How good is Aristocracy really?

[EverNoob]

I'd appreciate it if someone could explain to me what's so great about aristo-agrarian.

To me it just seems so inefficient production-wise and in the long-term inefficient commerce-wise as well. Early game production is vital and in the long-term cottages are better...Not to mention it's restrictive civic and research-wise.

I use it rarely, when terrain basically forces me to use it, ie: tons of non-forested flat grassland. And in those cases it worked out OK, but nothing spectacular really. And I only use it short-term to get by until I can adopt a better form of economy.

It seems alot of players swear by aristo-agrarian and I don't understand why

 

[Senethro]

It is good production wise. Food = hammers and Agrarian means you have a lot of it.
Its especially good for working more tiles/improving tiles as you get Population, Settlers and Workers faster.

The gold it gives is fast. Farms are more likely to give 3 gold in the early game because rivers are your main water source. Compared with that Cottages spend many turns giving a worse or equal return for gold, and even at Village size the food from farms still makes them arguably equal. If you run lots of Sages you can get a return of 1.5 commerce and 1.5GPP per unit of food. So, Grassland Cottage/Town vs. Grassland Aristofarm is 2/0/1 or 2/0/4 vs. 3/0/2+1.5+1.5GPP.
Furthermore, Aristofarms upgrade to 4/0/2 very early with Sanitation tech which also gives Public Baths for 3 happiness at about the time you need to raise that happiness cap and have sufficient production to do it.

So you gain the benefits for AristoFarms right now. No time to lose, you've got an axe horde, some kind of Tier 2.5/3 support, kill the Cottagers before they gain military parity and reap the benefits of their sweet sweet towns!

And as a freebie you get a unit that can culture pop new cities, give all your units a +10% bonus to healing rate. If you're Raiders the Royal Guards can be used in pairs to pillage your enemy while lots of units vanish into their high strength.

Better form of economy? What alternatives are there? City States/Cottage, Elven cottage, Infernal Foodless, Lanun Coast, Sidar WonderSpecialists, Khazad Hammer Emphasis, Calabim Food Emphasis. Who can think of more and who can think of one that most civs can use?

Aristo Akbar!

 

[EverNoob]

It is good production wise. Food = hammers and Agrarian means you have a lot of it.
Its especially good for working more tiles/improving tiles as you get Population, Settlers and Workers faster.

The way I see it, agrarian without aristocracy is much more effecient for production. Farms produce more which allows you to work more tiles like mines or lumbermills. Aristocracy actually slows down settler and worker training, especially compared to God-King.

I find the the population growth advantage not very useful early game since you hit the population cap really fast.

The gold it gives is fast. Farms are more likely to give 3 gold in the early game because rivers are your main water source. Compared with that Cottages spend many turns giving a worse or equal return for gold, and even at Village size the food from farms still makes them arguably equal. If you run lots of Sages you can get a return of 1.5 commerce and 1.5GPP per unit of food. So, Grassland Cottage/Town vs. Grassland Aristofarm is 2/0/1 or 2/0/4 vs. 3/0/2+1.5+1.5GPP.

In your example you're not taking into account the higher production from farms under a non-aristocratic. Which ties into my complaint that it cripples . Running specialists eats up even more . And again if you don''t run aristocracy, your farms produce more so it's easier to run specialists.

So you gain the benefits for AristoFarms right now. No time to lose, you've got an axe horde, some kind of Tier 2.5/3 support, kill the Cottagers before they gain military parity and reap the benefits of their sweet sweet towns!

Axemen don't require much tech to acquire...but they do require alot of to churn out.

More also means more economy-boosting buildings.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

why are towns more than farms? you get your hammers from mines and workshops.

 

[JonathanStrange]

@EverNoob:

I'm curious; just asking:

What do you use then? God King forever? City States? or...?

I'll use Aristocracy/Agrarian for awhile as circumstances seem to warrant; production falls but the extra revenue and lower maintenance may be of far more importance for a time. Focusing on alone isn't too compelling; when one need to switch civics, do so.

Probably I use God King/ Agrarian the most mainly 'cause my Deity level civilizations are small and struggling for a long time - God King really helps my capitol which is my main production city for a long time, while Agrarian is an easy, useful early civic.

Long term, as the Ljosalfars, I try for the City States/ Guardian of Nature, but I'm not adverse to a temporary coin generation with Aristo/Agrarian.

 

[JonathanStrange]

why are towns more than farms? you get your hammers from mines and workshops.

Good point. And, iirc, these are unaffected by the Aristocracy civic's effect. One of the reasons, I use for awhile, Aristocracy - because my Ljosalfar civs rarely are forests/ancient forests filled for a long time anyways - mines and workshops give me

 

[Senethro]

The way I see it, agrarian without aristocracy is much more effecient for production. Farms produce more which allows you to work more tiles like mines or lumbermills. Aristocracy actually slows down settler and worker training, especially compared to God-King.

Yes, but farms without Aristo make no gold at all so you have no economy and you might as well surrender.
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.

I find the the population growth advantage not very useful early game since you hit the population cap really fast.

Its useful because it generates you turn advantage, same way as expanding your economy quickly through various forms of REXing is essential in all Civ series games.

In your example you're not taking into account the higher production from farms under a non-aristocratic. Which ties into my complaint that it cripples . Running specialists eats up even more . And again if you don''t run aristocracy, your farms produce more so it's easier to run specialists.

Your complaint is wrong. Sorry.

Axemen don't require much tech to acquire...but they do require alot of to churn out.
More also means more economy-boosting buildings.

No they don't. Bronze Axemen are probably the most hammer efficient unit for most of the game for field work. Bronze Warriors are possibly a more efficient city defender, but only in terms of hammers.
What economy boosting buildings? Nearly all buildings in FFH are so hammer expensive as to be prohibitive. I rarely build anything that isn't a happiness, military or multiplicative building. Elder Councils/Markets are only good if you an a GP or are Philo/Fin, or are worried about your economy tanking due to building too many axemen that you have to fill the build queue with something.



Look, I used to think as you do. I'd been playing City States/Cottages for years. Then someone scared me in MP, out teched me by so much that I was fighting a fully upgraded Iron Champion army with Bronze Axemen. I still won, but only through building MORE Axemen and outrageous wins at 40% odds. But I was quite disturbed that someone could gain 7000 more beakers than me without a lot of tech trading.
So I studied save games and found no answers, only farms, which I ignored because I was not yet ready to accept the truth. I searched these forums and turned up a thread between Monkeyfinger and Turinturambar which I think was about which religion is best for the Calabim and comparing single player games to prove it. What was more interesting to me was that turinturambar somehow got 200 beakers/turn on turn 200 without techtrading or exploits and he did it with Aristofarms. I had solid numbers in front of me and a step-by-step guide on how to copy him. On my first go trying to replicate Turinturambars style I got 200 beakers/turn on turn 205.

I've been a convert ever since. There is no economy but Aristo and TurinTurambar is its prophet. At least, until Kael sees fit to rebalance the game.

 

[vale]

The main point of Aristocracy has always been to better abuse the two good Economy civics (Agriculture->Agrarianism or Guardian of Nature). While Agriculture->Agrarianism has been weakened over time, the fact remains that for almost every civilization in the game, there is absolutely no reason not to run it from nearly the moment you get it until the end of the game.

Cottages are better long term? That is debatable at best even on a strict single tile for single tile basis. End game towns give + 5 commerce. End game farms give +2 food, +2 commerce. Trade off is 2 food for 3 commerce. (Ironically if you think that is good, Aristocracy offers a simple way to convert 2 food to 4 commerce) End game for towns also comes significantly later in the tech tree than the farms. It also takes significantly longer to "build" a town. So already you are starting with a fundamentally flawed premise. At the absolute peak for cottages, it still isn't clear which improvement is better in my opinion and it will be very dependent on the state of the empire as a whole.

Second, the idea that an early cottage economy can outproduce an early Aristocracy economy is ludicrous. What the aristocracy economy loses in production on individual farms it more than makes up for by working many more farms than its cottage economy counterpart. And if you are talking about working only farms and mines in all cities then we aren't really talking about an economy any more. That is the earliest of the early game. And it won't be too long before Sanitation is in for Aristocracy and any concerns about production comparisons will be moot. (That fast commerce means Aristo will get Sanitation way before cottages even if both prioritize it equally).

Third, in terms of short and medium term commerce, Aristocracy doesn't just beat cottages, it utterly destroys them. I've crunched the numbers in several posts before but the cottage economy will fall behind very far very quickly. It will also stay behind because in general, if the cottage economy is choosing to focus on development of cottages, it will be outproduced fairly substantially by an Aristocracy. So the Aristocracy will be expanding more quickly and working more tiles than the cottage economy.

Now as far as being restricted in your choice of civics, I'm not sure I understand the problem there. God King is atrociously bad, almost to the point of being unusable. It really needs to get the full bureaucracy bonus as well as getting back the extra happy for state religion. City States used to be ok when it was at Education and you could get it on the way to Aristocracy. Not anymore. As far as economy civics go, there are only two ever worth adopting: Agrarianism or Guardian of Nature.

Also just to point out: Code of Laws is only slightly more expensive than Education. This is not the huge beaker outlay that Aristo detractors like to make out. I also believe that it will be rare when Calendar is not an early priority regardless of any economic decisions you are making.

I also have to wonder what better economy you are shooting for. All of the best economies involve Aristocracy. Even a late game specialist economy fueled by Sacrifice the Weak is better with Aristocracy (assuming not too much of the commerce is being filtered through the culture slider).

To sum up:
In favor of Aristocracy:
Aristocracy commerce comes much earlier (keyword there is much)
Aristocracy maintains a better overall growth/production ability
Aristocracy allows access to a ridiculously useful civic only unit
Aristocracy involves no culture penalties or war weariness penalties
Aristocracy is not found at a dead end tech

In favor of other economies:
More challenging
Fairer to the AI/human opponents
Don't have to research Code of Laws or Calendar
Lower priority on Construction and Sanitation
Might get the stooges
Possibly better for wonder hogging

 

[Emptiness]

To me it just seems so inefficient production-wise [...] Early game production is vital

Avoid farming plains tiles when running Agrarian. If you only farm grasslands and flood plains then there is no penalty so there's no production inefficiency.

The way I see it, agrarian without aristocracy is much more effecient for production. Farms produce more which allows you to work more tiles like mines or lumbermills. Aristocracy actually slows down settler and worker training, especially compared to God-King.

Agrarian is't any more efficient for production; it has the -1 penalty on farms, not Aristocracy. If you have to farm a lot of plains tiles then you may be better off not using Agrarian, especially if you are using God King.

Of course, without Aristocracy you'd have faster population growth and better worker/settler production. God-King/Agrarian is great for expansion, as long as you aren't forced to farm plains tiles. The price is paid in , however. With Aristograrian you'd expand slightly more slowly but have a much stronger economy.

There's no reason why you can't benefit from both of those aspects, however. Aristocracy isn't available until Code of Laws. Although you can get it without getting Mysticism, I recommend the detour. You can adopt G-K/Agr early to fuel your race to fill up the available space, and then switch to Aristograrian to stabilize your economy.

In your example you're not taking into account the higher production from farms under a non-aristocratic. Which ties into my complaint that it cripples . Running specialists eats up even more . And again if you don''t run aristocracy, your farms produce more so it's easier to run specialists.

In the long term other approaches will achieve superior extremes. Cottages will eventually mature to produce more . Agrarian alone will produce more , which will support more specialists, which will produce more great people. Aristograrian, however, is a more balanced approach. It requires no time to mature into its potential. It produces more food than the cottage approach, and more commerce than the specialist approach.

The biggest draw for Aristograrian, I believe, is Financial leaders. The trait is popular, and with good reason. It makes Aristocracy even more appealing, because of the additional . If you happen to be playing the Calabim then the draw is even stronger, because God King is unavailable and City States can only compete with Financial-Aristocracy in a truly massive empire - which you are unlikely to have that early in the game.

I use it rarely, [...] And I only use it short-term [...]
It seems alot of players swear by aristo-agrarian and I don't understand why

I hardly ever use it myself, unless I'm playing a Financial leader. Sometimes I use Aristocracy with an elven civ, but never with Agrarian because of the penalty (every tile is making at least 1 due to forestation and the +1 from AF replaces the +1 from Agrarian). I know why Aristograrian is strong, so I understand why it is popular, but it doesn't really fit my style well. I prefer to focus on output for my cities, and often will run God King/Agrarian early on switching to Republic/Something later in the game, where "Something" depends on my civ, religion, and whether I'm aiming for an economy based on 0% or 100% . I will have one city as my economic center (the holy city of the religion I found if 0% , my research hub if 100% ) and it will have cottages. I generally don't build them anywhere else because I want the or I can get from other improvements more than I want the I'd get from a cottage.

 

[Senethro]

Well that about wraps it up for Cottages. New topic please.

We've now got a game in which there is a single solution for terraforming/civics/tech path that very powerful under most situations. How do we break this?

Boring solution: Remove Sanitations food bonus.

More interesting solution: Improve Theocracy and Republic. Give Agrarian some kind of late game penalty that won't stop it being useful before turn 200. I also think a civic in Economy category that improves workshops is somehow important.

 

[vale]

The problem has always been the economy civics. It was even worse when Agriculture/Agrarianism gave +2F -1H per farm and was available at Agriculture tech, but it is still a problem. As much as I've loved that civic in my years of playing FFH, it is the primary source of most balance issues and still needs to be toned down significantly.

The best way in my opinion would be to make the hammer penalty stick. If you work a grassland farm under Agrarianism, you should lose 1 hammer from your cities base output that turn. I don't know if/how that can be coded, but it would make Agrarianism not the no-brainer it is now.

It doesn't help that the other Economy civics are useless save Guardian of Nature.

Cottages also need direct help. They don't have to be BTS good, but they need to be better. A civic that boosts cottages output and growth would be hugely helpful.

 

[Senethro]

Some random ideas:

Theocracy
Medium Upkeep
+2XP, +1 happiness for religion in a city
No Non-state religion spread.
Priest specialist slots.
+2 gold, +2 hammers per State Religion building.
Just like Aristo enables a unique unit, Theocracy could enable a unique building. A Cathedral building that gives big happiness and would have some kind of special power that is only active while in Theocracy civic.
They could be simple like Order Cathedral is +20% unit production and Empyrean is +20% science.
They could be more unusual like RoK cathedral upgrades Cottages at double speed and Overlords Cathedral might gain +1 beaker, +1 Great Prophet Point per water tile.
They could even be ability based such as living units dying to a Veil Cathedral city raised as Diseased Corpses.


Republic
High Upkeep
+20% GPP and Culture
Happiness bonus
Civic anger in opponents cities
+1 commerce per tile
+1 gold per military unit upkeep.

Going all the way back to versions of Republic from early civ games here. A recasting of Republic as the ultimate in small empire, highly specialised cities defended by few high strength, high tech units.

And having written all that 2 things have occurred to me.
1. Those solutions are messy and inelegant and full of unnecessary features. They're more like something out of FF than FFH. Game design is hard :<
2. Its actually quite difficult to think of something that would tempt me out of Aristo.

 

[Emptiness]

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.

A beaker-sink tech on the way to all the religions, plus arcane and divine caster units, right? I guess if you never use any of those things then Mysticism would seem pointless...

Then someone scared me in MP, out teched me by so much that I was fighting a fully upgraded Iron Champion army with Bronze Axemen. I still won, but only through building MORE Axemen and outrageous wins at 40% odds. But I was quite disturbed that someone could gain 7000 more beakers than me without a lot of tech trading.

It sounds to me like *he* should have been scared, and scrambled to understand and emulate you rather than the other way around.

What economy boosting buildings? Nearly all buildings in FFH are so hammer expensive as to be prohibitive. I rarely build anything that isn't a happiness, military or multiplicative building. Elder Councils/Markets are only good if you an a GP or are Philo/Fin, or are worried about your economy tanking due to building too many axemen that you have to fill the build queue with something.

If you don't build buildings then all you've got are raw tile yields, so yeah Aristograrian will shine. Alternatives can be made to work, but will require buildings as a support structure. If a player plans to spend the game with all of their cities building military units all the time then that is going to make Aristograrian seem like the only viable civic choice even in the later game.

As far as economy civics go, there are only two ever worth adopting: Agrarianism or Guardian of Nature.

Sounds like you're a 100% person. Foreign Trade works well with 100% as the Lanun, where all your cities are coastal and your is primarily from water tiles (and so you need to use every land tile to yield , thus making farms undesirable). Mercantilism is great with a 0% economy, especially in conjunction with a civic that enables gold to buy production.

Boring solution: Remove Sanitations food bonus.

More interesting solution: Improve Theocracy and Republic. Give Agrarian some kind of late game penalty that won't stop it being useful before turn 200. I also think a civic in Economy category that improves workshops is somehow important.

Removing the +1 from Sanitation would have wider consequences than just toning down Aristograrian. I don't like that idea.

Improving Theocracy and Republic sounds good, especially Theocracy. It seems only really useful to leverage an AotL victory, and for that it's not really necessary. Lots of priests could provide gold income for a 100% economy, but merchants would probably be a better choice in that situation.

Rather than giving Agrarian a late-game penalty I'd prefer to see improvement in the alternate late-game civics. I'm a big fan of workshops, so boosting them would help me out, but I'm not sure they really need it. Early game they are very lackluster but late game they are great.

 

[Emptiness]

2. Its actually quite difficult to think of something that would tempt me out of Aristo.

Civic choice is closely tied to play style. It's probably not a good idea to try to design alternative civics based around making them all attractive to just one strategy. Anyone who adopts a specific way of playing the game is naturally going to find a specific combination of civics that works with that way, and then be disinclined to use anything else. This is a natural consequence of having the civics tuned to a variety of play styles and game situations.

 

[Emptiness]

Just like Aristo enables a unique unit, Theocracy could enable a unique building. A Cathedral building that gives big happiness and would have some kind of special power that is only active while in Theocracy civic.
They could be simple like Order Cathedral is +20% unit production and Empyrean is +20% science.
They could be more unusual like RoK cathedral upgrades Cottages at double speed and Overlords Cathedral might gain +1 beaker, +1 Great Prophet Point per water tile.
They could even be ability based such as living units dying to a Veil Cathedral city raised as Diseased Corpses.

That sounds like a very interesting idea. Might be a challenge to balance, but once done it would make adopting Theocracy much more attractive.

 

[Turinturambar]

Aristocracy on its own is barely worth switching to. It is only such a great civic because it comes at a time when there are lots of crucial economic techs to research (sanitation/trade/construction/currency/bronzeworking/engineering), you have a very high food surplus, a low happy cap and the best city spots are already taken. All those circumstances make it ideal to trade food for commerce at this point in time.

Late game I usually switch out of aristocracy with a nonfinancial civ once I get one of the unlimited specialist civics. Research rate takes a hit, but FFhs lategame techs are mostly of marginal utility compared to the earlier ones and more food turns all cities into production powerhouses with either an alter/priest theocracy combo, or guild of hammers/guilds/engineers.

Cottages are a noncontender. As Vale pointed out even at their peak it is highly debateable whether they are better than a farm and it takes them 40 turns to even catch up with aristo farms commercewise. Given that my aristo economy tends to need ~150 turns to get all the useful techs from the tech tree after researching education, it is simply not worthwile to invest in cottages.

 

[vale]

Sounds like you're a 100% person. Foreign Trade works well with 100% as the Lanun, where all your cities are coastal and your is primarily from water tiles (and so you need to use every land tile to yield , thus making farms undesirable). Mercantilism is great with a 0% economy, especially in conjunction with a civic that enables gold to buy production.

The thing is, so is Aristocracy with Agrarianism (I would argue that it is better):
0% Slider
Gambling Houses for happiness
Gold Multipliers
Aristocracy/Scholarship/Caste System/Agrarianism/Undercouncil or
Aristocracy/Sac the Weak/Guilds/Agrarianism/Undercouncil

Is going to generate much more "stuff" than something similar with Mercantilism in its place. Just the larger pops + foreign trade routes will be huge. There will definitely be more base commerce, and depending on the gold multipliers in place, there may be more overall gold produced. It isn't an issue of the slider. You may not agree, but I promise you that Agrarianism has been and continues to be the root of these balance problems. Mercantilism is never a legitimate alternative. Conquest could possibly be of marginal use for a good aligned empire but thats really stretching the definition of use. Foreign Trade is probably the closest to being a legitimate alternative to Agrarianism in some circumstances, but not with the current overpowered nature of Agrarianism.

Fix Theocracy, fix Republic, thats fine and cute, but essentially meaningless. Aristocracy - Agrarianism will still be the civics of choice to get to those civics assuming they become worth getting to.

 

[Senethro]

Heres another problem. How do you improve Cottages without handing Erebus on a platter to the elves?

 

[vale]

you have a very high food surplus

This explains exactly why Agrarianism is the problem. The surplus is because food is so easily available at all times in FFH. Food is so easily available at all times in FFH because you get Agrarianism with a basic worker tech at the very start of the game.

This is also compounded by the fact that other conversion method standards from BTS are much much weaker here (much fewer/more expensive/worse specialist enabling buildings, much later specialist enabling civics, slavery comes later and is alignment restricted and weakened by worse and more expensive granary equivalents).

 

[Turinturambar]

This explains exactly why Agrarianism is the problem. The surplus is because food is so easily available at all times in FFH. Food is so easily available at all times in FFH because you get Agrarianism with a basic worker tech at the very start of the game.

I think the problem is not the abundance of food surplus, but rather that almost all civs are forced to feed themselves with farms/agrarianism in the early game. Naturally they have to adopt the civics that synergize with a farm economy. Only the lanun have a competitive alternative with seafood/pirate ports. In a recent deity game I was running foreign trade/godking with them for an extended period of time and finished the tech tree after 244 turns on normal speed.

So my solution would be to introduce meaningful alternatives: Fishing earlier/lighthouse cheaper, more food from clams/crab/fish. Food from pastures drastically improved. Maybe improve the output of camps with tribalism and rebalance tech costs of Hunting/Fol and reduce hunters base strength. Additionally cottages gain several early game advantageous civics (Republic/apprenticeship/city states/pacifism would be candidates). That way there could be situations where going agriculture/calendar first is not the best option.