What Economy?

[sylvanllewelyn]

This is not modern world like our own, this is medieval/renaissance world, so farms would be the norm and you'll need a reason to build a town that runs on commerce and trade. I still choose CE's though, for the raw gold that supports my cities and units in the beginning, which escalates. What about financial leaders?

My real mathematical question is whether I could run a CE or SE with Kuriotates. With Sanitation, sacrifice the weak and the unyielding order spell, I really don't care if my cities are extremely unhealthy and there's obviously "no" unhapiness. On the other hand, I could run the FoL religion, capture a few elven workers and spam cottages in my ancient forest megacity (grow forests with druids), and then run my specialists from the extra food. Food from ancient forests remain after blight also.

Don't want to crunch the numbers, would someone please do it for me?

 

[Von Wibble]

I thought at the moment captured elven workers still chopped forests (and workers captured by Ljos/Svart didn't) - my impression was that this was intentional...

I seem to play a CE very early on (since its a while before you get the civics allowing a lot of specialists). Once I have theology or caste system I switch if I can see a valid reason (which since I am a builder and often play for alter/cultural win answer tends to be yes). I tend to use a lot of workers - this also allows a relatively quick recovery after blight as it should take a couple of turns to get health resources back and then a few more to get farms and happy resources.

 

[Grey Fox]

This is not modern world like our own, this is medieval/renaissance world, so farms would be the norm and you'll need a reason to build a town that runs on commerce and trade. I still choose CE's though, for the raw gold that supports my cities and units in the beginning, which escalates. What about financial leaders?

Financial leaders has a good synergy with farms too. Through the Aristocracy civic.

 

[Papillon]

I thought at the moment captured elven workers still chopped forests (and workers captured by Ljos/Svart didn't) - my impression was that this was intentional...

I don't know if it's intentional or what, but it's still the case. I have tested in my last 0.30 game.

 

[onedreamer]

for me good fix to reéquilibrate this would be a civic that would give either of :
-+1 to towns
-+1 to village and towns
-+50% growht for all cottages-type.

Why not learning to play Civ instead. Agriculture with the Elves is plainly stupid. You will loose the hammers from forests.

 

[Calavente]

and where did I spoke about the elves ??
my idea is to enhance the cottage eco. while in vanilla it was CE>SE, in FfH it is SE>>CE, most of the times. IMO, 1 of my proposals would re-equilibrate into SE#CE or SE>CE...

why do you ask me to learn to play civ ???

(but you are right, elves + agri doesn't give any bonus hammers from farms... save on plain-forest-farm where you get 1 )

 

[Roghar]

The nice thing about a cottage economy is that you don't need to do anything else to make it good.

An effective specialist economy really needs you to:
- take agriculture, so you are losing out on other useful civics. I'm a big fan of running Conquest while building armies, especially if I have my cities running at max pop for happiness. The extra production and xp is huge.
- Build certain wonders to make the most out of it. This ties up resources and if you don't get them a base 3 science or 2 production isn't that much, especially in smaller cities that aren't likely to actually give you great People. In a MP game if everyone tries to SE a lot of people will miss out.
- micromanage your cities. Build cottages and forget about them, if you want to run a specialist economy you have to keep a very close eye on things.

 

[oyzar]

There is a tech(taxation) that work like printing press in the original game however due to the way the tech three works in ffh it might often not be convenient to get it.

 

[Tobbe_1]

I think CE and SE are quitebalanced in FfH2. Sure, you get tons of out of your Farms with agriculture and an early sanitation.

But then:There is no pyramids! There is no representation! Furthermore, pacifism is considerably weaker then in normal BtS.

To get some boni to your specialists you have to put much more effort into it. Library only allows 1 sage e.g. This is solved by guilds, but then you cant use caste system at the same time. And the second booster is scholarschip, but it has some negative effects and requires late-midgame tech. Ok, the GL really helps, but i think the GL i absolutely overpowered right now.

And there are less science booster buildings, so it is more difficult to create a SSC then it is in normal BtS.

And a CE can also gain by using agriculture. You just grow faster and you can cottage more plains...the cottaged plains give you the extra hammers. The only thing id love to see is a civic that enhances the cottage growth. Put it to a mid-lategeme tech...

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Like regular Civ4, SE's don't last forever, but they don't need to. I've thought about the seemingly contrasting notions of Sacrifice the Weak and spreading Ashen Veil, and at the same time the notion that once you spread AV around enough, armageddon counter will reach 40 and farms can only be built next to a direct water source.

I might try this theory in the near future: limit AV spread to a few cities, lightbulb my way to Strength of Will, switch to scholarship, and run mad scientists. In 3 cities: archmages for unyielding order. With Sacrifice the Weak, sanitation and agriculture, no amount of unhealthiness is even going to matter. I'm going to run a LOT of scientists and lightbulb the whole friggin tech tree. The best part is despite the 1 hammer a turn that I'll get in those cities, well it won't even matter, because I can either sacrifice population for food-storing buildings and then forget about building anything else. And if I really need production, my farms can support as many workshops as I want.

 

[oyzar]

Once you have archmages just promote them to fire3 and kill the world? O_o

About the comment of agriculture with elves, yes you lose the 1 hammer but 1 food > 1 hammer most of the time and you can farm over non-forests as well so agriculture is still decent as elves although not as good as with other civs...

 

[Grey Fox]

Like regular Civ4, SE's don't last forever, but they don't need to. I've thought about the seemingly contrasting notions of Sacrifice the Weak and spreading Ashen Veil, and at the same time the notion that once you spread AV around enough, armageddon counter will reach 40 and farms can only be built next to a direct water source.

I might try this theory in the near future: limit AV spread to a few cities, lightbulb my way to Strength of Will, switch to scholarship, and run mad scientists. In 3 cities: archmages for unyielding order. With Sacrifice the Weak, sanitation and agriculture, no amount of unhealthiness is even going to matter. I'm going to run a LOT of scientists and lightbulb the whole friggin tech tree. The best part is despite the 1 hammer a turn that I'll get in those cities, well it won't even matter, because I can either sacrifice population for food-storing buildings and then forget about building anything else. And if I really need production, my farms can support as many workshops as I want.

With Sacrifice the weak you don't need farms to run a SE. You could also use more cities with cottages/[production stuff] and just a few temporary farms for growth.

But as you are going to do is very powerful, I had a city with almost only floodplains as the Calabim. Built the Tower of complacency practically with the hammers from unhappy population (from governors manor) and slaves (legit slaves not from the slave trade, was in 0.25).

Then ran Merchants like crazy and settled every Great merchant to make the city even larger.

And if you are gonna do great sage's, you are probably better of settling them once you get Archmages (get the Strength of Will tech with tower of divination instead of sages). And build the Crown of Akharien in the city you settle the sages.

EDIT: Oh and for very powerful specialist game, use the Sidar.

 

[Ekolite]

Like regular Civ4, SE's don't last forever, but they don't need to. I've thought about the seemingly contrasting notions of Sacrifice the Weak and spreading Ashen Veil, and at the same time the notion that once you spread AV around enough, armageddon counter will reach 40 and farms can only be built next to a direct water source.

I might try this theory in the near future: limit AV spread to a few cities, lightbulb my way to Strength of Will, switch to scholarship, and run mad scientists. In 3 cities: archmages for unyielding order. With Sacrifice the Weak, sanitation and agriculture, no amount of unhealthiness is even going to matter. I'm going to run a LOT of scientists and lightbulb the whole friggin tech tree. The best part is despite the 1 hammer a turn that I'll get in those cities, well it won't even matter, because I can either sacrifice population for food-storing buildings and then forget about building anything else. And if I really need production, my farms can support as many workshops as I want.

For this strategy I would probably use the Kurios over the sidar actually. They would have a great synergy with the three archmages/cities thing although you'd need to use a map that allows you more then 3 cities so you have at least one for produbction. You'd be able to get a much higher pop with them i would have thought. The sidar are great for a specialist game of course but you needto sacrifiice all those lvl 6's, besides there are bbuildings like the great library that help for SEs.

 

[galahadba]

I think it would be great if some more bonuses for CE were thrown into the mix. It would give the player another strategic decision to make, which is always a good thing.

Well it may be out of topic, but i think that this way of thinking is wrong, if SE is overpowered they way to correct is to take of bonuses of it not to add more bonuses to CE, if something is overpowered in the game usually they overpower some other thing to balance, and almost everything is getting overpowered in the game, i like FFH very much becouse of its flavour, but sometimes when i move my ultra level unstopable heroes throw the map i fell as i am playing some of that ultra overpowered D&D campaing where everyone is so hight level that the master throw bands of tarrasqs instead of goblins for the usual fights...

 

[Grey Fox]

besides there are bbuildings like the great library that help for SEs.

Are you forgetting that great library boosts sidar's sages too?

Nah, but true, Kuriotates is a good candidate too.

 

[oyzar]

Or just run grigori and the game is over when you reach strength of will...

 

[nealhunt]

The conventional wisdom for vanilla civ is that SE is a faster start, CE is better long term, and some sort of hybrid that starts out mostly SE and transitions to mostly CE ends up being best. SEs can and do operate just fine without all the specialty wonders and civics. If you go look at the old GOTM, the guy that completely blew the scoring out the top (by multiples of the next closest scores) advocated strongly using early scientists to produce a super-research capital, and driving the score up with population (i.e. SE).

In FFH, food production comes much earlier and in much greater volume, which further favors SEs more in the early game. Cottages don't mature to the same levels, which is prejudiced against CE later on. Competing against a weaker late-game CE, you have Nature III Archmages and Druids and Genesis, that can blow food production out the roof. Blight is simply a brief pause if you are prepared.

No doubt this won't convince many people, but I went from using a traditional vanilla hybrid/transition plan to an SE/production plan and went up 2 difficulty levels. That's all the proof I need for my games.

IMHO, the only CE that makes sense in FFH are elves with ancient forest cities, because they can get a full CE and the extra food production for a SE boost.

 

[Grey Fox]

I use cottages early on, cause there is a limit on how many specialists you can use. Especially as a financial civ, a cottage on a river tile is an instant +2 commerce income from that tile.

I then often replace many of the towns with farms as I get more buildings and/or civics in the cities where I will use many specialists.

And there are more civs than the elves that work well with cottages.
- Bannor
- Infernals
- Grigori
- Lanun
To mention some

 

[gibbon_malus]

What if... Serfdom where changed from -10% and +20% to +1 per town improvement?

Currently I don't use serfdom much, since it carries a heavy malus and the other labor civics are generally more useful.

I think it would be nicely balanced since two of the core S.E. civics (Caste System / Guilds) are also in the labor category, so you cant get both bonuses at once. It also comes around in the mid-game... when the S.E. boosting civics, techs (Sanitation, Mathematics, Drama) and wonders begin to entrench S.E. superiority.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I never thought of the Bannor world spell factor. In that case, yes, I'll spam towns in every conceivable corner of my empire, within reason. It's Ljosalfar worldspell but you can actually use it to overrun the world, or at least unite your continent. It's slower than Grigori archmages of doom, which is surprisingly fast ever since their worldspell was introduced, but large numbers of demagogs call for a more sustained assult. Obviously, don't do it on an archipelago map.

Kuriotates.... I always found them to be a real challange to play. The issue, however, is they are really fast early in technological development, but taper off towards the end, just like any other OCC. Running mad specialists only amplifies this phenomenon. If you insist, however, I would suggest shooting for the Altar victory, making sure you have Runes in one of your city hubs when you are done playing around with AV (order and AV cant be in the same city). Run theocracy for the prophets in the end.

As for elves, use it with caution. They are builderish already, and need the hammers to build units to expand. It works too, but don't run agriculture. You need the hammers.