Aristocratic Elves

[Zechnophobe]

Something I've been working on for a while, because it seemed the math might support it as a valid strategy.

First of all, let me bring you up to speed on Aristocracy + Ancient Forest + Sanitation.

A tile of this form on Grassland produce 4 food, 1 production, and 2 trade.

A lot of time we assume that cottage spamming is better in the long run than farming, and this is generally true. However, there are a few things to consider:

The higher the number of squares you can work, due to happiness, the better the farm approach works.

For instance, if you can grow until size 10, it will take the cottage based economy 131 turns (101 with taxation) to catch up due to its better long term gains. A size 20 possible city (Growing from size 1) will take 225 turns to equalize (Where the cottage economy catches ).

This happens because while the farm economy only has 2 commerce per tile, it grows at a significantly greater rate to fill that maximum city size. Further more, once the cap has been reached, some population points can be moved to specialists, you will not have this food buildup with cottages.

However, elves under Guardian of Nature have just about unlimited growth capabilities due to happiness, and can approach that via Priesthood to spread forests everywhere.


So why elves? Well, first of all, because their forested tiles also produce production (Compared to other players who can't forest the tile, and must use agrarianism, to achieve the same level of growth) means that the speed of growth also increases production in a city, not just the commerce rate.

Please note, that I still very much suggest you build cottages early on. You can do so before you get code of Laws, and will greatly help you get to Guardian of Nature, sanitation, and code of laws.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

However, elves under Guardian of Nature have just about unlimited growth capabilities due to happiness

This is the key point that I'd like to underline which makes this a much better idea for elves than it does for most civs. The slower growth from cottaging hurts more, and there's more time before food starts becoming useless.

Because ancient forests provide extra food, you also need not run agrarianism, which means you don't start bleeding hammers by spamming farms the way the other civs do.

I still stand by this strategy being crap for most of the civs, but the Elves have the tools to make something of it.

 

[Schmoe]

I still stand by this strategy being crap for most of the civs, but the Elves have the tools to make something of it.

I ran Aristocracy/Agrarianism as a Financial Grigori (no religion) for 200 turns and quit, because I was 3000 points ahead of my nearest competitor and half of the world was still barbarian. Although difficulty surely played a role (I think it was Monarch or Prince), I don't think the strategy is crap.

 

[Schmoe]

Just as a followup to what I think is a pretty strong combination:

Agrarianism Farm
+3
-1

Aristocracy Farm
+1
+2

Aristocracy + Agrarianism + Financial Farm
+2
-1
+3

So using the combination gives you the faster growth of farms plus strong commerce. Put the farms on grassland so you don't lose hammers, and then use the extra population to run lumbermills, mines, and specialists so you have respectable production. It comes up quickly with the population growth from the farms, it has low maintenance, and it gives great production. I used this as a base with some cottages, windmills, and mines mixed in for additional oomph.

 

[Blackmantle]

@ Monkeyfinger:
Mid-Lategame there are other feasible ways to get high amounts of happiness (especially feasible if many specialists can be run and you are not all so much dependent on the slider...) + most financial civs have much more to gain from agrarianism + Agriculture + Sanitation than nonfinancial ones. (that setup is rarely earlier than early midgame anyways so those sources of bigger hapiness are not all so far away usually.)

Gambling Houses and Theatres (depending on game-plan) can help alot (which work better for sources of large amounts of happiness again because you can run more specialists with that economy and thus the slider isn't everything in terms of research...).

Also if running Order happiness shouldn't be a problem as well (neither should maintenance which allows for rapid expansion if some land is still available to grab.)

For Rok-Civs and Civs running Slavery the production-issue isn't all soo bad (in most city setups you do have some mountains and thus a comparable production to lots of forests around if you get to work all tiles).


What really does suffer for non-elves though is health (for quite some time). But there is so much food gained that still it should be less of an issue than hapiness at least until late midgame (unless you are really lucky with getting lots of luxuries / other sources of happiness)


Still the Elves should be able to pull it off the fastest (because you don't need bronze for cottaging your first city) and! get very much from it because you have high happycaps / healthcaps very early.

And one hammer per forest imo is clearly superior to one extra commerce from commercial. (best of course whould be financial elves with unrestricted leaders. But i for one don't play unrestricted.)
The 2 commerce vs. 1 hammer riversides hurt a bit more but are more than made up for by the easy+early acess to huge ammounts of health + hapiness.

What i write here has only been true to that extent though since aristocracy has turned into an outstanding civic in its own right (imo the change to maintenance is even more powerful than a cutting of the food-penalty whould have been.)


For most non-financial or non-elven civs i still find it rather subpar though (especially for Illians which don't even get commerce from riversides.).

 

[Kjara]

tl;dr: going from 2 to 3 food is amazing in what it does for your growth, going from 3 to 4 food is much less noticeable



I'm not so sure that this is better for elves than it is for anyone else(and perhaps is worse). Consider that a cottage for an elf on a grassland/ancient forest is 3 food, 1 hammer, and 2+ commerce.
Thus your tiles start at -1 food(as compared to grassland/ancient forest/farm/sanitation/Aristocracy), and eventually gain what, 4 extra commerce with taxation?
If you augment this with 1 or 2 farms(at 5 food each due to sanitation), you get a city that grows quite rapidly already.

The crux is that going from 2 food to 3 or 4 food really speeds up your growth(and is what makes farms + Aristocracy good for non elves, and farms beat out cottages so strongly in the short term, but going from 3 to 4 food isn't nearly worth as much. If you look at how long it takes to grow with alot of 2 food tiles, and 1-2 farms/food resources, compared to how long it takes to grow with a lot of 3 food tiles, its much faster(and this is the situation that most cottage/specialist economies are going to be in). However, elves are instead comparing 3 food cottages with 1-2 farms/food resources compared to 4 food tiles, and while the 4 food tiles will still grow faster, the difference in growth is much less.

Some of the speed is also lost due to needing more tech to get your farms up, but its not that major as none of the required techs are that late in the tree.

Of course, with the slower ancient forest appearance, this might not be completely true, but if not, then we are comparing normal specialist and normal cottage, with both just getting the added bonus of the hammer from the forest, which again leaves the elves as worse than anyone else, since they can't run agrarianism without losing the hammer from every tile.

For non elves, a Aristocracy + Agrarianism + Financial Farm on a grassland is an amazing tile, but the loss of production for the elves really hurts when comparing it to cottages plus the fact that you already are getting 3 food from every grassland tile.

However, as you noted, it does work, but I think that part of this is just the fact that elven economies with ancient forests is just so powerful that anything reasonable will work, not that this strat is superior to cottaging for the elves .

 

[Blackmantle]

@ Kjara: You have some misconceptions about some of those comments.

First (this seems to be a big one) Taxation enhances each level of cottage by +1 (so cottages yield 2, hamlets yield 3, villages yield 4 and Towns yield 5).
But those are not! cumulative. So Towns only yield 1 additional commerce at taxation not 4 (and you would have to prioritize Taxation which you might not always want.).

I might have badly misunderstood that statement a bit though (sorry if i did, the paragraph below is the explanation in case i did got you wrong.).
If you mean overall commerce remember that 2 food sustain one pop which translates into one specialist (in case of a scientist that might easily be as much as 5-6 science + GPP + possible culture with greath library and 4-5 science + possible culture without it. Still the better deal for science, let alone culture. Only for merchants its not all so hot. But those still deliver GPP which might matter to your strat and possible culture.
Engineers and Priests have different merits altogether in their own right because those greath people are often more valuable.)
Still it does matter a lot for various other reasons as well.
The waiting for the cottages to develop may be no deal in early to midgame (where the cottages are clearly superior anyways.) but in mid-lategame it has a huge impact. (30 Turns of actively working the tile from cottage to town?).
When you are expanding fast (which aristocracy + farms + sanitation + agrarianism/ancient forests help hugely with) in mid to lategame getting your commerce up as fast as your city grows means that farms + aristocracy have the edge for a long time for new cities.


Secondly: At first from 2 to 4 doesn't seem! so much different to 2 to 3 but it heavily adds up as the city grows to size 4-6 where the growth remarkably accelerates (the more huge the city gets the faster it will grow before hitting the healthcap.) +
food helps building settlers and workers faster and
food can be used for whipping with slavery or
for fast military by drafting (via military state... A huge empire turning into an army at the blink of an eye can be truly scary. I had the deity AI do it a few times lately. I don't laugh all so much at military state anymore.)
or for producing military faster with conquest (which might not be such a good idea fur such an economy but its still worth listing imo in case you are elves but non-fol and a few rare others.)
So food is a lot about growth but its far from the only benefit. (which is why the difference from 3 to 4 is still quite huge in overall effect.
The step from 4 to 5 on the other hand without aristocracy does help extremely in the initial stages when the city is very small so looks much more impressive but it isn't if you lose a lot of commerce.)


Thirdly (this is even much more true for non-elves which don't get their production from overall spread of forest mainly) the flexibility in working tiles is much smaller.
This is especially important in cities with lots of mixed terrain which is a common sight for many spots you settle.
Say 4-5 hills (or even more than 5, this is even more true for plain-hills than for grassland-hills where cottages might have a small edge since you can build them on grassland-hills too) in fat-cross (the rest flatlands of whatever sort which supports farms) with cottages to get them up you have to work them to get them up to cities which also means you grow slower.
With farms + aristocracy you can switch to those mines for production at will / as needed and don't suffer from less commerce later. Also you grow faster to use more tiles earlier.

Also your are not so bound to settle near grains/lifestock in the first place (rivers are nonbeneficial anyways besides freshwater / breweries which matter a bit less to fol-elves than to other civs as well. I didn't mention the need for freshwater to place farms because that part and how it can be overcome is obvious.) so cities can be put in less "ideal" locations and still turn out great (this is true for both elves and nonelves under farms + aristocracy but for elves its especially extreme.)
Whereas if you focus on cottages you need some sources of food near.

So the way to go (if you want to go with aristocracy + farms at all) for both elves and financial non-elves seems to be cottage at the start (especially if you go financial with adaptive at ~ turn 100 or ~ Turn 200) farm + aristocracy later in the game (only that elves can make the switch for full benefits quite a bit earlier. How much depends on the flow of the game for the non-elves.)

The switch to aristocracy might still pay off right when you get code of laws (agrarianism is early-game for non-elves anyways...). 3/0/3(4 if riversides) for non-elves or 3/1/2 tiles (for elves,sadly no riversides but still much better overall) are still neat and help getting to sanitation quite a bit faster... + there is no need to go all farms right away. The 40% reduction to maintenance kicks in right at adoption and for newly founded cities it might still be very neat.
This is also true only since Aristocracy has changed for the better. (and Royal Guards at feudalism can also be quite neat. Especially if you don't have spirit-mana + neatly takes care getting your new cities' cultural influence up to fat-cross-size without much fuss. )
For just this same reason of not being forced to put farms everywhere and still profiting from the civics it might actually pay off to briefly adopt agrarianism even as elves for a brief period in early-game (before you can get guardian of nature adopted.).

 

[Kjara]

@ Kjara: You have some misconceptions about some of those comments.

First (this seems to be a big one) Taxation enhances each level of cottage by +1 (so cottages yield 2, hamlets yield 3, villages yield 4 and Towns yield 5).
But those are not! cumulative. So Towns only yield 1 additional commerce at taxation not 4 (and you would have to prioritize Taxation which you might not always want.).

Sorry, I wasn't clear perhaps:

Was saying that towns+taxation yield 3 more com than farms+aristocracy, not that they got +3(4) from tax(looked it up, unless I'm missing something, it should be 5 vs 2, I was adding an additional point from something I think the previous post).

I might have badly misunderstood that statement a bit though (sorry if i did, the paragraph below is the explanation in case i did got you wrong.).
If you mean overall commerce remember that 2 food sustain one pop which translates into one specialist (in case of a scientist that might easily be as much as 5-6 science + GPP + possible culture with greath library and 4-5 science + possible culture without it. Still the better deal for science, let alone culture. Only for merchants its not all so hot. But those still deliver GPP which might matter to your strat and possible culture.
Engineers and Priests have different merits altogether in their own right because those greath people are often more valuable.)
Still it does matter a lot for various other reasons as well.
The waiting for the cottages to develop may be no deal in early to midgame (where the cottages are clearly superior anyways.) but in mid-lategame it has a huge impact. (30 Turns of actively working the tile from cottage to town?).
When you are expanding fast (which aristocracy + farms + sanitation + agrarianism/ancient forests help hugely with) in mid to lategame getting your commerce up as fast as your city grows means that farms + aristocracy have the edge for a long time for new cities.

My problem with your numbers here is that you are running agrarianism at all in the mid to late game. If so, you are hurting all of your already big towns that don't have the happiness/healthiness without guardian, if you aren't, then you only have a 1 food advantage over cottages, thus its a comparison of 4 to 3(on grassland/flat/ancient forest) not 4 to 2 or 5 to 3.

Secondly: At first from 2 to 4 doesn't seem! so much different to 2 to 3 but it heavily adds up as the city grows to size 4-6 where the growth remarkably accelerates (the more huge the city gets the faster it will grow before hitting the healthcap.) +
food helps building settlers and workers faster and
food can be used for whipping with slavery or
for fast military by drafting (via military state... A huge empire turning into an army at the blink of an eye can be truly scary. I had the deity AI do it a few times lately. I don't laugh all so much at military state anymore.)
or for producing military faster with conquest (which might not be such a good idea fur such an economy but its still worth listing imo in case you are elves but non-fol and a few rare others.)
So food is a lot about growth but its far from the only benefit. (which is why the difference from 3 to 4 is still quite huge in overall effect.
The step from 4 to 5 on the other hand without aristocracy does help extremely in the initial stages when the city is very small so looks much more impressive but it isn't if you lose a lot of commerce.)

Again, late game I wouldn't run conquest as elves as it again conflicts with guardian, but you have a point that you can whip better with 4 vs 3, while growing a city. I'm pretty sure that for drafting in existing cities or whipping in existing cities, you are going to have more happy problems than growth problems with 3 or 4 food(esp since you will be close to the max either way, and will have specialists eating up alot of the excess that gave you great growth rates). I guess if you want to completely cripple your large towns, you do have more total drafts you can do with aristocracy, but the unhappyness makes that unlikely to be worth it in the long term(unless this your final push to take over the world or something).

Thirdly (this is even much more true for non-elves which don't get their production from overall spread of forest mainly) the flexibility in working tiles is much smaller.
This is especially important in cities with lots of mixed terrain which is a common sight for many spots you settle.
Say 4-5 hills (or even more than 5, this is even more true for plain-hills than for grassland-hills where cottages might have a small edge since you can build them on grassland-hills too) in fat-cross (the rest flatlands of whatever sort which supports farms) with cottages to get them up you have to work them to get them up to cities which also means you grow slower.
With farms + aristocracy you can switch to those mines for production at will / as needed and don't suffer from less commerce later. Also you grow faster to use more tiles earlier.

Also your are not so bound to settle near grains/lifestock in the first place (rivers are nonbeneficial anyways besides freshwater / breweries which matter a bit less to fol-elves than to other civs as well. I didn't mention the need for freshwater to place farms because that part and how it can be overcome is obvious.) so cities can be put in less "ideal" locations and still turn out great (this is true for both elves and nonelves under farms + aristocracy but for elves its especially extreme.)
Whereas if you focus on cottages you need some sources of food near.

So the way to go (if you want to go with aristocracy + farms at all) for both elves and financial non-elves seems to be cottage at the start (especially if you go financial with adaptive at ~ turn 100 or ~ Turn 200) farm + aristocracy later in the game (only that elves can make the switch for full benefits quite a bit earlier. How much depends on the flow of the game for the non-elves.)

The switch to aristocracy might still pay off right when you get code of laws (agrarianism is early-game for non-elves anyways...). 3/0/3(4 if riversides) for non-elves or 3/1/2 tiles (for elves,sadly no riversides but still much better overall) are still neat and help getting to sanitation quite a bit faster... + there is no need to go all farms right away. The 40% reduction to maintenance kicks in right at adoption and for newly founded cities it might still be very neat.
This is also true only since Aristocracy has changed for the better. (and Royal Guards at feudalism can also be quite neat. Especially if you don't have spirit-mana + neatly takes care getting your new cities' cultural influence up to fat-cross-size without much fuss. )
For just this same reason of not being forced to put farms everywhere and still profiting from the civics it might actually pay off to briefly adopt agrarianism even as elves for a brief period in early-game (before you can get guardian of nature adopted.).

Not really arguing with you here, my main point isn't that the combo is bad, its just that elves benefit less than most of the other races, since you don't want to be running Agrarianism(for many reasons), you have 3 food per square for the majority of your squares(at least in most games where I have played them), and you pretty much need to run guardian of nature.

Also note that with just Aristocracy and not sanitation, your farms are exactly as good as a cottage.

Without agrarianism, the farms are only one extra food, which means that we are comparing 4 food vs 3 food(assuming grassland/ancient forest), which is 1/2 a specialist per square. 6(3x2) com vs 6(3+1+1+1) sci(best case for the specialist econ and you really can't get infin or 6 sci per scientist without a reasonably late game techs for scholarship and caste system), some gpp and possibly some culture. Also note that it takes a heck of alot longer for you to start getting anywhere near 6 sci per specialist, or to be able to run more than a few scientists per town(I find that even my cottage towns are running at least a few citizens for a while after I pick up guardian of nature)
In addition (sanitation + code of laws + taxation + arcane lore + hidden paths) takes quite a while to pick up all of them, as compared to just hidden paths + taxation(though code is somewhat a freebie, since its a requirement for tax), its more the sanitation + arcane lore sidetracks that take a while.

Elves with every grassland being a 3 food square base, really don't need to worry about sources of food as much either.

Also remember with 3 food per square, pure cottage can run specialist pumpers as well, and that 2x the specialists does not mean 2x the great people.

Remember that with the cottage economy you are getting your results with 3/4ths of the people(2 workers, 1 specialist for every 2 squares, rather than 2 + 2), meaning lower civic costs and less worries about unhappyness(even though this isn't a huge deal with guardian, you can still bump against the cap if you are trying to run 2 pop per square).

In the rare case that you have a lot of plain hills, I can see where Aristocracy is better, but it seems to me that cottages are better in the usual case I find myself in with the elves. The other thing I'll admit I failed to consider is slavery, but I don't usually find that I beeline those techs with the elves(though the Svalts would have it usually I suppose).
Remember that its much easier to get cash with cottages fast(since max cash with specs is what, 3?), and that you can have gold rushing possibilities as well. Also, not being forced to run Aristocracy means I can run city states for the much higher discount on city upkeep, or republic for more happy/more gpp.

Royal guards are a nice bonus, but as elves I don't seem to have culture problems, since I want fol up as soon as possible in the town usually anyhow.

Finally, elves have much less of a problem with pillagers(at least in my experience), which is one last place where farms are better than cottages for most civs.

Basically elves get less of an advantage from farms+aristocracy vs cottages for 2 reasons(as compared to other races), one is that they have a much better civic choice than Agrarianism(guardian), and the other is that they already have a free extra point of food per square from the ancient forests. (well less than anyone who doesn't have some sort of town special such as the kudorites or bannor)

 

[Zechnophobe]

Kjara is actually correct about the 2 to 3 food vs 3 to 4 food.

The actual catch up time is only 69 turns when you compare 4,1,2 (Farm) with 3,1,1 (Cottage). (For a city with cap size of 20).


Also the peak difference is only 720/522 (That is, total commerce produced by the farm city when it gets to maximum size, and starts losing ground to cottage). So an absolute gain of about 200 commerce over 44 turns (The time it takes to get to size 20 from size 1).

Considering that this is also about the ideal scenario, that growth is steady, and not stopped by things like workers (Where cottages still grow in value, even if the city doesn't) actually makes this look like less of a good game plan than I was hopeing.

 

[Kjara]

Woops, just noticed I claimed that the farms and cottages would be exactly the same pre-sanitation(which is false as cottages have 1 less com). But Zechno who was nice enough to actually run the calculations, seems to have used the correct value(s) so its not a huge deal.

 

[onedreamer]

Well, actually Aristocracy working well with elves is long known. It's even the favourite civic of Arendel. And recently this civic even got a boost (-40% distance maintenance costs)

 

[loffenx]

I'm confused, was there a consensus reached here? Is so, what was it? As I understood it the main arguments were that either

A: Normally an Agri + Arsito + Specialists -economy aint viable, but because of GoN and the high happy- and healthcaps it is for the elves.

or

B: An Agri + Arsito + Specialists -economy is normally viable, but less so for the elves because they already get a food-boost from GoN etc. (4-[3/4]) < (3-[2/3]) and so on.

Was there any conclusion / consensus reached in allt hoose calculations I did not quite follow Or am I on the completely wrong track...?

 

[Kjara]

My belief is B(with it becoming more viable as the happy cap goes up for most people(and it really gets better in the later game if you have the ability to run unlimited 5-6 beaker scientists, it might be comparable with 4 beaker scientists up to a point(guilds +gl), but no one has run the calcs for that yet, but you get the midlevel output faster even with the same sized towns). Elves, in my experience have little problems filling their total pop cap with at worst 1-2 5 food farm/grassland/ancient forest(w/ sanitation), or 1-2 food resources, and thus will benefit more from the ability to get higher yields(which take a little longer to mature), out of a smaller population that cottages provide, while still being able to run some specialists for great people even with the cottage economy. Other civs need to devote a town to producing gpp if running a cottage, which makes the specialist pumping civics look worse for them, they remain decent for elves if all of their towns are running a decent number(ideal of 1/3rd of the pop) as specialists.

One last point to make, if we are looking at this with unlimited specs(aka no pop happy cap), then farms without Aristo beat farms with arsito(they are 1 food higher, thats 3 sci(1/2 of a 6 sci scientist, plus culture/gpp) as compared to the 2 com from aristo, and tie on sci with aristo + financial.

However, since we do have a happy cap, what seems worth it to me, is the compromise that aristo allows for non elves(allowing them the spec + 2,3 or 4(depending on river or not and financial or not) com as opposed to 3/2's of a spec per tile) that a farm without aristo would give or the 5-7 com you would get from a cottage on that same tile.(I guess we can then extend this to comparing more towns for the specialist economy vs less towns for the cottage economy covering the same area, but if we go that direction we really need to worry about upkeep costs for both cities and civics, as more cities and more total population is a major negative for the specialist economy.)

I'm still somewhat conflicted between agri vs caste system(i think its the same cat), for specialist economies combined with, I guess it mostly depends on how much happy you have, the more happy, the better agri is, the less, the better caste is, caste also seems better pre-scholarship, as you just can't run enough scientists to take advantage of that extra food.

I guess a last question is caste system vs agri + aristo give the same food, but you have 2-4 com -1 production vs 1 extra beaker, 2 extra per specialist, and a open civic choice(for either happy +gpp or greater reduction of costs)? These seem about equal with scholarship to me, but better in favor of aga +aristo prior to this or if you have financial.

Returning to the arsito + specalists vs cottages, what it seems to me is that you are trading faster results with the aristo vs the ability to achieve the final goal with a smaller population with the cottages. Combined with the fact that elves cottages catch up to aristo faster(due to ancient forests and the 3v4 as opposed to 2v3 food issue), it seems that if elves are hitting their pop cap with cottages, that would be better for them(and in my games, the way I build cities, I tend to hit that pop cap with cottages). We would really need a much more in depth analysis to see if the smaller, more closely populated cities gain enough in speed to make up for the higher upkeep costs(plus it gets nasty I'm not sure those formula's are linear + they depend on the rest of your empire, so it now depends on what % of the empire is developing vs the % that is fully developed.)

Does anyone want to help out by posting the exact civic and town upkeep formulas(I'm sure I could find town if I looked hard enough, not sure if the same is true for civic)? Edit: Hmm, mabee not, I would guess we would have to worry about inflation here as well, which makes this all kinds of nasty.

As an aside, it almost seems that order is a contender for the best religion for a specialist economy, as they can negate much of the city costs with the at least -85% city upkeep they get innate from having courthouse + basicilla + law mana from shrine. Since to take advantage of the same land with spec vs cottage, you need more towns, this cuts down on the marginal cost for this. I still haven't completely convinced myself if aga or caste is better in this case though. Of course we get the food discout for AV as well, leaving that as another possiblity. Most of us like to build large towns, which is what makes elf farm strats look good with guardian, but it seems less efficient than just taking better advantage of the land with either order or AV.

(whats the best case of both worlds, AV with 12 law mana?) So if we have elves that got ancient forests, then swithed to av and agranism, for 6 food tiles, running 1+2 spec per tile, for an output of 10 sci per tile?(gotta make sure theres no hell terrain here as well) This requires ~25 health/happiness to take full advantage of a featureless flat space though.

 

[Blackmantle]

@ loffenx: To stir up the pot a little bit i have to say that from my experience to both should actually work out rather well (in terms of getting a game won.).
Since elves have it easier with their economy that should still be true for them.
If you get a mid-size empire up and running (say 5+ well established cities + further possible newly aquired ones) with either you'll have a really sizable output of commerce and might very well win a given game (and further expansion will be rather easy.).

The hardest part is getting there in the first place (at the hardest difficulties). I guess that part is what many players find hard to overcome if they have problems beating immortal and deity...


Also a lot of the things established here are theoretical assumptions which you might very well not encounter in a given game to that extent (forests everywhere. Since the cool-down of 2 turns for setting up forests by Priests of Leaves has been introduced it will take quite some time to get your empire forested if you haven't got a largely forested one allready. Some food sources and lots of Grassland around. No free techs from Lairs / huts and the likes)
And since at immortal and deity you have to play to the circumstances a given game very much to fare well you best look into that first before following a general strategy...
Not only in terms of the lay of the land but also the odd superstack of early pyre-zombies coming your way (as one example of many. That is what makes those difficulties so challenging.)...

So (if you don't do so anyways) you better take any guide like this with a pinch of salt. An individually tailored strategy virtually always beats a general one out.



Also i might really have underestimated the power of 3/1/1 cottage squares (i don't play elves that often, even though i might revisit the Svartalfar again here and there. I'm rather meh about playing the Ljos since there are so many other civs i find more interesting.
So I'm not the best reference about that part.)
My comment was mainly aimed at sowing doubt about that strategy being only! truly viable as the elves (imo it works rather well for financial civs).
So ill better not get into that discussion of the main-toppic much more. (Even though the discussion about it might still have yielded some insight.)





@ Kjara: Not anything i wrote was (or purely) about the elves but civs who are financial civs as well.
(With which i have some experience regarding an economy with quite some agri-ari farm-cities. And it plays out very well.
Mainly also from a point of gameplay because it needs much less micro and the AI-auto-assignment of worked tiles by AI rather sucks so you have to micro for that extra edge of a cottage-economy... unlike with agri-ari
And less micro can be a big factor for a game with lots of cities making it rather worthwhile to pass on a few commerce.
For me that's a big deal since i usually play on larger maps with quit some civs + rather play builder so my games take quite a while anyways.)

I'm aware that aristocracy + agriculture farms are not the utter hotness in terms of tiles (and that part really is not viable for elves for longer parts of the game. Certainly not long past FoL. Since you might go for hidden paths early anyways...) but they do speed up your way to sanitation quite a bit (which is not that a long way off if you do want it rather early. Especially if you take a "little shortcut") and the switch (agri first, ari later naturally) is often rather viable anyways as a side effect of another necessary civic-switch or in itself in case of agri (for spiritual civs that part is completely moot of course due to no anarchy as it is to a certain extent with lots of well timed golden ages for nonspiritual civs...)


Also as i already mentioned the -40% to maintenance can be rather hefty (that's why i wrote it might be worth to switch to it earlier now. Wouldn't have done so before...
Not least because city-states doesn't do all that well with the way I usually play my games. Might be strategic weakness on my part but it works out on tough emperor (sometimes depending on civs)- immortal (rather often) for me.
The Sidar which are my favorite civ are a completely different matter anyways (especially in terms of civics/economy...) and which i don't play below immortal + with some additional handicaps usually.)

About the order: No need to stay with it though... No problem switching from it when you have got that shrine and most of the Basilicas up.
Happiness can be gained elsewhere lategame and Scholarship might be quite a loss (vs. social order, or is that one in labor not values?)
Sounds like a good thing for a short detour to order + slavery (for getting those basilicas up fast, lest those unlawfully wasteful officials taste the whip ) during a little golden age.
Important Edit: Oops, that doesn't work, Junil seems to have outlawed slavery, sadly (no RL-endorsement of slavery from my part of course ) so you'll have to contend with another way of rushing. Slider to 0% for a few turns just might do.

I for one don't like the order as a permanent religion much during my games (and Veil even much less.). Druids alone are a reason for this. As are many other things. Nothing wrong with a detour though (getting some bless or material for a few Order-Druids among other things. ), as written...

Problem with Veil/evil is that coping with hell terrain can be really messy and if you have a whopping 12! law mana you might as well use those for enchantment mana / life mana instead to further up the cap of possible specialists you can run (in comparison to FoL. If you are not at the relative hard-cap to food with no happiness-/unhealthy-issues anyways.)...
Rather stay FoL with the occasional small detour to Order as needed... (especially viable for Arendel of course. Flip-flopping those religions goes real fast (getting back to GoN takes a while longer though so timing it right might still be very important). And those just need 4 or so turns of wait before you can switch again. So playing her can pay off after all. I always found her rather the weak one of the lot...) It also will play out easier on your time because you would need less micro...


Agri is in Economy-line and has no contender most of the time for many civs which are not running FoL (which basically run GoN without any serious contender).
(Conquest is good/better for some civs or for all at some times and in some setups.
Foreign Trade is very rarely worth it for a long time except for a rare few civs / setups and Mercantilism i find utterly useless for any situation you'll encounter when you really have acess to it. Which is only endgame. Now that civic needs some serious makeup... Not least to give Agri another serious contender...)
That's one of the main reasons why agri + ari is so appealing for financial civs imo... (and ari can be a very solid government-civic as well. Not least thanks to royal guards and low upkeep in itself.
Even though in lategame it does become quite a trade-off most of the time. But as you already wrote. Full SE with more food from farms might fare better then anyways and those many cities don't really suffer from you having went agri+ari before. )


Caste System is Labor (like in vanilla) and i find that one quite a good one in most games i play (unless Sidar where i favor apprenticeship of course or ROK in which case Arete might! just be favorable.) but it has lots of other contenders which might be interesting depending on circumstance and basically all have their place / value (i don't feel that this category has need for any huge meddling, like governement. I think differently about Economy and Healthcare (compassion is what its called ingame i belive. Thats the most seriously lacking / boring one...) Values might need a small meddling with pacifism but is excellent beyond that and its a small issue compared to the other 2 with sub-par choice.).
But if you want to run lots of specialists its without contender usually... (unless you can't run either theocracy, liberty or scholarship or want very varied yields from those many specialists in which case guilds might be mandatory to run those varied specialists in sufficient numbers at all.)

So that part plays out much differently than you envisioned it anyways.


But as written above in the other response of mine, that kind of extreme number-crunching might not be so much of a good use of your resources anyways (unless someone is really fond of it of course ) since (as i already pointed out) in lategame you most of the time either won the game anyways if you could get it set up either way or you have failed quite some time before that point. (At least that's my experience with high-difficulty games...) + each game plays out so differently that it really gets very hypothetical and without much value to many in-game situations.
Might help you rush that ToM or Altar (perhaps a bit more viable with such an extreme specialist-economy. Those Altar 5+ Priests rock... ) a few turns earlier (if you care to end your games at all.)

 

[Kjara]

@ loffenx: To stir up the pot a little bit i have to say that from my experience to both should actually work rather well. If you get a mid-size empire up and running with either you'll have a really sizable output of commerce.

The hardest part is getting there in the first place (at harder difficulties).

Also i might really have underestimated the power of 3/1/1 cottage squares (i don't play elves that often even though i might revisit the Svartalfar again here and there.)





@ Kjara: Not anything i wrote was (or purely) about the elves but civs who are financial as well. (With which i have some experience regarding an economy with quite some agri-ari farm-cities. And it plays out very well. Mainly also from a point of gameplay because it needs less micro and the AI-auto-assignment of worked tiles sucks...)

I'm aware that aristocracy + agriculture farms are not the utter hotness in terms of tiles (and that part really is not viable for elves for longer parts of the gabe) but the do speed up your way to sanitation quite a bit (which is not that a long way off if you do want it rather early) and the switch is often rather viable anyways as a side effect of another necessary city-switch (for spiritual civs that part is completely moot...)
Also as i allready mentioned the -40% to maintenance can be rather hefty (that's why i wrote it might be worth to switch to it earlier now. Wouldn't have done so before...
Not least because city-states doesn't do all that well with the way i usually play my games. Might be strategic weakness on my part but it works out on emperor-immortal
The Sidar which are my favorite civ are a completely different matter anyways. Especially in terms of civics/economy...)

First, I'm in agreement that both do work for elves really well, partially because of how powerful being able to add an improvement to an ancient forest is, I guess we are more arguing which is more effective. Looking back, its not even clear to me that what I meant.

Second, Ah, sorry I misunderstood(and I do agree that it is viable for most other civs, even if I instead usually end up running a 1/3rd farm, 2/3rds cottage economy or 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 mines, with 3-4 specialists per city that way).

I just really love my city states I think, which makes the only 40% reduction from Aristo seem low, my love of city states also means I don't worry about courthouses as much either, so I tend to not hit the tech for Aristo that early on.

Thought you were mostly referring to the elves due to that being where the discussion started.

Slight digression: Actually what I've been loving(in ff) is the late game industry economy(watermills + windmills mostly).

Someone really needs to do an analysis of different types of hybrid strategies at this point before we figure out what the best way to build one is(cottages + farms with either aga, caste, conquest or guardian, aga + aristo, aristo without aga, etc.) I also think I need to try the Aristo hybrid with a financial leader, haven't been playing many of them recently.

 

[Blackmantle]

Agree that its somewhat sad and would be terrific to see a change on (in the main mod) is those weak watermills, workshops and windmills (those might be useful occasionally), let alone Lumbermills...
Even though the game already plays out nicely without it...

Sure part of it was about the elves but since i play them not so often (not even the svarts, i just like the sidar so much more...) the thing with 3 food from ancients isn't something I'm good at figuring in overall (since most i write is derived from overall observations in games not so much number-crunching), so the part at topic might be quite a bit off obviously.


As for trying the hybrid with financial leaders you might want to try either Garam Gyr or Kandros Fir. Those 2 offer distinct enough a gameplay to not reduce the game to much to just that aspect.
And both require some cities with more mines thrown into the mix so its not all reduced to planting cities in flatland and setting up farms everywhere. (Both are rather strong as well if played right so one should be able to pull off an immortal win with them without to much fuss...)

Cassiel also plays out nicely with it in my experience by switching to financial ~ Turn 100 (in highest difficulties its quite hard to get acess to both ari + agri earlier anyways...) in a good way imo (because Medicine usually is a priority for Grigori medics which means getting Sanitation early might really pay off. And unless medics are changed that might remain true... Sanitation tech really taught me to value great bards / Drama...)
though adventurers in lategame will be much harder to come by in this way.
But one might still pull off getting some with their worldspell and a good micro of workforce shortly thereafter.

Cardith Lorda doesn't leverage the whole thing very well since rapid expansion (which is one of the biggest assets of going ari + agri + sanitation) is not one of his priorities + God King usually is highly interesting to him (and maintenance reduction is rather uninteresting obviously further devaluing City-States / Aristocracy). So for Kuoritates going with normal more-food farms+specialists and God King / Theocracy / Republic might be much more interesting to him... (+ the choice of traits for him is much more crucial since expensive is only really worth half a trait imo...)

Not much experience with Varn Gosam of the Malakim + those might very well change further soon so a test might not be so telling... (and since hes spiritual now there is no need to go with certain civics for a long time anyways anymore...)
It looks like it might be a good idea but there are quite some factors to consider with him...

Hannah might have some incentive to try such a route (especially if you are unlucky enough to be utterly landlocked, which really sucks anyways) but the Lanun are special for some other reasons anyways (an important one which sets them apart from other civs with financial leaders is that the Lanun might! have real incentive to stick with Conquest or even Foreign Trade depending on setup + farms might not be the prime source of food anyways.
So Agriculture likely is a more situational civic. If its viable at all.)


Flauros on the other hand is very much geared to the whole thing (even if some might disagree because of the hit to food sounds counter-intuitive for Calabim) for many reasons (one of them being that he might want to prioritize both sanitation and Feudalism for obvious reasons and thus has more benefits from switching to aristocracy early...)
So if you want to try a civ which gets huge! benefits from the whole thing and where you can largely ignore cottages from early midgame on you might very well want to try it with him. (who cares for some few beakers later when you can have much more of those tasty cattle's souls right now. )
No need to do all to much hunt for huge amounts happiness or health with them either.

And Calabim are well-known high-difficulty material anyways (provided you use Moroi in a good way and know how to survive an early deity-onslaught...) so the game will not feel like some kind of artificial proving-grounds.

If you have done a few games with him you'll have a much easier time to pull this of with other civs as well. Since you'll know better how to get there the fastest.

And they also have some benefit from going Order so you could try your order-thingy as well with them (or Veil if you care...).

 

[Kjara]

About the only time I've ended up running Ari was with the calabim honestly, and you are right, it was great. I haven't tried the gregori recently, though it seems such a shame to run specialists and dilute the adv pool before you've had a chance to get at least 3 out for archmagi, but I can see myself giving it a try, worst case I only get 2 twincasters.

Its amazing how few of our financial leaders are in civs that support rexing. Gregori of course can't go order. Calabim need large towns for feeding, I guess I could have lots of medium sized towns to keep down the unrest from feeding, and I like khandos, but theres the whole dwarven vault issue, where he needs few towns or lots of cash in the bank. I'm sorta golemed out. hannah has the whole sea tiles issue, who else is financial? Do we have any other financial leaders who can go order but don't have issues where they need large towns? I think flauros is the best bet to try a really hardcore rex/farm/aristo/aga/order game.

I think I have my next two games lined up there then .

 

[Zechnophobe]

... rexing? What in sam hain are you talking about?

 

[EmptyWolf]

Zechnophobe, I believe Kjara meant Rapid-EXpanding

I think flauros is the best bet to try a really hardcore rex/farm/aristo/aga/order game.

I think I have my next two games lined up there then .

Flauros with aristo-agrari-order is an awesome war machine. And with an aristo-agrari-RoK Kandros, try to REX and/or conquer while focusing on money (RoK/markets/priest/merchants/etc.) in every city at the same time and you'll find the results are often better than turtling up.

 

[onedreamer]

I'm confused, was there a consensus reached here? Is so, what was it? As I understood it the main arguments were that either

A: Normally an Agri + Arsito + Specialists -economy aint viable, but because of GoN and the high happy- and healthcaps it is for the elves.

or

B: An Agri + Arsito + Specialists -economy is normally viable, but less so for the elves because they already get a food-boost from GoN etc. (4-[3/4]) < (3-[2/3]) and so on.

Was there any conclusion / consensus reached in allt hoose calculations I did not quite follow Or am I on the completely wrong track...?

I don't know about consensus, I see tons of words but like Blackmantle correctly said there are too many variables in a game to draw general strategies and decree they are the best. The one thing I know is that you can't use Agri and GoN together though
It seems clear that Aristocracy can best be exploited by civs that can overcome the -1 food penalty with other means, like Lanun and Alfar. Wether Aristocracy would be a better choice than another civic though depends on a lot of factors.