Aristocratic Elves

[onedreamer]

Do we have any other financial leaders who can go order but don't have issues where they need large towns?

Varn Gosam and the Luchuirp. What's your issue with Hannah though ? She works wonders with Aristocracy.

 

[Kjara]

By REXing I meant shoving as many cities as possible together(each city overlaps as much as possible with other cities). Basically the idea that was behind rapid expansion in earlier civ games yes. Perhaps slightly lower actual building rate for putting the cities up to try to keep upkeep costs somewhat manageable.

I'll have to try that with the dwarves, I always seem to be fixated with keeping my vaults at least full, which prob hurts my gameplay .

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.

Varn Gosam and the Luchuirp. What's your issue with Hannah though ? She works wonders with Aristocracy.

I'm not sure if I agree that its best exploited by civs that can overcome the 1 food, I feel its best exploited by civs can run aga with it, but have no other easy way to get more than 2 food per square otherwise. Food at some point hits diminishing returns(esp at the early game when you have a quite limited happy/healthy cap), but having 3(or 4) food per square gives such a huge growth benefit over 2 per square.

On the subject of Hannah, when using here I find that she already has no food issues when you combine 3 food for sea squares + pirate coves+ the commonness that is sea resources, + I always have production issues, so I'm tempted to want to run normal farms + conquest rather than aristo + aga, but it might be interesting to look at aristo + conquest on her. Plus I don't tend to have issues getting commerce(when again, sea tiles are as good as aristo farms on non-river tiles). I guess one of my issues is that Aristo + aga is amazing, but Aristo without aga doesn't seem quite as amazing. She would be a good contender with the rare landlocked start(and it seems a great way to compensate for that when it does happen).

On the other note, While aristo is good for Flauros(started a game as him), what really seems to have broken my game with them was the rex + unique courthouses. Having 8 cities in the space/time where I would normally have only 4 or 5, each of them getting a free 10-15 production is pretty unbalancing. Its hard to tell if I couldn't have gotten the same results with city states(for the reduced upkeep), aga for extra food, and a few cottages though.

To digress on how powerful the manor can be, with just a size 10 capital(1-2 unhappy people), I was able to run over an opponent(elves) easily even without copper on immortal, just due to my capital being able to kick out 2 turn(normal speed) bloodpets with the manor, about 2 farms and 2 mines(wasn't able to get more farms up quickly due to way too much forest, and putting off bronze working till after courthouses due to no copper anywhere I could see). The game was also slightly broken by having both cotton and wine in the bfc of my capital, since I was planning on going for calender early for aga anyhow.

Ran out of time to finish it last night, but I detoured for law mana, due to my forgetting that the unique courthouses are only 20% reduction(and having upkeep problems with my 12 or so towns that I have so far), but am about 5 turns from iron working, and I do have iron, so my force of ~10 cats and ~40 modri are going to upgrade, and be able to steamroll over my next to neighbors that have a few archers and a few hunters per town.

I'm really not convinced it was aristo that gave me the win though, just due to how amazing the courthouses are. Whats depressing is the game will be pretty much decided before I even get to play with vampires or royal guards. My main limiters still seem to be unhappy and unhealthy, even with the cities being as close as possible(which bothers me at some level, but its undeniably effective).

No elder councils also makes the Flauros not really a early hybrid, but more of a focusing on production(and using the aristo farms to do that without needing to stagger both farms and cottages while mostly working mines). At the point I am now, I've finally gotten up order temples and markets, so I can run some specalists, but the early game was mostly just churning out bloodpets and settlers, rather than trying to run any specialists.

 

[Verily]

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.

Why would you want to use Agriculture alongside Ancient Forests?

Anyway, Aristocracy and Farms is probably better for the Elves than Cottaging, but it's close either way.

Aristocracy and Farms get you 3/1/2 tiles early in the game which become 4/1/2 tiles after Sanitation. Before Sanitation, then, they're the equivalent of Hamlets, but, after Sanitation, they become major food producers allowing you to grow enormous, specialist-heavy cities. Guardian of Nature makes sure your cities are happy and healthy enough to reach and sustain very large sizes.

Cottaging gets you 3/1/1 tiles which quickly grow into 3/1/2, 3/1/3, and eventually 3/1/4 tiles, and those 3/1/4 tiles produce even more commerce once you get new technologies. Is that commerce worth the loss of flexibility from the extra food from Farms and thus the specialists and Great People? Maybe. It's also worth noting that running a Cottage economy also allows you to run City States instead of Aristocracy, which is otherwise a more powerful civic for large empires.

 

[loffenx]

So far I've mostly worked with specialist while making my way through the 0.34 Immortal lands. The easyness with which farms can be replaced as sort of risen in importance with the increase in barbarians and that Illian ritual.

Has any of you thought of how/if the size of the maps adds to the calculations?

The downside of all this is that my reluctance to switch to Council of Esus as state religion has increased even more (as the svarts, that is)