The thing about not beating dead horses is ... what if that's the only thing from stopping them from arising as Undead horses and taking over the world? Can we afford to take that chance? In that spirit I present yet another Nerf Crusade of them pesky elves.
I differ (I think) from Conventional Opinion in that I don't think the imbalance lies in teh endgame condisions, so much, as it lies in the very early game. Ljosalfar elves get to combine movement/exploration bonues with production/growth bonuses that combine for significant development advantages in teh early game. Just as acceleration often counts for more than raw top speed in a race, development speed in the early game pays off handomely in Civ endgames.
To test this, I had to make several assumptions. (Herein lies the problem doing such comparisons. There are so many potential conditions, how to determine "typical" startingconditions.
Assumptions: Aggressive Barbarians played towards thehigh end of the skill slider. In these games Workers don't start improving for while. The player has to fend off the Barbs first, to a reasonable extent. So, I compared two cities starting off just as they got their 5th population point.
Players can gegenerate the starting map to ensure they have at least some terrain they like. So I assumed at least a few of most any sort of desireable tiles are available. This would be especially true for the largest, capitol civ.
There are too many different resources to test, so I assumed the presence of none. This being the early game, the needed techs are often unavilable. And all civilizations can exploit them, more or less equally.
All civs can make roads, farms, and mines.
The Ljosalfar srat off building Cottages in every nearby forest tile (four Grassland/Forest tiles) then they build a frmin a Flood Plain, a mine in a (riverless) hill, and finally a Cottage in a riverless Grasslands.
The Control civ builds Cottages in 2 Flood Plains, then Mines in two hills (w/rivers), then a Farm/Cottage in Plains(w/river), and lastly begins a Cottage in a Grassland without river. The COntrol player also makes use of nearby Grassland/Forest, often exploiting these Forest tiles while improvements finish in, e.g., Hills. In contrast, once the Elf player starts exploiting a tile, no micromanagement occurs.
The Elves do not build roads in Woods, as roads have no effect at all for Elves in Woods at this stage of the game. Control builds roads after finishing each tile's improvements. So do Elves in non-Woods tiles.
Elves do not worship Fellowship. No new forests emerge. No Forests mature to Ancient.
Cities have finished building their workers on turn 1. So they start "working" turn 2.
Turn ...... Elf / Control City Size ......... Cumulative Elf / Control Production
01 ................ 5/5 ...................... 0
0
0
/ 0
0
0
21 ................ 6/5 ...................... 273 - 119 - 77 / 252 - 84 - 119
41 ................ 6/6 ...................... 541 - 259 - 281 / 532 - 202 - 296
61 ................ 7/7 ...................... 853 - 435 - 581 / 831 - 399 - 539
81 ................ 8/7 .................... 1,201 - 615 - 996 / 1,131 - 580 - 847
Of course, there's all sorts of other ways to sequence the builds. Are the Elves smarted building a farm on their Flood Plain first? Should Control forget about the 2nd Mine? I dunno.
And Control could pass on road-building to speed up economic developments some. But that would leave Control the need to go back later to build the roads. And unlike Ljosaflar, movement would be severely hampered should a crisis emerge. So it's sort of a matter of choose your poison.
There are a lot of little things that add up for the Elves. Their worker can enter a forest (1MP) and start building that very turn. Control has to wait a turn to start building. Elf does not need or want the road, so that saves three turns. Cottage #2 is begun the turn after Cottage #1 is finished. Control takes 8 turns to build his cottages in Flood Plains, so Elf is done with his 3rd Cottage (18 turns) about the same moment Control has finihshed 2 Cottages and a road (20 turns in flood plain). Plus, Elf is now extracting all three basic goods from most of his tiles. Control must micromanage to ensure neither
nor
production lags too far behind the others.
In this example, then non-Fellowship Elves built 6 Cottages 1 Farm and one Mine. Control built 3 Cottages, 2 Farms, and 2 Mines. Elf out-produced Control by about
Food 6%
Hammers 6%
Commerce 18%
This is for one worker with one city. Giving a 2nd Worker to each civ would tend to favor Elf, given Elf's demonstrated higher efficiency.
Again, in a game featuring exponential growth rates, getting a fast start turns a small early advantage to a large end-game advatage. There is reason for concern. Elf's
&
could be said to be essentially the same as Control's. But the
advantage is significant. The problem is, Elf can achieve this
advantage without having had to sacrifice
or
. (And again, they do this
without Fellowship of the Leaves effects.) The player has to make fewer choices, fewer tradeoffs. IMO this is a sign for balance concern.
Fortunatley for players who like the Elf end-game as it is now, the only required change might be to slow down development. If Elves can build Cottages/Farms/etc in Forsts, there is nothing saying they can do this quickly. Makes such structures take twice as long to build, and much of the early development surge can be attenuated.
The design team might also want to consider removing the Elf movement advantage in forests. That would also bring their development speed more in line with other civs, or at least give the Elf player more tradeoffs to consider, while retaining their combat advatage in Forests.
Questions or comments?
)
.
Tree hugger and proud of it 
Once the AI starts casting ranges spells, using Spring to rid itself of Deserts, and the like, I'm sure we'll come up with a whole new crop of 'balance' complaints. 
