Aristocracy, City States and Republic purposes

[Good Sauce]

I'd consider to use Aristocracy with Calabim after sanitation if they were sprawling.

Aristocracy really needs some bonus to make it viable at the time you can get it. When I get it I usually have plenty of villages/towns in my capital (which in my games always is the workhorse).

What are you doing playing FFH? don't you have a mod I'm really looking forward to to be working on?

 

[Uberslacker]

Sureshot said:

'ya, without the food penalty itd be a great civic, as it stands, losing one food isnt worth 2 commerce'

Could it be as simple as this?

Aristocracy adds 2 commerce to all your farms; that's it.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Sureshot said:

'ya, without the food penalty itd be a great civic, as it stands, losing one food isnt worth 2 commerce'

Could it be as simple as this?

Aristocracy adds 2 commerce to all your farms; that's it.

But 2 commerce is 33.3% better than one food, under most civics and for most cities. 1 food will feed 1/2 specialist which will generate teh equivalent of 1.5 commerce. 2 commerce is 33.3% more than 1.5 commerce.

For financial civs that's +3 commerce, or twice as good as the lost food.

I just switched to Aristocracy in my ongoing game. I'd captured a few scattered cities. They had a lot of farms. I needed to reduce civics costs. Good-bye GK hello Aristocracy. Good-bye 250g/turn deficit hello 5g/turn deficit.

Useless? No. Situational? Yes.

 

[retro V]

Useless? No. Situational? Yes.

Simply put.

The only valid arguments against it so far have been that predominantly building cottages outperforms predominantly building farms. While this is undoubtedly true, I've tried a couple of immortal and deity games with farms and aristocracy as the primary strategy.

It's not going very well.

The problem is where aristocracy gives more immediate gains under ideal conditions, it hasn't been until halfway through my testgames that such conditions as sanitation and engineers are available. Therefore the first 250 turns are an uphill struggle. I could have been developing cottages in that time.

Is there any point in discussing a workaround to this? Obviously, sanitation can't be brought forward along the tech tree, as that would just make early growth even easier. Making aristocracy available sooner doesn't change anything, unless there's an abundance of floodplains, and even then cottages still only need to grow to hamlet levels and there is no reduction in food.

Meh, I can't think of any way round it, except playing on prince level.

 

[naf4ever]

Not to demean anyone, im glad discussion is taking place here, but i think those of your finding Aristocracy useful might be automating your workers. Simply put if you micromange your workers improvements and micromanage the development of each city I can guarantee you that empirewide Aristocracy is inferior to using cottages plus any other government civic. If you believe im wrong please post a savegame. My analytical skills arent perfect so maybe there is something im missing and Id love to see if so.

Uniquely developing each city always works out better for commerce and production in the longrun than forcing every farm across your empire to be gimped for the commerce. If you have non-core city that only has a few main farm tiles and lots of hills gimping those farms would reduce this towns ability to utilize the production from the hills which its ideal for. And if you got some town with lots of floodplains and a Bazzar of Mammon then your going to want to make use of that by building cottages to develop into towns which will better utilize that wonder than a farm with 2 commerce would.

BTW my goal here is to hopefully encourage the devs to improve Aristocracy..

 

[Grey Fox]

Kuriotates with OO and that wonder that makes the city have 0 unhappiness from population? That should be good with aristocracy (after sanitation...)

I want a change in Aristocracy too, I also think that God King is too good, atleast compared to the other civics.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

There seems to be some sort of presumption rampant that one must erect Farms everywhere in order to use Aristocracy. I build cottages, believe me. When I switch to aristocracy I do not eliminate a single cottage. It just makes what farms you do have, and you will always have a few, produce commerce you would not get otherwise.

It has other benefits: low cost, and it does not add +10% to city maintenence costs like GK. At some point the +50% gold from GK no longer pay for that civic. At some point the extra maintenece costs are too steep to to make the +50% hammers in the capitol worthwhile. Those are the moments when you switch to Aristocracy. It does not occur every game. But I use aristocracy about 10 times as often as City States and probably three times as often as Heriditary Rule.

I've been playing Civ sinceCiv 1 and I have never once automated a worker.

 

[Silverkiss]

I never build farms, only on resources.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

In vanilla Civ, I only build farms to bring up the population of my cities to exactly 20 (minus any unworkable/undesirable tiles). Considering the powerful terriforming in FfH (flooplains/grassland), farms are almost never necessary for me. Getting -1 +2 on farm resource tiles is nice, though.

 

[Gamestation]

No such thing as terraforming when you are khazad. Might as well take advantage of those farms that you will be building in plains or deserts converted to plains.

 

[Sureshot]

well, while aristocracy takes away 1 food for a measely 2 commerce, i wont be using it lol
every two extra food is worth +1 gold, +1 beaker, +2 culture, +2 hammers, and +3 GPP to me if i do things right, which divided by 2 is tons better than 2 commerce, and if i do things wrong a half a great bard still beats it.

 

[Silverkiss]

If you happen to have a Fellowship of Leaves High Priest you can terraform even being Khazad, don´t you ?

 

[Gamestation]

Oh, never tried making a fellowship high priest yet. Man I have a lot to learn about this mod...

 

[Chandrasekhar]

By the way, is there any purpose to blocking dwarves from terriforming? I don't see any glaring late-game strengths that needed to be compensated for, nor do I see a whole lot of flavorful logic in it. It hurts them a lot, once the game gets near the end.

 

[retro V]

Dwarves with their mines make a shedload of cash and hammers. So the little stunties aren't so good in agricultural aspects? Big deal

 

[Silverkiss]

Just get a Leaves High Priest and you´re good to go.

 

[retro V]

Steal workers if you want to build lumbermills.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

In vanilla Civ, I only build farms to bring up the population of my cities to exactly 20 (minus any unworkable/undesirable tiles). Considering the powerful terriforming in FfH (flooplains/grassland), farms are almost never necessary for me. Getting -1 +2 on farm resource tiles is nice, though.

Farms are my least built improvement also. Sometimes the value to a civic is the 'low' upkeep cost. That's what Aristocray offers, plus it chip sin a few extra coins.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

I never build farms, only on resources.

So the word 'never' here is innappropriate, yes?

That's about the same amount of farms I build, but that depends on the civ and the map. I still use Aristocracy when the situation calls for it.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

No such thing as terraforming when you are khazad. Might as well take advantage of those farms that you will be building in plains or deserts converted to plains.

Not to mention if you are playing the Financial Khazad leader, those farms will give you +3 commerce.

Pretty damn useless, yes?