Finally got a week off the grind of grad school to play FFH2 for the first time. Its quite a step up from FFH1 that I enjoyed so much. Most everything is improved and better and the work Kael and all you guys have done is amazing. Though, it seems that a few features got left behind and I think the game would benefit from re-examining them:


Aristocracy is still useless. When you can just build cottages on your flatlands instead which give more commerce after working them a bit and still reap the benefits of a civic like god-king or Hereditary Rule, why would anyone use Aristocracy? This civic has little use early or late game.

City States serves a very niche role. Even more so now since it got nerfed to only -60% maintenance costs. In all its rather pointless mid or endgame since with the Winter Palace now being a national wonder you can achieve really low city maintenance costs without using this civic.

Republic still lacks a definitive purpose. God King is still preferable if your empire is small and at peace while Hereditary Rule is superior if your empire is large and at peace because of the troop suppression for keeping non-core cities happy.

Suggestion: Use vanilla Civ government civics as a baseline comparison to assign roles to FFH government civics so that every one of them stays useful for a particular situation until end game.

In vanilla civ representation and universal suffrage both stay useful until endgame for empires that are not warmongers. Each is ideal for peacetime empires depending your strategy.

Police state of course is for the developed and advanced warmonger while there is still no substitute for monarchy in the endgame if you are an expansionist/warmonger player with a large number of cities and an undeveloped happiness infrastructure.

Here is a rundown of FFH2:

Hereditary rule: Ideal for a medium or large empire if your at war or peace.

God King: Useful for war or peace if you are a small empire.

Republic: The happiness bonus is negligible since im usually in Heriditary Rule before this with more than 3 troops guarding my cities. So all it really gives then is the culture bonus which I don’t think is going to make the difference if your going for a culture victory (not too mention I think I’m correct in assuming that most people who play FFH aren’t doing it to win by culture plus if you are there’s already the Liberty civic). The only role this civic serves is for small empires with large cities that want to get rid of the “We Demand Republic” negative which I don’t think even belongs in FFH. The whole point of “We Demand Emancipation” in vanilla civ was to introduce a mechanism that made that particular civic the one that everyone would eventually gravitate toward while at the same time making obsolete all others choices that came before it. Is that really what Republic is suppose to do in FFH? I think this civic suffers from not having a defined role.

Aristocracy: Obsolete in the early, mid and late game. You can achieve the same thing this civic does by using cottages while gaining all the bonus of any of the above civics.

City State: Good only in the early game if you don’t have Heriditary Rule. Again with the Winter Palace now a national wonder and if you keep up on your courthouses you can actually get really low maintenance costs while not using this civic at all.

Suggestion for changes:

God King and Heredtary rule: These are fine. One is ideal for a large empires, the other small ones.

Republic: Needs to be turned into a civic that trumps monarchy if you are a medium or large empire, predominantly at peace and focused on development and commerce.

New Suggested Stats:
+3 happiness in 5 largest cities (same)
+20% culture (same)
Then either: +2 bonus science per specialist, or +1 production per village/town tile, or +1/+2 commerce per village/town tile respectively

Any of the last 3 are simple changes but will go a long ways into making Republic a civic that actually has a purpose and gives an alternative to monarchy for large peaceful civs. I also think the "We Demand Republic" penalty needs to be looked at to see what its purpose really is.

If this change is implemented then you will have a civic ideal for smaller empires at war or peace (God King), one for large warmonger players (Hereditary Rule) and one ideal for medium and large empires at peace (Republic). That just leaves City States and Aristocracy.

City States: As I said before this civic has little role in FFH2. First it needs to be re-evaluated for what its purpose should be. Heriditary Rule already provides a civic that is ideal if your empire is large, at constant war, or both. Perhaps city states should serve the role feudalism in civ3 played. That of a government ideal for maintaining and defending a sprawling expansionst empire that consists of numerous underdeveloped cities.

New Suggested Stats:
-80% maintenance (like it was in FFH1)
-20% culture (same)
+free units (equivlant to about what Arete does, which isnt that much)
+1 happiness with a Castle (since each city is like its own state castles would be their mini-capitals)

I believe these changes would fine tune city states into a useful civic that maintains a purpose until end game and isn’t automatically discareded once monarchy is discovered. The free units would give a moderate bonus in helping to maintain a large empires to defend yourself while the happy castles would help some in making this a viable alternative civic for hereditary rule troop suppression.

Aristocracy: If republic is changed into the prime civic for large peacetime empires and godking remains better for smaller ones, honestly this civic should just be deleted or undergoe a radical change since its obvious this choice is inferior in almost every circumstance to the others.

Moderate Change Suggestion: If republic is changed to give bonuses to village/town tiles make this civic give a bonus to specialists since in ancient greek Aristocracy means "Rule by the best" referring to the elite in society which in civ4 means specialists.
Or perhaps make it a more religeous based government civic. An alternative to God King if you want a government based on your religeon but have a larger empire

Radical change suggestion: Since all your bases are covered already in terms of civics matching up with someones strategy or playing style, then re-do this one to match up with the one major new aspect FFH has over vanilla civ, that being magic. Rename this to “Sorcerer Aristocracy" or something like that with the idea that its a society where mages and wizards control the major government institutions. Then have it geared toward a person who makes extensive use of mages, conjurers, adepts, archmages etc. Havent worked out the details on this yet but this could include bonuses based on mana nodes or mages guilds. Perhaps a special promotion for that empire's arcane units and even a penalty for non-arcane units, etc. Ill try to think more on this.

FFH2 is still the best mod out there and better than playing warlords in my opinion. I hope this has been insightful and spurs some discussion.

i definately agree, the only civics in this category i use are godking and hereditary rule, id rather have despotism than any of the others except republic, but i never bother with that since in ffh you need military so hereditary rule is always better. aristocracy is just plain painful, and city states is not worth the tradeoff.

Very thoughtful. I believe Kael & Co. are more towards the idea of cottages being made less powerful, not more, but the increased science per specialist might work out for Republic.

I hate to pick holes in another person's suggestions and designs, the OP's and the Dev team's, because my opinion's bound to be held back by a biased style of play. I've tried a few; peaceful, warring, cottage/GP economy. But I always get more fun out of taking more and more land until it's game over, for me or them.

I have to wonder how biased your playstyle is too.

To be specific, aristocracy for one. After sanitation, this is still a good civic for high food-output empires farming GPs or mm-ing specialists. Cottages take 100 turns to mature at normal speed. Obviously, they only take 10 turns to give 2 coin, same as aristocracy, but they won't give the excess food needed to sustain specialists. So even if mature cottages far exceed the potential of specialists, it's a bloody long time to get to that stage.

I speak from Monarchy-level experience, only just stepped up to Emporer, which doesn't appear any harder. I haven't tried harder levels, yet, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but hear me out, there's more.

In games where my empires neared domination, city-states killed maintenance in the furthest suburbs, with approximately size 10 pops, to just 2-3 gold in each! Maybe 4-5 at most. 60% reduction is enough. I'd consider lowering the reduction to 50%. Even 40%, if a bonus to wealth/research conversion was included, just to give them newly conquered cities something worthwhile to do until workers get to them.

Godking is a good civic. I almost always use it. Even with 20+ cities. When your first city has the production to build all the market, library, inns, labs, etc it can, and has filled it's fat cross, the 50% extra wealth is one of the best individual benefits that any civic provides towards your empire. Despite heavy maintenance.

Hereditary rule must have a purpose. I'm not sure what, I've never needed it. It's good for surpressing angries in large empires? Aren't there enough luxuries in those 'large' empires to deal with it? Perhaps it's the best civic choice for evil civs with slavery, vampirism, always-war, no foreign trade, no republic, etc.

Like I said, I hate picking holes. I'm sure the civics were designed to cover all eventualities. And I know, like everything else, there's room for improvement. New suggestions can only be a good thing.

There are 1 or 2 civics that just seem, to me, to just be there to fill in some blanks. Like the difference between public healers and protect the meek is hardly inspired :p Although, the choice isn't available to all civs, unless I'm mistaken, so that explains that. Nationhood and crusade are 2 civics I've never toyed with so I can't remember off-hand what they do, but consumption and religion seems to cover all angles. The labour line of civics is perfect in my view, just the right balance of pros and cons to each, and a set purpose for each.

I would only suggest expanding the health [damn, what's it called, the one with basic care and fend for themselves?] and education line of civics. They should should take into account a civs hocus pocus abilities :D A civic or civics to increase the health happy caps, reduce war weariness, add beakers to specialists, dependant on available mana, e.g.

Full set of elemental nodes, gives +2 health and happiness in all cities;
Full set of divination nodes, (law, spirit, etc?) -50% war weariness in all cities;
Full set of alteration nodes, (it's late, can't remember which ones they are, but sounds scientific) +2 beakers per specialist;
Full set of the other nodes, chaos, death and entropy - I dunno, extra units, GP points?

I have to wonder if the problem with Aristocracy is that we're all so in love with cottages. Even before Sanitation, Aristocracy can give you cottagey benefits with zero waiting time; particularly nice if you're financial or along rivers, and particularly particularly nice if you're playing epic or marathon, when cottages take forever.

Unfortunately I'm not good enough at FFH for my test games to mean anything, but after my current game's done I just might try a round of using farms with Aristocracy instead of blitzing for Education as seems to be the consensus best practice.

personally i have to agree with retro. I LOVE the aristocrasy civic when i start getting to large empires. at this point i tend to be using cottages more for specialists , however there are many times i find it very useful turning my excess food into gold. certain groups like the calabim it is even better. I would suggest a tweak to 3 gold instead of 2 .... but not a reworking of the civic

I hate to pick holes in another person's suggestions and designs, the OP's and the Dev team's, because my opinion's bound to be held back by a biased style of play. I've tried a few; peaceful, warring, cottage/GP economy. But I always get more fun out of taking more and more land until it's game over, for me or them.

No prob, i think we are all here giving our two cents for the reason, to try and improve the mod..



I have to wonder how biased your playstyle is too.

To be specific, aristocracy for one. After sanitation, this is still a good civic for high food-output empires farming GPs or mm-ing specialists. Cottages take 100 turns to mature at normal speed. Obviously, they only take 10 turns to give 2 coin, same as aristocracy, but they won't give the excess food needed to sustain specialists. So even if mature cottages far exceed the potential of specialists, it's a bloody long time to get to that stage.



Yes after sanitation Aristocracy gets a bit better. But then after that long into the game most of my cottages have matured as well. Also you're forgetting one thing. Even if there is a very specific scenario where aristocracy is superior to cottages (after sanitation and before your cottages have matured) the edge that aristocracy has is oh so slight. But then you realize the fact that the person with cottages can in addition to all that reap the benefits of hereditary rule or god king, then cottages have the lead by far since being in aristocracy prevents you from those other choices.

I guess that is my main point in regards to that civic.

As for what you said about city states, again it is useful in a very niche scenario. Where you have distant cities but havn't gotten around to building courthouse or your forbidden palace. After you do those things though the bonus city states gives is not very noticable.

personally i have to agree with retro. I LOVE the aristocrasy civic when i start getting to large empires. at this point i tend to be using cottages more for specialists , however there are many times i find it very useful turning my excess food into gold. certain groups like the calabim it is even better. I would suggest a tweak to 3 gold instead of 2 .... but not a reworking of the civic

If aristocracy didnt give a food negative or a higher commerce bonus then yes it would be more viable. And really if you're willing to do the micromanaging in terms of tile improvements I still would have to say that a well designed plan for improvements that includes cottages being built in the cities that will benefit from them the most and farms in places that can support a lot of people and specialists will result in more overall commerce and science than being forced to gimp all your farms accross the board. There are some cities you want with the farms at thier max food potential, while others you want cottages. Aristocracy prevents you from specializing like this though :(

I mostly agree with naf4ever, but not completely.
God King rules the early game, and Hereditary Rule is good for the late game, but I also found that City States occasionally comes in handy when I build too many cities too early (or, put another way, allows me to stake a bigger claim early on), before I truly have the techs to sustain that size. And I find myself using Republic occasionally in the mid game when I have only 5 or 6 truly big cities that need extra happiness, because I prefer not to build too big an army.

On the other hand, Aristocracy ? It's better to build half farm, half cottages.

And I do sometimes wonder why my people should want a Republic rather than live under the protection of a God King, when I give them so many proofs of my divine powers :)

This is all very interesting, there was a thread a long while back in which I attempted to aruge the nature of civics and get some things adjusted. Alas, to no avail. But currently my thoughts are thus:

Aristocracy seems like it should be FUN to play, ignore balance for a moment. Doesnt it strike you as the perfect compliment to the Calabim? Aristocractic vampires, feeding on their population? Simple people that they are.

Anyway, to reflect the "fun factor" and create a different style from the other civics, i recomend the following:
Aristocracy: <Low Upkeep>
-1 Food +1 Gold per farm
Access to 2 New types of Specialists (Aristocrat and General)
Aristocrats Provide 1gold 1culture and 1beaker
Generals Provide 1hammer and 1xp to units produced in city.
Unlimited Aristocrats and Generals

EDIT: Just had a thought, What if the civic aristocracy made it +1 Unhealtiness and +1 gold per farm, instead of -1 food? Then if you had healthiness from other sources, it'd counter act the problem and you'd be getting that food?

I have found Aristocracy very useful, but it all depends on your civilization. Financial civs, for example, like this civ better than most. If your civilization is large and sprawling, the extra 10% distance cost under GK can be burdensome.

I used to be like the critics. I never, ever used the civic. Then in one game my maintenence costs were killing me, and my capitol was more a hammer-maker than a gold-earner. So I switched to Aristocracy to lower expenses. To my surprise, I found myself able to boost R&D by about 20%. I used that civic in the next game or two, and every time it was so VERY hard to give it up once the Republic happycap penalties started to bite. I was as surprised as anyone. The civic just seems to work better than it reads ... at least for the right empire.

The same comment apply to City States. I think a civ like the Clan might use it, because they can send out Settlers early. The problem is, it can be learned or GK can be learned at aboutthe same time. So why go for CS when you can get GK AND get a leg up on your religion ?

I do agree though that a lot of room remains to extract the vanilla and flavor up the civics FfH style. I just want to chime in with a bit of support for Aristocracy.

Nice thread ... only had time to skim it so far. Thanks for starting up the discussion.

I have found Aristocracy very useful, but it all depends on your civilization. Financial civs, for example, like this civ better than most.

Why are you building farms when playing a financial leader?

If your civilization is large and sprawling, the extra 10% distance cost under GK can be burdensome.

Wouldn't City States be a better choice then?

Also one food can support half a specialist. Half a specialist usually produces more than the two gold you get from Aristocracy.

It's of course hard to judge without being able to look at the game myself, but even in the situation you describe, I don't see how Aristocracy could be the best choice. :confused:

Why are you building farms when playing a financial leader?



Wouldn't City States be a better choice then?

Also one food can support half a specialist. Half a specialist usually produces more than the two gold you get from Aristocracy.

It's of course hard to judge without being able to look at the game myself, but even in the situation you describe, I don't see how Aristocracy could be the best choice. :confused:

What's being a financial leader got to do with it? I build cottages and noting but cottages baby! :D [pimp]

I had some farms because, I suspect, some cities needed farms. There will always be a few out there. I didn't say I built nothing but farms. Even a farm or two per city adds a nice jolt of commerce. I don't remember every detail, I just remember the surprise at how well the new civic performed for me.

That was my point, I think, about City States. It is somewhat useful in its present for, especially for such civilizations. It just would be considered more useful were not the even more useful GK learnable at the same time.

Aristocracy produces two new commerce (3 new commerce, for financial leaders, if the farm is on a river.) One half of a specialist is 1.5 gld or beakers. 1.5 is less than 2, so no, speciallists are not more efficient, they are less efficient. Less efficient, until you also have civic that grants free +2 culture from them. (And for financial leaders, aristocracy remains competative, +3 (river farm) vs. +2.5 (half-specialist)). And that is the point at which you would probably want to switch to Republic to multiply that free culture. Like I said, aristocracy is situational, but so is God King and City States.

Plus ... there are the savings from city maintenance ... +10 gold/turn is +10 gold. :thumbsup:

One half of a specialist is 1.5 gld or beakers. 1.5 is less than 2, so no, speciallists are not more efficient, they are less efficient.

Don't forget about great people points! Those of course become less valuable in the lategame, but then you have Scholarschip and Caste System.

Don't forget about great people points! Those of course become less valuable in the lategame, but then you have Scholarschip and Caste System.

Ahh yes, GP points ... one of the only non-fungible resources in the whole game. That's seat-of-the-pants-gaming territory all right. Gotta love it.

Those amount to zilch except in the 1 or 2 cities that are able to maintain specialists long-term. At least the way I play with all them cottages. I don't worry much about GP except getting my 1st Great Priophet. The rest are gravy. :yumyum:, but the meat and potatoes make the meal. Unless you are playing a Philosophical leader, something I have notyet done in FfH. (I haven't played all the CIVS, much less all the LEADERS. ;)) Most cities will never produce a single GP, so those points earn ya nada.

That does it!

Next game I play I'm going without cottages entirely. A philosophical leader with some other handicapped trait, like barbarian or arcane, if there is such a leader. All other settings at default, except difficulty which will be Immortal :lol: :crazyeye:

Then I'll see how naff aristocracy is :rolleyes:

i don't think i've ever used anything other than god king or heriditary rule. (don't forget heriditary rule gives you access to royal guard as well, which is a decent unit for defending cities and firefighting within your borders)
i can see situations where each would be helpful, but i'm more likely to try to find another way to deal with the problem than give up the wonderful benefits of GK or HR
I'm all for naf's suggestions, the civics may be ok as they are now, but i think naf's changes would really add some extra spice. I really love the idea of a mageocracy civic!

(Evil) Idea to make republic really useful, give a civ with republic the ability to create diplomats. What does a diplomat do? A diplomat can enter a rival city and do a reverse culture bomb (greatly lower culture). Now does the +20% culture seem so useless? Give a diplomat a bribe ability as well (cost should vary based on cultural influence) and now the builder way shall prevail!!!

I think that aristocracy should not give the food penalty because I think the idea behind an aristocracy giving commerce from farms is the aristocracy rules over as many people as possible to extort as much cash from the people as possible.

City states should definitely at least give +free units if not +military unit production because civs using city states I believe are confederacies of people trying to survive in the world. Maintenance of all things should be low (including military which each city should be maintaining as if each city state had its own military).

ya, without the food penalty itd be a great civic, as it stands, losing one food isnt worth 2 commerce, even when you get sanitation, you're still losing one potential food for 2 commerce. using specialists every 2 food equals some amount of commerce, science, and production, with 3 GPPs. gotta say that 2 commerce isnt worth half of any specialist (id rather have 1.5 science and 1.5 GPP than 2 commerce, and thats the worst case, since you can get bonuses on the specialists like +2 culture, or +1 hammer with a wonder, or +1 science).

I'd consider to use Aristocracy with Calabim after sanitation if they were sprawling. :p

Aristocracy really needs some bonus to make it viable at the time you can get it. When I get it I usually have plenty of villages/towns in my capital (which in my games always is the workhorse).

I'd consider to use Aristocracy with Calabim after sanitation if they were sprawling. :p

Aristocracy really needs some bonus to make it viable at the time you can get it. When I get it I usually have plenty of villages/towns in my capital (which in my games always is the workhorse).

What are you doing playing FFH? don't you have a mod I'm really looking forward to to be working on? :D

Sureshot said:

'ya, without the food penalty itd be a great civic, as it stands, losing one food isnt worth 2 commerce'

Could it be as simple as this?

Aristocracy adds 2 commerce to all your farms; that's it.

Sureshot said:

'ya, without the food penalty itd be a great civic, as it stands, losing one food isnt worth 2 commerce'

Could it be as simple as this?

Aristocracy adds 2 commerce to all your farms; that's it.

But 2 commerce is 33.3% better than one food, under most civics and for most cities. 1 food will feed 1/2 specialist which will generate teh equivalent of 1.5 commerce. 2 commerce is 33.3% more than 1.5 commerce.

For financial civs that's +3 commerce, or twice as good as the lost food.

I just switched to Aristocracy in my ongoing game. I'd captured a few scattered cities. They had a lot of farms. I needed to reduce civics costs. Good-bye GK hello Aristocracy. Good-bye 250g/turn deficit hello 5g/turn deficit.

Useless? No. Situational? Yes.

Useless? No. Situational? Yes.Simply put.

The only valid arguments against it so far have been that predominantly building cottages outperforms predominantly building farms. While this is undoubtedly true, I've tried a couple of immortal and deity games with farms and aristocracy as the primary strategy.

It's not going very well.

The problem is where aristocracy gives more immediate gains under ideal conditions, it hasn't been until halfway through my testgames that such conditions as sanitation and engineers are available. Therefore the first 250 turns are an uphill struggle. I could have been developing cottages in that time.

Is there any point in discussing a workaround to this? Obviously, sanitation can't be brought forward along the tech tree, as that would just make early growth even easier. Making aristocracy available sooner doesn't change anything, unless there's an abundance of floodplains, and even then cottages still only need to grow to hamlet levels and there is no reduction in food.

Meh, I can't think of any way round it, except playing on prince level.

Not to demean anyone, im glad discussion is taking place here, but i think those of your finding Aristocracy useful might be automating your workers. Simply put if you micromange your workers improvements and micromanage the development of each city I can guarantee you that empirewide Aristocracy is inferior to using cottages plus any other government civic. If you believe im wrong please post a savegame. My analytical skills arent perfect so maybe there is something im missing and Id love to see if so.

Uniquely developing each city always works out better for commerce and production in the longrun than forcing every farm across your empire to be gimped for the commerce. If you have non-core city that only has a few main farm tiles and lots of hills gimping those farms would reduce this towns ability to utilize the production from the hills which its ideal for. And if you got some town with lots of floodplains and a Bazzar of Mammon then your going to want to make use of that by building cottages to develop into towns which will better utilize that wonder than a farm with 2 commerce would.

BTW my goal here is to hopefully encourage the devs to improve Aristocracy..

Kuriotates with OO and that wonder that makes the city have 0 unhappiness from population? That should be good with aristocracy (after sanitation...)

I want a change in Aristocracy too, I also think that God King is too good, atleast compared to the other civics.

There seems to be some sort of presumption rampant that one must erect Farms everywhere in order to use Aristocracy. I build cottages, believe me. When I switch to aristocracy I do not eliminate a single cottage. It just makes what farms you do have, and you will always have a few, produce commerce you would not get otherwise.

It has other benefits: low cost, and it does not add +10% to city maintenence costs like GK. At some point the +50% gold from GK no longer pay for that civic. At some point the extra maintenece costs are too steep to to make the +50% hammers in the capitol worthwhile. Those are the moments when you switch to Aristocracy. It does not occur every game. But I use aristocracy about 10 times as often as City States and probably three times as often as Heriditary Rule.

I've been playing Civ sinceCiv 1 and I have never once automated a worker. :)

I never build farms, only on resources.

In vanilla Civ, I only build farms to bring up the population of my cities to exactly 20 (minus any unworkable/undesirable tiles). Considering the powerful terriforming in FfH (flooplains/grassland), farms are almost never necessary for me. Getting -1:food: +2:commerce: on farm resource tiles is nice, though.

No such thing as terraforming when you are khazad. Might as well take advantage of those farms that you will be building in plains or deserts converted to plains.

well, while aristocracy takes away 1 food for a measely 2 commerce, i wont be using it lol
every two extra food is worth +1 gold, +1 beaker, +2 culture, +2 hammers, and +3 GPP to me if i do things right, which divided by 2 is tons better than 2 commerce, and if i do things wrong a half a great bard still beats it.

If you happen to have a Fellowship of Leaves High Priest you can terraform even being Khazad, don´t you ?

Oh, never tried making a fellowship high priest yet. Man I have a lot to learn about this mod...

By the way, is there any purpose to blocking dwarves from terriforming? I don't see any glaring late-game strengths that needed to be compensated for, nor do I see a whole lot of flavorful logic in it. It hurts them a lot, once the game gets near the end.

Dwarves with their mines make a shedload of cash and hammers. So the little stunties aren't so good in agricultural aspects? Big deal :D

Just get a Leaves High Priest and you´re good to go.

Steal workers if you want to build lumbermills.

In vanilla Civ, I only build farms to bring up the population of my cities to exactly 20 (minus any unworkable/undesirable tiles). Considering the powerful terriforming in FfH (flooplains/grassland), farms are almost never necessary for me. Getting -1:food: +2:commerce: on farm resource tiles is nice, though.

Farms are my least built improvement also. Sometimes the value to a civic is the 'low' upkeep cost. That's what Aristocray offers, plus it chip sin a few extra coins.

I never build farms, only on resources.

So the word 'never' here is innappropriate, yes? ;)

That's about the same amount of farms I build, but that depends on the civ and the map. I still use Aristocracy when the situation calls for it.

No such thing as terraforming when you are khazad. Might as well take advantage of those farms that you will be building in plains or deserts converted to plains.

Not to mention if you are playing the Financial Khazad leader, those farms will give you +3 commerce.

Pretty damn useless, yes? :mischief:

well, while aristocracy takes away 1 food for a measely 2 commerce, i wont be using it lol
every two extra food is worth +1 gold, +1 beaker, +2 culture, +2 hammers, and +3 GPP to me if i do things right, which divided by 2 is tons better than 2 commerce, and if i do things wrong a half a great bard still beats it.

If you are talking about +2 culture, then you are comparing apples to oranges. If you are talking +2 hammers, then you are talking about a specific situation that may or may not exist in a given game. I've mentioned several times the efficincy to Argiculture is lost when you are also running the free +2 culture / specialist civics. I've mentioned the civic is useful only in certain circumstances. But most civics are useful only situationally. There are just a handful that get used most every game by every civ by every leader.

GPP points are fine ... if that city ever produces a GP. In most of my games, only a minority of all cities actually generate a GP. For a city that never produces a GP, those points may as well not exist. So once again we are looking at a situational issue, not a universal rule.

Use Aristocracy or ignore it. You know what they say about horses and water. ;)

By the way, is there any purpose to blocking dwarves from terriforming? I don't see any glaring late-game strengths that needed to be compensated for, nor do I see a whole lot of flavorful logic in it. It hurts them a lot, once the game gets near the end.

I tend to agree on the balance and flavor logics here. FWIW.

With regard to the dwarven terraforming . . . it would be a cool flavor if the two dwarven civs were the only ones who could raise/lower terrain. :)

Frankly, I think it might be interesting to give the Khazad exclusive access to special spells in the Earth and Enchantment categories, maybe a special Dwarven Runecaster unit?