Short question:

In your opinion, which civic is better? and under what circumstances?

Slavery, almost always.

The only exception would be when you're running a well developed specialist economy, but for some reason don't have the improvements necessary to hire the specialists you want.

The big problem to me with caste system is that it doesn't allow you the specialists you'd want most, engineers.

Look at Jihe's Immortal Se game and Snaaty's remarks in the current pacifism thread for some good ideas about Caste system.

Pre emancipation:

I usually run slavery with FE 80-90% of the game because whipping (=production) is best in most situations

But the other 10-20% I run caste system in a combo with pacifism to extreme-produce GP´s (GS and/or GM´s)

I don´t think they rival, I would rather say they work very well together (slavery to produce and build, caste-system to get GP´s) because a combo of productivity and GP production (GS = lightbulbing and GM = money) is a good way to go

One more use of CS is assigning artists to pop city borders more quickly ...

edit: and of course cultural victory ...

Although I can't argue that caste system is better, I usually end up adopting it anyway so I can assign multiple scientists in great people farms.

Caste system is useful if you're not creative and trying to quickly expand into some fresh territory. On terra maps caste system can help you to quickly pop your borders and grab a large chunk of the new world.

If you're on a continent, then there's no need for that because you can use slavery to whip up some soldiers and kill everybody.

I used to use slavery about 80-90% of the time pre-Emancipation but when I did switch to Caste system I usually regretted it. Now I basically only use Caste system if I'm playing a Spiritual Leader.

Repeat, oops.

slavery is just wrong people! You are killing innocent people just to speed up production! Doesnt that feel a tad mean to you?

You are killing innocent people just to speed up production!

"Innocent"?

In my civs, it's only the guilty I whip. Does that make it nicer?

- O

Unhappy cities become happy after a bit of cracking with the good old whip :whipped: :goodjob:

slavery is just wrong people! You are killing innocent people just to speed up production! Doesnt that feel a tad mean to you?

"I do not feel obligded to believe that"... citizens in Civ 4 = people. For me slavery is just a indirect way to make :hammers: out of :food: , and I do feel more guilty to use the :whipped: than to use the research option. And , besides that, I feel cranky when I start to see :mad: faces.