[Spoilers] Biggus Decius and the Sucking Vampires (Bobchillingworth / Calabim)

[Maksim]

But what the Hell is going on with his civ? Tons of farms (artisofarms as the Khazad?! Even a base cottage is almost as good as an aristofarm for financial leader, and the dwarfs don't need tons of food). No roads. The corn isn't farmed, and his city is starving from unhealth. He also apparently grew into unhappiness. He didn't keep his warrior around to defend his recaptured 2nd town, and so he could well lose it to a lizardman. And why the heck did he have so many warriors sitting around?

Why don't dwarves need lots of food? Surely they need food to feed all those miners? Dwarves aren't some poncy elves, who can wander through any old forest and come up with a banquet for twelve!

Seriously, though, any particular reason why Khazad should not aim for Aristograrian economy?

[DaveV]

In other news, Prespur finished it's governor's manor, it went into unhappiness- and it only gets +1 hammer! WTF?! After all the discussion in this thread, I thought that I should be getting something like +8 hammers, and not just one hammer per redshirt citizen like I initially had assumed. As it stands, it looks like I sacrificed a 3 food 3 gold farm for a stupid 1 hammer redshirt. Grr. I'll post an image next turn.

As Jabah said, the tooltip display is messed up, but you *do* get pop+1 hammers out of the governor's manor.

Yeah, I don't where people got that from... The building would be horribly broken if you'd get a hammer for every red citizen.

Yeah.

[Bobchillingworth]

Seriously, though, any particular reason why Khazad should not aim for Aristograrian economy?

A grassland cottage starts off only 1 food and 1 commerce worse than an aristofarm, and you can place it several turns sooner. A hamlet is only one food worse, and villages and towns are one food worse but 1 and 2 gold better, respectively. That's not accounting for the techs that increase hamlet/village/town yield. The Dwarfs also should be working as many mines as possible to make the most out of aerate, and the best way to get food to support that is regular agrarianism (but no aristocracy) farms.


cottage the grass, mine the hills, farm the plains / tundra

[Maksim]

Hmm... OK, that makes sense - guess I'm just not that familiar with Aristos. However:

cottage the grass, mine the hills, farm the plains / tundra

Surely, if you farm the grassland, and cottage the plains instead, you will gain an extra hammer when you are in Agrarianism?

Not that someone with governor's manors really cares...

[Bobchillingworth]

Surely, if you farm the grassland, and cottage the plains instead, you will gain an extra hammer when you are in Agrarianism?

Ah, yes, that probably makes a lot more sense than what I wrote



In other news, I've known for a while that PB is going for a culture win (he let it slip in a chat). I was talking with Sareln, and he hit upon a somewhat literally diabolical way of ruining it. Spread the veil to one of PB's culture cities (assuming he didn't already found it in one that isn't his capital), and then summon & switch to Hyborem. Build the "free tech evil book" wonder (I forget the name :P ) and take Malevolent Designs. Use the Hyborem's Whisper worldspell to take the culture city, and then raze it (or just gate over a crapload of powerful demons and Hyborem himself)

[darrelljs]

Aristofarms work best with a FIN leader! A grassland river tile under Aristocracy and Agrarianism gives 3/0/2 as a non FIN leader but 3/0/4 as a FIN leader. You leverage the trait right away, for double commerce .

A cottage either has to be on a river or promoted to a hamlet before you begin to leverage FIN. In fact, A maxed out river town with Taxation is only 2/0/7. An aristofarm will be 4/0/4 (Sanitation), and you'll be at that commerce level instantly. The extra food can pay for a Scientist meaning you have more beakers from the tile, plus GPP, plus the ability to switch to Conquest for sick military production or Slavery for general production. Another consideration is the expanded role pillaging plays in FFH; Farms are a lot easier to replace than Towns .

The downside is higher city maintenance since City States has better savings, but that doesn't begin to overcome the economic advantages. Oh, and Royal Guards rock .

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Surely, if you farm the grassland, and cottage the plains instead, you will gain an extra hammer when you are in Agrarianism?

The problem though is plains tiles are really not worth working. I would rather take the extra food from the farm and use it for a specialist. I suppose if the happy cap were really high you might start working a plains cottage, but by then the game is over. Now, the flip side is as a FIN leader a river plains aristofarm gives 2/0/4, or 3/0/4 with Sanitation. That's a pretty good tile! Much better IMO than 1/1/3. A Town at 1/1/7 starts to look better though look how long it took you to get there and how much early game commerce you through away waiting. Turn advantage = !

Darrell

[DaveV]

Another thing to consider in MP is pillaging. A farm can be replaced in 5 turns, and you're back up to full speed. If your towns are pillaged, you're looking at a lot of turns to grow them back (and the pillager gets a lot more cash than pillaging a farm).

[DaveV]

So, Bob, what's the plan after Bronze Working? My vote: Festivals, Animal Husbandry, Horseback Riding, ->Feudalism. 3-5 bloodpets per city and massive settler spam.

Construction would be nice for irrigation, bridges, catapults, and sanitation, but vampires and royal guards are probably more important (although it's a lot of research to get there).

[Bobchillingworth]

Next tech will be animal husbandry, because I need to connect my cow & pig for health, and I want to know where the horses are for optimal city placement.

After that I was thinking Feudalism -> HBR (no dire need for mobility before I even have vamps) -> Construction -> Sanitation -> Philo -> Way of the Wise -> Order. Alternatively, I might try for the Veil instead, losing out on the holy city really bites though. Still, the veil has those awesome priests, a free tech wonder, and two civics that work great with the Vamps, so quite likely that's the best choice. Mostly I just want a vampiric mounted hero.

After that, hard to say exactly, but I'll probably want fanaticism for my awesome hero unit.



An image from last turn:





The Azer, the charming Mr. Oozefoul, finally appeared. Even in the field my combat III shock bloodpet in the city had over 50% odds, so I should be fine on the defense. I have three other backup bloodpets should the first somehow manage to lose.


Also I double-checked, and it does appear that the manor is adding several "invisible" hammers, so I guess I really should spam them everywhere.