looking for advice on trying out a specialist economy

[Scathe]

Originally posted by ghpstage:

Focusing on which leader to use and which wonders to build is likely to build up a crutch like reliance on certain things, rushes too. Its better to focus on the basics that underpin everything first.

• (Pyramids are an infamous newbie trap).
  
• You want to have a library somewhere with enough food to run two scientists early as it will get you a Great Scientist for an academy. If your capital is cottage friendly (riverside) then it makes an awesome academy site as it will be bigger than other cities around this time and will benefit enormously from Bureaucracy later on..

ok, so, comments made by ghpstage in another thread recently, including what I quoted(but the quote was much longer), got me thinking that I maybe overuse cottages in my games, so I think I'm going to try barring myself from cottages. which got me thinking what do I need to do to be successful without them? I normally play on monarch difficulty but I'm going to try some prince settings that seem to be popular on this forum recently.

I know you could see my preference to play a creative leader as a crutch too, but I have started alot of games without creative and often wind up quitting them when I get to the decision of where to build my second and third cities(and weighing best short term site vs best long term site) and how to get their borders popped, I just find removing that layer of thinking saves me from analysis paralysis ending the game.

so I am thinking for this new game it will probably be Pericles of Greece. I'm not sure what exactly I should be most looking for to make it successful though. I figure I'll need a bigtime commerce resource like gold, silver, or gems in my capital. I don't know how important it is to get the pyramids for representation or to use the oracle for code of laws for caste system. If I need representation, that will be hard since I've relied so heavily on hereditary rule for happiness in my games. that's why I figure Greece for the Odeon.

anyway any pointers on using a specialist economy without cottages would be good :)

[IdealPoint]

Specialist won't generate as many straight beakers as a cottage economy. Instead, you will generate more great people who will let you bulb techs. If you plan well you can bulb monopoly techs that you can trade around to fill in your gaps.
Getting hereditary rule up early is very important to let you have big enough cities to run many specialists.
Getting the pyramids is great, of course, but pursuing any of the early wonders is almost always a mistake on monarch+ if you could instead be claiming good land or waging war with those hammers instead. If you are lucky, you'll just kill the guy with pyramids and then get the wonder plus his cities.
The national epic is the most important wonder you can get. The great library is also...great.
Usually you will have two cities running lots of specialists and at least one cottage city. Using more than two gp farms means that the ones with less gp generation will most likely never get a great person.
One of the main benefits of a gp economy is flexibility. You can use your bulbs to get some monopoly tech, then whip or conscript some of your high pop cities to get an army out with less overall impact on your economy than whipping away tiles from cottage cities.
Don't underestimate great merchants. If there's a big capital far away from you they can be worth thousands of gold.

[Scathe]

thanks for the reply, I guess I'll hold off on removing cottages completely from the table and try to make two cities with farms and specialists and no cottages work. I'll still try Pericles of Greece even though the greek colliseum replacement doesn't sound as important if hereditary rule is important for the specialist economy.

[ghpstage]

Is GP farming not a normal thing in your games?

Quick math on a common example, bulbing Philosophy with your second Great Scientist.
3 GPP generated per scientist per turn, GPP cost of second great person 200, base cost of Philosophy is 800. Using that base cost the effective beakers per turn generated by a scientist that causes that GS to be born is 800/(200/3) + 3 = 15.
15 science per turn is some huge productivity for a single point of population, and it gets better when you take into account that higher difficulties and map sizes cause tech costs to rise and that it can be traded around for extra techs. It can easily rise to 40+ beakers per scientist per turn on Emperor and above (where AIs start to tech fast enough to do a lot of trade with)
With returns like that and with the minimal effort required to get started, GP farms ought to exist in every empire.

If you look at a non rep scientist that isn't contributing to a future great person on the other hand, a scientist will give just 3 science while costing the same 2 food. Comparable to an unimproved tile, most other specialists are similarly weak so if they won't lead to a great person you don't really want to use them without Rep.
This is true even if you are running a 'specialist economy' so, without Rep you will be using specialists in a very similar way as you would while spamming cottages.

If you decide to play without cottages you will need to find other ways to generate science and gold, specialists are great but don't forget you have other tools at your disposal, off the top of my head, building Wealth/Research, trade routes, wonders. Expansion is more difficult to afford, but its not unachievable.
Some effective ways of dealing with the problem (map dependant) involve building a game changing wonder and leveraging it, Great Lighthouse, Pyramids as examples, sometimes the map will offer decent commerce opportunities of its own (gold/gems); and if you want to throw convention to the wind, empires built on spamming wonders that settle almost all of the great people in the capital have been used with great success up to and including Deity.
Late game transitioning to an empire paved with workshops and watermills is the way to go.

It comes as a shock so any crutches that make you feel more comfortable will probably help. If you want to make it less harsh then one way would be to only use cottages one city, a suitable capital being a prime candidate.

[Scathe]

Originally posted by ghpstage:

Is GP farming not a normal thing in your games?

sort of. I usually build the oracle, the great library, and either the parthenon or the hanging gardens in my capital, and also build the national epic there. maybe I run one specialist there also. my capital is usually the only city I have that gets great people.

I have a game on prince, marathon, continents, standard size, 7 total civs that I made after making this thread. Pericles of Greece. annoyingly, 4 of the AI started on my continent. I rushed out two of them with my unique greek axemen replacements (phalanx?) My capital and the capital of the first civ I rushed out are both going without cottages, but I'm building a palace in sparta and sparta has two gold resources to go with it's cottages, it already has an academy too, but it is lower on food than I'd like, with only two flood plains with farms for it's main food supply. also has one grassland farm and two grassland cottages, and more production stuff.

[Purplefairy22]

When it comes to Great people it makes sense to gear yourself to your game plan.
whether its war, tech or culture build accordingly.

From personal experience right now is always better than what cold be.
Never settle your first GP or build the 50% academy.
In Civ the key is be awesome at one thing.

You get way more beakers bulbing early techs and trading them. which in turn gets you to newer and better techs and improvements quicker. selling for money means you run your slider higher for longer, boosting tech even more.
Why would you build the 50% academy for a few beakers a turn, when you could exchange for Thousands instantly???

Scientist are useless for war mongorers. you want merchants. Sending them abroad for huge monetary gains helps swallow cost of being big and scary.

Stuck on a peninsula with trash land?
Artists my friend! (depending on culture needed for win, over 25000 on quick or 50000 on normal then forget this tactic)

Biggest waste of time is spies.

[IdealPoint]

You should build an academy with your first scientist about 95% of the time, and a scientist should be your first great person almost always. It is a great investment. With bureaucracy and a cottaged capital it usually will add something like 30% to your overall tech rate. That kind of advantage means you should be able to continue getting monopoly techs and liberalism and trade those.

The only times when you wouldn't use the scientist for an academy is if you get into an early, long, drawn out war and you won't be able to recover fast enough to get to a useful economic tech like alphabet so you can convert hammers to science. But if you stall out that hard that early you messed up royally and should probably just restart.

In a vacuum settling seems bad, but if you have a small number of cities and aren't pursuing war it can make sense. Usually a golden age is better if you have a decent sized empire. But like ghpstage said people have managed to make settling work even on deity.

[Scathe]

So since there is still talk in this thread I guess I'll update my progress. I beat that game on prince, domination victory in 1510 AD. none of the AI ever got past knights/macemen/longbowmen and I got destroyers and infantry. with two specialist cities, my empire generated 18 total great people, 1 artist (from music), 11 scientists, 3 merchants, 3 generals. basically, what I figured out is there is room for running both the merchants from a market and both the scientists from a library in a specialist city, and room for 1-2more specialists. maybe I made a mistake not building more temples to run some priests since I had 3 religious capitals from an early point. my top city for great person rate had the great library and the library quest spawned a third scientist in it, plus two scientists from a library, plus two merchants from a market, plus an engineer, plus national epic.

I bulbed mathmatics I think with my first great scientist, because I wanted catapults faster, because I was in a war where I could not safely attack the final city of my enemy because he was protective and slaving out archers about as fast as I was building axemen. that was the second civ I wiped out, and I did have to wait for catapults. I built two academies, not sure if they were with my second and third great scientists or second and fourth.

I did one very key great trade mission, got 3300ish gold from it like two turns before I got rifling. wiped more than half my continent with riflemen after having taken almost half with early axemen.

I am definately going to step the difficulty up to monarch and use a philosophical leader, not sure if elizabeth or pericles.