How good is Aristocracy really?

[Earthling]

Do you have a source of commerce? What is it.

Unfortunately, under most circumstances, you will need a reliable source of commerce. And if it isn't cottages (since they are strictly worse than Aristocracy farms) and it isn't Aristocracy farms, then what is it? Trade routes? Specialists? Markets and Elder Councils?

gold mines are what I consider to be the primary problem with the comparison game.

Well, everything here shows where your problem is at least. All of the above are in fact excellent sources of the broad term "commerce." For a random FfH civ, I tend to find myself running specialists as the rule; specialists like Great Library Scientists, Mines of Gal-Dur Engineers, or Altar Priests generally outperform random tiles. More food (4 food per grassland farm rather than 3 with Aristo for much of the early game) allows you to work these specialists much more easily. Researching religions rather than beelining for the techs you suggest allow me to build useful stuff for them too. Likewise with greater production it's easier for you to build elder councils/markets etc... And in almost every game I ever play you usually have some resources, whether it's plantations or mines or whatever, so maybe you just don't tend to use great city placement, since early on any city should be settled to work strong resources. And for the Khazad specifically, RoK + Shrine provides a huge amount of gold together with GK so you can channel all your tile commerce/trade routes straight into science if you need. In a pinch you can always build wealth/research as needed - again for the Khazad specifically it's fairly easy to get close to 100% hammer bonuses while thoses bonuses to beakers/gold require more buildings or come much later. And a little bit extra Aristo commerce will never really do much in the way of getting you a military, which is absolutely vital in the world of Erebus.

Think of it this way for the Khazad - let's consider a mid-size city, 6 farms 5 mines under Aristocracy. So you're getting 12 (18 financial) extra raw commerce you wouldn't under another civic (which for these purposes could be city states, GK, theo, whatever, just non-Aristo). But if you did switch out of Aristo, the extra 6 food would allow you to work another 3 mines or 3 specialists or something. That's roughly 12 raw production on the mines right there, it's harder to quanitfy GPP advantages, but could easily just be 9-12 beakers for instance, which is barely less than the Aristo commerce and gets you great people. So you'd have to convince me that at most 18 raw commerce is worth more than 12 raw production, and remember that the Khazad can get 50% or greater bonuses to hammers while they probably just have a 25% library bonus to beakers. I'd say it's not even close at all. And that's without the added benefits of any other civic, even if it's just say less maintenance from city states. You'd have to have a razor thin happy cap for Aristo to matter, and in fact non-Aristo should do even better with smaller/newer cities because you get more food per farm to grow faster. Again, I know there are some uses for the civic, but it just doesn't mesh with the Khazad.

 

[Turinturambar]

Think of it this way for the Khazad - let's say you have a mid-size city, 6 farms 5 mines under Aristocracy. So you're getting 12 (18 financial) extra raw commerce you wouldn't under another civic (which for these purposes could be city states, GK, theo, whatever, just non-Aristo). But if you did switch out of Aristo, the extra 6 food would allow you to work another 3 mines or 3 specialists or something. That's roughly 12 raw production on the mines right there, it's harder to quanitfy GPP advantages, but could easily just be 9-12 beakers for instance, which is barely less than the Aristo commerce and gets you great people. So you'd have to convince me that at most 18 raw commerce is worth more than 12 raw production, and remember that the Khazad can get 50% or greater bonuses to hammers while they probably just have a 25% library bonus to beakers. I'd say it's not even close at all. And that's without the added benefits of any other civic, even if it's just say less maintenance from city states.

This assumes that you have the happy cap to work those specialists/mines. If you aren't limited by happiness then clearly aristocracy is not a strong choice for nonfinancial civs, because it is rather trivial to convert one food to something better than 2 commerce.

The whole point of Aristocracy is not to run it until the end of time, but to use it for a quick burst period of research. This enables you to get the critical techs which enable the specialist/hammer economy you describe.
Now if you have a different means to get significant amounts of research/higher happy caps like the the Lanun, Kuriotates or Khazad (or you start near a cluster of gold mines) then Aristocracy is no longer needed and you can skip the Aristocracy transition period.

 

[vale]

I agree 100% with earthling. You mentioned very good points. But you will never convice vale, he is a maniac.
And to the comparison game. It has a ridiculous starting city for aristocarcy. All the flood plains will give you 4/0/3 even without sanitation.

The 2 gold tiles is much huger for God King than any flood plains were for Aristocracy.

Earthling would have struck multiple times before turn 150 without that gold. He has no commerce for most of the game otherwise. None at all. For you to say that start favored Aristocracy shows how ignorant you are about this game.

See the difference is, that once I hit Code of Laws (and education to a degree since I got there well before either of you), I had a reliable source of commerce always. Even if my empire had no gold mines or gem mines or lots of dyes. Earthling abused the fact that he had multiple gold tiles well, I'll give you that much, but the only reason he could do that is because he had multiple gold tiles.

He tries the same stuff without the gold tiles and he strikes.

Show me your great strategy with only grassland or better with a plains-start.
I am curious about your great economy with all the 2/0/3 tiles.
But of course you can run plenty of mines for production as well .
And the gold ressource was a big benefit to you, cause it lets you research CoL much faster.

You definitely have no idea about this. First of all on all plains start. Do those exist? Of course! All the time. Oh wait, no the map script pretty much forces a decent amount of grasslands near your start every time. But yeah lets worldbuilder a start with no grassland!!! And no fresh water!! And no food bonuses!!! No bonuses at all!!! How do you like Aristocracy now? Moron.

Here play your resourceless all plains map to a win on Deity. Leave other continents (and make sure there is at least one with an AI on it) untouched by editing please. Post your winning save. Use any civ you like and any civics you like and win. Post the winning save.

And what you are saying about epic game is brainless. You seem to expand very fast, to 4-5 cities with Despotism. In Epic, you just do not have the money to research at such a deficit. If you beeline Col you will have to research it for 60-70 turns. And all without elder councils and markets^^ (which u find unnessecary,lol).

If you don't understand the way game speeds scale, I can't help you. Research costs and BUILD costs scale at the exact same rate for Epic. So the expansion rate and tech rate scale at about the same rate. If you can't get that through your empty head I don't know what to say. If you were talking about marathon then sure yeah, that is a very different animal because build costs scale differently than research there.

This is just the truth. There are situations where Aristocracy is damn great (floodplains, rivers,lots of land to grab).
But the majority is different (Plains, few rivers, Elven civs, Deity AIs grabbing all land, game speed and so on).
And you are always talking about Turn 150. What about Turn 300? Your cities will be significantly smaller due to lower food production. With a happy cap of 14 of course, it wont matter at all.

Hold the phone. At turn 150 I had Sanitation and neither of you did. My farms are just as good at producing food as yours are. My cities are also significantly higher population across the board than either of yours are. I also have more potential to expand my happy cap quicker. I will have a religion well before you get Sanitation. I will also have Mathematics well before you get Sanitation. I will also have Festivals well before you get Sanitation. So while my happy cap is going up quickly, yours is going to stagnate. We may expand horizontally at the same pace, but my vertical expansion will definitely outpace yours.

Turn 300 is not going to get much better for you specifically. I have a much better ability to expand peacefully than you as I have a better production rate (check our mfg numbers). My farms produce the same amount of food as yours individually. And I work many more of them (check crop yield numbers) And your tech rate is such that it will be many many turns before you can even think about Sanitation to regain an advantage on farms. The fact of the matter is that except vs. saves that involved cheating the rules, Aristocracy has arrived at a superior position. The only advantage you have left is that you have Warrens up in some cities already and that will expire very shortly. Any possible production advantage you have will be gone by the wayside in a few turns.

If I still had my save (it was lost because as I've said I attempted several Myst saves and other things trying to see how likely a Myst detour was worth it).

And one last thing. Why shall we prove that GK is much better and will outproduce u widely. Its you who is spamming to everyone Aristocracy is the one and only truth, anything else is stupid/worthless/noobish.

No, you need to reread your first post in this thread. And not after you edited it. You made your position quite clear. It would also be nice if you showed your turn 150 production stats in your game and how a switch to Aristocracy would do for your economy right now in that game.

See, you are the only God King save that didn't cheat the rules. Earthling has a great save, but rushing the neighbor is a huge boost to expansion that none of the Aristocracy saves was allowed to do. I want to see how much more you have produced than me.

So its your turn, not ours. Show us on a suboptimal start that you will perform much better than we can.
And this time without gold, millions of fresh water tiles and a barbarian civ not being able to build the GL.

I think the fact that you keep mentioning the GL is hilarious. You realize if we weren't barbarian I would have had the GL already for many turns in that turn 150 save while you haven't even researched Writing yet.

And please, try a start without lots of huge commerce bonus tiles. If you truly believe that those HELP Aristocracy vs. God King, you are legitimately insane. Again, your buddy earthlings economy would have been crashed hardcore at turn 115, probably headed for multiple strikes without that Gold.

You are definitely wrong about gold being good for Aristo and you are definitely wrong about Epic. What else are you wrong about? Did you even try a switch to Aristo in your turn 150 save and see what it did for your economy?

 

[Earthling]

Remember religion is usually good for 2-4 happy in every city. Add that on top of your base happiness, and remember that you can usually get at least 3-4 happy resources just through land or trade. So any city you simply get your religion into can easily grow to size 10+, Khazad get even more from resources/Dwarven vault, so I see nowhere that my comparison is at fault.

If you have troubles with happiness in your games, here are some suggestions
-Order provides virtually unlimited happiness for any good civ
-Elves with FoL get huge caps from Guardian
-Even if you don't have high happiness you can convert food to production through slavery
-Various random sources like animal cages can be used in specific cities which need happiness; your "main" cities can also build a couple extra buildings like the culture ones if needed

Now apparently you hold a different view than others here or have changed your position though, since you're now just suggesting Aristo as a quick burst of research. Yes, I can see it working mid-game when you need more economy and such a situation can be out there. However, you can also often accomplish the same thing without the need for this "burst" by simply teching other things, instead of the tech beeline to get to Aristo. So instead of having to convert to Aristo to get the burst to get you past Aristo, you can simply tech something else from the start.

Edit: xpost with vale. The short answer is, I can play a game without a gold tile in the capital and still do well. Cottages on early plains tiles are also possible because they're just as good as Agrarianism farms (since those take away the hammer). There are very few civs and situations that can't get the money somehow. In this game, between GK/Aristo, I don't think the gold itself had too much of an effect at all compared to other things like the Barbarian trait, if the gold wasn't there remember one could always settle elsewhere, unless all commerce resources were removed. In which case this also would have hurt Aristo tech since it probably would've taken another long chunk of turns to even get to CoL. Killing Decius would still be trivial for anyone anyway with wolf riders if those were still allowed; if not though GK would have had a huge military edge. And most games would also end up over by around turn 300, it's not a great comparison when the game has no challenge in it anyway.

Also, vale, you are fundamentally wrong about game speeds. Maybe it's because you often play with no barbs/no opponents and don't challenge yourself. But epic speed is quite different from normal which also is different from quick on the military pressure early on, there are more barbs, and more time for units to do damage, there is zero doubt about it. He's right. I see no way you think that beelining Code of Laws + Sanitation and only having warriors is good, unless you play really easy games all the time.

PS: a swith to Aristo on my turn 150 save decreased my Food by about 10 and had only about a 1-2 change to GNP and Mfg. In other words, no, it wasn't better, the commerce to farms was countered by lack of food and maintenance problems.

And I love how you keep on challenging him to play a game without any resources, but then accuse him of saying that a game with a bunch of plains and no resources is unrealistic due to the map generator. Some hypocrisy.

 

[vale]

Think of it this way for the Khazad - let's consider a mid-size city, 6 farms 5 mines under Aristocracy. So you're getting 12 (18 financial) extra raw commerce you wouldn't under another civic (which for these purposes could be city states, GK, theo, whatever, just non-Aristo). But if you did switch out of Aristo, the extra 6 food would allow you to work another 3 mines or 3 specialists or something. That's roughly 12 raw production on the mines right there, it's harder to quanitfy GPP advantages, but could easily just be 9-12 beakers for instance, which is barely less than the Aristo commerce and gets you great people

Is there a happy cap? What about health? These are extremely relevant to the discussion as pop above the happy cap is obviously harmful and pop above the health cap is consuming 3 food each and thus the conversion is off again.

Furthermore, in the early game, there just aren't enough specialist enablers. For instance, for Scientist specialist off the top of my head I can think of Elder Councils, Libraries and potentially Temple of the Veil if you consider that early game. I think that is 3 slots total if you have all three in a city. But a 4th is going to be hard to get. (Please correct me if I'm missing something)

The same is true for priests I think unless you have multiple religions.

If you care about the type of GP you get, then your options are limited. If you don't then that changes things as you can pollute with Merchants easily.

Regarding the population caps. 6 farms gives 4 food 3 commerce or 5 food (and yes I do believe Sanitation is a worthwhile detour off of Bronze Working regardless of economy because of the passive food bonus and Public Baths). The 26 food under Aristocracy from those tiles can support 13 population by itself. Every two grassland mines is another pop that can be supported. Other random bonus tiles that are food neutral is another pop supported. It is likely that the city has something else going for it besides just grasslands and plains hills, the Khazad like hills and all, but they above most civs don't want to just settle a city for the sake of it as it increases their vault thresholds significantly each time. How much will this add to the population that can be supported? Highly variable but almost certainly more than a couple of population. This is not even talking about food bonuses.

The 32 food under not Aristo can support 16 population. The extra tiles will allow the same extra population to be supported.

All of a sudden we are in a situation where the population caps are likely to be relevant. The happy cap doesn't really disappear until math. The health cap is likely to always be at least a potential problem.

What Aristocracy has done in this city is allowed you to turn 6 food into 18 commerce (I'm using Kandros Fir for this) independent of the population caps. Specialists conversion always will depend heavily on possessing higher population caps. If the population cap is oppressive, then that ability alone is huge. Specialist conversion also depends very heavily on infrastructure or later game civics.

Admittedly, even with caps, you can do more base production in this city without Aristocracy (do starve grow cycles under the cap). But given that a large amount of commerce can be leveraged into an empire wide production bonus through 0% slider, it isn't clear how long that advantage will hold up.

 

[Earthling]

If you're at Sanitation/Math in the tech tree a happy/health cap of close to 20 isn't unreasonable. If not then 6 Aristo-farms give only 18 food like I said, and without Aristo 24 food - in either case a cap for 12-15 pop isn't as high. And I was also very generous with 6 farms if it is an early game situation, before irrigation spreads, or simply having 6 flat grassland tiles in the first place - if the city has fewer farms and more "neutral" tiles things just look worst for Aristo, since it's hardly adding any commerce. But again, if you want to come up with a save for the Khazad then please do; because I'm very convinced that the Khazad work fine without Aristocracy and theorycrafting isn't going to help much.

Also, Pagan Temple + Regular Temples also give a significant amount of priests specialists in any city, and you should have an engineer slot or two with smithy etc... as the Khazad; in short I've never had a lack of good specialists slots for them.

 

[vale]

Also, vale, you are fundamentally wrong about game speeds. Maybe it's because you often play with no barbs/no opponents and don't challenge yourself.

No I don't.

But epic speed is quite different from normal which also is different from quick on the military pressure early on, there are more barbs, and more time for units to do damage, there is zero doubt about it. He's right.

He was complaining about Epic speed in a no AI interaction barbarian trait game. It would have changed absolutely nothing for any of us except Decius may have been raped even harder by barbs.

I see no way you think that beelining Code of Laws + Sanitation and only having warriors is good, unless you play really easy games all the time.

The comparison game is not a good example because of the barb trait, but yes spammed warriors fogbusting and later upgraded to bronze weapons are quite sufficient for a long time. Drown them and rush someone and see what happens.

The only early drawbacks are that you will lose more when you rush someone and thus get more WW and you will pay more upkeep for your standing army than one consisting of more powerful smaller units.

The fact is Bronze weapon warriors are the most efficient army on a hammer for hammer basis pretty much until you have Mines of Galdur or Iron Working which both involve fairly heavy investments in research and/or production.

PS: a swith to Aristo on my turn 150 save decreased my Food by about 10 and had only about a 1-2 change to GNP and Mfg. In other words, no, it wasn't better, the commerce to farms was countered by lack of food and maintenance problems.

I know I checked myself. But to be fair, your land outside of a few core cities is almost completely unimproved meaning that in the majority of your cities Aristocracy does nothing but increase maintenance for them. If you spam double workers out of your capital a few times and get some improvements out there that will change. (I count 7 of your cities working unimproved tiles and 4 of your cities that don't possess a farm to begin with).

And I love how you keep on challenging him to play a game without any resources, but then accuse him of saying that a game with a bunch of plains and no resources is unrealistic due to the map generator. Some hypocrisy.

Give me a map with bare grasslands and some scattered lakes with no bonuses and I will be a happy man. That would be the absolute peak of Aristocracy vs. any other economy. There is no way any other economy would be able to keep up at all long term. I'm not asking for rigged settings like nothing but grasslands and lakes. I'm not asking for him to play a game with no resources. I'm asking him to play one without a huge early commerce resource in the capitals BFC. Silk is ok. Dye is fine. Gold and gems are too much. And if he wants to claim that Silk or Dye helps Aristo too much, then no commerce resources please. The worse the initial Capital is for commerce, the better Aristo will come out vs God King.

See what he is saying is that the gold helps Aristocracy more than God King, which is utterly ridiculous. I'm sure you can see the ludicrous nature given that you abused the Gold to maintain your economy in a situation where otherwise it would have been dangerously close to crashed. So I think it is entirely reasonable to call him on that.

I don't play games that have gold or gems in the BFC. I just load a new map because they are dumb.

 

[vale]

If you're at Sanitation/Math in the tech tree

I'm talking at Sanitation before Math.

As I said in my post "the happy cap doesn't really disappear until Math". It is quite reasonable to suppose that construction would be obtainable before then.

And until math, the happy cap is going to be relevant. And as I said the health cap will likely always be relevant. Once specialists start costing 3 food, you aren't as thrilled. At math, depending on your health situation and specialist enabling infrastructure, things may change.

But as long as the population caps are relevant, Aristocracy has merit.

Also, like I said, unless you have multiple religions or altar your priest specialist slots will severely limited at this point. The early religions all only enable 1 priest specialist with their temples (OO does give a scientist). The 2 "good" late religions give 2 priest specialists each with their temples. And as I am really concerned about where your commerce/gold/research is coming from, it is worth pointing out that Engineers and Priests do very little to help in that regards.

Also, what is a realistic early game happy cap pre-sanitation? Say three happy resources, a religion, religion civic and say a temple of your religion in the city? That gives a happy cap of 10 right? Is that a fair assessment of a realistic pre-sanitation cap? The 20 food from the Farms and center tile can support that regardless of what other tiles you work.

At sanitation we get a jump of 3 in our happy cap (to 13) and a gain of 6 food. Again, totally supportable by our farms regardless of other tiles.

At math we get a jump of 10 to our happy cap (to 23) and now we can realistically start considering the idea that happiness is unlimited.

 

[Earthling]

So, you never play games that have any gold or gems on them at all, anywhere? Rather interesting. It's not like they are even significantly more commerce than a resource like dyes, maybe 1-2. And whenever you pop a resource, I assume that's a restart? Also:

YOU'RE FORGETTING, YOU CAN SETTLE ANYWHERE!

I seriously wonder whether you have ever settled anywhere except where your settler starts to go on like this. Why, in many games I might even find myself moving the capital well into the game for various benefits (eg. holy city). It's an incredibly contrived situation to suggest one has to settle in a resourceless, featureless, worthless city, when, in fact, it's incredibly easy and encouraged in the game to find good city sites to settle. If you think that is the problem, then every single comparison game ever you're going to complain about, because people can just move to good sites and settle good cities. Also, once again, in my game I hardly abused the starting gold any more than you or anyone else abused it to get to CoL in the first place - I guarantee you if all the commerce resources were removed you wouldn't have gotten to CoL for a lot longer. I didn't even have GK up until around turn 100, remember, so there was no question the gold had no more benefit to me than to others up through then, and I also spent a lot of time and tech on military since that was before people had agreed upon rules. It's a terrible argument on your side that the gold made a huge difference when it was equal for everyone for a long time in the early game; I'd say the effect it had was simply help everyone tech faster.

Edit: xpost again, well, I do like seeing how your position has utterly crashed. It's gone from "always use Aristocracy, always" to "Aristocracy somtimes has merit;" I've said so much a long time ago.

And once again, you can always get two priest specialists with just a pagan temple and temple of your religion. You seem to severely underestimate how great religions are - a shrine is often a good 15 gold, settled GP are 2 prod 5 gold, which both increase with GK, even more useful if you get an early GP via events. So running at 100% slider due to all these nice bonuses means plenty of commerce just from the usual trade routes, tiles, etc... sources. And in many games extra production really does make the difference between defeating a neighbor and getting all that land as well, which adds to every output of your empire. Or religion helps you make friends and trade with them. Either of these strategies still seems superior to that warrior rush you're suggesting.

 

[Earthling]

It's not worth it to keep on editing posts, so I'll respond to that last bit about happy caps - remember the Khazad (whom we were talking about, if not there's a lot of other stuff to reconsider) also get 2-3 happy from their vaults if they keep them up. And they should always a gold resource (even Earth mana has some help in general too to maybe find another resource), so maybe consider they could have an extra happy resource above average. Then that 14-15 happy cap can be grown to quite nicely if your farms have extra food.

Edit: oh, also, with regards to Khazad again, I'd rather go for Arete before Sanitation in general as an economic tech for all the benefits there. Which is certainly a lot more doable if you're just running Ag and not running Aristo, because again 3 food aristofarms just can't feed very much at all.

 

[vale]

It's not worth it to keep on editing posts, so I'll respond to that last bit about happy caps - remember the Khazad (whom we were talking about, if not there's a lot of other stuff to reconsider) also get 2-3 happy from their vaults if they keep them up. And they should always a gold resource (even Earth mana has some help in general too), so maybe consider they could have an extra happy resource above average. Then that 14-15 happy cap can be grown to quite nicely if your farms have extra food.

They start with gold. And I suppose they have a slightly higher chance of popping gems. And that is why I gave you 3 happy resources instead of two. I also gave you a religion and a temple. I think to ask for more is pretty greedy for the purposes of an early game happy cap.

The vaults don't automatically fill. And again, my contention is that you arrive at the full vaults quicker when going for it via commerce rather than other means.

As I've said many times before (I hate to keep repeating myself here but apparently you are missing this). If the population caps become irrelevant changes can be made. As long as they are relevant, Aristocracy is a very viable option.

And to be entirely fair, at a happy cap of 10 (which I think is fair pre-sanitation) those 6 farms and center tile can support 4 plains mines. If you want to give yourself one more happiness, then I want a couple of grassland mines instead of plains mines. Another one and I want a food bonus. Another one and I want 2 more grassland mines. I can play this game all day. You say 6 farms is generous. I say nothing but plains mines is stingy. I say no food bonus is stingy. I say no other decent food neutral tiles is stingy. Like you said you can settle anywhere and if all this city had going for it was 5 plains hills and 5 irrigated grasslands I might save it for later.

And to address your you can settle anywhere. Absolutely. If you didn't notice I settled to get gold in my fat cross in my comparison games because it is absolutely broken and to not do so would be hurting any long term potential. But yes in private games, I do restart if there is close gold or gems in BTS and in FFH. There is no challenge in raping the AI if you stack the deck in your favor. Gold and gems are for HoF score milkers.

But thats besides the point. For purposes of a comparison game riverside gold in the Capitals fat cross does skew things because it is the absolute best commerce tile in the game. If it's further away and not discovered until some scouting is done that is a different beast. Now God King has to invest a decent amount to move the palace to take advantage of the prime spot. Its not a freebie based on the whims of the RNG.

I don't want a resourceless wasteland. But at least in my personal play, gold and gem starts do not happen. I prefer a more average start. One or 2 food bonuses, several hills, a lake and some nearby grasslands.

 

[vale]

Edit: oh, also, with regards to Khazad again, I'd rather go for Arete before Sanitation in general as an economic tech for all the benefits there. Which is certainly a lot more doable if you're just running Ag and not running Aristo, because again 3 food aristofarms just can't feed very much at all.

Of course in the time that you research Arete, Aristo can easily research Sanitation and Arete. The commerce bonus is quite noticeable (or have you forgotten the research difference in our saves).

 

[Earthling]

I don't know what you're talking about, you haven't posted any Khazad games. I'm still up for any Emperor+ standard random game you want to play, and I do think the Khazad will do better under GK. If you're referring to the Clan game there are a number of factors going on there, and in fact my save did rather well compared to many other Aristo saves, and I don't know why you think that applies to Khazad.

 

[vale]

I don't know what you're talking about, you haven't posted any Khazad games. I'm still up for any Emperor+ standard random game you want to play, and I do think the Khazad will do better under GK. If you're referring to the Clan game there are a number of factors going on there, and in fact my save did rather well compared to many other Aristo saves, and I don't know why you think that applies to Khazad.

Your save did great on production. On research it was completely and utterly outclassed.

No huts no lairs no events no unique features ok?

Its not standard settings but the events are wildly unbalanced and can change a game completely. Same things with lairs and huts. Barbs on, no rules about AI interaction. Do what you like with your neighbors?

 

[Earthling]

Great, huts/lairs/features shouldn't matter too much, that sounds fine. Roll it up, turn 150 or whatever point you want is probably fine, but I'd think it would be nice to have an earlier checkpoint at least. I've patched to 0.41 just to let you know, but I could do a Khazad game since you really must go on about them. I'm not playing that one Doviello game so I guess if other people are doing that this could be on the side.

 

[Senethro]

I'm not playing that one Doviello game so I guess if other people are doing that this could be on the side.

Remember that I put up a version of the Dov game that was a scenario and you could replace the Dov with several other civs using the world builder. I was hoping do do some comparisons between unusual economies like Lanun vs. Sidar from the same start. The civs available for replacement were DeciusBannor, Kandros Fir, Flauros, Hannah, Tasunke, Cassiel, Faeryl and Sandalphon.

 

[vale]

Remember that I put up a version of the Dov game that was a scenario and you could replace the Dov with several other civs using the world builder. I was hoping do do some comparisons between unusual economies like Lanun vs. Sidar from the same start. The civs available for replacement were DeciusBannor, Kandros Fir, Flauros, Hannah, Tasunke, Cassiel, Faeryl and Sandalphon.

We want AIs and barbs though.

Here is a save. I don't have time to play right now since my Netflix just got here. I'll get to it later though.

I think a good checkpoint (with saves) is:

Ancient Chants (to get a measure of how much divergence we had in early play - would be useful to see divergence in early play). If one person has a much better early game that can make it hard to compare actually Aristocracy vs. God King rather than just play skill.

If you found RoK, that would be a nice checkpoint.

Turn 150 and every 50 turns after that.

I would be happy if many people participate. I don't claim to be the greatest player in the world and am interested to see how people handle the early game. This game is about Aristocracy vs. God King for Kandros not Vale vs. Earthling.

No pictures of the start. But it isn't anything particularly special. There may be a reason to move the settler but it is debatable and that will be a major source of early divergence I suspect.

 

[schlalex]

Lol, vale, of course your save is better than mine. I just played it once, researched Education early to go for the GL but then remembered the barbarian trait and skipped writing. I even totally forgot about the warrens, havent played CoE for ages. I built them 10 turns before the finish.
So i did a lot of stupid things, not to mention that Decius nearly simultaneosly placed his cities 2+3, the third below my 2nd, so i could never grab the nice jungle ressources. In your pics i can see that you have them, giving you extra-happiness and great Commerce.
So you compare my wasted game against your best attempt in 40 trys .
Congratulations!
Btw, of course there are plain starts if you play the awesome Erebus Script or flavour starts. I am not someone who regenerates the map a million times.
I change my strategy dependent on the land i start.
I can just repeat Ozzy, Aristocracy is a situational one while GK is the allrounder helping you in any imaginable situation.
And it seems,you do not understand GK at all. It gives a 50% Bonus to GOLD, not to Commerce like in Vanilla.
So even 20 Gold mines wont give me a benefit, if i research at 100%. Can you get this into your empty head? But while i have elder councils with specialists asap, you are stuck with your 5 cities and 1commerce tiles.
So the Gold gave you a much bigger boost to reach your expensive destination.
Capiche?

 

[Earthling]

@Senethro - again, it's nothing against you but what vale said is right - I didn't feel like playing a game without AI/barb competition. As I said it might just become a city-states REX fest, even if not that it's still just not close to realistic to the settings I play.

So it looks like I'll be up to the Khazad save, I do have a little time this afternoon so I'll play to a first checkpoint. Since you asked, I did want to make a couple of clarifications on my early game patterns in general. I also usually play Immortal-Deity with barbs on, and usually huts/lairs/events but they can be just as bad as good so again I'm fine if they're off to remove luck.
-About moving the capital, for me, it's something like this:
Is it Flavourstart?
If FALSE look for better capital

So unfortunately no matter what I'm going to try to get a good capital; I'd even do that if I wasn't running GK, just because it helps more in the early game. But, well, good luck to anyone playing out other strategies, I could always be surprised by something. And one last thing - as we know a game is always not quite optimal on a person's first playthrough, I'll spoiler everything on my first run through, but if in the future people benefit from reading such spoilers/starting over I'm not one to get angry about that here.

Edit: well, working on getting 0.40z back up, I still have it but it's not running the save. Or is the save in 0.40? So if I'm not back till later that's the problem, too bad.

 

[schlalex]

@Earthling: Sorry, i did not read all the posts before my answer. You mentioned all important details, good job. He is wrong about game-speeds/Specialists/Religions/Interaction and so on. So it is hard to find a base for a discussion .