More talk of specialists...

[Rancidlunchmeat]

This comes from CF, and while I normally don't like linking threads to other boards.. I'm really rather eager to read some of the contributor's on here opinions of this strategy.

It doesn't seem quite right to me.

The thread is four or five pages long, and you really must ignore the OP because he doesn't appear to be the most.. uhh.. technically savvy contributor. However, there is quite a bit of interesting debate from others in there.

Essentially the theory is this: War, War, and more War. Run research at ZERO, build no cottages, and rely upon specialists (via Representation from the GL) to provide your science output. The money saved from not spending it on research, as well as the money gained from multiple conquests, help fuel your economy and (almost) constant expansion.

It's an interesting strat, I'm going to try it out tonight. But it seems way too pyramid oriented (miss 'em and you're effectively screwed), although later on in the thread a nice compromise has come about.. essentially the 'point of no return' where cottage economies will significantly out produce specialist economies.

(Oh.. the other caveat to this is that it is clearly ineffective if using a FIN leader. At that point, cottage away!)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=177506

[fed1943]

I have read, but there is a point I don't agree.

Why not use GP and enhance commerce (in different

cities,obviously)?

Best regards,

[Swiss Pauli]

Re: More talk of specialists...

Originally posted by Rancidlunchmeat It doesn't seem quite right to me.

Having scanned the thread, I think the reason that it doesn't seem right is that the end (Domination) doesn't justify the means (Wonders/Specialists). I don't see any advantage from using this strategy to achieve the goal, if anything it's less effective than a 'vanilla' Domination strategy.

Having re-read the thread, the end itself isn't clear: after prolonged conquest expansion, I've no idea what the path to victory should be! I've looked at the saves as well and the positions don't seem particularly brilliant. For Domination you should be a lot further along in your conquests than the OP was. For Spaceship you need only knock out (or back) one rival at most to have a large enough empire to guarantee victory.

All in all it seems, as you point out, a lot of risk for unexceptional rewards.

[Quillan]

What's more, I see from a late post in the thread that the OP is playing on normal speed, and probably on smaller map sizes. 315 beakers average cost for a tech in the classical era? Not in any game I've played. But then, I play huge maps and marathon speed.

Where I see a potential fallacy in the entire argument is that running specialists requires a large population. Since you can't use settlers/workers to boost population in other cities in this game, there is a maximum speed any city can grow, determined by the food resources available to that city. In the early going, you don't have the population to run all those specialists. Later, once you have the population, you could have enough other sources of commerce to outproduce it. They tossed out the entire idea if running a financial civ, but for obvious reasons, you cannot take into account terrain dependant commerce sources. What if you have 5+ gold/silver deposits within your empire? What if you have rivers everywhere? Gems?

Now, I like the idea in certain circumstances. Run specialists in certain cities that don't have all those commerce generating improvements, it'll allow them to contribute.

I have to agree with you guys. It seems like too much risk for uncertain reward. If going for a military victory, you should be able to overpower everyone else in tech anyway while still making money, so why depend on being required to get the Pyramids so you can run Representation?

[Cort Haus]

A strategy doesn't have to be optimal to be worth discussing or having a go at. That's what's great about this game - there are so many ways through it. New and even eccentric approaches to game play can be fun for their own sake.

I don't really do Domination but if I did I'd certainly give something like this a shot, just to see what happens.

[gdgrimm]

I've been experimenting with Specialist economies my last couple of games, and with some good success.

In fact, my current game, I'm doing a head to head comparison of playing the same start 2 ways. One way is a specialist focused economy, the other is a cottage based economy. It's about 300AD, and right now, the two are pretty comparable.

Specialist: Has better beaker production. I'm just now getting to where I can bring Theatres, Forges, and Markets on-line to really make full use of specialists. I'm also down one city compared to the cottages, but that'll be easy to remedy.

Cottage: Biggest benefit here is that that the Oracle-CS slingshot netted me Confucianism. So I'll be able to leverage the religion and shrine to fight the Happy cap and improve gold generation.

In general though, I'd say my impressions are:

Financial trait --- go with cottages (duh!)

To make empire wide, specialist economy work, you'll need:
Pyramids -- meaning industrial civ and/or stone
Flood plains and food resources -- an Arid map is not going to work

In any case, it's been very beneficial for me to see for myself that you don't need cottages to keep the research rate high. And specialists really do allow for flexible cities -- i.e. work the high production/low food hill when you need to build something quickly, shift the worker back to the Market or Library when you're done. Or run multiple Artists on the 'cold war' border with the one civ, while running Scientists/Merchants in other cities to drive research/gold.

Also, when you conquer, you can bring the new cities on-line in the fashion you need most -- i.e. build the library and run Scientists if you want the research, build a market and run merchants if you need some extra cash. It's hard to get such immediate, direct benefits from new conquests when relying on cottages, since their science/gold contribution will be controlled by the empire wide slider -- a rather crude tool when deciding what you want from one particular city.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Well.. I tried it last night, and it doesn't really work very well on Noble with huge maps (I used Terra). By about 200 AD, I had the Pryamids, did the Oracle Slingshot, built the GL, and I was able to maintain a tech lead with research pegged at zero and was well on my way to finishing optics for my Caravels..

But, I had an army of about 25 axemen that I couldn't really use because my closest neighbor was too far way.

So I had to keep building my own cities, which was a pain.

Anyway.. I guess it's interesting to play with, and I'm also not sure if I did it 'correctly'.

I ran my research at 100% until I was out of cash, then I dropped it to 0% and used specialists. (Can't really use specialists until you get those libraries built anyway, and maybe I took too long building the lib in my second city because it was building the Oracle)

But.. the second city was also a production city, so I didn't want to lose production, which meant I couldn't get 'secondary specialist cities' on line until I had built my third and fourth city.

To summarize: as Grimm said, it's a nice exercise to demonstrate you can maintain a viable empire by using specialists instead of waiting for cottages to grow up.

But I think, if anything, it might be most useful as a demonstration of what you can do with little 'worthless' cities that you don't want to bother micromanaging. Just build a library (or switch to caste system), improve one or two tiles for food resources and then apply scientists and leave them alone.

I can tell you that I would have been doing much better had I taken a different tact. Going for the pyramids not only pushed back production in my capitol for quite some time, but it also forced me to go down an early tech path that I wouldn't normally have gone.

[AshenPlanet]

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Specialists are very viable I think, just different, and harder to manage.
It's a lot more micro-management changing each city set-up often.
Especially if you are philosophical, you can do cs slingshot earlier.

Caste system, pacifism, representation, and mercantalism are the biggest things to shoot for.

If you stick to 'thinking' religions, and forego the militant religions, jewish, christian, moslem, by staying away from masonry, you can also shoot up to higher techs like liberalism, education, military tradition, gunpowder, etc. very very early through light bulbs.
The post points out that in the early game pyramids makes such a huge difference in specialists, and it does, but it does require masonry which will totally screw up your light-bulbs.
It's hard to figure what's better, getting pyramids for early representation will slow down greatly how soon you can get education, liberalism, etc. but it'll give you more research to help you catch up to the light-bulb approach.
The light-bulb approach, on the other hand can get you high in the tree faster than any other method, pyramid representation or cottage economy.
You could use it to rush to liberalism and get constitution as a free tech giving you representation later than pyramids, but you'll probably have more tech by that time...?

Either way, it's very feasible, and your military doesn't suffer at all.
You can actually produce much more than the cottage approach, especially if you have angkor wat.
Every 2 food can net you 2 hammers, 1 gold, 3 beakers, and 9+gpp - better than a town.

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[gdgrimm]

Originally posted by AshenPlanet Specialists are very viable I think, just different, and harder to manage.
It's a lot more micro-management changing each city set-up often.

That's very, very true. And while the city governors are pretty good at automatically handling a cottage based economy, they are completely useless when trying to run a specialist based economy. You need to walk through every city every 5 or 10 turns (at least, that's what I do).

If you stick to 'thinking' religions, and forego the militant religions, jewish, christian, moslem, by staying away from masonry, you can also shoot up to higher techs like liberalism, education, military tradition, gunpowder, etc. very very early through light bulbs.
The post points out that in the early game pyramids makes such a huge difference in specialists, and it does, but it does require masonry which will totally screw up your light-bulbs.
It's hard to figure what's better, getting pyramids for early representation will slow down greatly how soon you can get education, liberalism, etc. but it'll give you more research to help you catch up to the light-bulb approach.
The light-bulb approach, on the other hand can get you high in the tree faster than any other method, pyramid representation or cottage economy.

I think that's what's valuable about the thread.

Using G-men to dive deep into the tech tree is more of a G-man strategy than a specialist economy. You can accomplish that goal with just a couple of cities working specialists, and fits very nicely with the Philo trait -- no special wonders or anything required (just a religion, so that you can get the GProphets early and often).

The thread is exploring how to leverage an empire wide specialist economy -- primarily for warmongering in the Classical and Medieval eras, when the specialist economy is strongest compared to cottages.

For that scenario, you really don't care about the GProphets. You want GE's to pop the Metal Casting/Machinery/etc./etc. part of the tech tree or rush wonders, GScientists to settle or pop, and maybe some GMerchants to settle or fund upgrades.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

The most interesting part of the thread that I found was the discussion about settling the first GS or using him to build an Academy.

I used to always build an Academy by default. Yet, after reading that thread, if you know you're going to kick your research down to 0%, you're better off settling your first GS and leaving the Academy for your second or third GS.

[gdgrimm]

WOW. So last night I got back to my specialist vs. cottage head to head comparison. And post-Drama, the specialist economy + caste system really blew the cottage economy away.

The primary reason is because you can use the culture slider to completely remove any happy cap, letting your cities grow as large as your health cap will maintain.

That's possible, because dropping the research slider 30-40% in favor of the happy producing culture really doesn't impact your research rate much in a specialist economy. But you can't do that in a cottage economy without crippling your research rate.

So I'm now running about 4 scientist specialists in every city (a couple have 6 -- 1 because it has the GL, and the other because it has 3 food resources and 3 flood plains), and I'm screaming through techs much faster than the cottage based economy.

Admittedly, this is an island start, and in the cottage game, I have access to only one religion. So the use of multiple religions (i.e. temples) and trading for happy resources, two techniques used in non-island starts to lift the happy cap, aren't available to me. About the only happy lifter I have for the cottage economy is Heridetary Rule with a large standing army -- which really seems to be a waste of resources since there's nothing for me to fight until somebody gets Astronomy.

As mentioned earlier, using the culture slider for a large happy lift in a cottage economy isn't a viable option.

So my list of what's needed to consider a specialist economy is now:
1) not financial
2) get pyramids - probably means industrial or stone access
3) lots of food

And my list of when specialist economies are especially useful:
1) whenever happy cap is major limiter -- such as an island start
2) expansive civ -- it's easier to convert the +3 health bonus into cities that actually are 3 pops bigger.

In fact, I'm almost to the point where I think that if you're an expansive civ and/or you know that happiness is going to be a real limiter, you may want to prioritize the specialist economy in the early and mid game, even if you're financial. You can always transition to cottage based post-Emancipation.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Kind of related.. kind of not.

Played again last night, getting Pyramids and then completing the CS Slingshot and building the GL.

Well, let me tell you something... I popped THREE GEs in my capitol and no scientists, despite the fact I followed my normal path of building the library (immediately after the pyramids), and assigned two SS.

Then, even with two SS plus the GL plus the two free SS, the Pyramids were still polluting the GPP enough to give me GEs instead of GS.

It was actually rather damn awesome. I'm sure its just a matter of luck (well, a matter of probability) and can't be reasonably duplicated. But it was just hysterical trying to figure out if I was going to settle my GS, pop a tech, or build the academy and then the next turn I get a GE instead!

[Blaupanzer]

Seems like your advancement is pretty much the same as cottages until you get the pyramids. Thus, if you get the wonder, go for specialization. If not proceed normally.

I'm not a great player, but I don't use the cottage method anyway, have always used markets and merchants to generate cash as needed by expansion.

[AshenPlanet]

.

Using G-men to dive deep into the tech tree is more of a G-man strategy than a specialist economy. You can accomplish that goal with just a couple of cities working specialists, and fits very nicely with the Philo trait -- no special wonders or anything required (just a religion, so that you can get the GProphets early and often).

You might be able to accomplish that with only a couple cities, but I like going after enemy cities as well as quick expanding to 3-4 of my own cities early.

You can do that, have a bunch of chariots, and fly up the research tree if you are willing to forego the non-thinking religions and masonry.

It depends on the size of your map, I think.
On smaller maps, getting the research slower, but having settled specialists like ge, gs, and gp might be advantageous in the long run.
On those smaller maps, the pyramids/masonry approach might be better.

I think, though, that on larger maps, like earth, where you'll have a lot more cities, light-bulbing up to liberalism/constitution is better.
Here, I think skipping masonry and the militant religions, might be better.

Either way you have to decide which path to travel, and go that way early enough to make sure you get pyramids.
ie. if you got masonry, and failed to get pyramids, it's too late to try the light bulb approach - masonry screws that up.

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[Rancidlunchmeat]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer

I'm not a great player, but I don't use the cottage method anyway, have always used markets and merchants to generate cash as needed by expansion.

If you're not building cottages, how are you generating the commerce required to gain and keep a tech lead?