Doviello late-game economics

This is my first time playing as the Doviello, and I find them unbelievably difficult. You have no economic abilities, your research is weaker than normal and both your leaders don’t have any traits that help your empire-management in any way. Even the Clan of Embers have some form of economic ability, you’ve got none. The only real “advantage” you have is starting with an extra axeman, which in my game, promptly got consumed by a spider. Not needing buildings for units sounds cool, until you remember that only 1/3 of your cities are production cities anyway, the rest contributing less than 10% of your empire’s total hammer output. Besides, if anything you would need more commerce cities, as your units are weaker and more numerous, and it’s not like you can run many specialists anyway (you can’t build libraries).

I don’t even know what kind of economic boast would help them, and at the same time maintain their flavour.

sylvanllewelyn said:

This is my first time playing as the Doviello, and I find them unbelievably difficult. You have no economic abilities, your research is weaker than normal and both your leaders don’t have any traits that help your empire-management in any way. Even the Clan of Embers have some form of economic ability, you’ve got none. The only real “advantage” you have is starting with an extra axeman, which in my game, promptly got consumed by a spider. Not needing buildings for units sounds cool, until you remember that only 1/3 of your cities are production cities anyway, the rest contributing less than 10% of your empire’s total hammer output. Besides, if anything you would need more commerce cities, as your units are weaker and more numerous, and it’s not like you can run many specialists anyway (you can’t build libraries).

I don’t even know what kind of economic boast would help them, and at the same time maintain their flavour.

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Not to be unduly glib, but as a piece of general advice, beat up more people and take their stuff. Charadon is pretty rough but Mahala's having Ingenuity is a big help.

I can beat 1 civ or 2 at most using beastman and their worldspell, but afterwards I can't pay for city maintenance and inflation, my opponents have more units, better units and more cities than me, and I am stuck in a rut. With other civs I can lightbulb and/or beeline to their specialty and continue my assult, but the Doviello does not have anything after the initial rush.

What? More cities? Yeah... one thing I have noticed is that if you rush a civ, they tend to weaken, wither and die, but by the time you are done wiping out the first civ, you have your own, 3 that you captured, and all your enemies already have 6. Not to mention your capital is miles away. Build more beastman and crush the next civ, and afterwards you have 7 cities while the others already have a dozen.

You could play on Barbarian World and raze your enemies cities. The barbarians will ignore you for most of the game whilst your foes get trampled into the dirt. Add the Conquest civic for extra gold whenever you stomp anything and, as you don't need to worry about the barbarians, go and seek those villages for extra gold or tech.

I found the Doviello hilarious, and with a big army, you're never short on money as long as you keep using that army. Pillage the dickens out of everything, basically, cripple anyone within your sphere of influence, carefully consider whether you need to bleed them for a long time or whether razing cities or (blah) taking them makes better sense, etc.

I tended to run slavery while doing this, so some of the time anyone who tried to stop your pillagers would end up a slave, and that slave would quickly end up a beastman or worse, funded by the gold of those pillaged cottages, farms, whatever.

Doviello, if sitting at home builder-style, will indeed stink at research and an independent economy... play to their strengths instead.

Fixing the Military State civic should help the Doviello. Between that and City States, your maintenance should be manageable and then you can just produce units in every city you own. Why bother with research when you should be conquering the world?

Seriously, I don't think the key to playing Doviello is trying to shore up their weak economy. I think the key is, instead, playing to their strengths (quick conquest) so that their weakness doesn't matter.

As Brokenbone said, the Doviello get their economy from pillaging and conquering, not from their cities.

sylvanllewelyn said:

I can beat 1 civ or 2 at most using beastman and their worldspell, but afterwards I can't pay for city maintenance and inflation, my opponents have more units, better units and more cities than me, and I am stuck in a rut. With other civs I can lightbulb and/or beeline to their specialty and continue my assult, but the Doviello does not have anything after the initial rush.

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Not true. The Doviello have the simple fact that, as soon as the tech is available, all of their units can upgrade in the field.

The "no building requirement" is a huge economic benefit that makes new cities quickly productive in the war effort.

As others have said, if you can't afford the maintenance of a newly conquered city, raze it instead.

What? More cities? Yeah... one thing I have noticed is that if you rush a civ, they tend to weaken, wither and die, but by the time you are done wiping out the first civ, you have your own, 3 that you captured, and all your enemies already have 6. Not to mention your capital is miles away. Build more beastman and crush the next civ, and afterwards you have 7 cities while the others already have a dozen.

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First, it's usually quicker to conquer a city than it is to produce a settler and found in a new location.

Second, while your enemy has been putting all of his resources into expanding and improving his territory, you should have been putting all of your resources into an army, so you should have a bigger army and be able to go take out those fresh cities.

Obviously, difficulty matters, and I can't really provide suggestions for the higher difficulties (Emperor+). As a point of reference, though, in the late game of my last Doviello game, I was running 50% science with an income of -60 gold per turn, but I was making 100+ gold per turn from conquering and pillaging, and all of my cities could continue to crank out more fodder for the front lines, and I could easily afford to upgrade my experienced troops.

Don't keep cities. Doviello rape and pillage. Do what they do best - Pillage the enemies. You can run 100% science forever and wipe out empire after empire.

I guess a fun strategy would be to mindlessly maim an enemy empire with pillaging and razing, then make peace, let the AI rebuild while you war elsewhere, then return and pillage your initial victim a second time?

Bleeding target A, then switching to target B to let target A get some assets for you to take later, ad infinitum, is a perfectly valid strategy. Sure, both A and B will have big relationship penalties with you, but as you keep getting stronger from oscillating wars (hopefully managing war weariness through civics and building choices, and letting your citizens "calm down" a bit between wars to be weary about), tough nuts to them.

Again, the Doviello role is kind of "when all you've got is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail", kind of like the Clan in that regard (except instead of cheaply field upgraded fighters (or slave-fighters_, you're talking plentiful warrens-bred fodder).

I wonder why you can't steal techs when capturing cities in FFH. I find that kind of hampers an agressive style. The only way to get knowledge through conquest, is threatening people into giving you it. Which requires you to leave them alive to do so, and even then most AIs are sorely unwilling to give up technology, even when you have a vast army at the gates of their last city.

WarKirby said:

I wonder why you can't steal techs when capturing cities in FFH. I find that kind of hampers an agressive style. The only way to get knowledge through conquest, is threatening people into giving you it. Which requires you to leave them alive to do so, and even then most AIs are sorely unwilling to give up technology, even when you have a vast army at the gates of their last city.

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It would be nice being able to tech steal, it'd keep you in the race at least.

The doviello are good at what they do, conquering early. Lucian is an excellent tool if you are playing as Mahala. When the barbs come at you, they will all be strength 2 or 3, easy targets and free xp for Lucian. On average, by turn 30-40 my Lucian has shock II and march. Combine this with a stack of beastmen and their worldspell and you should easily be able to take out a lot of your rivals. Also as a side note, Lucian makes an excellent candidate for freeing Brigit.

As to the economics of the doviello, here are several tips.
1) Your settler has 4 moves, use them. Find a location that is near a patch of wine/gold/gems. You improve your economy by teching toward bronze working. It's okay to settle your first city on turn 2 or 3.
2) Before you get you large empire, make sure to have gotten cartography.
3) Don't pillage the cities you intend to keep. More often than not they may have developed cottages, farms, gold mines, plantations, etc.

In my games, it is rare for me not to have 5-7 cities by turn 70-80, which obviously gives you a nice edge. Personally, I never tried the bleed target a, bleed target b, return to a strategy. If that works for you, good. I normally conquer or kill and that works wonders for me.

Mahala is quite capable of running a pillage economy on a near permanent basis using Beastman pairs as resource gatherers in enemy territory. Make sure not to pillage roads as they let you collect gold faster. Yes, you still probably won't tech faster than you normally would, but your enemies will also research more slowly due to their worse production/commerce. In relative terms, you win out. By Bronze working you should have a sufficient war chest that you can begin the city taking with axemen upgraded in the field.

I couldn't open the posted save (it wasn't patch k or m), but I started an open Charadon game.

Yeah, the Doviello can be a blast when used correctly. Kill everyone, pillage everything, do it early. Don't keep many, if any, cities - unless they provide access to Copper or Iron. Tech toward Bronze Working, Way of the Wicked, and Iron Working in that order; you can ignore pretty much everything else until you have Sons of Asena wandering about (even - gasp! - cottages, if your enemies are close enough together for steady pillaging).

Thank you for all the advice!! Especially the slavery part.

Well beastman cost 25 hammers, settlers cost 120 hammers, monuments cost 60 hammers, so if I can conquer a city and not lose more than half a dozen beastman, then I should conquer I guess (chances are 1 building will be left when I take a city). Otherwise I would stick to building settlers, unless the city in question is in a great location.

As for the game I posted, I did eventually win it, but it was truly an epic and difficult one that left me wondering if I did anything wrong. I built up to 100 battlemasters and 50 catapults, against 3 times my power graph, and the only thing that saved my ass was mithril.

What would be cool is that since Lucian is technically not a hero. They should make a Battlemaster version of him that you can upgrade him to once you have the research for Battlemasters. Even though by that time he has so many promotions he make the battlemasters look like children. By the end of a match with Mahala he was at around 347 experience. Anyways, since he is like a group/warband captain lorewise I would think he would atleast be armed the same way as his troops.

I tried the Doviello (Malaha) after being inspired of the new manual strategy page for them. I had luck starting of close to a lot of gems, but needed bronze working to get rid of the jungles on top of them. The beginning was really hard as i had conquered some Ljosalfar city on the other side of the continent and I had to reenter a risky war with them just to get enough gold to survive long enough to get cottages and some other needed techs.

When the first cottages was built and I manged to get City States as a civic, my empire really started to bloom. The units' spell that upgrade them in the fields are awesome. After spending 40-something turns p) to research rage so I could get the units called Circle of Urd, I'm now ready to kick the h... out of my enemies. Having your Battlemasters (Doviello Champion) being able to upgrde to Circle of Urd while in the battle, was a big suprise to me as I though I had to build them from scracth. I even called in Basium for some extra support

All-in-all, this game seems to be one of the most interesting I've had. I'm at war with Hyborem which is already the most powerful in the game cause of all the Ashen Veil civs there (Ethne the White is the only good leader).

Methuselah said:

It would be nice being able to tech steal, it'd keep you in the race at least.

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While playing a high-to-low game..... my second civ was the Doviello.... needless to say they were way behind techwise.... that is until I completed the Eyes & Ears.... I have no idea how many techs I really popped... because the Doviello instantly went from middle of the pack... to score leaders that turn....