[LuCiver]

I tend to go granary->library->forge->national epic for my GP farm. Let's me run an engineer as third specialist and speeds infra builds. Once NE is in place, time to build more infra to allow more specialists (or go caste for a Gs-powered Lib race).

 

[§L¥ Gµ¥]

Dang, that's about it?

Maybe I'm underestimating GP, but I just can't see running caste for 1 city when the rest of my empire benefits from whipping.
That or I'm whipping too much...nah.

in a wonder driven economy [even with just the 'myds], you can pretty much double your science output with just that one city.

 

[tibbles]

Sure, if I had the Pyramids, I'd definitely run caste early. But it's a very rare game that I build them. I never seem to get stone and being neither industrious nor philosophical, doesn't seem worth the risk.

My confusion comes from it being considered a general case strategy to run a GP farm. So it can't rely on running specific wonders. Given the huge number of whipping-based strats on here, I'm unsure of the cost vs benefits of going caste too early.

I guess for my usual game, the trade off of going caste much sooner would be getting a 3rd GS to bulb most of education at the cost of not being able to whip 1-2 late cities' infrastructure and some universities for a faster oxford. It doesn't sound worth it, but then civ is a game of scaling early benefits so I'm unsure.
edit: Oh, or I could flip back to slavery after, but that's a turn of anarchy, and assuming I wanted caste again after, that's a 2nd turn...

Why I'm asking, is it normal for the GP farm to not kick in until mid->late game? Or should I be getting more GPs sooner?

 

[DaveMcW]

It's normal to only get a few early GPs in a jungle-heavy game.

If you cottage spam the jungle, you'll do ok.

 

[Beamup]

Why I'm asking, is it normal for the GP farm to not kick in until mid->late game? Or should I be getting more GPs sooner?

IMX, yes and yes. Getting a really good farm going without CS is pretty tricky until midgame, but you don't have to get all (or even most) of your early GPs from a farm.

 

[Puhi]

Oh, or I could flip back to slavery after, but that's a turn of anarchy, and assuming I wanted caste again after, that's a 2nd turn...

This is why I like using a spiritual leader. You can run caste system most of the time, and switch to slavery and whip to your hearts content for 5 turns, then go back to CS. It also makes those pesky slave revolts much less frequent.

 

[CHEESE!]

I always thought Spi was like Cre, nifty but not hugely necessary.

 

[Rusten]

Learning how to manage GPP will be a huge asset to your game -- from the early first GS to the pacifism era. You don't have to limit yourself to one city, especially early on.

In the spoilered game I popped ~12 great people before 700 AD and several followed the next centuries. While I'm generally not a big advocate of the SSE it can be very good in some situations.

Spoiler :

No world builder involved.

What a lot of people do wrong is not to grow their cities enough. Trade for as many resources as possible and get above 10 population (the higher the better). You should have no problem running at least 5 specialists then. Avoid whipping too much infrastructure in your GPP cities -- it can wait. GPP is much more important than whipping temples.

 

[Fluxx]

I always thought Spi was like Cre, nifty but not hugely necessary.

You just insulted the 2 best traits in this game

 

[Gorey]

I know I could get mine going sooner if I went caste system, but I generally feel I still need slavery due to having a lot of jungle belt cities with 0 production tiles.

with caste system & guilds those low production cities with no hills (or any city really) can get a good boost with workshops, negating the need to rely on slavery.

 

[Negator_UK]

Getting an early GP farm -> Use Scientists -> Good for Early bulbing/lib race.
Getting late GP farm -> Merchants & Engineers -> Good for Corporations

So early or late complement a certain style of play, I guess the top players use early to allow then to use high tech against AI's still wearing grass skirts...

 

[Gumbolt]

Learning how to manage GPP will be a huge asset to your game -- from the early first GS to the pacifism era. You don't have to limit yourself to one city, especially early on.

In the spoilered game I popped ~12 great people before 700 AD and several followed the next centuries. While I'm generally not a big advocate of the SSE it can be very good in some situations.

Spoiler :

No world builder involved.

What a lot of people do wrong is not to grow their cities enough. Trade for as many resources as possible and get above 10 population (the higher the better). You should have no problem running at least 5 specialists then. Avoid whipping too much infrastructure in your GPP cities -- it can wait. GPP is much more important than whipping temples.

Not sure what that screenshot is meant to show. Rifles by 710AD is good. I do think whipping granaries/light houses can be positive. Also libraries if build time is slow due to food intensive cities. If you reach a happiness cap whipping is a great tool. Unless you are sugesting we should be adding specialists very early on to pop an early scientist.

Either way its not hard to set up a scientist or 2 in a second city while you develop the GP farm.

 

[Gumbolt]

Getting an early GP farm -> Use Scientists -> Good for Early bulbing/lib race.
Getting late GP farm -> Merchants & Engineers -> Good for Corporations

So early or late complement a certain style of play, I guess the top players use early to allow then to use high tech against AI's still wearing grass skirts...

Why does everyone call it a lib race when most emperor players tend to get there before the Ai anyway? Even on deity level too its possible. Its not as though the Ai beelines Liberalism.

 

[Negator_UK]

Why does everyone call it a lib race when most emperor players tend to get there before the Ai anyway? Even on deity level too its possible. Its not as though the Ai beelines Liberalism.

I just intended it as a wrapper for the practice of scientist bulbing up through paper, Edu, and even Lib to get an early tech lead. Mostly what I've read on the forum to be honest, my typical speed is 1100AD on Monarch, but some go much faster. I often don't have a GS handy when I get to Edu and wind up doing it the hard way, which as you imply, ain't so hard if your economy's going well.

But then I'm not good at early GP farms either