Aristocracy Experiment

[vincible]

Keeping your military strong enough is a really important part of the early game in FFH and a no barb/no hostile AI/no lairs start doesn't capture that part of the game.

I'd like to throw out the suggestion that you do this with no AIs, Raging barbarians, and a rule that you can't explore lairs or capture barb cities (though you can raze them). Having no interactions with the AI is important for reducing variability, but if there's nothing hostile out there then that reduces the value of production.

Or maybe you could have no barbarians along with a rule that you can never let a city ever have less than (say) three warriors in it. So you'd need to produce six warriors before you could settle your first non-capital city.

 

[Senethro]

Or maybe you could have no barbarians along with a rule that you can never let a city ever have less than (say) three warriors in it. So you'd need to produce six warriors before you could settle your first non-capital city.

This is how I've played all my own comparison games, except for my second city which I settled first with only 2 warriors escorting. As long as you post dated screenshots of your military advisor to prove you're not skimping on defense I think it still works.

 

[schlalex]

I do not think it is a good idea to use a barbarian civ again. The lack of Libraries and so the GL is another handicap for GK, cause we will surely have earlier access to writing.
And this time, remove the floodplains. In my games i rarely have some, and this game should be an average start, not excellent.
A big river for Aristocracy, 5-8 hills for GK and no Gold/Gems/Floodplains should do the job.

 

[Frodius]

Could I suggest a change in methodology for the experiment?

I would think that we should try to come up with a starting position where we can all agree that the initial tech path would be the same for those players who want to run God King/agrarianism for an extended period and those that want to semi-beeline towards Aristograrianism.

Perhaps such a start doesn't exist, but if it doesn't maybe that would help us learn about when skipping God King is, if ever, advisable.

I think that timing issues is at the heart of the matter, and I think that unless we limit ourselves to a very specific set of settings and then try to expand our results to others, we are never going to reach any conclusions at all.

For the record, my personal thought is that in most games, for most civs, a period of time spent under God King/Agrarianism is advisable if only because mysticism is required to generate GPP (unless you are the Grigori), and that the switch to Aristgrarianism probably comes shortly after you get to Code of Laws.

What I hope to learn from this experiment is some general criterion for how many farms you need in noncapital cities to make the switch worthwhile. It doesn't seem like it would be too many, at least until cities can build wealth.

 

[Earthling]

Such a start can't exist. Unless you give the starting settler zero movement, or remove like every resource in a 10x10 square. Or you could put us on an island with room for only like 3 cities, but somehow I think GK would come out too far ahead there. A huge part of early game strategy is settling a good capital. I'd think you want to do this anyway just to not be stupid, but you absolutely should if you plan to use GK. There's a reason the settler has its starting bonuses, so if you get a weak start you can move to a better location, and/or find resources that fit with your techs/civ.

Again, I'm not onboard with this Doviello comparison either, another barbarian civ + heavily edited map doesn't make sense. Doviello are a war civ anyway and whatever non-interaction rule is out there probably also skews things.

To answer one of vale's questions - you do realize that there were other players than just you playing as Aristocracy or other methods? I just gave the numbers for my game, and they compared decently to a lot of other saves. And the early rush certainly did nothing but hurt my overall economic situation, though it was thematically fitting for the civ; everything would have been better if I could have produced straight workers/settlers/economy instead of units to fight Decius (or just used free wolf riders which are negligible production) and teched economic stuff instead of techs like Bronze. But I think we can put that game to rest, hopefully learn from some of the problems there.

 

[ICanHasName?]

Make it scientific, to the extent something like this can be. I would recommend no lairs, no unique features, *few AI's, raging barbarians, no random events, no Orthus, no Acheron, and agree on what to do about religion. Pick a difficulty that makes those barbs substantial, as they simulate mindless hordes of Doviellos or whatever in a normal game. Pick a civ that isn't barbarian, because it slows tech beelines and leaves you with nothing useful to build with all that God King production. Maybe Bannor or Amurites, someone with unique stuff that won't have any effect.

As for starts, run an Erebus map and agree on one of the nice grassland valleys with a variety of resources and hills/flatlands. Maybe even decide which resources GK and Aristo like better, and replace all the resources with an equal number of those. Thats probly the most generic start you can get, good for everything and nothing unusual like flood plains, Decius, or Acheron popping up. Also the barbs are very important, this is a war game.

edit: *regarding the AI's it occured to me that you should leave some on other parts of the continent and disable tech trading. Just so they can use up some of the wonders because you could do disgusting things with your capitol otherwise. Maybe even block them in with mountains in WB to enforce the no interactions.

 

[Turinturambar]

And the early rush certainly did nothing but hurt my overall economic situation, though it was thematically fitting for the civ; everything would have been better if I could have produced straight workers/settlers/economy instead of units to fight Decius (or just used free wolf riders which are negligible production) and teched economic stuff instead of techs like Bronze. But I think we can put that game to rest, hopefully learn from some of the problems there.

This is simply wrong. Early war vs Decius nets you extra workers/plunder gold and a great city. The only opportunity cost is building 10-15 warriors, which you can later use as city garrison. For comparison here is a save where I do not get boxed in by Decius, but kill him early:

Stats:

Technology:
Agriculture-124
Exploration-124
Ancient Chants-124
Crafting-187
Calendar-249
Animal Husbandry-280
Mining-312
Masonry-218
Education-436
Mysticism-312
Bronze Working-624
Code of Laws-499
Sanitation-998
Philosophy-468
Way of the Wicked-436
Construction-624
Way of the Earthmother-624

Total: 6639

Production: (I'm not listing Warrens production, I just go by the stats page)
Thane of Kilmorph-2 = 120
Rantine-1 = 180
Goblin - 1 = 15
Settler -4 = 880
Warrior - 16= 400
Worker -6 = 450

Warrens -4 = 720
Courthouse-1 =180
Deruptus Brewing House-240
Granary -4= 480
Monument -4= 240
Temple of Kilmorph-120

Total: 4025 (For comparison Earthling's total without Warrens production and incomplete production is 4550)

Demographics:
GNP:96
Production:64
Crop Yield: 154
Soldiers: 90000
Land area:141000
Population:4002000
Approval:57%
Life Expectancy: 53 Years

So you have a production advantage of 500-1000 hammers, but a research disadvantage of 2800+ beakers.

I then tried another save emphasizing production and expanding after killing Decius and that one is superior to yours in all aspects except for military, but military really is not needed in that position.

Note that I did not get any beneficial events in either save.

 

[Earthling]

No, it's not wrong. I only have that turn 115 save but at that point you should still see for yourself - whatever the games you played above, they're probably better at that point already, which is before anything from conquest started to kick in. Again, being the first time through, there were plenty of disadvantages I had - suboptimal tech, settling, not knowing where everything was, etc... It also seems you didn't tech Bronze Working early either, or build any axemen - which is a more significant tech and military investment to go for before other economic techs. In short, gearing up for military did not help the early game economy; it only pays off in that later turnset of ~120-150 and not in the same way. If you played a GK game with a better techpath the numbers would also probably beat my save by far. Even more so if you take advantage of early map knowledge and all and box out Decius in the first place.

Edit: and thanks to getting 0.40z up again, I'll even be willing to give this another go myself later to show what I mean; basically I know there were plenty of things to be improved on in my game.

 

[Earthling]

OK, this time I played according to "THE RULES"
No messing with Decius at all, simply optimized my tech, settling etc... to be better than my first attempt. So again if I could kill Decius on this one it could be even better. I went straight GK until City-States, no need for Aristocracy again. No beneficial events other than 7 beakers on Animal Husbandry, in fact a spider infesting a mine along with another jungle one killed a ton of warriors and delayed my fourth city. Here are the stats:

Production (not including warrens, incomplete or anything (though there is plenty of significant production there, but it's ok), straight off of F9 like you asked)

Granary - 5 = 600
Elder Council - 4 = 240
Temple of Kilmorph -4 = 480
Warrens - 3 = 540
Monument - 3 = 180
Smokehouse - 2 = 240
Pagan Temple - 1 = 100
Dereptus Brewing House - 1 = 240
Tamblets of Bambur (not counting any hammers here, just listing)

Warrior - 13 = 325
Worker - 9 = 675
Settler - 5 = 1100
Thane of Kilmorph - 3 = 180
Goblin - 3 = 45
Soldier of Kilmorph - 2 = 180
Great Prophet - 1

Total Production = 5125

Technology
Agriculture-124
Exploration-124
Ancient Chants-124
Crafting-187
Calendar-249
Animal Husbandry-280
Cartography -312
Mining-312
Masonry-218
Education-436
Mysticism-312
Bronze Working-624
Way of the Earthmother-624

Total Beakers = 3926

Demographics:
GNP - 102
Mfg - 70
Crop - 112
Soldiers - 65000
Land - 121000
Population - 2329000
Approval - 65
Life Expectancy - 68

And here's all the saves as it goes along:
View attachment EarthlingGK75.CivBeyondSwordSave
View attachment EarthlingGK113.CivBeyondSwordSave
View attachment EarthlingGK150.CivBeyondSwordSave

So this save comes out the furthest ahead so far on production again, in a deficit on research at this junction, but that's kinda what is to be expected already. Killing Decius in turns 120-150 of this game would have been trivial and vastly increased every stat, also to be expected. Or starting over with early cheese could do the same. Once again the map would quickly turn into a City-States fest after turn 150, and I don't think this was a good game for comparison at all, but if you wanted to see the orcs to well with GK + Kilmorph, this was a good game for it. So coming out ahead ~1000 hammers while being behind ~2000 beakers on an unusual map and situation- I don't see this proving anything.

 

[Turinturambar]

Just to nitpick, you count your soldiers of kilmorph twice, since you list their production cost and the buildings you rushed with them, so you should subtract 180 from the total production (I assume you built them in a Warrens city).
Additionally I think for further comparisons we should halve the hammer cost of temples/granaries, since they are produced at double speed and the raw hammers are the indicator of an empire's productivity, not the choice between building a temple and a warrior.

Your save is obviously very comfortable and well played, but Vale's aristo save is clearly better in my opinion. He has better demographics, more techs and your production advantage is somewhat inflated by the large amount of double speed buildings.
How much of his advantage is due to your bad spider luck and how much to Aristocracy is debateable.

 

[Earthling]

I don't see how I've really counted the soldiers twice - after all, you don't subtract a settler when you found a city? Since they are no longer part of my military there is a cost to it.

But I'd also like to point out that by looking at vale's save one can immediately see the reason this is a horrible game for comparison. He built a total of 10 military units. Basically I think the clan (barbarian) on a huge continent with no strong neighbors and tons of room to expand isn't a very realistic game, at least it's nowhere at all close to the majority of my games. Again, I often find a desperate need for military so I'm not laughing at all that extra production, it makes a difference in many games. But everyone did play well, not trying to say that isn't true. I guess I'll post the first dwarf attempt I know of in the other thread so we can see how that one plays out, won't spoiler it here. If later we want to move back to this thread for stats that might make sense though, I dunno.

 

[Turinturambar]

I don't see how I've really counted the soldiers twice - after all, you don't subtract a settler when you found a city? Since they are no longer part of my military there is a cost to it.

Using the soldiers for rushing is a simple hammer conversion. It's as if the soldiers never existed, since they did not do anything useful besides providing hammers (I assume you did not use them for bearkilling or somesuch).

Maybe this will make the point clear: Imagine you could rush units with Soldiers of Kilmorph and use that to build the same soldiers again. Would you argue that that empire has infinite production just because it builds the same soldiers over and over again? Or would you rather argue that only the equivalent of one set of soldiers gets produced?

 

[EverNoob]

Eartling's game is difficult to use for comparison, since he used a great prophet to build the tablets of bambur. That early in the game it's usually more worthwhile to bulb a tech, unless going for a religious victory.

As a matter of fact, the advantage of not using aristocracy means you can support more specialists without killing your production, at a stage in the game where bulbing can make a significant difference. For example in my game, I switched to aristo at turn 147, but I could've just as easily gone city-states and spam ritualists for quick conquest.