Cottage is self-explanatory. These four civs favor cottages over aristofarms on grasslands for whatever reason. The choice of a cottage or a mine on a hill depends on an individual city's needs.
- For elves, the synergies with GoN and dis-synergies with Agrarianism are obvious. With up to +20
from GoN, they don't need Aristocracy to help them convert
into
-- they can do it directly with a better
to
ratio from cottages or use specialists.
*Cough* the elves do most definitely NOT do their best with a cottage economy. Their abundance of food (due to the ability to improve Forests- which develop into Ancient Forests and provide extra food), health (from Forests and GoN), Happiness (from GoN), and hammers to build city improvements (from Forests) mean they have a clear preference for a late-game SPECIALIST economy.
After all, what do specialists require? Food, Health (so Food costs don't grow too high), and Happy faces! The ability of the elves to grow their cities to MUCH larger sizes than other civs, and to use civics to save hammers on buildings (and use those hammers for defensive units) gives the elves a natural affinity for a specialist-heavy economy...
To compound this, the Ljos get their Flurry unit at Machinery- which is only a short hop from Engineering. If they manage to grab the Guild of Hammers, and eventually work their way to Guilds, they end up with ENORMOUS hammer production from Engineer specialists in the very Late game (and with their slow-growing economy, the elves are probably the only civ that will ever make it this far w/o the winner already being effectively decided 100% of the time...)
Even before this, elven high terrain base hammer production from Forests, builder tendencies (due to a slower-maturing economy), and need to have VERY high production to produce badly-needed defensive units in their weak/vulnerable early game (lots of Archers for Amelanchier! Priests for Arendel!) give them a clear preference for God King over Aristocracy. Plus, they might well need to run Conquest to survive their Early-Mid Game...
The elves (especially the Ljsofar) are a great civ to run a specialist economy in the late game- particularly if they haven't produced a lot of Great People in the early game due to their need to simply survive (Food is often better whipped into hammers with Slavery rather than used to feed specialists in their Early-Mid Game, as they are likely to be under a lot of pressure from stronger civs, and it is important for the elves, particularly Amelanchier, to grab a lot of territory in the Early Game so they can Bloom it and turn it all to Ancient Forests as a massive natural defensive barrier later in the game...)
Regards,
Northstar