Well I've been playing around with Serfdom, so I figured I'd post about Police State, another infrequently-used civic. It is a government civic that opens up upon the discovery of Fascism or by building the Pyramids. It is a high upkeep civic that grants a 25% boost to military unit production and a 50% war weariness reduction.

Obviously, this is a warmonger civic. It offers none of the happiness benefits of Hereditary Rule or Representation, the science bonuses of Representation, or the production and gold-rushing options of Universal Suffrage. On the surface, then, it is inferior as a happiness or research civic.

In an extended war of conquest, though, I can see where Police State would be superior to all of the other government civics. The reduced war weariness means less unhappiness on the home front; over time, this would more than offset the happiness bonuses of HR and Representation, and would reduce dependence on the culture slider significantly. Add to this the military unit production bonus, and you have also offset the reduced production from having smaller cities than in HR/Rep (due to lower happy caps).

Although you could choose Police State with the Pyramids, it seems like overkill at that early stage of the game. Conquests in the BC period would rarely generate so much war weariness that Police State's bonuses would exceed the value of either HR or Rep. On the other hand, Fascism is a long, long trek, and having built the Pyramids in the BC would make Police State very handy for a long medieval war.

I think the tricky part would be deciding when to switch out to Police State from HR/Rep, as you would take an immediate happiness hit in your larger cities. I suppose the easy answer would be to do a 3- or 4-pop whip on the turn when you come out of anarchy. Alternatively, you could switch into Nationhood simultaneously and mostly offset the happiness loss with +2 :) from each Barracks.

Civic synergies with Police State:

Legal: Vassalage for reduced unit support costs and bonus XPs; Nationhood for drafting, increased espionage, and happiness
Labor: Slavery for pop-rushing; Serfdom for improvement of newly conquered lands
Economic: Mercantilism for a bonus specialist; State Property for reducing maintenance costs in your massive empire
Religious: Organized religion for production boost for buildings; Theocracy for bonus XPs; Free Religion for happiness and diplomatic benefits.

What are your experiences with Police State?

What are your experiences with Police State?



I consider it a good late-game civic for warmongering. With enemy land sizes that require over a hundred turns to conclude a war, it's possible for WW to reach unmanageable levels. With Mount Rushmore and a Jail, you get -50% WW, but Police State makes that 0%.

The 0% WW is really the pinnacle achievement of this civic. Which means that you're really missing out on the best of the civic until you build Mt. Rushmore and a Jail.

I've used police state off the pyramids on occasion if I'm starved for land and need to somehow field an army with inferior production capacity.
It's also useful while warring with the owner of the SoZ (particularly for a spiritual leader.)

Obviously, this is a warmonger civic.

Nothing more needs to be said.

Nothing more needs to be said.

:lol:

I love this guy. In the dictionary definition of "pithy" there is a picture of Dave.

The unfortunate part about it is how late it comes. Most people like to have the game well in hand by the time it rolls around.

when your trebs take 3-4 turns to bombard 1 city(yeah, yeah, those eps will be consumed sooner or later) and you already have 5-6 unhappiness, it's an excellent civic.

without mids... seldom getting to fascism before the game is finished(or finished de facto), so... would be great, but don't have it...

Police State with Nationhood is an awesome combo when fighting a protracted war with a civ with the same religion.

SP is awesome late in a modern era war or early with the pyramids. Thge late game is obvious but the early game

1) Best with ORG as the upkeep is cheaper and you can "acquire" more lands.

2) The lost HR and Rep happiness is insignificant since you are simply taking happy resources from the AI.

3) Since you are acquiring more cities and thus more overall commerce, losing REp does not matter.

4) Great if you have the Great wall for defensive GG points or the SoZ to ran WW down the Ais throat.

See my Julius Caesar RPC. I ran PS the entire game after capturing the pyramids early from Darius.

Edit: Changes SP to PS!

Sp.......?

Sp.......?

Sorry, SP should be PS!

I'll use it in 100% of the games I'm spiritual and have the tech/mids. I use it pretty often even if I don't. It doesn't take long in big wars for the WW reduction to outstrip the :) from any other civic, and that's huge.

The production is money too. Who doesn't like more units at war?

In my last Immortal game I had war weariness go up to almost 3,000. Without Police State my cities most likely would've been reduced to size 1 ;)

Want to win a late game domination? This is the essential ingredient and the last piece of the jigsaw to fall into place. The Pyramids are not enough, you really need to research Fascism for Mt Rushmore to get rid of the last vestiges of WW. War in the late game is very wearisome due to the huge stacks and larger multipliers.

My preferred civic combination is:
PS (+25% mil prod, -50% WW)
Nationhood (happiness, drafting, +25% EP)
Slavery or Caste System (depending on how many workshops are available)
SP (zero dist maintenace, zero colonial maintenance, +10% prod, +1 food)
OR or Theocracy

That combination makes for a production juggernaut that churns out a stream of units and doesn't care what casualties are. PS plus SP and a forge gives a 60% bonus to military production in every city and just build enough workshops for insane amounts of hammers. The civic essentially turns the game into a battle between your production and the AIs. Even with their bonusses for production and upgrade and huge stacks of units the superior military ability of the human can easily inflict a 5 to 1 loss ratio on the AI.

My preferred way to win.

Very good UncleJJ, altough with BtS I prefer Mercantilism or - even better - FreeMarket since I just love to spread Mining Inc and Sid Sushi everywhere. Easily doubles overall production without any :yuck:.

What are your experiences with Police State?As the others said, I'm always in it when world-waring lategame. Only emergency situations before that.

3000? What time

The extra hammers seems pretty weak (although every bit helps I guess), but the elimination of WW is just a necessity sometimes. One time, after a long war, I changed out of police state before ending the war, and found that every single person in my capital was unhappy!

Oh, there's also a really sweet random event that can happen when you're running police state. I think it's something like a choice between =2 happy in every city, or a GG.
edit: it's a choice between +2 happy, and giving every gunpowder unit the march promotion.

UncleJJ makes the most relevant point, I think. PS is a civic that really requires select structures to make shine. PS from the Pyramids is really too early to make use of, except perhaps as a spiritual civ.

I'm not fond of Police State from Pyramids, even when playing a Spiritual leader. +25% military unit production isn't that significant early on. The bottleneck on production still comes from how often you can whip. Happiness and food are more relevant than total hammer production at that point in the game.

Don't get me wrong, +25% hammers is nice, but at that stage in the game you're probably talking about getting +1 or 2 hammers in most of your cities while building swords or catapults. It doesn't seem to speed up the rate at which I can assemble an army large enough to go conquering with, and happiness is a much bigger problem without Representation and Hereditary Rule.


For late game warmongering it's a godsend though.

PS with Cristo Redentor, Mt.Rushmore and jails is a no brainer.

Best regards,

I'm not fond of Police State from Pyramids, even when playing a Spiritual leader. +25% military unit production isn't that significant early on.

When spiritual PS should only be adopted for 5+x turns of synchronized chopping + whipping of your army. After that return to Representation ASAP to erase whip anger.
Sisiutil should try this in his current Saladin ALC.

I've used Police State early with industrous leaders to play power meter catch up or amass an army quickly in the early stages of the game. Pyramids to open police state and then oracle with metal casting as the free tech. The forges go up quickly and then you've got a 50% bonus to unit production. This has really nice synergy with stalin, de gaulle, ramses, and augustus.

PS rules for late game warmongering

When spiritual PS should only be adopted for 5+x turns of synchronized chopping + whipping of your army. After that return to Representation ASAP to erase whip anger.
Sisiutil should try this in his current Saladin ALC.

In an ideal world maybe that would work. It's hard to synchronize all of that along with timing hammer overflow properly.

What units are most needed for a classical age war? Catapults. They're 50 hammers on normal speed, chopping gives 30 hammers, 37.5 with Police State.
How many catapults can you get out during 5 turns? How many more can you get by running police state?

You need to chop ~7 forests in order to get 1 extra catapult.

I'm not sneezing at production bonuses, I love Organized Religion and Forges. But with early game military conquest the number of units you can quickly assemble has more to do with whipping than anything else.

It's a lot of micromanagement for what I see as limited gain, and I often find I'm still better off with the extra happiness from HR or, more likely, Representation.

When you have a large empire and a lot of cities to make troops that are very expensive, and whipping + chopping is no longer your primary means of producing troops, Police State is a lot more attractive.

When you only have 3-6 cities and the rate at which you can produce them is mostly tied to how often you can slave troops, it's a much smaller factor and a less attractive option in my eyes.

PS rules for late game warmongering

futurehermit,

I'm wondering how well it would work out for early game warmongering for the military production bonus in a food economy when paired with slavery. You only need 6* technologies to start, too. The Wheel, Mysticism, Masonry, Mining, Bronze Working and Iron Working. If you can pump out a huge army of swords early on it could help you reach an early game domination win. A 25% bonus could means for ever 5 swords for the price of 4. However the pyramids are very expensive, and without an industrial leader you would need to make a TON of units before you "made up" the hammers it cost to build the pyramids in the first place. Though swapping to HR/Rep when you're done with your war (for regrowth) could also factor into the hammers used for the construction of the pyramids.

*5 if you can get your iron on your city or a river.

Don't forget that mids allow it not just in early game, but all game. This opens up interesting mid game options: rush buy and PS. Constitution comes much sooner than fascism, and that's a time many players like to prep for war. With jails, PS offers a 75% reduction in WW. That's not insignificant, in fact it is almost always enough to keep WW from being an issue at all (maybe you'll need 10-20% culture slider if you're fighting a massive overseas war). That time period is also where you'll be wanting to mass up on the rifles, grenades, and cannons (or curies/cavalry). While a globe city can draft units, depending on empire size the +25% is plenty significant by then also (and doesn't conflict with drafting civic-wise). HE city can usually turn out a unit close to every turn. A very well promoted unit, oftentimes.

This is one reason among many the mids are such a powerful wonder IMO. It allows police state early, and from the middle ages on that's a huge boost in production, if situational.

The civic's uses with spiritual has already been mentioned.

futurehermit,

I'm wondering how well it would work out for early game warmongering for the military production bonus in a food economy when paired with slavery. You only need 6* technologies to start, too. The Wheel, Mysticism, Masonry, Mining, Bronze Working and Iron Working. If you can pump out a huge army of swords early on it could help you reach an early game domination win. A 25% bonus could means for ever 5 swords for the price of 4. However the pyramids are very expensive, and without an industrial leader you would need to make a TON of units before you "made up" the hammers it cost to build the pyramids in the first place. Though swapping to HR/Rep when you're done with your war (for regrowth) could also factor into the hammers used for the construction of the pyramids.

*5 if you can get your iron on your city or a river.

IMO, mids are too hammer intensive for that early of an attack, because as you said you'd need a LOT of hammers worth to make up for building them, and by then you may have more cities from earlier swords anyway. Of course, in such a scenario the mids would be a great enemy city to target :lol:.

You need to chop ~7 forests in order to get 1 extra catapult....the number of units you can quickly assemble has more to do with whipping than anything else.

P.S. PS boosts your whipping too.

I never use PS unless my war weirness is at catastrophic high levels, eg needing the culture slider @ 80% or more: I find Representation far more handy for the extra research, and if I'm ahead in research, I want U.S. to hurry wonders before the AI.

The thing about PS and research is that at some point later in the game research may become irrelevant for you and you can just stay in PS and warmonger full time.

P.S. PS boosts your whipping too.Which makes it great for a whip cycle (either spiritual leader or golden age free swap).

PS is a late game civic outside of those whip cycles. Until then, you don't have the production or the economy to produce the massive war weariness that would make PS worthwhile to reduce it. You also lack the supporting improvements that serve to further reduce, if not totally eliminate, war weariness.

There are other, more efficient methods of dealing with the weariness you'll encounter before PS becomes available through research.

Outside of those whips, you don't have the production to make running PS for a long duration worthwhile. The opportunity cost of not running HR or representation is too high.

edit: it's a choice between +2 happy, and giving every gunpowder unit the march promotion.
Does it work like the "cover promotion" event, ie. all gunpowder units that you own AND those you still build get the march promotion? If that is true, this reward is just amazing.

3000? What time

19th century... I had just killed almost 250 Zulu Cavalry/Riflemen, and lost about 80 units of my own, all on foreign soil. In that game I built the most units ever in any game so far. Eventually I lost to Hammurabi though (Space), I had Tanks and Infantry against huge amounts of Modern Armor and Gunships... I built 127 tanks in that game and lost 120 of them, mostly to Gunships :sad: