Well, apparently there are some contradicting opinions on these forums about the usefulness of homes. I personally am more of an intuitive player than I am a number cruncher, though I use Utopia Angel and run numbers myself occasionally. I'm fully aware that a purely intuitive player will get their backsides handed to them in a game like Utopia because, lets face it, the game is not intuitive whatsoever.

For example, kingdoms in real history medieval periods could not sustain a standing army any greater than 1% of the total population, otherwise their economy, such as it was, would probably collapse. A ton of different variables factored into this, but the 1% is a standard rule of thumb when looking back at real world medieval armies. Of course, Utopia has "kingdoms" (i.e. provinces) running a minimum of 60% of the population as military. Not exactly intuitive.

Another intuitive aspect is homes. People need homes to live in, right? Yeah, generally speaking, of course. But the poor people of utopia are forced to sleep in the corners and cellars of the armouries and training grounds . . . and perhaps some of the military men actually have barracks in which to sleep, but not even all of them . . .

At any rate, Homes would be an intuitive choice. It also seems to me, with a cursory thought process (meaning not very deep), that they could be valid numberswise as well. More homes means more overall population, and while you'll have less space for effect-producing buildings, the buildings you do have should be working at maximum efficiency even while maintaining a very high draft rate. These are my theoretical and intuitive thoughts on homes. Can anyone explain to me where my thinking falls short?

All I ask from responders is that no matter what opinion you give, you substantiate it with either numbers or a reason. Please just don't say, "Homes are the SUXXORS!!!" and leave it at that. . . (I know I just invited every troll and jerk on these forums to copy and paste that into a reply, but oh well . . . *sigh*)

Thanks.

Del