Staying in Despotism

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I'm currently playing at C3C at Monarch (doing well), with one moderately successful Emperor game set aside for the time being. In my current game as the Russians, I kept myself in Despotism until sometime early in the Middle Ages. I had picked up Republic a while back, and was at tech parity with the leading AI civs. I know that the common wisdom is to get out of Despotism as soon as you have your core cities at 6 pop or above, but I was having way too much fun pop rushing my infrastructure. Paying for libraries (so I didn't get totally culture-whacked and so I could keep pumping out the beakers) and harbors and aquaducts with shields or gold seems like such a waste when you can just pay for them with blood.

Is this something that folks do often at Monarch and above -- stay in Despotism to keep pop-rushing? I haven't played a religious civ in a while, so I stick with the strategy of switching govs once to Republic and staying put. Thus I'm not planning on switching to Commie just to start pop-rushing again. Pretty much once I'm done with Despotism then I'm paying with gold ever after.

What do you all do?
 
I am a vannila player so I usally take the Republic to Demo path.
If I want to do some warmonning though, I usally take the Republic to Commie path using small wars in the ancient and medivil age followed by big wars that conquer enitre contryes later in the game.
 
Why pop rush at Monarch? It is a tactic that is best used under more stressing game conditions.

Loss of pop means not getting economicaly strong in that town. Use pop rushing in corrupt towns, if you must.

I never heard of the size of my cities being the main factor in switching out of despotism. True size 7 is a good thing for republic in C3C, but not so important for vanilla.

You want to get out of despotism asap. That often means right after learning the governemnt you want to go into (rep/mon).

I did once stay in depotism all the way through a game at sid, because I was being pressed and could not afford the anarchy, until it did not matter.

Demo I never used in vanilla/ptw or C3C at any level. Mainly becuase I seldom play as a religious civ and will only switch once. It is an optional tech and I just don't research it.

Communism is the same thing, except is is worthless in vanilla. In the games where commie could matter, it just was too late in the game to take a hit on the switch.

The other thing about going rep right away is that with the smaller number of towns, you get a smaller number of turns of anarchy. Also the lost of production is not as painful, since you are not all that productive anyway.

I mean 6 turns with 30 cities with many improvements is more painful than when you have 8 towns. You also can catch up easier in the ealry middle ages on tech. You could gets some trades.

Later it will be harder to make up loss ground.
 
Vind2 said:
I'm war crazy :crazyeye: How does fuedalism fit into stradgeys? I go monarch then facsism.
Fedualism does suffer war-weariness...it's not really any more durable than Republic for warmongering. The unit support structure (pretty opposite of Republic) looks like it would have potential for an ICS'ish settling pattern... which I rather dislike.

Feudalism might play well for a 100k culture win, with lots of little towns densely packed in, and a buch of temples and libraries built by whipping. Whipping the citizens of captured cities to get cultural improvements might play to the strength of this government...
 
vmxa said:
The other thing about going rep right away is that with the smaller number of towns, you get a smaller number of turns of anarchy.
I´m really curious about this. Is it truely the number of towns that makes the effect? Because I thought the key for the anarchy period was one´s empires relative size - compared to your opponents.
I guess on the difficulty levels you play, this is pretty much the same. But on lower levels it may well make a difference.

vmxa said:
Also the lost of production is not as painful, since you are not all that productive anyway.

I mean 6 turns with 30 cities with many improvements is more painful than when you have 8 towns.
I dare to disagree on this. When you have 8 towns, you are probably right in your expansion phase, and several turns of delay cost you a lot here, especially in terms of delaying the founding of productive towns. Comparing the absolute numbers of lost shields during anarchy is not the right way to determine the overall cost of it imho.

@SimpleMonkey: I find that sacrificing more than 2 or 3 citizens of a given town really starts to be counterproductive. But I always consider to pop rush stuff right before I switch to Republic, where the lux-slider can easily handle the unhappiness.
 
Twonky said:
I´m really curious about this. Is it truely the number of towns that makes the effect? Because I thought the key for the anarchy period was one´s empires relative size - compared to your opponents.
I guess on the difficulty levels you play, this is pretty much the same. But on lower levels it may well make a difference.
I believe the nonrandom part is based on the number of cities compared to the OCN.
 
It kinda depends on your play style. I like to fight at least one war in the AA, picking up a resource and maybe a random wonder from a neighbor. The AA's sword vs. spear or horse vs. spear is one of the few times that the offense has an advantage without the need for a big stack of artillery. So IMHO if you plan on fighting in the AA, stay in Despotism until the war is done.
 
Twonky anarchy is awlays painful. My point is mainly that you will not lose as much ground if it is done fairly early.

The longer I wait the more food I an not getting and that means growth. I also want to switch while the AI is not really cranking out troops. I have to be concerned that they will start to see me as an easy target.

Now if we are talking about Regent or there abouts, feel free to loosen up.
 
vmxa said:
The longer I wait the more food I an not getting and that means growth.
I agree that this is the point. Getting rid of the despotism penalty is the reason to change your government asap.
But it may well happen that if you interrupt your expansion for 5 or 6 turns of anarchy, you lose a productive city site to an opponent. This might turn out to be a bigger loss of food than delaying the anarchy.
After all, imo it´s always easier to grab land by settling instead of conquest. Of course this is no big deal at Regent, but I play Emperor/DG and the AI gives you a good challenge here when it comes to expansion.
 
@vmxa -- The notion of waiting until your core cities were over 6 pop came from some advice I got a while ago when I was trying to figure out what the best time was to switch from despot to repub. I'd been playing a game as the Celts and had bee-lined for Republic, snagged it, and switched fairly early in the game, thinking I'd become a booming, prosperous empire in just 2 turns. Shocked I was to find that I was making much less money than before. Turns out that I'd been working on cranking out lots of Gallic Swordsmen (not a bad investment) and the troop upkeep was just killing me with all the low pop towns I had that early in the game. So I started waiting until I had at least a few cities under my belt to support all the troops that I focus on building in AA. (I stick with the rule that the best things to invest in during the AA are settlers, troops and workers. The only infrastrucure I build are barracks and maybe one or two granaries.)

I think I see that unlike when you're Commie and you're pop-rushing the hapless civilians in conquered cities, extensive pop-rushing in AA is offering short-term gains but ultimately slowing down long-term growth.

@Twonky -- I tend to also avoid slaughtering 2 or three citizens at one time, just to avoid the screaming unhappiness that follows. What's the point of getting a granary in one turn and then having the town go into civil disorder the next turn? But sacrificing just one guy to get a barracks 10 turns or more early is still pretty tempting. Even better when you're religious and you can pop-rush a temple with just one guy after a few turns, and the happiness provided with the temple will negate the effect of the pop rush.
 
I agree too that the Anarchy early in the game is hitting you at a relatively worse time than in the late AA. It just hurts so much to slam production to a halt when you're trying to crank out as many settlers as possible. Every shield counts so much then.

I didn't know that you could shorten the Anarchy period by taking it when you're smaller. This is getting even more complicated than I thought.
 
The problem with jumping to Republic from Despotism is that you're going to have to have a really good infrastructure in order to take advantage of the Commerce Bonus. Timing is critical....and I have to admit that I don't always change at the most advantagous time. I do like to change as soon as is practical, because usually I can handle the deficit spending to get the infra structure built up.

It might be better to go to Monarchy first, where you get MPs and lower unit cost. But then, it might not. No Commerce Bonus, but no Tile Penalty as well. YMMV.
 
Twonky I played mostly either Sid or AW emperor or DG, so I understand the expansion. I think that why I get Rep or Mon (whichever I am switching to), I have already done the easy expansion.

I may not be able to switch the next turn, I may have to wait. In fact I oftn do not get Rep at Sid until some are already late into the middle ages.

Believe me swiching is no easy choice at AW on a pangea map, even at emperor. The thing is that at DG or better you are not going to be making 10 or 15 settlers anyway, unless you are some huge map.

You probably be doing good to get 6 good sites and after that anything you lay down is subject to a flip or a capture.

In games beyond DG (and I feel AWE or mets that), you cannot defend a lot of early towns form either invaders or culture. At sid I have no culture compared to the AI.
 
SimpleMonkey it very true that you will want cities not towns in C3C republic. In the other versions you get no support anyway.

I would have at least the cap and probaly the second town as cities before switching, but not because I waited. The captiol will be a city because I want it to be productive.

I will have switched it off of making settlers and probably even started to add workers back into it in an attempt to get to size 10 or better.

Lots of GS or an units will only happen, if I intend to use them, so they will pay for themselves by taking land. In fact I may just go to Monarchy if I am making lots of attackers.

IOW I won't have lots of units sitting around costing me money. I cannot afford to the shield for idle units, let alone the maint.
 
@vmxa -- Oh no, those Gallic Swordsmen weren't sitting idle. They were chopping up Portuguese and English Spearmen, making the world safe for a Celts-only subcontinent. Nevertheless, I was being left with a lot of size 1 or 2 newly acquired towns, while my core were still also small as they were still cranking out workers and settlers. I wasn't seeing the value of letting the core build up its pop ASAP to get it as productive as possible. Strong arguement for letting your first ring of cities turn out the workers and settlers once you've built your first three or four core cities, which then turn to producing troops.

Am I understanding that to be your general approach?

I'm still playing at Monarch/Emperor, so I can still manage to crank out quite a few settlers before the AI shuts me off. By that time I make it a point to have iron and enough troops built to keep on expanding by military force. Again, now I see how the higher levels, that path is much more restricted, so that by the time you're even just at mid-AA the AI will have closed you off and you'll have an empire of < 10 cities. Thus you need as high a pop as possible, and pop-rushing is just going to slow you down.

Ah ha! Now I also see that at higher levels you won't get Republic or Monarchy before the AI has also closed you off and out-expanded you. So again, you'll have mostly 6+ pop cities at that point anyway. When that's the situation, it makes sense to get out of Despotism ASAP because you also need every tile as productive as possible.

So at lower levels it makes sense to get out of Despot early because you'll be ahead of the AI and you can afford the anarchy period, and at later levels you need to get out ASAP so you can start trying to catch up with the AI.

And pop-rushing doesn't pay off in the long run because of how it slows growth. Plus makes your happiness problems, always an issue at higher levels, even harder to manage.
 
I was never a big fan of pop rushing and used it only sparingly. If I have room to keep expanding I will. Often the switch to Rep finds me with a high maint cost as well.

I just have to do the best I can until I can get more size 7 cities. I probably will not have a lot of size one/two captured towns, a couple maybe. Even at Emperor, I would rather raze them and keep moving forward. Filling in those spots later.

It just gets me too stretched out to defend and you end up with needing too many units to sit on them.

Anyway when to switch is a hard choice, in all but the easiest games.

I am confused as to why you are making settlers if you are already capturing lots of towns? Are you going to abandon some and replace them? Do you really still have lots of open land in your borders to fill?

Been awhile since I played a std map on Emperor, but I don't recall having so much empty land that I needed to keep making settlers, after I was already capturing other towns.

It is very common at AWE, as I will not try to hold their towns in many cases. I will want a settler ready to abandon and replace. Just depends upon weither I can move my units on to another battle right away or not.

If not, them keeping the town is possible. If I want to move on, I am more likey to replace.
 
vmxa said:
I am confused as to why you are making settlers if you are already capturing lots of towns? Are you going to abandon some and replace them? Do you really still have lots of open land in your borders to fill?

Been awhile since I played a std map on Emperor, but I don't recall having so much empty land that I needed to keep making settlers, after I was already capturing other towns.

I'm usually playing on large or huge pangaea maps, so there is still often room, even with a full complement of AI civs surrounding me, for me to keep putting out settlers even when I'm starting my first swordsman push. (I used to actually go for ultra early warrior rushes, but that was back at Regent. :rolleyes: ) I'm also building my cities fairly close CxxC so I need lots of settlers to fill up my territory completely. Thus I'm building new cities at the same time that I'm relieving the AI of the burden of governing others.
 
except for AW games i switch to republic immediately every time. the loss to settler production is pretty minor. suppose anarchy lasts five turns. then the loss to settler production is about 2 turns worth. do not forget that although you lose production you do not lose food. furthermore you can switch population off high shield tiles fully onto high food tiles since you are not getting production anyway. any specialists you might have had also get put onto high food tiles. so when i come out of anarchy my cities have grown and i can make up to some extent for lost time on settler and worker production. it's much like delaying settler production by building a granary. many times it is worth it and the food bonus (and for that matter the shield increase) of a switch to republic does indeed significantly speed up settler production.

as for commerce under republic - commerce in the ancient age is not very important. it is more important to sacrifice commerce in the short term for more rapid commerce growth. if this were not true i would say "why stop with despotism? increase your commerce even more with large numbers of specialists". but no, it's all about population growth to me early in the game and for that i require a change of government. and do we grow our cities to size 7 so we can switch to republic or do we switch to republic so that we can grow our cities to size 7? the latter is easier for me.
 
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