Fertility festival

[LetswaveaBook]

It must be admitted, in a24 I used fertility festival in almost every game. The reason is because it makes your economy easy to manage: Short on wood, make mainly women and when there is a wood surplus build a few fields and buildings. It always was tricky in the sense that you had a significant portion of the population that was not good at fighting. Now in a25 researching fertility festival is not viable strategy anymore and it is better to boom with infantry. 3 reasons for this are:

1. Infantry had their training time reduced by 2 seconds, while for women it was only 1. Also training time from houses stayed the same.

2. Rushes are more useful, so that makes players with many women more vulnerable.

3. Infantry cost wood and trees are more abundant now.

I always like the idea that making women meant booming, making infantry meant turtling and making cavalry meant rushing. Currently booming can be done better with infantry. Also if we want the game to be realistic, having 50/50 ratio between men and women should not be bad. I would like to hear your ideas on which place fertility festival (or producing women) has and should have in competitive play.

[Player of 0AD]

Houses with 10 pop should produce women twice as fast. Carthaginian apartments should produce them 4 times as fast?

[LetswaveaBook]

2 hours ago, Player of 0AD said:

Houses with 10 pop should produce women twice as fast. Carthaginian apartments should produce them 4 times as fast?

I think that is overdoing it. Lets consider an example.

If we want to produce 5  women, and we have either 5 big houses or 10 small houses.

Then with a train time of 15, 5 of the women are produced after 15 seconds and get to work for 15 seconds until the "competitors are produced in the small houses". In those 15 seconds, they can collect per unit around 10 wood making them effectively 10 wood cheaper. I think this gives to much of an advantage to the big houses.

With a train time of 25, 5 of the women are produced after 25 seconds and get to work for 5 seconds until the "competitors are produced". In those 5 seconds, they can collect around 3 wood making them 3 wood cheaper. I think this gives an acceptable advantage to the big houses. So if you want to produce limited amount of women, the big houses have a small economic advantage for production. On the other hand if you want to train lots of women, small houses are better in this example.

So I would advocate not halving the training time for big houses but giving them a more modest reduction, which is still a reduction.

Edited August 12, 2021 by LetswaveaBook

[Player of 0AD]

Or let big houses train batches of 2 twice as fast as now. Currently houses have no batch training bonus.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I think it should be, and now really is, a high-risk boom. It most certainly is faster than a men boom, and I have seen it employed a few times in a25 in TGs to great success. 

[Dizaka]

10 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Now in a25 researching fertility festival is not viable strategy anymore and it is better to boom with infantry.

I disagree.  90% games I've played I've used fertility festival in a25.

Issue is most people still don't rush and are extremely afraid of it.  If you are pocket more reason to boom with fertility festival.  If your border enemy is Rome/Mace and you do fertility festival without spear then you're SOL and RIP.  Scouting is important here.

The only thing to be fearful of though is Rome/Macedonains for their spear cav.  Spear cav for some reason are super dangerous.  Skrim Cav are eh.  Camel archers, if you can build regular archers, are easily countered.

Edited August 12, 2021 by Dizaka

[vijayvithal]

19 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I think that is overdoing it. Lets consider an example.

Here is a counter example.

1. You normally train women in the initial part of the game.
2. If you are booming you want women pop to be around 50-80
3. Let's assume fertility festival is done at pop-30
   1. At this point, Mauryans have 2 houses and romans have only 1.
   2. At pop 40, Maur has 4 women trained from houses while romans have only 2
   3. i.e. civ's with small houses can produce twice as many women as civ's with large houses for the same pop...

[Dizaka]

Actually, I change my mind.  Fertility festival is about as effective as regular booming.  I've tried regular booming and I can do about the same boom as with fertility festival.

@LetswaveaBooksort of agree with you now.  I haven't done regular booms and just played Maurya with a fertility festival.  After playing other civs then coming back to Mauryas I can do same, and/or better, in booming without fertility festival.

However, fertility festival is critical after 18 min +.  It's important for quick recovery.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Dizaka