Vel's Strategy Thread, Volume III

[]LoL[Harm]

Hello, I'm primarily a reader, rarely a contributor. But thought I'd just throw out something.

I have a situation that I ran into in my most recent game that required the farming of plains. I planted a city down in an area primed for a great production/hammer city, that did not have any grassland to farm. Not having enough food caused the city to stagnate and to not reach its full production potential. Since I needed food in order to have the city work the tiles that would make it a great production city, I did farm plains, (along with two windmills on grassy hills) which allowed it climb higher in population. Out of the 20 workable squares it had 6 hills (2 forested plain hills, 2 plain hills (one gold, one bronze), 2 grassy hills), 4 plains, 8 forested plains, 2 forested tundra. This was post-biology.

As a note, I tend to be a lumbermill + railroad junky.

Is the above not a good example of when farming plains is a good idea?

[Generaldoktor]

Presumably, it was post-Civil Service, so not all the plains were with fresh water. The Great Vel, who may chime in himself, since this is his thread, once said, (I believe,) that the nice thing about farming plains is that once you get two food out of them, they are paying for the (consumption of the) labor that works them. This made sense to me, so I started farming a lot of plains lately, as long as they were post-Civil Service (allows "chaining" from irrigated farms,) or if before, had fresh water; otherwise, no farms allowed. You still get the one hammer out of them, even if their primary use is farms/food.

Now I recall with State Property, you can get food out of a workshop or something, so some may be doing that and then hammers would predominate on the plains; but I don't like State Property, (something about growing up in the U.S. during the Cold War,) so I'm no expert on that. The one thing it appears wise to avoid is having no food at all on a square worked, (though proponents of heavy mining will disagree.) Not only will the ones with no food stunt growth, but the self-governors know that for the cities and tend to move your labor away from squares with no food, towards ones with at least some food, to encourage growth to the end, even in "emphasize production" mode.

Thus, I use windmills on bare hills and workshops only on perceived, unneeded grassland. But that's just me.

[Quillan]

A farmed plain (assuming fresh water, meaning it's next to a river/lake or connected by a chain to such a source) produces 2 food and 1 hammer. After Biology, it'll produce 3 food and one hammer. A workshop on the plains will produce 0 food and 2 hammers without any of the other bonus techs, but can produce as much as 4 hammers and one food, assuming you run State Property (returns the lost food) and have the other techs (Chemistry and Guilds, IIRC) that each add 1 hammer to workshop production. I'd rather watermill plains, in all honesty, but it depends on circumstances.

Where workshops really shine is an all grassland flatland city (say you hacked it out of a jungle). Under State Property, every single square could produce 2 food and 3 hammers.

[]LoL[Harm]

Yes two of the tiles were on a river, the other two plains tiles were chain irrigated. It was post-civil service.

[hannehanen]

Just want to add something about how to expand on emperor level, great plains, standard size ~10 AIs.

First of all i think its the best map, much war and your in danger all the time with so many neighbours. Try this if you havent.

Atleast with this setup you cant build more then ~3-4 settlers before the computer are all around your citys,
so there are really no way to expand except from doing a charge with axemens, pretorians or cyrus chariots.
You really have to do an early charge or otherwise the computer will have to much towns and own you in many ways

try it out and give a comment how you do to complete it..

[Addled Platypus]

as of
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all hail Velociryx

[Velociryx]

Dactyl had asked an excellent “how-to” question regarding using specialists, and I thought I might make an addition here in the strat thread to discuss that in more detail. This is my first post of any length in some time, so please forgive me if I’m somewhat rusty, but I will do my best to answer the question posed (that being, how do I set myself up to use specialists).

A few provisos and assumptions need to be made in order to put meat onto the skeleton we have before us in the form of the question. Changing these assumptions may change some of the particulars spelled out below, so bear this in mind when reading:

Assumptions I’ll use when constructing this piece:

* You have a (relatively) free hand where establishing one or more new cities are concerned—this meaning that you’re not hemmed in, or out of available land, and can, at least to a degree, pick and choose your city sites.

* It is the early game, and you’re looking to cash in on specialists sooner, rather than later (that is to say, we’ll assume that you are at or near the beginning of the game, and still in the ancient era).

* You are at peace, and will be for the foreseeable future (war would put such fineries as setting up your economy in this manner rather on the backburner, and while it is possible to do both, I would say that, in terms of explaining HOW in general terms, doing both in tandem would fall outside the scope of the article, in much the same way that conducting a war of conquest while executing the CS Slingshot would be outside the normal scope of how to conduct the Slingshot itself).

* SP – I’m writing this from the perspective of SP, so keep it in your mind as you read.

That said, here goes nothing.

The main ingredient you need to begin to reap the benefits of specialists is food (and by extension, these immediate techs:

Hunting
Agriculture
Animal Husbandry
Fishing

Will factor heavily into your thinking. Which ones you need, and what order you need them in will, in large part, be determined by local geography (this meaning that obviously you’d not put any real emphasis on Fishing as a tech to acquire if you did not have a “seafood special” you could exploit, and so forth).

So that is the first step toward running specialists to good effect. The need for surplus food at a city site.

This need for surplus food must, by definition, factor into your thinking when selecting new city sites, and the sites which have access to food specials (especially if you can fit two or more such specials inside your city’s workable area) are prime candidates. Conversely, cities with OTHER types of specials—gold, gems, copper, etc—may not lend themselves so well as specialist cities, since, in order to reap the benefits of those types of tiles, they must be worked, and of course, none of those tiles are food intensive, which will somewhat blunt your efforts at specialization…not to say it is impossible, because a source of copper may provide the specialist heavy city with badly needed hammers at the “cost” of only one worker, but such fineries are only possible if the other resources exist in addition to the aforementioned food specials.

The second thing you need are, of course, specialists. Thus, the following early game techs are important to you, in terms of “unlocking” the early specialists in the game:

• Writing (allows Library, unlocks the “Scientist” specialist)
• Meditation (allows Temple, providing that you have a Religion, which in turn unlocks the “Priest” specialist)
• Metal Casting (allows the Forge, and unlocks the “Engineer” specialist)
• Currency (allows Market, and unlocks the “Merchant” specialist)

The Warlords expansion also makes Great Generals available, but to earn points toward THAT goal, winning combats is required, and the points are not tracked at the city level, so this too, is perhaps beyond the scope of the article.

And that’s the basic mechanism.

Get yourself a city with a good food surplus, and get some techs and buildings that unlock certain specialists. As the city grows, you want to begin assigning specialists, but do so in a way that does not paralyze the future growth of the city (ie – make sure the city still has enough growth to get bigger, even as you reap the marginal benefits of assigning a specialist in that city).

But of course, there are lots of ways we can enhance that basic mechanism, and that’s where the real power comes from.

In terms of looking for synergy, and how to make specialists pay big dividends, let’s take a closer look at available options.

Essentially the specialist is a point of population that’s not assigned to work a tile, so there’s a cost associated with the specialist. An opportunity cost, expressed in terms of the value of whatever tile he’s NOT working. That’s the number you have to compare against to see what kind of value your specialist is producing.

I’m not going to tell you what’s a “good tradeoff” or bad between a tile worked and a specialist created…that is for you to decide, but obviously, the more valuable the tile that the pop point could be working, the lower your return on the specialist will be (so if you pull a worker off of a tundra tile, said specialist will offer a VERY good return, but if you pull a worker off of the iron mine, said specialist’s return will be significantly less…perhaps to the point where you have no desire to do that).

Passive Advantages

There’s a certain amount of synergy built into specialists…that is to say, the Library enhances research. It also allows you to assign two scientist specialists, which…further enhance research. That’s good stuff, and it’s built in synergy that you don’t have to do a thing (except for assigning the specialists initially) to reap the benefits from.

In the same vein is the Philosophic trait, which doubles the G-Man points that a specialist will generate per turn. Again, you don’t have to DO anything other than assign specialists in this case. The game takes care of the rest.

But passive advantages can only take you so far, and if you want to REALLY unlock the power of specialists, then you need to actively pursue other avenues to make them more potent. For example:

* If you are the Romans (Warlords), then building a Forum in your specialist cities will see a 25% increase in G-Man point production.
* Building the Parthenon is of value to you, as it too, will increase G-Man production
* For the same reason, the National Epic in your big Specialist City will see more points produced
* Running Pacifism becomes highly attractive (and this means that WALLS are attractive, because the AI equates walls with military might, while saving you on upkeep)
* Likewise, Caste System unlocks a whole host of possibilities, allowing the unlimited assignment of many types of specialists (Merchants, Scientists, and Artists)
* The Pyramids become more attractive, because you can run Representation, which gives your specialists a nice per-turn bonus to research
* The Great Library, for the free Specialists
* The Statue of Liberty
* Mercantilism (if you can’t run free market, or if you are hated the world over and can’t get good foreign trade routes anyways)
* The general mechanism of packing as many wonders into a single city as possible, allowing still more G-Man points to be generated each turn (every wonder generates points, so if you build lots of wonders in the same city where you have lots of G-Men, then you’ll get TONS of points per turn…very nice).
* The Granary could be your best friend in a specialist city--well, any city really...Granary should be among your first builds in almost every instance, but ESPECIALLY in a Specialist Heavy city...that faster growth means quicker use of those specialists!

And that’s but the tip of the iceberg. Happiness or Health resources to pump up those values for you can and will factor into your game (thus, the traits Expansive and Charismatic become important, in terms of allowing you to run relatively MORE specialists), and geography (specifically, the availability of health/happy resources), and/or your trading savvy play a role. Do ANY of these things and you’ll enhance the power of your specialists. Do several in combination, and you’ll see their power greatly magnified.


The essence of the plan here is to look at every tech, every building or wonder, every in-game happening, and see if you can find a way to adapt its use to enhancing the power of your specialists. Do that, and their powers will magnify like you wouldn’t believe!

Essentially, there are only two reasons for making specialists:

One, because the tiles in the city radius that you COULD work are inferior (ice, desert, tundra), and you can “get more” by assigning a specialist. In this case, you’re likely to see specialists scattered throughout your Empire, and the decision to keep them serving in their roles or put them to work will change, based on new terraforming done in and around the city in question.

Or two, because you have it in your mind to run a specialist heavy city.

This is really what Dactyl was asking about when he posed his question, and in this case, the goal is to cram as many specialists as you can into your city.

The primary advantage of going packing many specialists into a single city revolves around the concentration of G-Man points. Specifically, doing this will allow a high concentration of G-Man points, which will generate more G-men. These G-Men can then be assigned to the city, which will further your production of G-Man points, while providing nice benefits to you and your holdings, or they can be cashed in for a free tech, to speed you through the tech tree (there are other articles elsewhere that delve into the dark mysteries of which G-Men unlock what techs, based on what you’ve already researched—or, opted NOT to research—and that is a highly recommended line of research).

Some would argue that another benefit of such “packing the house” would be that you can take advantage of certain infrastructural efficiencies, but generally, this is not the case (ie, a Great Artist does not generate any beakers—unless you’re running Representation—and so, by himself, he doesn’t care if you have a research-enhancing library present or no…it does not matter, in terms of what he is doing for you each turn, which is boosting your culture and providing G-Man points).

Other uses of specialists
One fun little note I would add as a post script to these notes is this:

If you’re running Caste System (quite likely, if you’re interested in a specialist heavy game), and you’re looking to bump up the borders of a newly captured or founded city, then assign as many artists as possible in that city and watch your culture skyrocket. In very short order, you’ll get that crucial first border bump, and sometimes, that can be exceedingly important. Note that this is not as necessary a trick if you’re creative, although it can shave additional turns off the time needed to bump those borders out, but if you’re NOT creative, then this can be an invaluable trick….found a new city, assign its one point of pop as an artist, wait a few turns, and voila! You have bigger borders!

There are others, but that should be enough to get your mind turning on the subject…


-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Next Steps

The original question posed was, "how do I structure a specialist heavy economy" and as I looked at the above, I realized that it was a good place of beginning where specialists were concerned, but that it didn't really get to the heart of the question of how to run a Specialist-Based Economy/ To that end, I'll continue, in hopes that others will come along, read, and add their voices to this topic!

What's good for the city is good for the economy. That is to say, the amount of impact that your specialists have on your economy as a whole is directly related to how much of a percentage they represent, in your economy. For example, if you have 100 points of population, and of those, three are specialists, then I fear that specialists will not, in any way, "drive" your economy.

On the other hand, the more specialists you have, the more their influence will be felt. This then, is mostly a matter of replication. Duplicate the efforts above as often as desired, until your specialists are in the drivers seat of your economy.

But there's more to it than that, and with specialists, you can "break" your economy for periods of time to net a tremendous advantage.

Consider:

What if you run binary science (100% or 0% depending on your needs).

If you're using Caste System, then you could slam science to zeo and assign every pop point you have to as merchants...devoting the whole of your Civ to the production of coin for a few turns (you could take me literally here and eat into your food surplusses of your cities to avoid starvation, or simply max out food and make as many merchants as possible with the rest).

At the other end of the spectrum, if you're looking to milk a few more turns out of your holdings, and again, with Caste System, you could put science at 100%, and make every "spare" citizen in your Empire a scientist...even better if you're running Representation.

Doing either of those things will generate simply UNHOLY amounts of beakers or cash, depending on which way you go, and that's BEFORE taking into account the buildings that multiply their baseline effects. If you have a lot of infrastructure in place, the impacts can be nigh on unbelievable, and the focus is sublime.

Imagine, your *entire Empire* geared toward a singular purpose. Imagine the clarity and the power of that single-mindedness.

Granted, you cannot afford to do it indefinitely, but those short bursts can completely redefine your game, they're so powerful.

The other specialists (Artists, Engineers, and Prists...not so much, but mostly because there's no mechanism in the game to give you unlimited Engineers and Priests, and the Artist's main contribution is culture...not to downplay culture, but it sees its most important use in terms of pushing your borders back, and that's already been mentioned....might be good to keep an eye on the culture progress bar though, and if you're looking to shave some time off of that next expansion, that would be the time to drop in some artists).

-=Vel=-

[couerdelion]

Well written again Vel and useful to put the additional proviso at the beginning to avoid all the “can’t do that because of this” problems. I tend to think of specialists serving two purpose: primarily to generate GPs, and secondly because they produce more than the “next best available tile”. Often, therefore, the choice of which specialists I have in my cities will be pretty fixed so I don’t think of them as factoring into the 100% science vs 100% gold equation.

For this I prefer simply to look at the science gold difference by moving the slider between the two and calculating my own civ-wide exchange rate from the different numbers coming out and then tending towards merchants in cities with a relative strength in gold production and scientists in those with relative strength in beaker production – assuming I am indifferent to a GM or GS.

I wasn’t sure if you were going to give an example of a GP farm but if you want to look at a ready made one then people might want to check out the link to the SPDG game
here (near bottom of page)

[Verrucosus]

I've often felt that I don't use specialists as much as I could. Part of the reason is probably that a single specialist doesn't appear all that impressive and there is often a good case for working a cottage or even a mine instead. Velociryx's remarks about how to establish, run and enhance a specialist city is extremely helpful in that regard because it presents a broader perspective that I will keep in mind during my next games. His essay - as always - will take some time to digest and, for the moment, I can't think of any question left regarding the "how to" topic.

There is, however, the question of why and when to use specialists. Vel gave two situations without going too much into detail, as that would have been beyond of the topic that he had set himself. couerdelion already commented on that and I feel that's a question where I could still need some help.

The first situation Vel mentioned was the "poor alternative". It involves analysing the microeconomic situation in the specific city and comparing the return from the specialist with that from the tile he would work as a normal citizen. I believe that there have been helpful posts about this outside this thread in the past, but a general aspect here is how to weigh the fact that working a tile can give benefits beyond the current output by increasing the city's productivity in the future (either by population growth or by development of cottages into towns). Personally, I'm very reluctant to draw citizens from cottage tiles or to create specialists at all until the population has reached the current happiness or health cap. This is also a point mentioned by Dactyl in the post that prompted Vel's creative outburst.

The second situation was described as "having it in your mind to run a specialist heavy city" and both Velociryx and couerdelion pointed to the creation of Great Persons. In my own games, I often go for a specific Great Person that I need (Prophet to create a shrine, Scientist for an early Academy, Artist for giving a newly captured city a good radius to work, Super-Scientists for the science capital etc.). I don't go for Great Persons "in general" and their ever-increasing cost seems to make them a good example of diminishing returns. Maybe I'm wrong about this and with all the enhancements of a specialist strategy listed in the essay, they are much more efficient than I think. Later in the game, I find specialists extremely useful in cities with a heavily specialised infrastructure (Oxford, Wall Street), because they allow the city to continue to do what it can do best while I'm free to change the general science/tax slider as I need.

Anyway, the Civ4 specialists are much more interesting than their predecessors and certainly worthy of a detailed discussion.

[couerdelion]

I just noticed the comment about "settled" GP adding to the generation of future GP. I've never seen this effect since I though that the GP only produced the base values without GPP.

Did I miss something?

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by Verrucosus
...a general aspect here is how to weigh the fact that working a tile can give benefits beyond the current output by increasing the city's productivity in the future (either by population growth or by development of cottages into towns). Personally, I'm very reluctant to draw citizens from cottage tiles or to create specialists at all until the population has reached the current happiness or health cap

...In my own games, I often go for a specific Great Person that I need (Prophet to create a shrine, Scientist for an early Academy, Artist for giving a newly captured city a good radius to work, Super-Scientists for the science capital etc.). I don't go for Great Persons "in general" and their ever-increasing cost seems to make them a good example of diminishing returns...

I held the view for a long time that tile-working was a priority and specialists only the icing on the cake; once you had worked up to pop 20 or so. I am moving away from this. The GPP on its own can never be duplicated simply through tile production. I have also found coin production to be often superior, if one is not, by opting for specialists, discriminating against legitmately excellent cottage sites. (I always get confused whether its commerce or just "gold", but the output can exceed a tile in many cases from either an enhanced priest or a merchant.)

I think in the end it takes a commitment to a certain type of strategy, based on situational factors, whether or not one is going to commit, in turn, to extensive specialists. In most cases, barring out and out total war, it is certainly worth a try and I intend to be more committed about it, after this reading. GPP is just another reason for going heavy specialist or specialist city.

As Vel points out, you can switch back and forth too; just watch the food reserves so you don't cause starvation damage to the population base in resorting to heavy specialists for a time. Even then, it was suggested on another thread, (by Arrian, I believe,) you could run food up for a time, generate a ridiculous number of specialists, then starve them off to something more practical. In the real world, this would be unacceptable, but in a game? (I've always thought there should be a happiness hit for starvation though; and am still wondering if there isn't.)

Oh yeah, great article Vel. Some of the concepts I had figured out for myself, but weren't applying consistently. Your summation helps me focus my own ideas more clearly.

Edit: I forgot to comment on the second aspect of the quote above. The diminished returns, I found, can be mitigated by Wonder-stacking. Even with the progressively higher total to attain Great Persons, once you have a city with 50-70+ GP per turn, even the higher totals can be attained in a reasonable period, at least right up through mid-game.

[Footie Mad]

Nice text Vel, on an interesting topic.

I'd like to add a discussion of rushing great people, the higher up in difficulty you go in SP the more eager you become to use every single possible way to outmaneuver the AI. Most players I know make a point of rushing their first great scientist for an early academy that gives 50% plus science in the chosen city.

In the early game it can often be enough to maintain one commerce heavy city, a city next to rivers with good cottage sites, gold resources or other things that give early commerce. It's a realistic and common scenario to have two or three cities available when the options comes to build a library, because you have researched writing by then.

The point I make here is to not build the library in the science heavy city, it should work cottages and grow instead. Rather I maximize production in a city with a good food special or grassland/flood plains farms. Also using chops to make library production even hastier, I then immediately set two scientists and soons the first specialist is ready to build the academy in the commerce city.

Remember that everything is worth more the earlier it comes into play, so that science bonus may be enough to be able to run a lower science rate and maintain an expanding economy while not falling to far behind in techs.

[Cort Haus]

There's a difference between running specialists at the margins (either lack of alternative tiles or at the happy cap) and the total commitment of a specialist economy (SE).

When it comes to the latter, its about farms rather than cottages, probably cast system, almost certainly representation therefore pyramids are mandatory, ample fresh water, and playing a non-FIN civ.

In the early game cottages are slow to mature and for non-FIN yield less than a specialist under representation. Great People are very powerful early on, too. Later on, techs & civics beef up the towns & villages, and the G-Men are much weaker, and while Biology gives a lift to the SE, the cottage economy is stronger.

There are accounts on CFC of running 0% science while constantly taking new cities, using the plunder and the 100% gold to finance this while using scientist specialists everywhere, including the new cities, to drive research. Starving down new cities reduces maintenance too.

The farms support production as well as specialists (the whip), and are quickly relaceable if pillaged, unlike the vunerable cottage economy.

Ultimately though, the numbers say "you need Representation" to really make the SE pay. This means that only IND or civs starting by stone need really apply, leaving the cottage economy the more mainstream solution. The Great Wall --> GE in Warlords opens another option for the Pyramids now, though.

[Cort Haus]

FM, an early Academy is excellent as you say, but because the capital is bundled with 9 commerce, plus possible commerce bonus tiles, it is a very good spot for the Library --> Scientists --> Academy. Very quick too for PHI civs.