Informational Poll: When should we enter Democracy?

This is an informational poll to determine when and if we should consider entering Democracy.

Democracy will give us:

1. Large drop in corruption
2. Increased worker speed(50%).
3. More commerce per tile.
4. Protection from propaganda.
5. A chance to stay in the tech race.

On the downside, it will:

1. Introduce war weariness
2. Force us to support our entire military with our treasury.
3. End martial law city bonus(happiness).

We have all 8 luxuries so happiness should be easy to regulate at the outset of Democracy. We also have Adam Smith's Trading Co. pays for maintenance of Markets, Banks and Harbors. We are also a scientific civ, meaning that we can build Libraries and Universities more cheaply. This could allow us to gain parity in the tech race.

There are a whole host of options that could be presented here(Republic, Communism), but to get the best idea I decided to keep it simple.


That said, should we:

1. Enter Democracy NOW
2. Enter Democracy within 10-20 turns
3. Never enter Democracy.
4. Abstain



Please vote your conscience. This poll will stay open for 72 hours.

I don't think we should ever enter Democracy. Increased worker rate is nice but we have supplemented with many captured workers. More commerce per tile and researching our own tech go hand in hand and both fall short of the efficiency of purchasing our own techs. Protection from propaganda is pretty meaningless. Mostly, Democracy introduces heavy war weariness. This will almost absolutely prevent us from our conquest of the world.

Millitaristic Fanatika cannot afford a trip in democracy. It would cost about 8 turns of anarchy (just a guess) and another 8 turns to go back to Monarchy/Communism when the war weariness will be too high, and this will happen. We should never enter democracy, unless we eliminate everyone exept the Zulu…

Originally posted by Fier Canadien
Millitaristic Fanatika cannot afford a trip in democracy. It would cost about 8 turns of anarchy (just a guess) and another 8 turns to go back to Monarchy/Communism when the war weariness will be too high, and this will happen. We should never enter democracy, unless we eliminate everyone exept the Zulu…

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Unlucky for us.... That's not an option as the Zulu are elimnating themselves.

I think a switch to democracy is a must. Increased worker rate.... more commerace.... Democracy is good with big civilizations with lots of commerace already. We would be counted within that group.... We need the better worker rate to build railroads. Last time I checked we still had cities that weren't even connected to our trade route.

Strider - I think you need to download the latest save and take a really good look.

I also vote that we never enter Democracy. I fear it would be a mis-step that could very well cost us the game since at this level war weariness can be crippling even to a civ that possesses all the luxuries in creation, and our recent experiences should have made it abundantly clear that we cannot rely on our neighbours to maintain peaceful relations. I do not believe that the planet will ever see lasting peace until such time as we have succeeded in imposing a "Pax Fanatikanus" upon it via the conquest of every other nation - Monarchy being the government best suited to that aim.

Originally posted by Eklektikos
I also vote that we never enter Democracy. I fear it would be a mis-step that could very well cost us the game since at this level war weariness can be crippling even to a civ that possesses all the luxuries in creation, and our recent experiences should have made it abundantly clear that we cannot rely on our neighbours to maintain peaceful relations. I do not believe that the planet will ever see lasting peace until such time as we have succeeded in imposing a "Pax Fanatikanus" via the conquest of every other nation - Monarchy being the government best suited to that aim.

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We are close to getting communism.... Or Police Stations for this matter..... War weariness would not be as bad with Police Stations.

How about the option of going to Republic? Shouldn't that be on the list?

Originally posted by Strider


We are close to getting communism.... Or Police Stations for this matter..... War weariness would not be as bad with Police Stations.

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Police stations would improve matters slightly, but they will not have a sufficiently powerful effect to warrant the withdrawal of the "crippling" epithet.

I think its just for democracy Feodor, other wise we would have Communism and Despotism on there too.

Anyways, I think we should never enter democracy. We have set domination or conquest as our goal and I am afraid that a trip to democarcy could be a fatal blow to our efforts to win. We need the military support of the militaristic governments. Also, in Communism (which I think we need soon) we can get a communal amount of corruption and waste, which could have a good or bad effect on us. Communism/monarchy also allows a high level of military activity and the spy benefits under Communism are something we could use.

Are we really militaristic? Haven't two nations attacked us in recent centuries because our army wasn't big enough? Aren't we in an era of big navies without a single artillery piece to protect our harbors?

Let's go to Democracy ASAP so we can buy some new toys. We have enough luxuries to stay happy and we can make up the rest by ponying up for some temples and cathedrals.

Originally posted by Chieftess
Strider - I think you need to download the latest save and take a really good look.

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I would, but my network crashed and I can't get on any of my PC's and my PDA isn't strong enough to run Civ3. I'll have to wait awhile when I'm not to sick to move for I can fix it.

Never, Fanatika just is not in a position to be peaceful right now...

Never, Fanatika just is not in a position to be peaceful right now...

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Er . . . why not? Who do we have to be scared of? My assessment of our potential enemies (posted elsewhere) is that none of them have that much potential. The only things we have to worry about, as I see it:

(a) a grand alliance against us, which can only happen if we antagonize everyone by fighting them constantly.

(b) A large country gets a serious technological edge on us. This means, in this case, what if the Persians get tanks or nukes before we do.

Making guns instead of butter doesn't protect us against either of those scenarios.

I would also point out that two different nations have attacked us recently, true enough, but any threat they posed to our survival was handily dealt with within a single turn. Primarily by shrewd diplomacy, I might add. The rest of the wars were spent cleaning up the mess, retaking lost ground, and going on the offensive.

Yrs,
Feodor, DFAM, GC, RG

Originally posted by Feodor Ardent
Er . . . two different nations have attacked us recently, true enough, but any threat they posed to our survival was handily dealt with within a single turn. Primarily by shrewd diplomacy, I might add. The rest of the wars were spent cleaning up the mess, retaking lost ground, and going on the offensive.

Yrs,
Feodor, DFAM, GC, RG

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It was not the FA Ministry that fought and occupied Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, Chittagong, Delhi, Ganges, Jaipur and Lahore. It was our military units that did that. We also pulled off that trick by buying techs and getting to cavalry once we were attacked by India. That's not something we can do everytime we get attacked. Witness the Babylonian war.

It was not the FA Ministry that fought and occupied Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, Chittagong, Delhi, Ganges, Jaipur and Lahore. It was our military units that did that.

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Uh . . . okay, but this doesn't actually contradict anything I said. None of those cities were taken until after the decisive battles were fought.

Securing techs, as you note in your next paragraph, and the alliances secured at the same time, guaranteed the destruction of India. Later, against Babylon, a rapid diplomatic response crippled their offensive power in the west immediately and caused their eastern army (as I had predicted) to evaporate before it got across our border.

Nowhere did I claim that the army was not involved. In fact, as the TC record shows, I was there leading the Guild Volunteers in person, urged the generals to strike harder blows, and collecting exotic and occasionally gory souveniers for my nephews and neices.

Also several dictionaries, as I recall. Strange, that.

Feodor
Deputy FA Minister
Steward, Bavaria VFW

Originally posted by donsig


It was not the FA Ministry that fought and occupied Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, Chittagong, Delhi, Ganges, Jaipur and Lahore. It was our military units that did that. We also pulled off that trick by buying techs and getting to cavalry once we were attacked by India. That's not something we can do everytime we get attacked. Witness the Babylonian war.

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As well as any other war we actively immerse ourselves into during the first half of this era, donsig.

We mowed through India so quickly because they were one of three civs scientifically inferior to us. They were defending against our cavalry with pikes and spearmen. We will not catch any more breaks like that from this point on.

Without Democracy, we will have our hand out scientifically for the remainder of the game. It is a sad day indeed when our main hope(as a scientific nation, don't forget) is that we can get Theory of Evolution to "catch up" with the other civs. ToE should be about us leaving everyone in the dust.

Why do I even bother putting my effort into the Size 12 Plan, which goes hand in hand with having a Democratic government, if no one wants to enjoy the benefit of what that plan would provide?

Why even have Adam Smith if we don't have any desire whatsoever to build the Markets and Banks maintenance-free and use them to their full potential under the right government? Do I even bother to lay out plans for Wall Street?

Judging by the results of this poll to date, our methods should be:

Shoot, retreat, shoot, retreat, shoot, shoot, capture city of no value to us, build courthouse, repeat.

Hey, has anybody seen the remote?


People, I am willing to put my reputation on the line that Democracy will work. I would be proud to oversee a domestic agenda where each one of our cities is maximized to the point where we are competitive in all aspects of the game.

Let's make Fanatika something to be proud of, at least for a little while. I'll dust off my uniform when we get Panzers.

Before considering the path of attack, I seriously question the ability of our current military technolgy to actually capture anything. We are entering an age where the main offensive and defensive units have equal strength, with fortification, cities, and the draft giving more power to the latter. I would much rather agressively research and purchase techs up til replaceable parts and motorized transport, when we'll have considerably more offensive and defensive strength than the current moment.

I do not necesarily advocate Democracy. All I am saying is that we should get out of this confounded monarchy in favor of a permanent switch to either the Republic or Communism, with the possibility of a small amount of time in democracy.

Originally posted by Feodor Ardent
Let's go to Democracy ASAP so we can buy some new toys. We have enough luxuries to stay happy and we can make up the rest by ponying up for some temples and cathedrals.

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We can't afford to support a large military under democracy. If we revolt to democracy, we will have to cut back on our military, which would lead to our nation becoming more vulnerable.

(Not in relation to Feodor's quote)

We need to switch straight to Communism, especially since we are playing as a Militaristic civ.
We cannot afford to go to Democracy. We must exploit our advantages as much as possible. Democracy will simply not work for our nation at this time.

I reloaded my GOTM 15 save to see if I could get an idea of the effects of different governments on the treasury. The save I loaded was after the game had been won by a space ship launch. My country was a republic. I recorded the income, corruption, etc. then went into anarchy, switched to monarchy and recorded the data. Reloaded the save and went into anarchy and switched to democracy and recorded the data. The anarchy periods were 5 or 6 turns long. This is not a true test but offered as a rule of thumb. Here is the data:


I think democracy is lower than republic due to the anrachy period where starvation occured in some cities which reduced commerce. The numbers for monarchy should be considered low for the same reason.

Using this data it seems that democracy increases commerce by two-thirds over monarchy. It also appears that the corruption rate is one-third less under democracy. Applying these rough figures to Fanatika (and factoring in the known units costs under the two governments) we get:


Note that maintainence also must come out of the net figures above. Even without knowing the maintainence amounts we can see that (according to these estimates) a switch to democracy would add 160gpt to our bottom line. Given our current surplus of about 240gpt, we'd have 400gpt to spend on science research and entertainment (luxury rate). Even assumming a lux rate of 0% we would only be increasing our research spending by two-thirds over what we can spend now. (400gpt versus 240gpt.) It's late and I'm tired but it seems as though this will only reduce our research time by a third. Being 24 turns away from steam power would allow us to knock off 8 turns. Throw in a six turn anarchy and we've gained two turns, assuming the anarchy doesn't starve our large cities down too much!

And in democracy even a phony war is costly. Having to spend more on entertainers (or turning laborers into entertainers) would eat away at our science rate.

I do not see a Fanatikan democracy as being beneficial.