Economic Scholia

[Meshelic]

Same questions and issues from the Tactical Scholia are pertanent here in the Economic Scholia.

1.) How will the Economicists organize themselves?
2.) How will decisions be made?
3.) Who will make those decisions?
4.) What issues need to be addressed economically when the game starts?
5.) Shall the Chief Economic minister be in charge of not just the luxury slider, but also building queue's, city improvements, tile improvements, etc?

We are increasingly short on time, and I fear that 2/3 of the Scholia are not ready to begin yet, as no clear guidelines for the Chief's or the members have been laid down.

[Meshelic]

alexman
Arrian
asleepathewheel
FrustratedPoet
Randolph
Sir Ralph
Velociryx

This is your time to shine guys. Good luck.

[Randolph]

Humm.. I was thinking about making one (or a few) thread(s) for the ES, but I thought I'd wait for the "chief" thing to conclude (whether in ended up being me or someone else). But I suppose we might as well start getting this under way. I'm going to think about this for a little while and post more later.

[Harovan]

I think, the leader of the economist shall manage both sliders (science and luxury) and manage city build queues and public works, or at least give the Grand Poobah directives about build priorities.

And my candidate is alexman.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, that he can have as many deputies for the single tasks as he needs.

[Arrian]

I think the economists should deal with terrain improvement (worker orders), but I'm thinking that city builds should be a cooperative decision between the Econ chief and the Poobah.

Citizen allocation (which tiles we work) I think falls within our jurisdiction. Left to its own, the AI will put our citizens on the wrong tiles far too often for my comfort.

The immediate issues to be dealt with are the initial worker orders and citizen allocation. That totally depends on the start location, of course, but the economists need to be on the ball early because those initial choices can save turns.

As for the chief (or in my view, the facilitator), it doesn't really matter to me. Randolph, alexman, whomever is willing to put in the effort.

-Arrian

[Randolph]

If Alexman is willing to be the econ chief he's more than welcome to be

1. There will obviously have to be a vice-minister (vice-chief sounds weird to me). If the members would like we could break tasks down into deputies tasks that’s fine, but as far as I'm concerned we could just have an undifferentiated group.

2. I see issues being resolved 90+% by discussion with the occasional "real disagreement" being decided by either a poll or decision by the chief (depended on the level of importance, if anyone wants a poll there should be one).

3. I think this is covered in 2

4.
a. What level to start the slider at (once we build a city)
b. With the tactical schola we need to decide what to build in our city (of our many choices )
c. Worker orders
d. What tech to research (BW should like the consensus at this point)
d. Chief and Vice positions, and any deputies.

5. All areas are of course in the end jointly decided, no schola should be operating in a vacuum. The economy being the foundation of the empire will obviously affect other schola's operations more than their operations will affect the jurisdiction of the eonomic schola, other scholas will thus need more say in economic decisions than vice versa. Therefore don't interpret these as "grand dictator of ____".
a. City production (tactical will of course decide what units to build, and will help decide how many units / amount resources put towards military)
b. Sliders.
c. Tech choices: this is obviously a very joint decision, but if one schola is to have the final say it should be the economic schola.
d. City placement
e. Worker actions

There may be more

[Meshelic]

Glad I could help get you guys on your feet.

[Arrian]

It appears that nbarclay will be our econ chief.



No offense to anyone else, but from reading some of Nathan's AAR (after action reports) for AU games and such, I definitely got the impression that he knows what he's doing when it comes to early game micromanagement.



-Arrian

[nbarclay]

There are three main thrusts to my typical early-game economic policy. One should work fine in multiplayer, one could be suicidal with the wrong neighbor, and one would be a bit problematical.

The one that will almost certainly work is cranking up the luxury slider as much as we need to to get core city sizes up where we want them. A civ with a high luxury slider setting can have significantly higher production than a similar civ that uses a lower luxury slider setting. Note especially that with the right settings, a capital or nearby city on a river can be a production powerhouse even in the ancient era.

The one that could be suicidal in this game is building almost no military units early. Against AIs, I can get away with it almost all the time as long as my size suggests a lot of latent power, but I wouldn't try it against a human with even an ounce of warmongering in his blood.

The one that is problematical is building an early granary or two to create one or two settler pumps. Normally, more often than not these days, I'll research Pottery right off the bat (assuming I'm not expansionist) and build my first granary before my first settler. But against human opponents, we probably need to get more warriors out exploring earlier than I usually do in SP, and researching military techs early is more important. Both of those factors would interfere with plans for early granaries.

Nathan

[Arrian]

Yeah, I don't see that any early granary will be viable, EXCEPT under the right circumstances. If we don't have a river or lake to start, I can't imagine it being worthwhile. Plus, there are other techs we really need ASAP. Pretty much everybody agrees that BW is a must-have.

One thing I often do when playing an industrious civ is chop down some trees early on for the 10 shields. If there is some forest next to our capitol and we don't have a lot of food, we could chop to help the granary along, provided we get pottery somehow (hut?).

To be honest, discussing strategy is tough without knowing the lay of the land. I know we want to have some basic scenarios covered for the initial 10-turn rush of playing, but there are a lot of hypotheticals out there.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

What kind of say will the Tactical scholia have in military unit production (and other stuff, like Barracks)? I suggest some sort of transfer of power from Economic to Tactical during wartime, although I'm not thinking of something as drastic as this sounds. For example: "we need approximately 15 Horsemen and 5 Spearmen for our next campaign (...please!)".


Dominae

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by Dominae
What kind of say will the Tactical scholia have in military unit production (and other stuff, like Barracks)? I suggest some sort of transfer of power from Economic to Tactical during wartime, although I'm not thinking of something as drastic as this sounds.

Clearly Tactical and Econ will need to work together very closely, especially during war, but remember that the membership for these two schools is almost identical. Since many team members are in both these schools then any conflicts over build queues should be averted.

[Arrian]

My thoughts exactly, FP. The two scholias have very similar membership, and any disputes that do arise ought to be settled by NYE.

Early on, it will be pretty simple: we need exploring warriors, settlers and units to protect them. Later, we need temples, barracks and more units, both defensive and offensive (WCs). There will be waxing and waning of each scholia's influence over the build orders depending on our available techs. Once we get say... currency, I think everyone will agree to interrupt military production in favor of marketplaces unless we are in serious danger of being defeated in a war.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Arrian
The two scholias have very similar membership, and any disputes that do arise ought to be settled by NYE.

My question arises from the fact that I'm one of the weirdos that didn't pick those two Scholias (I'm Diplomatic and Tactical). But I agree that, in the early-game, things should run pretty smooth.

Originally posted by Arrian
Once we get say... currency, I think everyone will agree to interrupt military production in favor of marketplaces unless we are in serious danger of being defeated in a war.

Actually, depending on our current diplomatic situation, I believe this will be a major point of contention.


Dominae

[alva]

As I get it, schola's have a sort of brainstorming function. They don't make the actual decission, I.E. they advise.

btw: is anyone in both the
diplo & economic schola??