A Guide to Civics

Pfeffersack said:
Thanks for pointing that out, I have corrected the text.

I think I may be wrong on that have to do some testing, but I seem to recall a place where it did not work.

One point I HAVE tested though, Organized Religion allows you to produce ANY type of missionary an a city that has the required religion not just your state religion [so religion switching is not necessary]. I am currently using that for my money strategy in a game where I conquered the Spanish (with three holy cities) in the Industrial Age. I am spreading those religions from my high production cities (1-2 turn missionaries on marathon setting) and I definitely don't have monasteries for those religions there.
 
Yes, you are right OR...I'm making use of the same strategy in my current game.I have reworked the text to reflect it.


On Theology, I'm a bit clueless.I'm honestly not sure how it works in its details, I'm not even completly sure how natural religion spread works.My current understanding is:

- natural spread happens via trade routes only (probably a close proximity to shrine is an exception or does it just boost the chance for trade route spread?)
- a city without any religion is likely to get a religion this way
- a city which already has a religion never (or only very rarely) acquires a new religion on the natural way (I have never exactly whitnessed this, but I can't proof the opposite, too.I experienced some situations in AI land, where my shrine spreads religion quickly to old, established AI cities.Those cities had two religions when I examined them a few turns later...I just cannot believe that they were atheistic before and got their second religion through an AI missionary)

Now Theocracy:
- it definetly blocks natural and missionary spread in cities with state religion
- opinions on none-state-religion cities under Theocracy contradict.Examing the subject is difficult because of the uncertainty about how natural spread works.According to how the other religious civics work, only cities with state religion should be affeted, but I have never seen any spread of minor religions.But that might be just bad luck, because running a Theocracy often involves having less foreign trade routes (wars, bad relations = less OB treaties) and if a NSR-city under Theocracy has already acquired a minor religion before switching to Theocracy, this religion might "block" spread of other minor religions because of spread rules.
 
slimpikuns said:
what you used environmentalism for in the modern age with all that unhealthiness is about the only good use for it. You used it well, however next time try state prop... the financial benefits are massive.
But it sounds you may have made the right move in the right situation patriarch

How about when you have a MAJOR production city using mainly lumbremilled hills and grasslands. When not at war, all that happiness is kinda overkill admittedly, however if you get involved in a protracted war, you can almost IGNORE war weariness in your production city due to all those forests. This actually happened when I was playing a game on prince. It meant that I could either keep on pumping out units, or keep building spaceship parts during a war that I was forced into while keeping my research rate through the roof. Now add to that that I had a gigantic great person city that this allowed to reach size 36(note that this one had no forests but did have globe theater). Any of the other civics would have hurt either my production capacity(due to the unhappy citizens, since I REALLY don't like Police State) or my science output due to using the culture slider.

Thus, I think that Environmentalism is undervalued. Probably due to how many people seem feel the need to chop rush EVERYTHING. I am starting to leave one city spot that is mainly forests for a late game production center now, and get along with a secondary non-forested production center that gets heroic epic, until Replaceable Parts.
 
This seems to be a good place to ask.
Could someone explain to me what emancipation civic does ? specifically what does the :( for civs with no emancipation mean ?
 
@Pfeffersack: Religions will spread along trade routes, but only to cities which have no existing religion. The shrines merely accelerate this process. Once a city has a religion it can never get another by this natural spread. I'm not sure about your counter examples, but I've never seen a religion spread naturally to a city that already has one, and I tend to play a religious strategy. The documentation specifically states religions cannot spread without missionaries to a city with a religion.

Theocracy blocks all missionaries that are not of the state religion, so they can't spread religion. It however has no effect whatsoever on natural spread of religion, and non-state, as well as state religions can still therefore spread to any of your cities that currently have no religion. I have observed not state religions spreading like this in my games, though it is very unusual.

@lz14: Once one civ is running emancipation, all those who are not running emancipation receive a happiness penalty (usually only one point) in each city.
 
Legal Column is up together with some minor additions and corrections here and there.I hope to complete this guide soon with the Labor Column.Either then or maybe before, I will also update the first three parts for Warlords and add the Environmentalism article again.
 
Last reply was 2005. What a shame, because I still feel that Environmentalism is worth exploring. Medium upkeep and you get to use it after medicine...

Well first off, your health bonus increase is not just +6, because should you keep forests, you get health benefits from having them also, sort of like getting back your oppertunity costs from free market. So what do you do with all the extra health and happiness? War!!

Evil combination: police state, nationhood, slavery, environmentalism, theocracy. Forget state property, whipping produces way more hammers than workshops. Tons of farms and lumbermills, draft and whip like crazy, friggin forget about war wariness.
 
I'm only on my second game of Civ IV and still have a lot to learn so this guide has been a massive help.

A quick question though. You get happiness from forests with environmentalism, does this also apply to jungles ?
 
Pfeffersack said:
On Theology, I'm a bit clueless.I'm honestly not sure how it works in its details, I'm not even completly sure how natural religion spread works.My current understanding is:

- natural spread happens via trade routes only (probably a close proximity to shrine is an exception or does it just boost the chance for trade route spread?)
- a city without any religion is likely to get a religion this way
- a city which already has a religion never (or only very rarely) acquires a new religion on the natural way

More specifically, a religion can spread to an unconverted city which is trade route connected to the holy city. The closer you are to the city, the greater the probability that the religion will spread. The existance of the shrine doubles the chances that the religion will spread.

Converted cities never have religions spread to them naturally. Those who claim otherwise are contradicting the code in the SDK.

Pfeffersack said:
- opinions on none-state-religion cities under Theocracy contradict.Examing the subject is difficult because of the uncertainty about how natural spread works.

Not really - you test it using world builder, or you look at the SDK. Your state religion can spread naturally to your cities. Other state religions cannot. Your missionaries can convert your cities to any religion. Enemy missionaries can convert your cities to your state religion. Team mate missionaries... nuts - I don't remember; I believe teammates can spread any religion to your cities, but take that with a wife of salt.

I've written on this topic before; a search through my posts may reveal one with the answer to this question.
 
sylvanllewelyn said:
Last reply was 2005. What a shame, because I still feel that Environmentalism is worth exploring. Medium upkeep and you get to use it after medicine...

Well first off, your health bonus increase is not just +6, because should you keep forests, you get health benefits from having them also, sort of like getting back your oppertunity costs from free market. So what do you do with all the extra health and happiness? War!!

Evil combination: police state, nationhood, slavery, environmentalism, theocracy. Forget state property, whipping produces way more hammers than workshops. Tons of farms and lumbermills, draft and whip like crazy, friggin forget about war wariness.

Never thought about it that way - an interesting strategy...I will include it in the environmentalism article.


enigmagic said:
I'm only on my second game of Civ IV and still have a lot to learn so this guide has been a massive help.

A quick question though. You get happiness from forests with environmentalism, does this also apply to jungles ?

Thanks :) It applies as well for jungle in theory, but you usually will not have many jungles around when Environmentalism arrives - jungle tiles are not only evry unproductive, they also generate unhealthiness.So keeping them is not a very good idea...and even when you can switch to Environmentalism, every happy face you get from a jungle is penalized with a half point unhealthiness.


@ VoiceOfUnreason

Thanks for bringing light in this issue, time to update my article with this.
 
Reimplemented the Environmentalism article and reworked the one for Theocracy to reflect the influence on minor religions spread.
 
I must give a warning about the "evil environmentalist" strategy - I never tested it on multiplayer. But what I do know is that a more proper use of environmentalism is when your empire is small and you don't have a lot of health and hapiness resources, OR you sold a lot of your resources to other players for GPT.

It's not so much "environmentalism is underpowered" really, it's more like "free market is overrated". On average an extra trade route only translates to a half to one town at most (n a large empre a lot of ctes have nternal trade routes that only generate 1-2 commerce). The way play now 'm pretty convnced that the real debate should be between envronmentalsm or state property.

As to state property, feel that f you have a large empre just the elmnaton of dstance penalty more than maes up for the extra trade route of FM. What I personally le to do wth SP s to stll cottage spam on all my other ctes because of tech ssues but worshop spam on my ronwos cty mang t a producton powerhouse.
 
What happened with the labor civics descriptions? This article mentions caste system many times, but never defines it. Also, the earliest and arguably the best civic, slavery, is also not described. Missing Serfdom is probably no great loss, since it is quite probably the worst civic. Emancipation is no doubt a major pain when the AIs blindly adopt it.

How did this article make it into the Civ IV War Academy without defining any of the four above mentioned labor civics?

The article also contains numerous instances of incorrect or at least odd grammar constructions. Otherwise, it is truly a great article; it would be a shame to not correct it, since that would double its value to War Academy readers!

Sun Tzu Wu
 
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