Is Aristocracy actually better than Plutocracy? Solid Shmaybe..
I have been Plutocracy pilled for a while, and maybe this isn't useful information to most players here. Skip to the end if you just want my conclusion.
However, if you have been defaulting plutocracy..Hear me out.
Plutocracy is great. The bonus to trade building cap really pumps up your economy, and there are lots of other reforms and laws one can lean into that makes trade go wild.
Despite that, I have been trying out both on the same nations to see how the econ actually plays out, and I am starting to lean Aristocratocy as a preferred value.
Mid game, Burger power can be difficult to keep at or under 25% if you are handing out the privaledges that benefit you. Prosperity, production efficiency, etc. plutocracy creates more burgers, gives them more power, and allows you to spam more merchant buildings which employs a lot of burgers. This challenge to crown power hurts income a touch, but the estate still prints money so, it's generally acceptable. If going republic, this is actually ideal, but I digress.
The boiled down pro and con for plutocracy, without getting into the nitty gritty of various laws, is that you can really bolster burgers and charge up your econ, especially through trade. The con, is that it gives the class a lot of power.
Now, For Aristocratocy, the pros are simple. You get access to a bunch of discipline and some flat legitmacy generation, which is as good as cash.
The Aristocratocy discipline bonus is 10%, which is not nothing. However, the value also increases your total nobles as a proportion of your population, which can also give up to 10%. I found that when I was 250 years into a game that switching from Plutocracy to Aristocratocy made a huge impact here. With Plutocracy, I had a 3.5% bonus, but when swapped over I was closing in on 8% after a couple decades. I think had I stayed Aristocratocy from the start, I would be at 10%. Either way, the differential in discipline ultimately ends up around 15%, which is significant. Early game, this is a lot.
Its easier to also grab more + legitmacy leaning Aristocracy, so despite the court cost being higher, you can actually save some money here.
Next, paired with serfdom and disenfranchised peasants, you can tax peasants much less and keep your overall satisfaction higher. This is a side benefit, but worth keeping in mind.
Essentially, I found being able to tax the burgers more, paired with pulling a large amount of revenue from the nobles combined with less need to spend on legitmacy meant that my income ended up being roughly the same going from Plutocracy to Aristocratocy. Meanwhile, my army was significantly stronger. The enhanced power of my army alone pretty much made up for the differential in trade value.
Now, I know that you can collect half the burgers piggy bank frequently, but they burn that reserve up building stuff at 4x the normal cost, so I personally value taxing them before they blow it.
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My conclusion for the time being is that for a Monarchy, the economic benefits of plutocracy don't outweigh the benefits of combat power and less obvious economic bonus's of Aristocratocy. When looking at the players total end of turn income and the ability to project power and win fights, Aristocratocy may actually tend to come out ahead.
To clarify this, I am talking more so about the game start to the halfway point. Generally I find that late game, the player is just doing victory laps so nothing really matters. I have no opinion on which value and in which context is optimal past year 300.
What do you think?