GPP City Specialization Strategies

[uberfish]

One of the advantages of GEs is you can actually avoid great artist pollution by building, say, the Parthenon or Sistine Chapel in a border city that could use the culture boost.

But I don't think that running a mixed wonder GP farm in the midgame is that bad. The artist pollution from National Epic is tolerable when the chances of generating a GA are down to 10-12% due to multiple sources of more useful GPs, in particular the Great Library which counts as 3 scientist sources. It's harder to get the percentage lower than that with a specialist city (unless you have a really good food site and can run Caste System.) Also, it's easier to build wonders in one high production city (often the capital) that already finished its other essential infrastructure than to distribute them around, unless you have a lot of forest. I do agree it's generally worth isolating the artist wonders in a non-cultural game if it can be done without too much hassle though.

On an unrelated note, one irritating thing is that National Epic + Globe Theatre looks like such a good combination on paper for a high food, specialist based GP farm, but building both introduces enough artist point pollution to make it not worthwhile unless aiming for a cultural victory.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor
1. I am concerned in a "full, specialist economy" that military and infrastructure are being neglected. It would seem that mines, mills, workshops, etc would still outproduce specialists, so if 30+ cities, or even 10+, are all food-heavy and relying on specialists, I would think one would be dwarfed militarily unless you drew a player personality mix that was universally benign.

I said I had 30+ cities as GP producers. I didn't mention the other cities. There's of course the dedicated military production cities which may or may not fit into the GP production cities.

It was an Huge, Deity, Domination (almost Conquest) victory BTW. Not peaceful at all.

2. How do you stockpile food and "stop" specialist (and associated GPP production,) for a time? Maybe I'm showing my inexperience here; I know there's a "stop growth" button, but does it stockpile food?

Take the Specialists and work a tile that produces Food with them. This builds up excess Food, which can then be "eaten" by running extra Specialists for a few turns, making up (some of) the GP p/t difference.

(Also I should point out that at various points in the game there will be hikes of Health and/or Happiness that allows for further growth. These periods of growth can be coordinated between cities to allow those with fewer GP p/t to cash in while those with more potential GP p/t are using more tiles to grow.)

This won't work if you have no more tiles to work, but that's generally not the case for most of the game. As a last resort (if it's still deemed worth it), you can change the Specialists to regular Citizens for a few turns to stop the GP p/t production.

3. Since we just had an inconclusive discussion about how much food is enough to generate healthy amount of specialists, perhaps some instruction would be helpful on how one gets 15 or so specialists out of a typical fat cross. Some people are having problems with this; I thought I was doing good with six or so per.

I said 5-10 out of a "typical" city, and also gave the tech prerequisites. 2 are free, Mercantilism and Statue of Libery. That leaves 3-8. A single bonus Food source can get you 3. Otherwise Farms work well enough. There are very few sites that won't support at least 3 Specialists post-Biology. (Of course, don't found cities there to run Specialists in the first place.)

The good cities can get 15 Specialists generally. I think I've had a few around 25 even, without Merchant settling. (Used-to-be) Jungle areas can be very good in the late game.

Certainly map type plays a factor though. Ice Age, Highlands... aren't the best maps for Specialists in general.

4. At one point you dismiss high GPP concentration as automatically generating pollution, though I don't see how you'd get much of that if you watch the specialists and/or Wonders generated in a given location.

My points about GP pollution are all dealing specifically with massing Wonders. To get to the very high GP p/t, you generally have to have many Wonders and Specialists. (Obviously the theoretical max will be with all the Wonders. You can't pick and choose.) The extremely high GP p/t from Specialist centers on massive amounts of Food will have some Artist pollution (National Epic + Globe Theater).

At another point, you say in your empire-wide "specialist-economy," Wonder concentration and GP specialization, is easily achieved. I don't understand why this would be more so in 30 cities than in 3?

I never said you can build a Wonder supercity without generating GP pollution. I said you can build a Wonder supercity in a Specialist economy.

Note the uppercase on Specialist. This is refering to a proper name in the game. Specialist economy is not to specialize (note the lack of uppercase) GP type (but it can be specialized), but to run lots of Farms and Windmills so as to produce as much Food as possible to support Specialists (Engineers, Merchants, Scientists, Artists, Priests).

---------------

Please quote what you are referencing. It took me some time to figure out what the miscommunication was without a reference.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Hermann the Lombard
Aeson: Do you have an example saved game of a mature specialist economy with high GP p/t? I underuse specialists and it seems I can rarely support more than a couple per city. Needless to say, feel free to say "no."

Sorry, it's been close to 3 months since I've played. Don't have any saves, or the game, currently. You could check out the CFC GOTM. The standard "milk" for score is get to Biology and near Domination, Farm everything, and grow as much pop as possible... so there should be some good examples of high numbers of Specialists (as well as ways to get to them ASAP) in the top scoring games.

Don't get hung up on numbers though. 2-3 Specialist early on work well. Though if you see a site with 2 bonus Food sources, you can often support 4-5 Scientists, Merchants, or Artists pretty early on (Caste System). It's only much later in the game (Biology) where the really high numbers of Specialists become available.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Well, thanks for sharing wisdom even when you're not playing. You give a lot back to the game.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Originally posted by couerdelion

I actually think that you might even be overvaluing GEs. But I also think that most gamers here tend to place too much enphasis on pure production. For me the GE simply accelerates a wonder or allows me to build a wonder that I would not otherwise build.

Well I very well might be. Remember I'm the one with the GE fetish, not Generaldoktor

But, as it stands, I used to use GEs the same way you describe. In fact, I never attempted to get them.. they were always a bonus. If one popped out, "GREAT! Now what extra wonder can I build I wasn't going to spend resources building previously because now it's a 'freebee'"

But because they are so powerful, both in completion of wonders or buildings and because of the tech's they give, I've started this thread as an attempt to maximize their creation.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor


Oh, by the way, RLM; if you get too many GS's, just scatter Academies everywhere. You'll like it.

Nah.. It's actually a waste. I'll use three scientists to build academies, but after that.. the GS should be better off used to pop or rush a tech.

I'll build an academy in my GS farm first, second in my capital, third in my coastal city. Those are usually my highest commerce cities. After that, there's little point in adding 50% research to an additional city. If I need four academies, I'm pretty sure I've done something wrong.

[fed1943]

Thank you,Aeson.Impressive lessons of yours:the right questions,the right way,the right answers.The mark of a great player(and not just player).
Thanks,again.
Best regards,

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by fed1943
Thank you,Aeson.Impressive lessons of yours:the right questions,the right way,the right answers.The mark of a great player(and not just player).
Thanks,again.
Best regards,

Ah, but I asked a lot of the questions. Thank you for the compliment!

Aeson: I went back and looked at your original comment and then at your clarifications. I could quote at this point, but you have answered my questions. It is clear that when available, i.e. not in a heavily-military MP game or bad game map, you are building specialized Wonders as thread author RLM proposes, to complement your own dexterity with multiple specialists; just that you described ideal conditions where you can do a LOT of this in multitudinous cities. Cool. Well, there's more things to try then, better start a new game!

Okay, the way you "wait" for a smaller GP city to cash in, as I now understand it, is, physically remove specialists (the opposite of what the game calls "forced" specialists,) and put them on food tiles. 2.) Other city catches up and produces GP. 3.) Frontrunner city has experienced a lot of pop growth while other was catching up; now this is transferred to GPP by "forcing" specialists previously put on tiles and new population, once again as specialists. You are "stockpiling" food in a symbolic sense, but really just working tiles to divert GPP for a time; there is no true "stockpiling" of food, (other than the normal "granary" mechanism.) I was confused earlier by the term "stockpiling food" because I didn't think the game allowed it. Hope this is right.

Again okay; I think I now understand your definition of inevitable GP "pollution" from "high" Wonder-spurred GPP, which seems to have initially been misinterpreted by me, because of my lesser definition of "high" Wonder concentration. A "high" GPP from Wonders to me would have been maybe from: Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, Hagia Sophia, Ironworks, various complementary "usual" buildings (Forge, etc.,) as originally proposed on this thread by RLM, for maybe 35-40 GP/turn. Your definition seems to be for GP/turn of 200+, which would have to include several non-GE producing wonders like National Epic and maybe some incongruent specialists to attain. Thus I ended up, in my mind, comparing apples to much larger oranges, creating confusion.

But you and RancidLunchMeat are on the same page in that you are both using "specialized" Wonder production in select cities, just that that is below your (Aeson's) personal ideal level of "high" GPP. I'm okay with all this, really, I'm okay. (If all this is correct. )

I believe, as you say, that game difficulty and map are important as far as what you can accomplish with Wonder production and GPP. I am a little curious what is the ideal map if one were to "customize" to "practice" generating large numbers of GPP. My guess is tropical, as long as you're willing to cut and plant the jungle; or temperate. Maybe Pangea or continents, though I would think archipelago (large, through low seas,) might be interesting to increase chances you are left alone, (which last is why I liked Highlands maps; the comparative isolation for much of the game.) I'll tell 'ya, I think lots of trees for good old "chop" for Wonders helps plenty, (another reason I liked Highlands.) Since you can't get a chop value out of jungle, is temperate Pangea/continents the best then?

I think we were talking about different periods of a game too. When you said 30+ cities on GPP, I was thinking of a period in game play where 30 cities might be close to your tops. Even humble and rather non-militant me has had empires of 50+ cities by game end, so 20 or so on production instead wouldn't be inadequate at that stage. Fine.

Let me echo others, Aeson, to thank you for contributing and taking this to a higher level. Thinking big, really big, on GPP can now be seen to obviously yield really big results.

RLM: I was being rather facetious about the academies. I know there's a point of diminishing returns where there's just not much sense building more of them. But, so far, I've never had so many GS that I couldn't find something to do with them, like buying tech or Golden Ages and there's always creating "Super Specialists," which are more versatile than the academies, because you can add them anytime, anywhere.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by Rancidlunchmeat I'll build an academy in my GS farm first, second in my capital, third in my coastal city. Those are usually my highest commerce cities. After that, there's little point in adding 50% research to an additional city. If I need four academies, I'm pretty sure I've done something wrong.

Well, in my Devel 1 game I ended up capturing at least seven academies from Spain, America, and India...so I didn't feel the need to build more of my own.

[SandMonkey]

Great Merchants

So it's taken me FOREVER to read this entire thread, but i can finally post on this topic!

I started a game just to try out some of the ideas posted. I even went so far as to make a list breaking down the necessary wonders and buildings for each Great Person. I never realized how many wonders produce GA! I want to thank everyone who's posted ideas here, the strategies (and links to other strategies) have really opened my eyes to the power that GP can provide. That said...

Where's the love for the Great Merchant? From what I've read in most of the posts here, they're looked upon as some sort of nuisance. Someone mentioned that they were able to upgrade their entire army on the gold from trading with a foreign civ, but other than that I haven't seen too many positives comments on the GM.

Based on that I decided to produce a GM city, and having checked out ahead of time what wonders I would aim for, I decided that a coastal city is your best bet for a Merchant City (Great Lighthouse and Colossus are the two early wonders). My attempt to make a "pure" merchant city was ruined early by having two religions founded in the city, but I still made up for it with the wonders and Merchants working the city. I also had a Great Prophet city producing them like crazy, so after I built shrines I began adding Prophets as city specialists. I did the same with two GM since I was on a relatively small island with two other civs and I didn't feel the one time cash would be the same as Specialists working for over ~600 turns. This city now produces ALL of the gold per turn for my empire, and I'm running at 100% science.

So what are the thoughts on using a GM as a specialist as opposed to the one time bonus? And stacking "gold producing" GP (merchants and prophets) in your super gold producer?


I was playing around with Aeson's idea as well, letting your weaker Great Person cities catch up to the big boy(s) by taking workers away from the big GP producers and allowing them to work squares for a while until the other cities produce their GP. I think this has great potential for controlling GP birth rates, and making sure that you get the ones you really want at the time you want it. One thing I'm not sure of is where the proper cutoff is when considering if it's better to let the Primary GP city keep producing, and when you should cut it off to let the other ones "catch up."

I just want to thank everyone again, this has been a great thread, and I've picked up more than my fare share of great tips.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor
Okay, the way you "wait" for a smaller GP city to cash in, as I now understand it, is, physically remove specialists (the opposite of what the game calls "forced" specialists,) and put them on food tiles. 2.) Other city catches up and produces GP. 3.) Frontrunner city has experienced a lot of pop growth while other was catching up; now this is transferred to GPP by "forcing" specialists previously put on tiles and new population, once again as specialists. You are "stockpiling" food in a symbolic sense, but really just working tiles to divert GPP for a time; there is no true "stockpiling" of food, (other than the normal "granary" mechanism.) I was confused earlier by the term "stockpiling food" because I didn't think the game allowed it. Hope this is right.

This is one way. It's what I was talking about with coordinating periods of growth after hikes in Health and/or Happiness.

The original method I was refering to doesn't necessarily involve population growth. If you have X Food to grow to the next population point, but don't want to actually grow a population point due to Happiness or Health issues, you can "store" X-1 Food to "eat" later. To store the Food, use more tiles that produce Food, instead of running Specialists. The way to "eat" the food is to run more Specialists than you can support continuously by running a Food income deficit. Then before you get 0 Food stored and lose a population point, restore the Food balance.

(This type of surplus/starve micro works well in other areas too. Storing up Food then running more Mines while starving is a way to "prebuild" while you don't have the pre-requisites for the actual build. Slavery is probably a stronger option in this regard, but doesn't work for Specialist economies relying on Caste System.)

Another method would be to work the tiles and produce Workers or Settlers.

Another is to coordinate builds in high GP p/t cities to allow for lower GP p/t cities to cash in their GP. Swap Specialists to high production tiles, speeding up the build and decreasing the GP p/t.

I believe, as you say, that game difficulty and map are important as far as what you can accomplish with Wonder production and GPP. I am a little curious what is the ideal map if one were to "customize" to "practice" generating large numbers of GPP. My guess is tropical, as long as you're willing to cut and plant the jungle; or temperate. Maybe Pangea or continents, though I would think archipelago (large, through low seas,) might be interesting to increase chances you are left alone, (which last is why I liked Highlands maps; the comparative isolation for much of the game.) I'll tell 'ya, I think lots of trees for good old "chop" for Wonders helps plenty, (another reason I liked Highlands.) Since you can't get a chop value out of jungle, is temperate Pangea/continents the best then?

In general, the more Floodplains and Grassland to Farm, the better.

Tropical should have more potential for using lots of Specialists. Not too sure on what the Tropical/Temperate setting does in relation to Forests. I would guess that Tropical has a similar amount of "good" Forests as Temperate does. The Forests that will be lost on Tropical will be the ones that would have been in artic regions. Even Forested artic regions won't be much good in most cases for GP production. And if you're starting in an artic region you'll have more useful things to chop than Wonders most likely.

Archipelago tends to not have a lot of Food surplus per city, because land to Farm is more sparse. There are high Food sites still due to resources, but the average city will have too much Coast to reach really high Food levels. Certainly some GP pumps are worth setting up on water based maps in general, and can even be more common early on (seafood bonuses), but I think you'll get more use out of a Cottage and/or Shrine economy than Specialist. In large part because Production is limited. The Civics which work for Specialists (Rep, Caste, Pacifism) take a hit in relation to Civics which increase Production or allow rushing (Uni Suff, Slavery, Org Rel).

If you don't mind the theme maps, land-based ones like Lakes, Great Plains (as long as you aren't in the Rockies), and Inland Sea all have rather high Food potential. Even Sahara can suprise, with a lot of Flood Plain and Oasis sites. The Earth map is really heavily laden with Food too in most regions.

[Aeson]

To clarify what I mean by stockpiling food, a little example.

(Assumes all tiles worked by the (potential) Specialists would be 2 Food, that there is enough room in the Food box for 32 Food without growth, and the 4 other tiles would need to be 4 Food each on average.)

Normal:

Size 12, 8 tiles worked, 4 Specialists, 0 fpt (not growing or starving), 12 GP p/t

Store Food:

Size 12, 9 tiles worked, 3 Specialist(s), +2fpt, 9 GP p/t

Eat Food:

Size 12, 4 tiles worked, 8 Specialists, -8fpt, 24 GP p/t

Example 1:
Run "Normal" for 20 turns. +0 Food. +240 GPP
Totals: 0 Food, 240 GPP.

Example 2:
Run "Store Food" for 16 turns. +32 Food, +144 GPP
Run "Eat Food" for 4 turns. -32 Food, +96 GPP
Totals: 0 Food, 240 GPP.

So in comparing the examples, after 16 turns 1 has produced 192 GPP, while 2 has produced 144 GPP. They both end up at the same point, but get there different ways.

[fed1943]

Generaldoktor:just to put it clear:I didn't ask the right question,I asked the wrong question,but Aeson corrected the question(put it right)and then answered his own(right)question.
Best regards,

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by Aeson
To clarify what I mean by stockpiling food, a little example.

To save space, I won't quote the example, which is located not too far above me, but I got it, after the example. I had never done anything like that, which shows forums and probably multi-player too, are good things to get solitary players out of grooves that may be unproductive. Oh; and thanks, Aeson, for the discussion of maps. I just chopped my way to a few more Wonders on the Highlands/temperate map and really do like all those trees and rivers, but I can see what you mean with some of the others. Lakes, for one, might give me a lot of the same, with a more benign climate and less secreted barbs.

Fed: I'll butt out. Sometimes when I write these late at night, I find myself hilariously funny. Your question, as clarified or the original, was as good as or better than mine.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor


RLM: I was being rather facetious about the academies. I know there's a point of diminishing returns where there's just not much sense building more of them. But, so far, I've never had so many GS that I couldn't find something to do with them, like buying tech or Golden Ages and there's always creating "Super Specialists," which are more versatile than the academies, because you can add them anytime, anywhere.

The "problem" with super specialists is that you can't remove them. If you have a library with two specialists plus the GL and it's added two, you'll have a city that will far out produce the GS as your other GE city. Essentially, you will get no GE during the period of time you are in possession of the GL. If you then use the GS that are generated as superspecialists in that city, it's possible you will get to the point where even when the GL goes obsolete, that city will still out produce GS to the other city's GE.

That's the "rub" with super specialists.. you can't remove them, therefore don't have the same level of control as you do with regular specialists.