An honest discussion about the use of Homes

[Sephi]

sheperds that run 5% homes for every honortitle above knight won't do bad imo.

for pumped sages (high BE) homes aren't as good.

Homes are awesome for pumped Sages.. at least if you pump properly.. and I mean key points being Pop and BE(or income depending on race). With baron bonus I ran 35-36 PPA 1-2 rounds ago.
now what 10% homes do in that case is not even the birthrate(which is an awesome boost against FBs together with LP). Simply consider the way bonuses multiply in utopia normally.

the difference is the following(10% homes, knight, 0% pop science @ 1000 acres)
25*1.032*1000 =25800 pop. its a mere 3.2% pop bonus however if you maintain a stable amount of pezzies, it does give the 800 extra troops. 0.8 unit per acre.

consider knight status, 10% homes, 5% pop science @ 1000 acres
25*1.032*1000*1.05=27090 units in total.. thats a whooping 2k extra units. and no exceptional bonusses. or almost 2 PPA now with the same amount of homes. Homes kinda increase the effect of your pop science.

without homes:
25*1.05*1000 =26250 units. nice 1250, but with running 10% homes I 840 extra. See the increased gain(ok its only 40 in this case, but if you are sage you run 10+% pop and you can count on lord status normally.. which makes it an even bigger bonus.)

so dont say that they arent as good. they are getting better!


and regarding the rest of the homes discussion:
- stabilizes your province by increasing BE
- Faster recovery
- bigger army available

downsides
- 10% forts or TG could make a nice difference. however, I always manage to squeeze in that 7-15% of homes, and it helps a lot to my experience.

And if you use more then 10-15% it becomes hard to maintain all other buildings( TG, guilds, towers, rax, whatever you prefer. I always find myself able to squeez that 10% out by lowering all buildings by 1-2%)

[Lead Pipe]

There's always a better building than homes.
If you have homes and you converted them to TG's, your offense will be stronger.
If you have homes and you converted them to Forts, your defense will be stronger.
If you have homes and converted them to Banks, your economy will be stronger.

*Edit... that's for this age.

[Realest]

The above is false. Homes give higher offense or defense, but it cost you money, whereas, TG and Fort require no additional cost.

[citadela01]

Homes are ok building to start war with if you had long enough time to pump up and are not growing before war. More troops can be squeezed in and you will last longer in war. Its good alternative to using tg/forts.
As soon as you hit war you stop building them and just let them phase out in favor of buildings which provide mods.

They are also viable for heavy magic/thievery oriented hybrids since combos like delf/mystic and halfer/rogue really have hard time keeping up with attacking part of their role.

Overbuilding homes like some people like to do on the other hand is very bad idea imo tho. Desertion rates are ridiculous if you chain him right off the bat, especially since such provinces tend to rely on dpa rather than on gs's. We chained gnome shep with 40% homes this age ... was a good laugh.

[Blip]

I dont use homes. I used them for a while normally around 10% and I have run no homes strats and I have never noticed that my prov suddenly pwns because of the inclusion of homes. The BE bonus is somewhat noticeable but I have never noticed a large increase in offense or defense so I generally prefer to run any different building. I think in the past since I play pretty much full attacker I have used GS or run forts to optimize opa and dpa instead of running the Homes.

Also a story from this age, we massacre chained a large DE T/M last war which ran 45% homes and they were completely disabled with only a few attacks.

This age especially I picked shep and it has a birth rate bonus and pop bonus which is effectively makes running homes useless since my personality imparts better advantages.

[loco]

I like having about 10% or so...sometimes I go higher when pumping to get BE up...then in war I almost never build them, building the extra TGs or forts as necessary to keep my.

my theory is once in war you have a 1/3 chance of being at your max pop. if you grow fast, you won't have max pop so having it higher doesn't help you. If you get fireballed, then the higher max pop doesn't help, (though I like some to replace losses faster) and if you get chained then they don't help and I would rather have higher defense/GS or better opa to take back land.
we have a guy in our kingdom who insists 40% or higher is the way to go, but I'm not sure why. he does do well though pretty much every war. He probably calls 10% homes a rainbow strat.

[Bonesplitter]

Homes are a great building for increaseing population military size gc productio BE. however they fall apart veary fast. along with those bonuses becouse of the higher pop you sustain higher military losses. higher military expenses. Homes are really more for the Solo style of gameplay. Depending on race selection i use homes out of wars. whenever the kd goes into pump mode i dump in 20% homes for a faster larger pump. Never build homes in war. veary rarly are they usefull.

[carter]

So let's say without homes during war, your BE is at 80% and you have 20% Tgs. It would be roughly the same as someone with homes at 100% BE with 16% Tgs. If you were to war with only 80% of your war buildings strengths, it is not going to worth it. Everything you get new incoming acres, your building % drops further below the "16%" until you get them fully built.

[johnnydoe]

The sole purpose of running homes is to increase BE. Good BE = good province. If you are running 90% BE then that means 10% of your land is being unproductive. With increased BE comes all the bonuses and higher income. BR and pop bonus are just small extras that you get from homes.
Homes can't be used to increase population. It's a very small advantage. 800 extra men for 10% of your land?? If 100% BE then TGs will give you more bonus.
It helps your run your province in optimal condition.

Now, that said. Homes do make for terrible warring strats. So many buildings are required for a warring province that you just can't fit 'em all in while running 25-30% homes.

I think, Dwarves are the best warring race 'cause of that BE bonus. That BE bonus allows you to run 10% homes and still pull 110% BE. But, they are mediocore attackers, imho.

I ran dwarf/shep a few ages ago. Pumped mad sci and ran 15% homes along w/ 10% libs. I think, that was one of my all time best provinces.

Homes are just for BE purposes!

[citadela01]

Actually building homes to boost BE is counterproductive. You get more practical effect by diverting land you used for homes into overbuilding other types of buildings. Its been numbercrunched and proven many times already.
Also as mentioned earlier in this thread homes will have negative effect on your economy since additional off/deff they provide cost money.
Only viable use of homes is to provide additional population if you have time/resources to put it to good use (br bonus is pretty usefull sometimes but its rather situational). 0.8 base ppa 10% homes will provide is quite a lot.

[Owlshour]

I'm new at this but homes should increase BE dramatically even without the population boost right?
Since they don't take jobs to run, which you probably don't have the peasants for anyways if you have a high draft rate, having 10% homes wont increase the number of jobs you need by 10%. You could throw the homes into something else, but you would lower the BE across the board. Is this correct?

[jason87x]

I got curious and calculated things for a gnome artisan (+40% home pop) a build with 50% homes. I think I had 10% stables, 10% farms, 5% towers, 10% guilds, 15% armouries or banks or something and running these numbers, I used like a 75% draft. With that high of a draft I only managed enough leets and ospecs to get around 50 opa and 50 dpa. Keep in mind that you'll be stretching just to pay the wages and draft costs, and greed or riots WILL ruin you right away. Add to the fact that homes quickly become useless in war once your (well I guess relatively few because of high dr) pezzies get fireballed.

[johnnydoe]

Actually building homes to boost BE is counterproductive. You get more practical effect by diverting land you used for homes into overbuilding other types of buildings. Its been numbercrunched and proven many times already.

I'd like to see that math. Let's say you have 10% homes and 100% BE. Now you take away those homes and put 'em into TGs. Your TG bonus might go up even w/ the additional 10% buildings but, eventually that will fall, too. Not to mention the fall in BE will effect bonuses from all your buildings.

0.8 base ppa 10% homes will provide is quite a lot.

That's not a lot at all. 100 homes give you 800 additional peasants. That's such a sad addition to the population. Not a lot of ppl from high end KDs are going to reply to this thread 'cause they don't use homes since they run KD specific strats, which might make up for weaknesses here and there. But, if you are just talking about Utopian mechanics then those provinces are not well run. Just SOT any of the top provinces and see what kinda' BE they run. Most of the utopia can't be run like them. How many of us can run a 4k acre Orc w/ 89K def points and get away w/ it?

[Luc]

I'd like to see that math. Let's say you have 10% homes and 100% BE. Now you take away those homes and put 'em into TGs. Your TG bonus might go up even w/ the additional 10% buildings but, eventually that will fall, too. Not to mention the fall in BE will effect bonuses from all your buildings.

Shouldn't be too hard to calculate. You just need to check if the increased BE from the 10% homes is actually worth spending 10% buildings. I'm not gonna bother doing it, but I'm guessing the result will be that homes vs no homes both work and give similar results.

That's not a lot at all. 100 homes give you 800 additional peasants. That's such a sad addition to the population. Not a lot of ppl from high end KDs are going to reply to this thread 'cause they don't use homes since they run KD specific strats, which might make up for weaknesses here and there. But, if you are just talking about Utopian mechanics then those provinces are not well run. Just SOT any of the top provinces and see what kinda' BE they run. Most of the utopia can't be run like them. How many of us can run a 4k acre Orc w/ 89K def points and get away w/ it?

Massive LOL. Them not running homes has nothing to do with kd specific strats, it has to do with homes not being a superior building in any way, and BE being overrated by less proficient players. Their provinces aren't well run? Are you seriously this ignorant? BE is NOT the means to all ends. In fact, if you'd ever ran any calculations, you'd find out pretty fast that you don't end up with the optimum province by maximizing BE (though running homes is viable if you don't consider that they're pretty useless in war). What running low def has to do with homes or BE, I have no clue. I'm guessing you just couldn't come up with a better example of how top provs can get away with stuff.

Having a large army is usually worth a lot more than having a high BE, especially considering that a large BE is much easier to ruin than a large military. The only time it's worth running a high BE is if you're solo playing or in a kd that never does anything at all, because then it makes sense to go for a high income.

[vines]

When i play I use a minimum of 4rawtpa and 4wparaw. Well I do us 70% as my province becomes more powerful I will say others should not. 70% homes is hard to do you need to be a master of the game and so far I'm the only one that can do it will out having their province fall on it's self. However 70% homes was a thing of the past. The only reason we all are talking about homes is because little o' Vines made up a strategy that can't be beat. Comming up with the vines-strategy aka home-strategy I did the math, however, once the math was done I didn't use formulas any longer. I'm not going to give you formulas they will not teach you how to play the game. In short the Vines-strategy works and is the strongest strategy around. One does not need formulas to know that truth, so use my strategy and learn as you go.

An add to Luc any that's gone against my proince in war chances their view that homes our pointless in war. You just never went up against my province other wise you wouldn't be bad-mouthing homes.