FfH Paring Questions

[Sareln]

Economies:

Aristoagrarianism (Farms)

Cottages

Trade Routes


Windmills/Watermills/Workshops don't seem to get much use in FfH. Would it be worthwhile to pull them in? If so, how would you add them to these economies? Or would you make them their own "mech/industrial" economy?

[Sciz]

I use workshops when I get guilds, because then they are 5 hammer on plains and 1 food 4 hammers on grassland, which is pretty great. That's far into the game though

[haphazard1]

Workshops tend to be a far into the game option in base BtS, anyway. I am not sure if making them available with too many hammers earlier would upset too many other balances.

Windmills to me are very situational, and really only get used if a city is just desperately short on food. If food can be found elsewhere -- and with springing and chain irrigation it usually can be -- then mines tend to be better.

Watermills...very rarely use them. But that may just be me; I do not really even consider them most of the time, even when I should.

[Irgy]

Watermills and windmills always seemed superfluous to me, I don't care that much that they're now basically completely unsupported. Workshops are weaksauce without all the bonuses from techs and civics that could actually make them worthwhile, with one exception. The Infernals, who don't care about food at all, have nothing better to run. So be aware that by boosting workshops you are giving the infernals a helping hand that they possibly don't really need. It's hard to catch up with them, but once you do their cities are already extremely awesome, giving them huge production from every tile in the game would make it even more of a snowball, which I'd say isn't good.

Thanks to Serdoa for the screenshot! I've completed my civic review now:

Government
3 Despotism - Not meant to be good, but can still help with war weariness in a pinch.
8 God King - Great early on. A well balanced version of beaurocracy by not having the raw commerce bonus.
10 Aristocracy - Once you know how good it is it's overpowered.
7 City States - Really quite good, just overshadowed by Aristocracy.
6 Theocracy - Decent but also overshadowed. Has its niche uses. If priests were actually a serious limitation in an Altar victory (rather than teching righteousness and omniscience) the unlimited priests would help.

Cultural Values
6 Religion - The less useful of the starting civics.
7 Pacifism - Useful for an early Academy, but wouldn't want to be stuck in it.
7 Nationhood - The +10% production is worthless early on (rounded to 0 below 10 hammers) and not that crash hot after, but it's still a decent early choice.
9 Sacrifice the Weak - Really very good, worth running AV for. The only thing that limits it is that it's possible to have more food than you can handle, I've had cities end up with a stockpile of 600 food that I just can't get through. Gets even better on Epic/Marathon where the 1 pop per turn limit doesn't exist.
3 Social Order - Used to be a good civic, but only because it was available early. Where it is it isn't worth much. Plus the religion you need has high priests that remove unhappiness completely, overdoing the same thing.
8 Consumption - A really good option for civs with maintenance problems and therefore a low research slider - or civs running cash for mercenaries and so on.
7 Scholarship - Better than consumption when running a lot of specialists and/or a high research slider.
6 Liberty - A required civic for a culture-victory run. Culture victories aren't so popular in multiplayer though.
8 Crusade - Ok, I'm not that familiar with it, but it certainly looks like it would work well for the Bannor.

Labor
1 Tribalism - Not meant to be good though.
8 Apprenticeship - Comes early. The 10% penalty really bites with rounding, but combined with nationalism this is always worth switching to at least in conjunction with another civic change.
9 Slavery - As awesome as ever, if a little harder to get to and limited to evil. This is a tool that it really hurts to have to do without. Good needs an equivalent of this.
8 Arete - A worthwhile civic to boost production for good civs. Great for dwarves with all their hills.
7 Military State - A decent military buildup civic.
6 Caste System - Also good for a culture victory, like having the sistine chapel. Again only rated lower because culture is weak in multiplayer.
3 Guilds - Can't really imagine many situations where you would actually use this.

Economy
1 Decentralisaiton - Not meant to be good.
10 Agrarianism - Overpowered even without aristocracy.
6 Conquest - Ok if you're really desperate for military production and either can't run slavery or have an excess of food and shortage of happiness to whip it away.
4 Mercantilism - Can't really imagine why you'd run this. Maybe if you were at war with everyone and running a pure gold economy for whatever reason?
8 Foreign Trade - If for some reason you're not running Agrarianism (and not elves) then you would probably run this.
8 Guardian of Nature - Good for elves.

Membership
Both the councils are good, and no reason not to join (except obviously the tech requirement). Undercouncil seems to be better, not sure whether the eveil civs need yet more of a boost, but I'd still fix it by coming up with more good-only stuff (and probably leave the overcouncil as is).

[Irgy]

As for Aristocracy and Agrigarianism; I'd fix it mostly by just getting rid of Agrigarianism completely. Or at least getting rid of +1 food from farms. No idea what to replace it with, but +1 food from farms with no penalty for grassland is just never going to be fair. It's already unbalanced without Aristocracy. All that food grows cities quick, and makes whipping limited only by 1 pop growth per turn and of course unhappiness. Remember what a boost Biology is in BTS, this gives that boost super-early.

If you then put Sanitation somewhere at the back of the tech tree (i.e. more expensive and more pre-requisites), all of a sudden the -1 food from Aristocracy will start to matter. -1 food from 3 in grassland is actually pretty bad, a cottage would be better. However -1 food from 5 doesn't really matter so much. Maybe swap Sanitation with the tech that has hospitals and that worthless dwarven runes hero.

Take the +2 food from other sources away from farms and aristocracy is probably ok as it is again. Late game, sanitation will make it a reasonable option for the economy again, but if you have to get to the late game for it to be useful then cottages will once again be a comparable alternative. What's awesome about it at the moment is you can run aristofarms a lot earlier than you could ever get mature cottages.

[Sciz]

Aristocracy would be practically useless for non-financial leaders though.

2f/2c on grassland non-river tiles with no chance of growth is beyond useless. 2f/3c on river-tiles is a bit better but still bad, since they can't grow.

Sure when you get to the +1 food techs they can be decent, but that would take a while and by then your cottages would have already grown and become much better.

[Serdoa]

Btw: When Sareln mentioned the 3 possible economies he didn't mention at all to use specialists. Was that meant to be included in the Aristograrianism or is it really not worthwhile to use specs (for the lack of Representation). If so, would that be something to keep in mind when changing the economies?

[haphazard1]

I agree strongly with Irgy that the -1 food from Aristocracy means very little when Agrarianism and Sanitation (not all that deep in the tree) mean you are getting 4 food per grassland tile anyway. In BtS terms it is a farmed flood plain or dry rice, plus commerce -- and you can get this on every grass tile! No wonder cottages can not compete.

Well, if we go back to that article that was posted (very interesting reading, thanks), he recommends balancing to the stronger tier. Maybe instead of tearing down Aristofarms we should be boosting cottages and other alternatives (are there are other alternatives, really?).

What if cottages grew a lot faster? Maybe even combine this as a way to buff one of the currently blah civics, giving it an Emancipation-like boost to cottage growth? Maybe another currently-not-valuable civic could also boost cottages in some way, either extra commerce or a hammer? Cottages would at least offer a somewhat competitive alternative with these other civics.

This might boost elves too much, with cottaged ancient forests becoming really ridiculous. Not sure what could be done about that.

[Sareln]

Btw: When Sareln mentioned the 3 possible economies he didn't mention at all to use specialists. Was that meant to be included in the Aristograrianism or is it really not worthwhile to use specs (for the lack of Representation). If so, would that be something to keep in mind when changing the economies?

I have a blind spot for the specialist economy. I never got a good handle on it in standard BTS, so you all should be sure to bring it up whenever I've forgotten it.

[Sciz]

Maybe the civic boosting cottages (like +1 hammer for example) cannot be chosen by the elves, like crusade can only chosen by the bannor. Maybe because its ideals are inspired by some anti-environmentalist stuff. The civic or tech boosting cottage growth can still be available to elves though.

But anyways i definitely agree that we should rather try to boost the lesser economies than nerf the dominant one.