Adventure Nineteen - T-hawk

[T-hawk]

The key to a specialist economy isn't beakers from the specialists, it is beakers from lightbulbing.

Gotcha, I've never tried a dedicated full-blown lightbulbing plan. I don't see where it really translates to military tech, though? Great Scientists will lightbulb some combination of Philosophy, Paper, Education, and Printing Press, all builder techs. That does get to Gunpowder, but muskets are only so-so (no City Raider) against longbows. What do you do next - Liberalism for Chemistry? Engineering is a pricey prereq for that though.

I've toyed around with a couple of scenario ideas to test this out. The best I could come up with is a neutral trait builder like vanilla Hatshepsut (definitey no Financial and no Philosophical) and you are either assigned or given the choice on which type of economy to run.

There could be material for an Epic there, for sure. We've had events in the past asking the player to choose between several scoring paths. Or it might fit well as a pair of competing SG teams.

Sure, a hybrid economy is usually the most natural choice. Usually a civilization runs primarily cottages or primarily specialists with one city being the exception. A cottage economy runs one GP farm city (National Epic), and a specialist economy runs towns in the capital (which are more mature from starting earlier and multiplied by Bureaucracy.) I think this can be handled with simple variant rules, though, and let the players work out the rest. If you choose cottages, the National Epic, Great Library, and Pacifism are forbidden. If you choose specialists, Bureaucracy and Free Speech are off the table.

Hatty isn't neutral for traits though. Spiritual helps the specialist game plan by allowing free flips in and out of Caste System and Pacifism. The most neutral traits are Organized and Creative -- and that pair doesn't come together. Best might be Organized / Expansive (Caesar) or Creative / Expansive (Cyrus).

I'm not up to sponsoring such a game, but I'd probably play it...

[sunrise089]

Not Caesar: His UU makes SE based military too strong. Cyrus's UU comes so early, does SE vs CE even matter? I would love to see this game offered, and like the idea of banning cotteges or specialists totally - so no city governer ever (this will also force non-MM folks like myself to MM more), and no SoL or Mercantilism for the CE folks. Why ban beaurocracy or free speech though? Or caste system? The point is specialists vs cotteges, so as long as you don't run your forbidden thing, I don't think civics should otherwise matter.

[darrelljs]

Gotcha, I've never tried a dedicated full-blown lightbulbing plan. I don't see where it really translates to military tech, though? Great Scientists will lightbulb some combination of Philosophy, Paper, Education, and Printing Press, all builder techs. That does get to Gunpowder, but muskets are only so-so (no City Raider) against longbows. What do you do next - Liberalism for Chemistry? Engineering is a pricey prereq for that though.

This is true. The wars come in two phases, basically an early axe (or equivalent) rush on a neighbor, followed by a Chemistry slingshot for a Grenadier rush. If you are good and/or lucky you can lightbulb Chemistry and take Steel with Liberalsim even at the higher difficulty levels. You've hit the bottleneck though, the Metal Casting -> Machinery -> Engineering -> Gunpowder techs have to be researched or traded for (ironically an SE can work better at higher difficulty levels, or at least faster, since the trades are available sooner). If you can get some GEs born that can help as well.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Not Caesar: His UU makes SE based military too strong. Cyrus's UU comes so early, does SE vs CE even matter? I would love to see this game offered, and like the idea of banning cotteges or specialists totally - so no city governer ever (this will also force non-MM folks like myself to MM more), and no SoL or Mercantilism for the CE folks. Why ban beaurocracy or free speech though? Or caste system? The point is specialists vs cotteges, so as long as you don't run your forbidden thing, I don't think civics should otherwise matter.

Hmm...I sense a volunteer

Darrell

[sunrise089]

Hmm...I sense a volunteer

Darrell

Thanks for the vote of confidence darrelljs, but whatever the qualifications and responsibilities of someone running a game are (and I really don't know what's involved), the job should probably fall to someone with more than two reports (and a forthcoming shadow) under his belt. Plus, my SE experience is minimal, so I wouldn't know how to design a very fair scoring system. I can easily think of what rules to have in place to make the no cottages/no specialists thing work, but that in and of itself doesn't give people a goal for playing.

One idea though (just to see whether or not I'm even thinking like an eventual game sponsor): RB is more about having fun than powergaming, so what if we left the pure "which is better" idea over at Civfanatics, and mixed it up. The stereotype is that SE is better for waring and CE is better for tech pace long-term, so why not force the opposite: a fastest finish game where the SE player has to win by Space and the CE guy by Conquest. If the game would be fun (that's the big "if") then it would simply be a matter of playtesting to find a map where the pace should be the same towards either goal - if the SE is being quicker then make the map bigger or add some civs across the water, if the CE is winning do the opposite. I don't know....but that's what I would think to try IF I were in charge.