[LURKERS] EitB 29

[flugauto]

Cottage economy is too slow, it has not enough food-hammers compared to farm economy. And each Raiders opponent makes cottages even less appealing. I hope HK stays away from cottages.

[Thoth]

Agreed. Trade is a nice supplement to an economy, but you can't base your game around it. I think people are drawing the wrong lesson from our game in PB1 - trade was good to us when we went for it after already having 30 cities. It's less useful when you don't have a pre-built empire that's paid for with either farms or cottages.

Trade also came with Undercouncil in v8, so not only did we gain additional free commerce from TRs we also multiplied all of our Orc gold by 10% thanks to the Undercouncil civic.

Even then it still took time to turn the Orc economy around and we relied heavily on Aristo farms to keep the bills paid while we developed other sources of commerce (IC trs, 3 commerce coast, FT boosted cotts ect).

We also had a Spiritual leader, which enabled us to fine tune our Orc civics as our development and tech progressed. Without Spi, it's a bit trickier to make the conversion from Ariso econ.

I think HK could pull off a cottage econ here, and that's a reasonable alternative to aristograrianism, anyway. You want FT for the cottage growth, though, not for the trade routes. Those are just a bonus, to help pay the upkeep.

Pre-FT, Aristograrian farms will always outperform cottages. I think your opinion on cotts vs ariso farms may be somewhat coloured by the number of Lanun games you've played.

Cottages take too long to catch up commerce wise compared to an Aristograrian farm. Remember that an Aristograrian farm also provides a food increase while cotts do not.

In both PB1 and XVI we got a good chunk of change from cotts eventually. But in both cases cotts were a supplement to our main income (Lanun coast in XVI and Aristofarms in the PB) and were primarily grown under FT.

And both those games were played with v8. FT and Currency are both significantly worse in v9.

So yes, a TR/Cottage/Coast economy can be made to work but it's a mid-game set-up and it can be tricky to do well.

And there is a downside to huge, sprawling, intercontinental empires. The trade income is lovely, but you do have to put a lot of effort and hammers into naval assets/pickets ect in order to keep it.

[Thoth]

Cottage economy is too slow, it has not enough food-hammers compared to farm economy. And each Raiders opponent makes cottages even less appealing.

Yep. Cottage economies are wonderful things for a Raider.

[Mardoc]

Pre-FT, Aristograrian farms will always outperform cottages. I think your opinion on cotts vs ariso farms may be somewhat coloured by the number of Lanun games you've played.

Cottages take too long to catch up commerce wise compared to an Aristograrian farm. Remember that an Aristograrian farm also provides a food increase while cotts do not.

Depends mostly on available water sources, in my opinion. If there's lots of grass riverside tiles, then yeah, you can't beat Aristo. I don't think even FT catches a cottage econ up, it doesn't go beyond until Taxation by which point the game should be pretty much decided. When it's two aristofarms at 3/0/3 each or a farm + town at 4/0/1 + 2/0/5, getting your towns sooner just means you break even sooner, not that you actually catch up.

I think cottage economies work when:
you can't farm a lot of tiles and you need all the food
You're an elf
You're the Kurios
Land is mostly plains

But of course realistically - the best econ of all is a mixture, aristofarms where you can afford them, cottages where you can't, commerce resources, lots of trade routes, so on and so forth. Can't get locked into thinking there's one and only one right answer, it all depends on what you have to work with.

Cottage economy is too slow, it has not enough food-hammers compared to farm economy. And each Raiders opponent makes cottages even less appealing.

Yep. Cottage economies are wonderful things for a Raider.

Disagree. If a Raider can pillage your core uncontested, you're doomed regardless what econ you're using. And no one sane is going to pick their military target based on pillage gold - you pick them based on whether they're winning, or whether their land would help you win.

I think this map might support a cottage econ mostly because I was fairly stingy with water but generous with AH food. But yeah, they should still use aristofarms where they can, especially early.

[Qgqqqqq]

Ok I' turn nothing happened except for a bit of movement. So I did a dot map:

Ouch, why no overlap?

[superjm]

Ok I' turn nothing happened except for a bit of movement. So I did a dot map:

[img]http://i685.photobucket.com/albums/vv217/BrianShanahan/EitB%2029/Dotmap.jpg[img]

Ouch, why no overlap?

He's BAR and wants to get the best city sites possible distance be damned?

Not sure I agree with that approach. But then I like packing my cities as tightly as possible depending on the terrain so what do I know.

[Qgqqqqq]

I think that the best city sites (generally speaking) want overlap early game, BAR or no BAR.

[Thoth]

If you look at the screenshot carefully, you'll see there is some overlap between the early cities.

And Brian is Creative and the land is a bit on the weak side both of which favour spacing cities out a bit more.


That being said, I'd still aim for a somewhat more compact city placement.

[Qgqqqqq]

Sorry I misspoke; Ouch, why no more then two tiles of overlap in the first 5 cities?

[Qgqqqqq]

Turn 48. I moved my scouts out to expose some fogged tiles, and found the griffon again.



This time, the griffon decided to attack.





All the barbs promptly came charging out of their lairs.





The problem is that the griffon is Hidden Nationality, so the barbs don't know he belongs to a team that's at peace with them. Instead, their Fresh Meat proximity sensors trigger, and they go into hunter/killer mode. Note to self: declare nationality on the griffon next turn!

If I was him, I'd try to lead them around a bit, maybe even to opponents - keeping safe with lakes and mountains and careful movement. Probably a fools dream, but would be fun