Question about homes.

[bringtherain]

My BE is tanking. Would homes improve BE? My reasoning is that homes have no jobs. Less jobs to fill + more pop = More BE. Is the logic correct?

And also, why is there consensus that homes are not viable at less than a particular acreage?

[Dan4GS]

Yes, it would increase your BE because there's less jobs to fill.

The home debate will go on for all time. The general consensus seems to be that to make good use of them, the entire KD needs to run a decently high percentage. The idea is that it gives you a higher pop starting out war and allows you to regen peasants faster=more gold=better economy. If you only run a small %, usually other buildings are more effective, even at a decreased BE.

Do the math for yourself and decide which way you like more...that's the important thing. Do what you feel comfortable with, not what others tell you.

[bringtherain]

Thank you for the speedy reply.

I would suppose the reasoning is that if the entire KD runs a lot of homes, the opponents cant possibly keep everybody's peasants down, giving a chance for the birth rate to kick in?

[noobium]

Generally, building efficiency isn't a good reason to build homes by itself - you would get better results by building more direct effect buildings, for a static bonus.

Homes are a defensive building (for t/ms) and a growth/economy building (for everyone). For provinces that cap their growth at small sizes, homes have a lot less utility, and they are generally a poor building to enter war with. Generally speaking, if you can't find a direct use for Homes, it's better not to build them...

For low-tier and warring kingdoms, Homes are best used for pumping military, particularly after a war win. They are also useful if you expect to go into fortified stance to train up in the near future. Use the homes to generate more money from peasants (while keeping your building efficiency as high as possible), and when you're done rotate homes to your actual buildings. This way gives you more money and attains a better draft rate than just building banks+arms alone; however it also takes longer, so you have to figure out what to do once eowcf/fortified expires.
Many growth strategies utilize some percentage of homes as the standard "filler" building - they are good for economy (with peasants) or other things (with trained troops/thieves), and preserve BE until you need to flip in your actual war build. You can do this with any kingdom, but you should bear in mind why you're building the homes, rather than just using them as a static building.

With the change to fortified stance, it is a lot easier for kingdoms to use homes for this purpose, since you can reset buildings on the cheap within 7 hours. Dwarves get a lot of use from Homes as well because they can rotate build for free, at any time; they also have more incentive to preserve their building efficiency due to their racial bonus.

Usually, if you're going to war, you want homes (and peasants) removed and replaced with buildings appropriate to war. If you go to war with homes it's not the end of the world, but you wouldn't willingly sacrifice a useful war building because you need homes. Sometimes it makes sense to keep homes rather than raze all of them, but you should have every building you would want and not build homes out of a sense that they're necessary (unless of course they are necessary for something you can clearly see). That said, if you are caught with homes and need to war right away, it's not the end of the world, and some races handle it better than others (Dwarf and Avian come to mind). The birthrates bonus is only really good on provinces that can secure their peasants, or for early age. For an attacker, the BR bonus can be a short-term (and if not careful, a long-term) liability, since those peasants get farmed by whoever you're fighting.

The logic (in principle) is correct, but for a lot of reasons you wouldn't build homes for (static) building efficiency, but rather with a plan to make small differences in peasant count have a more significiant effect on BE. For instance, a t/m with homes slaying part of a dragon and repopulating, would experience a much greater spike in BE than the t/m without homes once their peasants refill. For an attacker that just got chained, whatever buildings they had are likely gone or almost gone; if you build nothing but homes on your incoming acres, you should have (almost) no jobs to fill, and thus your BE will spike up even if you have crap for peasants. While you can't exactly use that building efficiency right away, it does mean that your attacker BE will spike post-chain to the maximum once you are left alone, and you can build your actual post-chain buildings after that happens. (and if you are able to maintain good peasants and retrain some defense+tpa, you're able to stay at maximum BE for quite some time afterwards...)

shorter version: It's very situational, but more useful (and less harmful) than a lot of people assume. It's difficult to tell a typical ghetto how to properly manage homes, and if only a few provinces homespump those provinces are going to be the first ones dropped. So basically, don't use homes until you are comfortable enough with your kingdom, and make sure everyone (or almost everyone) is on board with homespump before you use them too much. They're almost always useful for pumping though.

edit:

I would suppose the reasoning is that if the entire KD runs a lot of homes, the opponents cant possibly keep everybody's peasants down, giving a chance for the birth rate to kick in?

This is very untrue against an organized kingdom, at least in the early stages of war. The thing to understand is that removing peasants from a province doesn't kill it, or even weaken it significantly. There are cases where you want to fireball someone heavily (cows and landshells). but if someone makes a serious effort at peasant control, they're only allowing peasants to pile up on provinces that can be farmed through chains or kidnap; everyone else gets controlled to some degree, by some means.
In longer wars, this can hold true, but the birthrate bonuses alone will not ensure an advantage, especially if you are inferior in every other aspect. You would want to have something else to go with the birthrate bonus, whether it's superior military output or better spellcasting ability. The more secure a province's peasants are, the less they are a liability and the more they turn into an asset.

[ZenithSun]

Homes are an awesome building if you plan to fill the space with extra tpa or wpa, but only if you know you won't get Trad marched, because the impact of 10-15% BE loss on TD/WT would overcome your better tpa/wpa.

For example, an unbreakable faery running 25% homes makes perfect sense. A breakable halfling rogue in the middle of the networth distribution of your kd running 25% homes is full retard.

The other situation is massively loading elites (eg. Dorf/Human) pre-war but this is more for top bank style play.

I am sure there are all sorts of other situations where bad play happens that you could load up on 30% homes, fill them with Ogres, and have an awesome fun war, but not against a good war kingdom.

[Palem]

If by "my BE is tanking" you mean it's fallen down to around 80%, that's a good place for it to be. Unless you're a TM, have rockin science (which you won't at this point in the age), or playing some kind of low-draft prov, you can't maintain 100% and stay strong. Just not how the balance works.

[bringtherain]

Thank you fellow forumers, for taking the time to share your views.

Palem sort of put things into perspective. Yes my draft is 60%, BE is 88% and i'm freaking out. lol

[Persain]

Thank you fellow forumers, for taking the time to share your views.

Palem sort of put things into perspective. Yes my draft is 60%, BE is 88% and i'm freaking out. lol

mid late age my kd hovers on 68-74 BE. dont freak out till your down that low. the general rule of thumb is more raw military is always better.

[octobrev]

Homes are bad. You're welcome.

[Attero]

hell my BE is 59% what a noob! Such is life in the orcish clans. Homes are no good for attacker imo. T/Ms is a whole different story.

[Bukharistan]

The more homes the better! I always run at least 15% of em. Now playing dwarf/rogue even threw in 30% ^^

[Bo To]

Homes are no good for attacker imo. T/Ms is a whole different story.

I think you are wrong. Homes give you more max pop, which is good for attackers since they get overpop a lot.

For example you are at 200 acres(no sci) without homes -> 5k max pop(everything builded), military starts to desert over 5750 pop.. You are at 200 acres with 10% homes -> 5.2k pop military starts to desert over 5980 pop. If you have sci the difference between having and not having homes is getting bigger since sci benefits homes.

[Shockwave]

the fact that you're playing dwarf rogue nullifies any suggestions you make.

[Shockwave]

I think you are wrong. Homes give you more max pop, which is good for attackers since they get overpop a lot.

For example you are at 200 acres(no sci) without homes -> 5k max pop(everything builded), military starts to desert over 5750 pop.. You are at 200 acres with 10% homes -> 5.2k pop military starts to desert over 5980 pop. If you have sci the difference between having and not having homes is getting bigger since sci benefits homes.

You have to weigh the numbers. When you weigh the numbers, you'll see that tgs/stables/forts/etc are better than homes for raising off/def. And your statement makes very little sense. your overpop difference is about .6%, 30 pop total. even if you scaled that to say 20k acres, it would only be 3k pop difference at when you overpop.

[noobium]

homes are not for static strength (aside from economy once banks have maxed out, i guess)...

they're not going to counteract overpop much, but they are useful to build after chains to avert overpopulation on subsequent waves, for BE manipulation purposes, and for peasant recovery later on.