How good is Aristocracy really?

[Sephi]

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.

I played the Dov game 150 turns both with Aristo and God King and didn't noticed much of a difference. Aristo was a little bit ahead in terms of commerce (120 compared to 100 /turn) and I had about the same Military.

 

[vale]

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.

10 turn before I even had Masonry

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!

I tried Aristocracy twice then moved on to other methods. Did you notice I researched writing, an utter waste? Did you notice I researched trade also an utter waste? Did you notice that I just finished masonry so I haven't even started building Warrens yet let alone owning them for 10 turns? I replayed my first Aristocracy save once because I made the mistake of going Agriculture before mining as did you. So your 40 is as usual complete and utter bs. My other attempts were all attempts at making God King work better than Aristocracy and they were all failures (not production wise but research wise certainly). At least Earthling attempts to make real arguments even if he doesn't seem to understand mine. All you do is spout garbage.

Please try it again. I've given you advice about how to make Decius not expand so quickly. I've also given you a better research order.

Your ad hominem attacks only prove how clueless you actually are about the situation. Since you can't actually argue the facts, you can only resort to name calling. Because the second it comes down to facts, it is instantly obvious that you as usual are full of it. (see below or 2 paragraphs above)

Did you or Earthling ever come close to researching at 100% for any decent period of time. No, not even close. So don't try to pull that junk with me. The gold was boosted significantly by God King for both of you. Him more than you because he was much closer to a 0% slider throughout, but both of you enjoyed a significant boost from the gold specifically because of God King. At minimum I would suspect that the Gold alone was worth a 2 commerce per turn boost as a result of God King for both of you for the entire time. It was very clearly better for you than for Aristocracy.

Stick to the facts please. This is the last time I respond to a post where you insult me. Please play it again. Play it many times. Show me that God King can arrive at a comparable position within the constraints. Or do I need to play a 3rd Aristocracy save but rush Decius this time?

I don't have time for this right now, but your ad hominem attacks are getting very very old very quickly.

Also, feel free to explain how Epic is significantly different from Normal when you are a Barbarian trait leader and not allowed to attack the AI. I'm still waiting. Earthling never responded to that and your idiotic belief that tech rate and expansion rate don't scale exactly the same under those circumstances makes it hard to give any credence to a single thing you say. You clearly do not understand this game.

 

[Earthling]

At least Earthling attempts to make real arguments even if he doesn't seem to understand mine. All you do is spout garbage.

Please try it again. I've given you advice about how to make Decius not expand so quickly. I've also given you a better research order.

Did you or Earthling ever come close to researching at 100% for any decent period of time. No, not even close. So don't try to pull that junk with me. The gold was boosted significantly by God King for both of you. Him more than you because he was much closer to a 0% slider throughout, but both of you enjoyed a significant boost from the gold specifically because of God King. At minimum I would suspect that the Gold alone was worth a 2 commerce per turn boost as a result of God King for both of you for the entire time. It was very clearly better for you than for Aristocracy.

Also, feel free to explain how Epic is significantly different from Normal when you are a Barbarian trait leader and not allowed to attack the AI. I'm still waiting. Earthling never responded to that and your idiotic belief that tech rate and expansion rate don't scale exactly the same under those circumstances makes it hard to give any credence to a single thing you say. You clearly do not understand this game.

First, I'll handle the last part, I'm not trying to attack your character I guess and I'm sorry whatever schlalex was saying is angering you.

I didn't know you were specifically referring to the barbarian-trait game in general, reading the other person's post really did seem more about epic speed in general. If there's no barbarians/wars then of course there isn't much difference between epic and normal. But in general I think it IS true that on epic speed it's a whole lot more trouble to try to defend with just warriors because there are greater threats.

Second, I feel the first paragraph there is rather unfair. As I said, for the first 100 turns of the game the gold was exactly the same being GK and Aristocracy, since neither of us had our civic of choice there. I was generally on quite a nice slider to at every point before the war as in a normal game. I'm not intending to replay that game as I said before, but you can also see around turn 100 that in my save I had spent a ton of time building that military, which probably slowed down the economy some. At any rate, definitely through the first 100 turns, the gold also certainly helped you and everyone else get to CoL in the first place; without it your tech too would have been slower.

Also, I'd be grateful if you could edit in which version of FfH that Khazad save is in, if it's not 0.41 I'm still having a little trouble, sorry.

 

[vale]

I'm 95% sure it is .40z. But I guess I could have downloaded that patch and forgotten to install it?

 

[Earthling]

Right, the problem's on my side getting 0.40z running again then. Thanks though. I probably won't be playing this till tomorrow then.

 

[EverNoob]

I don't really see the problem with organized. It's true that code of laws becomes a bit better with half-price courthouses, but courthouses are a very low priority building in the early game and even late game they are nerfed quite strongly compared to BTS.

It's more in the context of God-King, since organized halves the high civic upkeep and courthouse has a stronger effect as well.

I assume you want an unrestricted leaders Keelyn? Because the Balseraphs are great with a farm economy due to multiple early ways to raise their happy cap.

Yes, Keelyn with the Bannor. Unless someone can think of something better?

 

[Earthling]

If you could set up a Keelyn with the Bannor that could be fun too. But I'm mainly posting that it seems like I won't be able to play any 0.40z games now that I'm on 0.41, so that's out there.

 

[Turinturambar]

If you could set up a Keelyn with the Bannor that could be fun too. But I'm mainly posting that it seems like I won't be able to play any 0.40z games now that I'm on 0.41, so that's out there.

Just rename the FFH2.old directory back to FFH2 (You'll need to rename the new directory to something like FFH2 41). Then you can load 0.40z saves again.

 

[Earthling]

Ah, so it did, thanks. I guess that means later today I can try out these games.

 

[EverNoob]

But before we start, what exactly are we trying to determine with this new comparison game? With the last game I was trying to show that aristocracy wasn't always the best alternative in every situation, and that's exactly why I chose Jonas. I was purposely trying to present a situation sub-optimal for aristocracy.

Something vague like "compare aristocracy vs other civics" is too general a question. We should aim for somethin more specific like: "In situation X and leader Y, civic Z works better".

Since there was a debate about it, I suggest we do a "God-King/City-State vs Aristocracy" comparison game with the Khazad. I suspect Arturus will favour God-King and Kandros will favour Aristo. But since we're essentially trying to dispprove the "aristo is better" assumption, we should pick Arturus.

What do you think?

 

[Earthling]

Alright, if there's still interest in the one Khazad game I think this one may be a much, much better comparison. I'll put info in spoilers but I played to 150, one time through, it's been fun and interesting even though I don't like that map script. And at the least it should be VERY generous to Aristocracy, or I think so until someone corrects me with an excuse why it isn't so.

Spoiler :

I settled very nearly in place, since there wasn't any other area that spoke out for a great capital, so we shouldn't have any divergence problems there. The land is kinda subpar for a FfH game (fine for vanilla civ I guess) - all the calendar resources are trapped in jungle, food sources are random cows, seafood which require detours to get to those techs. I teched mining and then towards mysticism, and actually settled a pretty early second city by the gems/cows/banana. Balseraphs were cutting me off to the south and claimed almost all the dyes. A lot of warriors built up nice xp against barbs but I haven't gone to war or anything, obviously that could cause a lot of divergence if so, but unless Keelyn has some juicy cities probably isn't so great of an investment unlike the Clan game.

So, as time goes on, getting to turn 75 or around my first save, Orthus spawned to the south and came after my second city; he killed a worker but then I killed him, axe was useful, not a terrible trade off. I settled a third city up by the wines/fish; after mysticism filled in a couple techs like agriculture (have to check if I did ag right after ancient chants or right after myst) and exploration. I went for Bronze Working next to clear all the jungles. Then filled up my vaults some more and went for Earthmother, founding Kilmorph in the second city. Calendar and some random techs like cartography came next as I settled a fourth city to the NE rice and spread the religion; then education and writing partway done at the 150 cutoff. If I was to keep on playing past 150 I'd get the Great Library, Great Lighthouse just cause I can, and get to Trade. All AI's I've met should end up pleased/friendly via Kilmorph (just regular trade for Cassiel) and it would be a easy religious win after that.

If I had recommendations for optimizing the game it would be to avoid the jungle - my second city really wasn't worth much for a long time, it probably would have been much better to settle the wine city first. The resources make calendar seem alluring but you can't get any of them without Bronze Working too - it might be worth delaying BW until after either Aristocracy, if you go that path, or after Kilmorph. Cassiel seems to have claimed the only copper in sight, to the far east, though of course Iron would be easy to get with Kilmorph.

Saves: Especially since no one else has tried it out yet I'd hope the saves just speak for themselves, rather than a whole mess of stats again.
View attachment KhazadGK100.CivBeyondSwordSave
View attachment EarthlingKhazad150.CivBeyondSwordSave

Extra notes about last save

Spoiler :

If you look in the last save I did cast the worldspell, had plenty of mines and figured the gold couldn't hurt, getting to the point of diminishing returns. But at any rate I'm about 5 turns away from Tablets again, and I'm almost up to overflowing vaults, both of those would be ~turn 155.

 

[EverNoob]

I'm 95% sure it is .40z. But I guess I could have downloaded that patch and forgotten to install it?

I think a .41 game woud be better. it contains the AI python research fix. Theoretically that should makes the game much more realistic with competitive AI's. Do you want to redo it in 0.41?

We could start a separate thread and have more ppl participate too.

 

[Jet]

the map script pretty much forces a decent amount of grasslands near your start every time.

There's more than one map script.

 

[retro V]

We could start a separate thread and have more ppl participate too.

I'm down with that.

 

[Nefelia]

Do you have a source of commerce? What is it. If you answer cottages, then you clearly do not understand the bonus of Aristocracy. By working more farms throughout the empire, an Aristocracy has significantly more food despite the food malus.

See here is what you apparently are missing:

For using mines:
Farms>Aristocracy Farms>Cottages

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?

What your posts seem to indicate is that commerce is unnecessary at all. You haven't ever addressed where you are getting commerce from. You will not always have multiple gold mines to work and the gold mines are what I consider to be the primary problem with the comparison game.

This is where you lost me.

My empire thrives due to city specialization. In my production cities I want lush farms to support my mines, lumber mills, and engineers. In my commerce cities, I want the best commerce improvements possible, and that means towns. The Aristocracy/Agrarianism combination is great for bringing the core cities of my empire up to population 15+ while still allowing for a good economy. But once that core is established, Aristocracy becomes a burden to me: production cities can no longer afford the -1 food from Aristocracy, and the +2 commerce pales in comparison to villages and towns.

 

[vale]

City specialization just doesn't work the same way in BTS as it does in FFH.

There aren't nearly the same number of commerce multipliers.

Most of the commerce multipliers that do exist are less effective and more expensive.

There aren't nearly the same number of hammer multipliers and many of them come across the empire.

Not to mention that cottage based commerce will lag significantly behind farm based commerce on a tile for tile basis for a very long time.

Basically what we saw in the first comparison game from the God Kingers was an all out version of your described "cottage" economy with every city specialized as a production city. There is no doubt that they outproduced Aristocracy. And yet there is equally no doubt that they lagged very significantly behind in technology to Aristocracy. If you were to take individual cities in their saves and specialize them for commerce, you would definitely find that any production gap narrows significantly more than the research rate gap. This is especially true because of the lag inherent to cottages (they take at least 30 turns to catch up in total commerce to a farm ignoring the food bonus). Basically, the more those empires are specialized for commerce, the more favorable the comparison Aristocracy is going to look. It won't take many "commerce" specialized cities before Aristocracy has a higher:
MFG rate
Crop Yield
and
GNP
At which point there is no comparison to make. At least by specializing all production there can be some debate.

I know you are going to complain about the lack of Libraries for barbarian civs, but that simply wouldn't make that much of a difference either. Add Libraries to your "commerce" cities and let Aristocracy have the same number of Libraries in its "commerce" cities and there will still be a huge disparity.

I can't open up FFH or Civ right now so can't give all the details I want, but suffice it to say I don't really believe strongly in city specialization in FFH (I think it is slowly getting better with the building costs over time but it isn't there yet).

 

[EverNoob]

This is where you lost me.

My empire thrives due to city specialization. In my production cities I want lush farms to support my mines, lumber mills, and engineers. In my commerce cities, I want the best commerce improvements possible, and that means towns. The Aristocracy/Agrarianism combination is great for bringing the core cities of my empire up to population 15+ while still allowing for a good economy. But once that core is established, Aristocracy becomes a burden to me: production cities can no longer afford the -1 food from Aristocracy, and the +2 commerce pales in comparison to villages and towns.

I would actually advocate the reverse. Early game is the time to invest in cottages, concentrate on population growth and get your economic buildings in. Aristocracy actually slows down growth and production. I agree with Aristophiles p) that somewhere in the mid-late game Aristocracy is better, because at that point in the game the immediate commerce from farms is more valuable than a long-term investment in cottages.

What remains to be seen is whether an early game Aristocracy is better, and if so for which civ and leader.

As for city specialization, in FFH specialization exists but to a lesser degree and you usually need special strategies to make full use of it, such as using 0/100% science economies where the commerce multipliers will have their full effect.

 

[Earthling]

First, specialization in FfH is way different from BtS, and I'd say it depends HEAVILY on what civ you're playing, so there's no way to make broad generalizations. Except specializing for military, that is, which is plenty alive and well. That said Aristocracy is a little less conducive to specialization because it builds fewer buildings, which is why its at its best when you have significant farmable land in all directions and no specific need to specialize. And if you're interested again what civs/leaders I think Aristocracy does naturally fit, both the Malakim and Calabim as mentioned before in this thread are a couple of the better fits.

As for the rest, I've said enough about that one game being quite poor for comparison and I don't see much I can add. But I would like to mention, at least if you're referring to my game(s), that NO cities were "specialized as production cities." Other than the inherent bonus at the capital, the difference in production was not due to specialization but simply the different techpath and city development. It may be true that cities in Aristocracy games were more specialized for commerce, but nothing in the (non-war) GK game was specialized for production. Another thing to note is that the Aristocracy path generates no GP for a very long time; it is true that there was some specialization in other economies with regards to that.

 

[vale]

NO cities were "specialized as production cities."

What is a city specialized for if every improved non-bonus tile is a mine or a farm? The fact that a city with such a tile configuration is working a specialist at the moment does not change that it has been improved for maximum production power.

What is a city specialized for if it contains a Warrens? The Warrens is the absolute best production boosting building that exists in any Civ mod (or base game) that I know of.

These are two examples of absolute specialization that was going on for your cities in both of your saves if I recall correctly.

I can't open your saves right now, but offhand I don't remember seeing any improvement other than a farm or mine in your empire on a non-bonus tile. This is very clearly a "max production" configuration throughout.

 

[Earthling]

I'll answer those points one at a time to give you my perspective on things.

1. It's called playing Fall from Heaven instead of vanilla civ4 - there simply aren't any other improvements you use that often, even lumbermills/windmills/watermills are rare and come late game. Unless you're suggesting that the Aristocracy games built a significant amount of cottages (I didn't see any?) or these other improvements then there's no reason to say my farms are more "specialized" than your farms.

2. Really odd point; I think it's rather clear running specialists = not maximizing production. The whole concept of a GP-farm and all. So I see no way running specialists in general (except very late game engineer cases) means maximum production - which is better achieved by workshopping tiles for more hammers, etc... From the game it should be quite obvious that not running specialists would have increased production more, but as I said, I wasn't going for that, just a typical economy.

3. Having warrens is called playing as the Clan of Embers. And at any rate I only ever got the building in my capital, which benefited from GK bonuses. And I even went out of the way to detail how warrens affected the statistics in each game, so I don't see why there's a big problem there? Getting warrens early isn't exactly a crazy strategy, it's standard play as the civ - beelining Aristocracy and ignoring military tech not so much.