Is building a stroked 318 better than a stroked 340/360?

Dale Davies said

Rod to stroke ratio is not that critical according to the magazine tests years ago between a stock SBC 350, a 383 using the 400 rods and a 383 with the 350 rods.
According to David Vizard, a 0.5" rod change in a high compression ProStock engine makes minimal difference in power. He states low compression engines are affected more, but not a lot. This agrees with the magazine article.
Now if you are building a max petformance engine and you have the bank to support the learning curve, go for it. For most street builfs worrying over this is immaterial.

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Were the combo's highly tuned for each rod? Cam heads etc..

It's hard to do an apples to apples comparison, Eg.. Mainly what were talking about 318/340/360 vs there 4" stroke version, but what is an apples to apples comparison between a 365 vs 408?

Since both should be built with slightly different parts (cam, ports, Intake, exhaust to gears and stall) for whatever build level were talking about, and if one is better than the other (always make more power) you can't even build to the same power and compare. What are good comparable test between a 365 and 408?

But I get why people build 408s you can build 450-550 hp at street friendly ish rpms with little more than a credit card and a catalogue and don't have to run deep gears and high stall to get satisfactory results and it's light and small.

But If you flexible on the small part any 383/400/413/426 would fit the bill and could even add a 3.915 to any of these and keep good S/R/B ratios and run heads that don't strangle them.