How good is Aristocracy really?

[vale]

I thought that would be true too but I crunched the numbers a while back for civs running sacrifice the weak and was surprised to find that Aristocracy still shows improvement assuming any sort of population caps.

Just did the math on it and I was surprised to learn that Aristocracy + Specialists beats just specialists in that context even with all the specialist boosting civics. So we can safely remove the maybe, but now the opportunity cost of not running city states or another civic becomes more relevant since it isn't that much better.

Someone asked me to post the math so here goes:

First let me make it clear: I am making a few assumptions. First, that the health cap is higher than the happy cap (so you truly only need one food to support each population). This assumption is ok, because if it does not hold that weights things in Aristocracy's favor. Second, that the food tiles we are working are non-riverside grassland farms. The most troublesome one is that the difference in GPP is negligible, one I am forced to make because at this late stage in the game, the value of a GPP can vary wildly from game to game depending on your early game GP production. Again, it is not a perfect simulation, but its a jumping off point.

To continue, let us assume we wish to stagnate at a population of x. So to feed this population we will need to provide x food, 2 of which is coming from the center tile, so we will need to work enough farms to produce x-2 food. In the case of Aristocracy, that is (x-2)/4 farms, while in other case that is (x-2)/5 farms. The remainder of the population will be assigned as scientists who produce 5 beakers per turn (3x+2)/4 under aristocracy, (4x+2)/5 otherwise.

Total "commerce" under Aristocracy thus works out to be (17x+6)/4 and 4x+2 if otherwise. The former is greater than the latter whenever x>2.

I was also asked about cities under the happy cap. Basically you could redo the analysis above but instead of saying we want to produce x-2 food with our tiles, we could say we want to produce y food with our tiles. As long as y is less than 4x (assuming abundant grasslands), both models can reach the goal and Aristocracy will out-commerce its counterpart. Where non-Aristocracy wins in this model is that it can super-specialize itself into a full-growth mode, with a possible 5x food available on its tiles. So it can get itself to the happy cap quicker, albeit while sacrificing tons of commerce in the meantime.

I think overall though, the slight benefits in commerce that Aristocracy enjoys at that point in the game are outweighed by the gains that other available civics offer (specifically super-low maintenance with City States or better GPP production with Republic).

Now this was dealing with happy capped cities using sacrifice the weak. I think this analysis may have been done back when what are now the civics scholarship and theocracy were in a category called education? I believe. So I may have been computing a specialist under sacrifice the weak with a scholarship bonus (not sure about this it has been a long time). I did not do the math for non sacrifice the weak but if someone wants to do it the methodology is there and is fine. Just make sure to account for the changes to civics over time.

 

[Rutee]

I can honestly say I don't know where you got the math for any step after food production. Chalk it up to neglecting math classes while I pursue my actual career.

 

[vale]

If the math confuses you, basically it just says that when you are running Sacrifice the weak, Aristocracy-Agrarian shows minimal gains over not Aristocracy in terms of commerce/science/gold produced from tiles/specialists. It does not factor in any other boosts and I just remembered that not only was scholarship in Education civic category, but Sacrifice the Weak was in a different category that had only lame civics in it. So the math is probably very much outdated. I think that means that specialists will be slightly worse now so if I redid it Aristocracy will probably show slightly larger gains now.

 

[retro V]

Back in the Fire stage, StW was a starter civic, iirc, available to all evil civs. It didn't have the 4 and -20%GPP back then either. Oh, happy days.

 

[vale]

That was before fire for sure. In fire they had Fend for Themselves as a starter civic.

 

[Rutee]

If the math confuses you, basically it just says that when you are running Sacrifice the weak, Aristocracy-Agrarian shows minimal gains over not Aristocracy in terms of commerce/science/gold produced from tiles/specialists. It does not factor in any other boosts and I just remembered that not only was scholarship in Education civic category, but Sacrifice the Weak was in a different category that had only lame civics in it. So the math is probably very much outdated. I think that means that specialists will be slightly worse now so if I redid it Aristocracy will probably show slightly larger gains now.

But... how? 1 food is a specialist. A specialist is by itself the commerce boost, even if you're Fin..

 

[vale]

Correction: 1 food + 1 population-turn is a specialist.

If you have a happy cap population turns are limited at minimum by that. When health comes into play, you need 2 food + 1 population-turn for a specialist above health cap.

Straight conversions of x food = blah commerce as a specialist ignore the whole idea of population turns and thus are 100% useless. Lemme load up FFH so I can make sure I remember which civics can be run together and do an updated analysis where I calculate this out in a way that is hopefully more clear. Gimme a few minutes.

 

[vale]

So lets consider a few potential late game civic choices for converting food to commerce (I'm not caring about production so Theocracy would have to be considered totally differently). I'm also not using a financial leader which would skew things significantly for Aristocracy.

Option 1:
Aristocracy-Sacrifice the Weak-Guilds-Agrarianism

Option 2:
not Aristocracy-Sacrifice the Weak-Guilds-Agrarianism

Option 3:
Aristocracy-Scholarship-Caste System-Agrarianism

Option 4:
not Aristocracy-Scholarship-Caste System-Agrarianism

I will assume that the great library is not in our empire and we are not Sidar. Again I am ignoring GPP for all intents and purposes which is rough but in a late game situation widely variable. Under options 1 and 2, 1 specialist provides the equivalent of 3 commerce. Under options 3 and 4, 1 specialist provides the equivalent of 5 commerce and all science is boosted by 10%.

Lets deal with Options 1 and 2 first though. Suppose our happiness cap is x, our health cap is greater than that and we want to stagnate at population x while working as many specialists as possible. We will need x food total produced in our city and since the center tile produces 2 food, we will need x-2 food produced from worked tiles.

Under Aristocracy, a farm produces 4 food and 2 commerce. So it takes (x-2)/4 worked Aristocracy farms to produce x-2 food. Those farms will produce 2 commerce each so the total commerce produced by those farms will be 2*((x-2)/4) which is (x-2)/2.

Now as (x-2)/4 of the population is working farms, the remainder of the population is free to be assigned as specialists. Since there are x population working, there will thus be x-((x-2)/4) which is (3x+2)/4 specialists assigned. Each of them provides the equivalent of 3 commerce so the total commerce produced by the specialists will be 3*((3x+2)/4)) which is (9x+6)/4.

If we add these up (the commerce produced by farms with the commerce produced by specialists) we get a total of (11x+2)/4 commerce produced in Option 1.

Option 2 is slightly easier to do. Each farm produces 5 food so it will take (x-2)/5 farms to produce the food we need. The farms will produce no commerce.

The remainder of the population is free to be assigned as specialists. As there are x people in the city, that makes x-((x-2)/5) which is (4x+2)/5 specialists assigned. Each specialist makes the equivalent of 3 commerce so the total commerce produced by the city is thus (12x+6)/5.

In options 3 and 4, the population needs 2x food to support itself at stagnation. So we need to work enough tiles to produce 2x-2 food.

In option 3, as each farm produces 4 food, we will need to work (2x-2)/4 which is (x-1)/2 farms to produce the required food. Each farm produces 2 commerce so the total commerce produced by the farms will be 2*((x-1)/2) which is just x-1.

The remainder of the x population can be assigned as specialists. That is x-((x-1)/2) which is (x+1)/2 specialists. Each specialist produces the equivalent of 5 commerce so the total commerce produced by the specialists is 5*((x+1)/2)

Thus the total commerce produced under option 3 obtained by adding the commerce from both sources is thus (7x+3)/2.

In option 4 each farm produces 5 food so we will need (2x-2)/5 farms to support our population. The farms produce no commerce.

The remainder of the population is assigned specialists. That is x-((2x-2)/5) which is (3x+2)/5 specialists. Each specialist creates the equivalent of 5 commerce so the total commerce produced is just 5*((3x+2)/5) which is just 3x+2.

Now some of these results are surprising. To get ideas of general trends as x gets large, just look at the coefficient of x which is in options 1-4 respectively:

2.75
2.2
3.5
3

The larger x is, the more these coefficients dominate the amount of commerce produced. More specifically, Options 1 and 2 will always be worse than Options 3 and 4 on a strict commerce basis at any population (just check any positive values of x if you don't believe me). Option 1 will be better than Option 2 at population 2 and up. Option 3 will be better than Option 4 at population 2 and up.

Quick example numbers for population 20 the total commerce produced under Options 1-4 respectively will be:
55.5
45.2
71.5
62

Keep in mind I didn't even attempt to factor in the +10% science from Options 3 or 4. I also did not factor in the culture produced by specialists for them either.

A couple of points:

1. Aristocracy is better than its non Aristocracy counterpart here. If it is better enough to justify not using another Government civic I can't answer at this point.
2. If Financial, Aristocracy would be a much stronger choice regardless of other factors here.
3. Sacrifice the Weak is much much weaker than it used to be thanks to being thrown in with Scholarship.
4. Just in case you were worried about them, rivers only help Aristocracy here. As Aristocracy is working more farms than its counterpart it will be working at least as many riverside farms as its counterpart. I calculated it as if they work the exact same number of riverside farms. If not, Aristocracy gains.

 

[vale]

I tried to be more detailed about exactly where I was getting all the numbers from in the above. I hope it is understandable. I was surprised by exactly how badly Sacrifice the Weak has been nerfed by the civics category changes.

 

[EverNoob]

Another important point to mention is that Sacrifice the Weak is a No Upkeep civic, whereas Scholarship is High Upkeep. Depending on empire (total population?) size and inflation this makes a big difference.

 

[schlalex]

God King is a noobtrap tied to a beaker sink tech. Its something you get after you have an economy, not to make an economy.

Sorry, but this is completely wrong. GodKing is by far the best civic. It comes very early with Mysticism. While in the past, it was a hard choice between Mysticism and Education, with the change of City States to Cartography, its an easy choice now.
Mysticism gives u elder Councils, nearly improving your research by ~50% and gives u a GS after 38 Turns with a non-philosophical civ (epic Speed+Pacifism)
God King ist damn great, the Production bonus is awesome, it lets u build everything very fast for this early.
And the Gold Bonus can be completely overpowered, imagine a GP from the event and/or the holy City of RoK even without a shrine.
Aristocracy may be nice in certain sítuations (Malakim with lots of flood plans), but God King is THE burner even in the endgame.
The increased maintenance ist nothing compared to the benefits. Plus with courthouses, which are very early accessible in FFH, you can even maintain a big empire.
I think, its a little sad, that GK is so way overpowered that u just cannot choose the others, also they might sound interesting.

 

[vale]

Another important point to mention is that Sacrifice the Weak is a No Upkeep civic, whereas Scholarship is High Upkeep. Depending on empire (total population?) size and inflation this makes a big difference.

I'm not saying Sacrifice the Weak is bad, just much worse than it used to be. Yeah the upkeep is definitely relevant. But I also ignored other passive effects like -40% GPP, -4 Health, +10% Research.

Sorry, but this is complete . .. .. .. .. GodKing is by far the best civic. It comes very early with Mysticism. While in the past, it was a hard choice between Mysticism and Education, with the change of City States to Cartography, its an easy choice now.
Mysticism gives u elder Councils, nearly improving your research by ~50% and gives u a GS after 38 Turns with a non-philosophical civ (epic Speed+Pacifism)
God King ist damn great, the Production bonus is awesome, it lets u build everything very fast for this early.
And the Gold Bonus can be completely overpowered, imagine a GP from the event and/or the holy City of RoK even without a shrine.
Aristocracy may be nice in certain sítuations (Malakim with lots of flood plans), but God King is THE burner even in the endgame.
The increased maintenance ist nothing compared to the benefits. Plus with courthouses, which are very early accessible in FFH, you can even maintain a big empire.
I think, its a little sad, that GK is so way overpowered that u just cannot choose the others, also they might sound interesting.

The fact that you talk about Pacifism like it is frequently usable proves how ridiculous this post is. The situations where God King can outperform Aristocracy-Agrarianism at any point after Code of Laws is researched are extremely limited. The same goes (albeit to a lesser degree) in comparing God King with City States. Past a certain point of the game it is so ridiculously unlikely that God King can outperform City States.

The benefits of God King are just simply not that strong in any decent sized empire. The larger the empire, the less meaningful overall that a 50% production bonus is in the empire. And unless you get a shrine in your capital, the 50% gold bonus is more equivalent to a 25% commerce bonus in the capital. Now balance all of that with the increased city upkeep and increased civic upkeep and try to tell me that "u just cannot choose the others".

 

[vale]

The other thing I fudged over in the options post was the amount of land needed for the different options. Theoretically, if using option 2 you could have your cities tightly packed in together using 4 or 5 tiles each to support ~size 20 cities. Maintenance will be worse in this case without a doubt, but it is a work around the happy cap. More numerous but smaller cities will be potentially be able to claim that full 1 food=1 specialist bonus for every farm in your empire. I have no idea how bad the upkeep could get there and my instinct says that the significant upkeep increase will make this a non-starter.

 

[vale]

Schlalex, why don't you play in the comparison game if you believe so strongly in God King. It has an uber God King capital with a legitimate chance on immortal to found RoK even so we are talking about the best possible situation for what you claim. Get some turn 150 stats up for us and lets look at where you are with production/research/etc. Bonus points if you actually found RoK in your capital which I find extraordinarily unlikely.

 

[Turinturambar]

I have no idea how bad the upkeep could get there and my instinct says that the significant upkeep increase will make this a non-starter.

Afaik city upkeep is capped at some value, so at a certain point upkeep becomes less of an issue.

I agree that sac the weak is not very worthwile for a farm based economy. I simply think of it as +1food per citizen above four. But at that point you already get +4/5 food from a simple grassland farm, so happiness is the clear limiting factor not food growth.

In general I think this is the best economy strategy:
1. Research the techs that allow you to hook up commerce resources, provided your city has some way of growing (i.e. 3 food tiles).

2. Tech towards education, plastering farms everywhere with fresh water. Cottages on hard to irrigate tiles. Depending on food situation/resources, you may want to research calendar.

3. Once you have expanded to 4-6 cities, switch to aristocracy.

4. Research towards trade/sanitation/construction to make the farm economy fully operational. You should now expand/conquer onto every free space on the map.

5. If you have overseas AI trading partners, research towards astronomy, else research towards engineering if you feel confident to get the guild of hammers.
The third path takes you to arcane lore for scholarship followed by taxation.

5. Alternative: Head to fanaticism for theocracy to pursue an altar victory. Run theocracy/social order/caste system/agrarianism.

6. You have reached the endgame, run republic/scholarship/caste system/agrarianism and watch the endgame techs roll in.

 

[vale]

Number of cities upkeep is capped (based on difficulty level). But distance maintenance has no cap except I suppose the size of the map restricts the maximum distance a city could be from a palace. And distance maintenance is the part that is "helped" by God King.

 

[popejubal]

The benefits of God King are just simply not that strong in any decent sized empire. The larger the empire, the less meaningful overall that a 50% production bonus is in the empire. And unless you get a shrine in your capital, the 50% gold bonus is more equivalent to a 25% commerce bonus in the capital. Now balance all of that with the increased city upkeep and increased civic upkeep and try to tell me that "u just cannot choose the others".

I get the feeling that the two of you are talking about two different things. In the early game, there's obviously no comparison. God King wins hands down against every other civic that you could have just for the 50% production bonus alone. When your capital is your only city, you're giving yourself a 50% production boost across your entire civilization. What other civic can even come close to matching that?

If you have a big shrine in your Capital, it can also be worthwhile in the right situations (Sidar, I'm looking at you!). Otherwise, the vastly increased maintenance makes it completely unsuitable once you have "any decent sized empire" as Vale points out. I expect that the difference of opinion here comes from the fact that you're talking about two different parts of the game. If you don't have a decent sized empire, then God King is an easy choice. If you have a massive, sprawling empire, then not picking God King is equally obvious.

I will note that I have sometimes left my civics on God King for longer than I should based on expenses just because I had no other reasonable option to get the hammers that I so desperately needed. With no early whip available and no early cash-buying available, I needed those extra hammers from God King. It hurt like heck to see all the science I wasn't producing, but survival comes first.

 

[Turinturambar]

Number of cities upkeep is capped (based on difficulty level). But distance maintenance has no cap except I suppose the size of the map restricts the maximum distance a city could be from a palace. And distance maintenance is the part that is "helped" by God King.

Yeah but distance maintenance is independent from the number of cities. I assumed you were worried that building tons of small cities leads to an exponential increase in maintenance. Given that lategame each new city usually starts with 4-5 trade routes (currency/trade/council resolution/nexus), it only takes a very short time until they become profitable.

 

[vale]

God King is THE burner even in the endgame.

I get the feeling that the two of you are talking about two different things.

Nope, he clearly is stating his position here.

In the early game, there's obviously no comparison. God King wins hands down against every other civic that you could have just for the 50% production bonus alone. When your capital is your only city, you're giving yourself a 50% production boost across your entire civilization. What other civic can even come close to matching that?

How long is the early game? It is very possible that you have a second city by the time Mysticism is researched unless you beeline it before worker techs. And I would argue that appropriate worker techs will do much more for your Capital in the early game than God King with a bunch of unimproved tiles.

The problem with God King is not that its bonus is useless but that its value over other options expires too quickly. Essentially by the time you can research Code of Laws even by a semi-beeline, you can easily have enough cities to make Aristocracy the clear choice over other government civics. Researching Mysticism for God King early delays your access to Aristocracy and its turbo commerce and gives you another anarchy period.

This is the exact problem that City States has. Back when City States was at Education, I always revolted to it when I got there to sustain my economy on the way to Code of Laws. But now that it lies along a detour it is just useless. If God King were available at Education it would be very clear to revolt to it on the way to Code of Laws.

If you have a big shrine in your Capital, it can also be worthwhile in the right situations (Sidar, I'm looking at you!).

There are definitely Civilizations that synergize well with God King. But they are the exceptions rather than the rule.

I will note that I have sometimes left my civics on God King for longer than I should based on expenses just because I had no other reasonable option to get the hammers that I so desperately needed. With no early whip available and no early cash-buying available, I needed those extra hammers from God King. It hurt like heck to see all the science I wasn't producing, but survival comes first.

Another alternative would be to aim for one more city and Aristocracy by that point. The lost production from your Capital can be overcome by increased production across your empire. Given that you aren't forced to work cottages for commerce, overall you can have a healthy amount of production in each city without crashing your economy. Admittedly this is not always possible, but the capital production bonus really does become mostly irrelevant fairly quickly unless you are chasing wonders. Any production that can be distributed (warrior spam) is handled well by an Aristocracy.

 

[Earthling]

Schlalex, why don't you play in the comparison game if you believe so strongly in God King. It has an uber God King capital with a legitimate chance on immortal to found RoK even so we are talking about the best possible situation for what you claim. Get some turn 150 stats up for us and lets look at where you are with production/research/etc. Bonus points if you actually found RoK in your capital which I find extraordinarily unlikely.

I already played a God King game that held up to any other comparison so far by turn 100, no need to call him out. And I also gave reasons why that wasn't a great game for comparison (unbalanced war situation, barbarian trait, etc...) but there you have it. I didn't even go for RoK which would have been crazy OP.


Furthermore,

There are definitely Civilizations that synergize well with God King. But they are the exceptions rather than the rule.

I think you're doing one of a few things:
-playing way under your difficulty, so it's easy to conquer anything/get huge empires
-simply don't play all the civs
-somehow have other very weird settings

I count the following civs as incredibly God-King inclined; it can work the whole game.
Lanun
Khazad
Sidar
Kuriotates
Infernals (not exactly a normal civ though)

For these civs GK is way stronger than for any civ's leanings to Aristocracy (in other words, for other civs you choose City States, Aristo, Theo, GK etc...situationally. Malakim being maybe the one exception). Then, almost every other civ has situational uses for GK, depending on religion/military/relative time in game needs etc... I'd say civilizations that synergize with Aristo are the exceptions rather than the rule.

1. Research the techs that allow you to hook up commerce resources, provided your city has some way of growing (i.e. 3 food tiles).

2. Tech towards education, plastering farms everywhere with fresh water. Cottages on hard to irrigate tiles. Depending on food situation/resources, you may want to research calendar.

3. Once you have expanded to 4-6 cities, switch to aristocracy.

4. Research towards trade/sanitation/construction to make the farm economy fully operational. You should now expand/conquer onto every free space on the map.

5. The few warriors you've produced with low production have just been completely owned militarily, nice try.

I can glean a bit about your game settings here that might encourage the above but for me this isn't at all the optimal tech path for the vast majority of civs. One of the problems with Aristo is that it takes a lot of tech to get the economy up and running; if you ignore religion, the metal line etc... you're very liable to be destroyed. The AI in FfH sucks of course so it's hard to use it to find optimal strategies, but the above would get destroyed in MP games.