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Paragraphs, paragraphs - getting a bit wall-of-texty in parts, there. Plain old line-breaks are fine, too.

It'd also be a good idea not to type these things out while pretending you're chatting on your instant messenger application of choice, if nothing else to stop my eyes from bleeding...

Paragraphs, paragraphs - getting a bit wall-of-texty in parts, there. Plain old line-breaks are fine, too.

It'd also be a good idea not to type these things out while pretending you're chatting on your instant messenger application of choice, if nothing else to stop my eyes from bleeding...

At the risk of being a grammar nazi, I have to agree. It seems like there's a lot of good information in there and lots to discuss but I quit after the first few paragraphs due to illegibility.

Please, dont say lords! It's disrespectful! The real name is Octopus Overlords ;)

so , what stage are you looking for tactics for?

Paragraphs, paragraphs - getting a bit wall-of-texty in parts, there. Plain old line-breaks are fine, too.

It'd also be a good idea not to type these things out while pretending you're chatting on your instant messenger application of choice, if nothing else to stop my eyes from bleeding...

At the risk of being a grammar nazi, I have to agree. It seems like there's a lot of good information in there and lots to discuss but I quit after the first few paragraphs due to illegibility.

Yeah, I found it somewhat difficult to read myself.

try separation it into sections like
calabim and religions
calabim and the overlords
calabim and weakness to sun
and using the tab key for paragraphs

what kenken meant-the special effect of sacrifice the weak is that your cities eat 1/2 the food(this would stack with farms to have a 4x effect!)

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few things i do as calabim in the mid to early game that your looking at.

1 - you want to rush for vampires and dont get too distracted however there are 2 techs to get on the way there. festivals so you can get a +3 gold per city and a +1 happy per city, and the animal tech to see horses and boost food production.

2 - once you can see horses and get aristocracy going build your 3 national units.

3 - build bloodpets and never stop building bloodpets. these are your food supply in the future and until you get there you can overwhelm any attacker with massive numbers.

To add to important techs besides Feudalism:

Festivals - As daladinn says, the happiness from the Building festivals is nice to have, although its quite expansive to build. It's also needed if you have any captured animals you want to add to the city for additional happiness. The biggest reason I find is for the market, which is a cheap building that adds +3 :gold: and -1:science: , which is very nice. And will make it easier to put science on 100%. Flauros build these extra fast too, with his financial trait.
Sanitation - Gives +1 food on Farms, excellent for the Agricultural/Aristocracy combo you are gonna be running for most parts of the game. Public Baths gives +3 :) and +1 :yuck:. Also, you can build Aqueducts, which can be nice to have with its +2 :health:. And you can remove jungles if you have any.
Knowledge of the Ether and Priesthood - So you can build adepts and Priests early enough to get experience. This isn't needed if you don't feel you are gonna need them. But for long games at least, they can be nice to have even with vamps running the show.

I agree that Festivals is very important for the early game for any civ. It allows rapid early expansion.


My experience with Calabim is somewhat limited. What I have observed is that Alexis' Philo trait, combined with the sage points in the capital and breeding pits for extra food makes for awesome GP strats.

Great Sages can come early and fast, allowing the Calabim to develop a strong arcane line of troops in addition to teching towards Vampires. Before unhappiness is under control, there's no reason not to run specialists if you're Alexis. Elder Council and/or a Library in the capital with a Breeding Pit can pump out a lot of Sages quickly. Using one Sage to put an Academy in a God King capital will supercharge research in the early game.

After that, Great Sages can lightbulb a strong arcane path while not slowing down a beeline to Vampires. Build several Fire I Adepts early to gain XP. Tech to Sorcery right after Vampires and upgrade to Fire II Sorcerers for bombarding cities.

Stacks of Bloodpets, Vampires, and Fire Sorcerers make a monster army in the mid game.

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Alternately, if you want to go for an early, pre-Vamp war, you can run Merchant specialists. Settled Great Merchants provide great cash flow for an early expansion and additional food for population growth. Lightbulbing econ techs can keep the early expansion going as well.

Calabim cant build elder council.

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If I wipe you out with Flauros next time we play MP, will you stop complaining about them being underpowered?

so the result is, nealhunt, from not being able to build elder council for +2 beakers and 1 sage (3 beakers):

sages dont come fast...u have to wait till writing and build libraries for only 1 sage (3 beakers) or until certain religions' temples allowing for 1 sage (3 beakers)

The calabim is runner up for having the worse science rate/beakers after the clan being the leaders in lack of beakers/science rate

Doing farms doesnt help with beakers until u get COL and aris civic ..and still +2 commerce per farm doesnt do much for your already low amount of beakers

Anyone try getting great merchants first then? Think of what you could do with 6 extra gold in the beginning of the game. You could probably spread like a plague instead to get your commerce, and you could afford to because you are running merchants and settling great merchants. You even get 1 extra food to boot! Surely that doesn't sound like a terrible idea. I haven't tried it myself yet though.

Great Merchants are great, and I haven't tried it yet, but it should work good.
4 of them in a city would mean +24 Gold (before % bonuses even) and +4 food.

Don't know if it helps much in the very early game tho (pre-religions), like a sage do. Also, an early Academy in the capital is 50% more beakers for a big part of the game.

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I'm sure u can I'm still very noob.

I'm not saying alexis is any better than flauros. I'm just pointing out there's more synergies with farms-alexis phil trait-slavery civic-vamps-specialists-etc.
however,farms also have more problems to deal with and is more complicated and needs more micromanagement than a cotage economy with flauros

You are forgetting that farms in aristocracy gets +1 commerce with Flauros, as they start with 2. So all farms with Flauros are +3 or +4 commerce (if next to river)

And you need Animal husbandry anyways for vamps, Feudalism requires Trade, and trade requires Horseback Riding, and Horseback riding requires Animal Husbandry.

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true flaoros will give +1 commerce to your +2 commerce farms with aris civic, but id rather use cotages with flaoros getting +` commerce on my ~7 commerce cotages for 8 commerce than only +1 commerce on 2 commerce aris farms for only 3 commerce.......8 commerce is better than 3 commerce per tile

if your doing farms I dont see the point in using flauros over alexis

If you want more commerce u'd do cotages and use flauros

If you got 10 tiles with towns producing 8 instead of 7 commerce with Flauros. You get a total of +10 commerce from his bonus.

If you have a 10 tiles with Farms, producing 3 instead of 2 commerce with Flauros. You get a total of +10 commerce from his bonus.

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It's just you. The point is, financial is just as good on farms producing 2 commerce as on grown cottages producing 7: In either case, it's +1 per tile. (In fact, it could be argued that it's much better on the 2 commerce farm, where it adds 50%, as opposed to ~14% on the cottage)

He's just saying financial trait is as useful with astocratic farms as it is with hamlets. Even if you go farms because you want food more than money, the extra money from the trait is still very helpful.

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As politely as i can, would you please improve your reading skills so I don't have to double post the same thing because you can't read very well. It's really irritating.

I don't think anyone here is having any problems with reading. Please don't attack your fellow posters, it's just not constructive.

The point that other people are making is that +1 commerce is +1 commerce. It doesn't matter if the tile is producing 2 commerce, or 7 commerce, or 10 million commerce. +1 commerce is still one extra unit. You don't need to go 100% cottages to benefit from receiving an extra point of commerce, the bonus is the same either way.

Who the better leader for farm spamming is, is a matter of discussion... but the point is that the financial trait is still fully functioning and helping you regardless of whether you use towns or farms.

I love your rationale with the statistics

Let me give you an analogy of your logic in the statistics:

the first person is infected with HIV-AIDS virus. If you kill the person, you just killed 100% of all people infected. THAT'S BAD....100% !!!! ONE PERSON..

now lets let HIV-AIDS spread and now we have a billion people infected. But, now we only kill a 1 million people infected...only a million poeple.......THAT'S good! It's only 1/1000 or 0.001 %. We r only killing 1% of the people infected compared to 100% people infected...ya ..thats good..rationale you have.....

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your stats r right but ur 50% means nothing in the game. 8 commerce vs 3-4 commerce DOES mean something in the game

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I'm not arguing that 3 or 4 commerce is more than 8, as you seem to believe. I'm saying that the bonus from financial is identical for tiles with more than one commerce, no matter how much additional commerce that tile produces.

A financial leader does not get a bigger bonus from his financial trait with cottages than with aristocracy farms - in fact, someone with all their commerce coming from 7-commerce cottage tiles will get roughly 14% bonus commerce from the financial trait, while someone relying only on 2-commerce farms with aristocracy will get a 50% bonus from the financial trait.

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Flaming - warned.

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Really. If you want people to read what you write carefully, take the extra few seconds and use something resembling the English language - I know you're capable of, at the very least, spelling 'you' and 'are'.

If you don't feel the point you're trying to make is important enough to present it clearly, why should anyone else even think it important enough to read it?

Even so, if I understand that poor butchered language of yours properly, you consider a 7->8 commerce boost better than 3->4 - and I really can't see how that works. I can't help but feel you somehow consider "the more you have, the more you need" somehow applies to commerce and/or beakers, and, well... it makes no sense!

(Note that I'm using beakers and commerce assuming a 100% ratio between the two in the following example.)

Let's take a small empire bringing in 35 beakers per turn, from five tiles with 7 commerce. This has a 200-beaker tech taking six turns to research.

If we add 5 beakers due to the financial trait, we end up at 40. The tech now takes five turns - a turn earlier! Great!

Next, let's use an aristocratic farm-empire of the same diminutive size. It brings in a pitiful 15 beakers per turn, from five riverside farms of 3 commerce each. This empire needs 14 turns to research the tech above.

We add financial, again with five beakers as a result. With 20 beakers, the tech takes 10 turns to research. Wow, four turns earlier!

Here, we see that the farming aristocrats gained more from the financial traits: They cut a flat 4 turns of the tech, where the cottagers cut only one turn - adding a flat number of beakers is much more useful for those who don't make as many.

While that was a simplified example, nowhere near the complexity of the actual game, it still illustrates the fact that financial does more to help those with lower commerce gains, as long as those are above the threshold of 2 for a tile.
If you'd like to explain under what circumstances the 7-commerce-cottage-user would gain a larger benefit from the trait than the farmer, I'd love to hear it.

Bear in mind that I've said nothing on the farms-vs-cottages issue - it might well be true that going for cottages is a better idea as a financial leader, in the end. (A mix of the two might be optimal, I imagine.)

Really IMO the issue is, what's better?

8 commerce from towns, or 4 food plus 3 commerce from farms.

personally I reckon the farms. now that there's +1 hammer per unhappy person for calabim, Growth is no longer such an issue.

*edit*

Might also be worth mentioning that sacrifice the weak civic has a -50% great person penalty attached. Therefore the ashen veil is really only a good civ for flauros- it has anti-synergy with alexis.

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Even if sacrifice the weak civic gives -50% great person penalty it's still a good civic for Alexis. But Alexis might wanna stay Overlords longer and milk out GPP from the city with Tower of Complacency.

I havn't gotten so far yet to see the full effect of a city with the Governor's Manor. But it should work best with sacrifice the weak.

And to put an end to the Farms vs Cottages under financial discussion: If you are Calabim, you ARE gonna run Heavily on farms. And my point is, Flauros will get +1 commerce on every farm you run, EVERY FARM.

Math is good and all, the only problem is... you're not using it. You just threw a load of math up there, then kept repeating the same baseless idea.

While I'm usually opposed to doing so, I'll pick your post apart.



20 commerce x 100% (1.0) = 40 commerce compared to 10 commerce x 100% =20

20 commerce x 100% = 20 commerce. 10 commerce x 100% = 10 commerce. What's that about math, again?

4 (3+1 fin) farm vs 8 (7+1 fin) cotage: per single farm and cottage:

4 + (4 x 25% library)= 4+1=5=not a big boost to farms: 4->5 commerce

8 + (8 x 25% library)=8+2=10 commerce not a big boost to cottage either: 8->10 commerce

All you did here is prove libraries give a 25% boost to research, regardless of it you're using farms or cottages. Good job, Einstein.

now lets take 20 tiles of cottages vs 20 tiles of farm:

20 tiles x 4 commerce per farm=80 commerce + (80 x 25%)= 80+20=100 commerce: 80->100 for farm

20 tiles x 8 commerce per cottage=160 commerce + (160 x 25%) =160+40=200 commerce: 160->200 for cotages

im too lazy to see percent but id mouch rather be making 200 commerce than 100 commerce

Wow, you did it again! Libraries add 25% even if you have TWENTY TILES! I wonder why nobody nominated you for a Nobel prize yet?

if i've done my math right they are both the same percent wise=1/5 growth...i think i might have done something wrong maybe..or maybe not...its been long time since i've done math.....
Oh, your math isn't right, and even if it were, all you'd prove is that libraries work just like their description says. Now, what does that have to do with anything, again?

20 tiles x 4 commerce per farm=80 commerce + (80 x 100%)= 80+80=160 commerce: 80->160 for farm

20 tiles x 8 commerce per cottage=160 commerce + (160 x 100%) =160+160=320 commerce: 160->320 for cotages

Wait, what? Here, you're apparently attempting to prove 8 is twice as large a number as 4. Again, good job, but... why?

ah now i know what i messed up on...... I was comparing them the wrong way ... haha my bad:D ...
I knew they couldnt have the same percent!!! :D

20 tiles x 3 commerce per farm=60 commerce + (60 x 100%)= 60+60=120 commerce: 60->120 for farm

20 tiles x 7 commerce per cottage=140 commerce + (140 x 100%) =140+140=280 commerce: 140->280 for cotages

3 commerce farm (no fin trait)=60->120 vs 4 commerce farm (fin traited)=80->160= 75% (3/4) differ

7 commerce cot (no fin trait)=140->280 vs 8 comerce cot (fin traited)=160->320= 87.5% (7/8) differ

fin trait boosts farms' commerce by 75%
fin trait boosts cotages' comerce by 87.5%

fin trait boost: farm < cotage

uses to total commerce

That'd be neat, IF IT WERE TRUE! Fin trait boosts 3-commerce farms' commerce by 33%. It boosts 7-commerce cottages' commerce by roughly 14%. It's official - you fail at math. (It boosts farms by 1/3 and cottages by 1/7 - not 3/4 and 7/8 - to do that, it'd have to add 2.25 commerce per tile for farms, and over 7 commerce per tile for cottages!)

fin trait helps out cotages more than farms in turns of total comerce of city with libraries etc.. that give % bon

No.

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sorry bcalchet but i've finally did/got the math done right and actually it IS cotages that get more boost than farms do. if your still in denial u can argue with the correctly done math:D ... goodluck! I have yet to see a person beat out correctly done math in an arguement:D and real life with engineering or theoretical physics or astronomy or whatever:D math is the key to the universe from black holes to building a bridge to proving that I am right in this case and you are wrong:D

Hint: If you want to use math to prove ANYTHING, try learning it first. Just because you type out lots of numbers before saying something stupid doesn't mean you used math to prove it wasn't stupid.


You can get your point across in more constructive ways than flaming. Warned.

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;_; that's completely wrong, as well... I give up.

Even if sacrifice the weak civic gives -50% great person penalty it's still a good civic for Alexis. But Alexis might wanna stay Overlords longer and milk out GPP from the city with Tower of Complacency.

I havn't gotten so far yet to see the full effect of a city with the Governor's Manor. But it should work best with sacrifice the weak.

And to put an end to the Farms vs Cottages under financial discussion: If you are Calabim, you ARE gonna run Heavily on farms. And my point is, Flauros will get +1 commerce on every farm you run, EVERY FARM.
Actually, I like to stay OO as the Calabim for the slaves. Vamps can eat slaves to gain health and another attack. Over the course of a game, staying OO (with slavery) should let you have ~25% more attacks (if you can use them).

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7 cota + (7 x 0.25)=8.75
8 cota + (8 x 0.25)=10

10/8=1.25 cota* .....weird..... very weird.....
It should be 10/8.75, which does indeed come out to 1.142857... No matter what multiplier you use, the ratio will always be the same as long as the multiplier is the same.

The Calabim will always want farms to feed their vampires. Alexis will want more farms and specialists to maximize her traits. Flauros will want more cottages because he won't be relying as much on GP for research. Flauros will keep farms around to quickly grow after rushing and feasting, but cottages, not specialists, will drive his research.

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...and now you're reduced to putting words in my mouth, eh? I guess it's always easier to argue against someone if you don't actually read what they're saying.

Not all farms produce three commerce. Not all cottages produce seven commerce. Farms are not always boosted by 33%. Cottages are not always boosted by ~14%. The example farm and the example cottage, sure, but you clearly said it was *always* so for farms and cottages. (And there really is no need to add the library bonus over and over again, it'll be 25% no matter how often you do it.)

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It was completely wrong, but only when applied to all farms and cottages all the time, as you did.

I'm not sure we entirely agree:
if your doing farms I dont see the point in using flauros over alexis
Even Flauros will need plenty of farms, more than most other leaders need. It's not a simple question of farms or cottages, it's how many.

That said, which leader does everyone here prefer? Right now I prefer Flaruos because I don't find Agg that useful once I get Vamps. It's great until then, but once you get all the XP you need, who cares about one promotion? Fin and Org also boost some of my favorite buildings.

look at the dissonance a library has caused...-clearly such things should be left out of the calculation.
why do people get irrational over (seemingly) irreconcilable things?


(the multiplyer will be applied to both ,the 1 commerce gained/lost due to rounding alone is 99% of the time never going to make a diffrence, except for the occ, and the early game without such boni)

2 farms under aristocracy/agriculture get the financial bonus twice

1 farm and 1 cottage otherwise gets the financial bonus once

while assuming a level 4 cottage with no improvement, on grassland.
is equal without the financial bonus, meaning the 2 farm combo is better after mass dejunglization

also, whats with this double mod standard being applied to forums vs subforums or is it just philosophy that is exempt from anti flame moderation?

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I'll agree on Aggression being garbage - look at Raider. Now there's a combat trait with an edge. Faster experience, first strike, using enemy roads, superior pillaging, more unit types benefit... there's no comparison.

But then, I prefer Flauros.

Does anyone not use Agriculture, besides elves and possibly Lanun?

I dont agree. I think that no matter what leader you choose, you will need farms with Calabim. The difference is, the leaders get benefits from the farms in different ways. Flauros gets +1 coin to every farm (in aristocracy), and Alexis gets +100% GPP, and you can have more specialists with farms.

It's as simple as that.

Flauros might benefit a bit more by running a mixed farms/cottages strategy, especially in the early game. (I tend to replace some towns with farms in the mid game) but he is still gonna use a lot of farms. I tend to put my towns on grassland hills and plains.

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OK - that's quite enough. Either continue the discussion in civil terms, without any flaming, or I will shut the discussion down; banning people as necessary.

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Flaming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming

Cause if it's in Wikipedia, it's True.

You shouldn't (necessarily) run Aristocracy / Ag with Flauros, but a few grassland farms lets you run more cottages. Plains is one food, one production. A point of population, before you get Veil, takes 2 food to sustain. There's what, 21 squares in a normal city? You need several farms if you're going to sustain full cottages. Not to mention a) Calabim want large cities for max snacking options and b) new Calabim don't even care if their people are cranky or not, they can still use them as production resources.

And, hey, that way you can run City States, which is more lucrative for very large empires. Like you will be, once you unleash your vamps on the world.

I'm just trying to see your point of veiw with using flaoros with farms instead of alexis for her phil trait or doing cotages-flarous. To me doing farms-flarous is as ineffective as doing alexis-cotages.

I understand that doing farms-flaoros gives you both food and some commerce. But, ffh2 requires specialization even more than civ4 ever did and playing in this hydrid or "generalist" way can't compete with some one who specializes.
As xAlephx said, you still need enough farms to support your cities. Not all tiles will be flat grasslands. I suppose Sacrifice the Weak changes things, but only as long as you keep up your health rating.

I think the "ideal" Flauros strategy would involve a "few" cities with only farms for feeding and building your vampires, and the rest with as many cottages as possible.