Civ3 governments and why it's good

I think that Civ3 represents a more faithful account of societies than its predecessors in some respects. With regard to the government system in particular, Civ3 for me displays the idea that societies change fundamentally through revolution and what's so good about it is the idea that, no matter how much you may build up the productive forces of say, a despotism, you will always encounter a point where you are compelled to undergo a period of violent loss, a gamble you take in order to reach a higher threshold of development. This is a real and substantial choice and is often not an easy one. We all know the monarchy/republic debates, and when (or even if) to exit despotism. What I like is that you CANNOT have your cake and eat it too, you make a choice and then you suffer the consequences. You cannot supplement a republic with elements of monarchy in order to make war and money.
In a way Civ3 creates a much more exciting game than Civ4 or 5 because of this. I know in Civ4 there are periods of revolt between switching civics but I never got the sense that I was making a substantial choice with a real gamble which made the potential gain more satisfying.
I was even more struck by Civ5. The civics had the air of unlock-able bonuses which required no strategy, only a progressive 'getting better-ness' that was satisfying only in a very superficial way, like the way in which leveling-up in an RPG is satisfying.
Not to mention what I felt of as a pretty a-historical way to portray societies. In fact there is no social upheaval whatsoever in Civ5, not even civil disorder, as if all resistances, all strikes, protests, revolts, rebellions and revolutions can be condensed into 'unhappiness', what a truly depressing notion.
Whilst the government system of Civ3 leaves a lot to be desired, it is I believe, far superior in political and gameplay terms than its predecessors. What do you think?

I think Republic is hideously over-powered and many of the other Governments fall into the banal, skipable category.

Now, if Monarchy gave you +1 shield like Republic gives you +1 Gold, then we'd be making truly difficult decisions. If Democracy was in any way different to Republic, say with +1 Gold and +1 shields, but at the cost of zero unit support and +2 cost per Unit and severe... severe... War Weariness, then you'd have interesting choices. If Feudalism gave +1 food and if Communism gave +1 food and 'better' communal corruption than it's current level, then you'd have more relevant choices. If Fascism gave you +2 shields, but at the cost of -1 Gold... you see what I'm getting at...

I see what you're getting at, and those are very interesting proposals, I wish the governments had been more diverse. I would have liked the transition period to be more devastating too, and not just boring (waiting turns), there is a good mod I play that has a large population drop upon entering anarchy and upon entering certain governments which gives more of a sense of the loss preceding the hoped for gain.

The mali you get from Despotism are huge. Whether you go for republik, monarchy or even feudalism is secondary to leaving Despotism. Leaving it ASAP is a top priority. Republic tends to the best government only challanged by communism. Communism as it is has excellent corruption. You can have minuscle better commerce and almost twice the production compared to republic. The problem with communism is the high cost of introducing it. Getting the cost of 7 turns anarchy back takes while, quite a long while. Similar problems apply to facism and democracy. The better worker efficiency would make those a very good choice in the ancient age. Also the reduced distance corruption can make a significant difference in the early game, but later distance corruption is reduced by 50% twice, so the advantage democracy has over republic is reduced by 75% aswell. In the end democracy offers too little. That could be changed by making it available in the ancient age as a second optional tech following philosophy like republic does. As for facism it is more difficult. Making it possible to enter it without the cost of anarchy might be an option. The cost of lives would be sufficient then.

I enjoy, in terms of governments, the mods that have a more gradual scale from one government to the next, and additional governments.

Is it possible to switch to Republic too early (from despotism)?

walletta said:

Is it possible to switch to Republic too early (from despotism)?

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Probably not, but you should limit your military spending during early republic. So donnot build too much military before entering republic and in case you did built too much military, than disband it.

justanick said:

Probably not, but you should limit your military spending during early republic. So donnot build too much military before entering republic and in case you did built too much military, than disband it.

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It's just that I managed an obscenely early switch in a recent game and found it very difficult afterwards to balance the books. Also, the populace was less happy than under despotism.

For a proper utilization of republic you need to let your populace grow. You need relatively many towns of relative low size when leaving despotism. The low size is a result of producing many settlers and thus inevitable. The low size eases the anarchy period as those low size towns are easily made happy. Once you are a repulic you need to grow fast and the removal of the despotism penalty makes this easy. Get your towns to city size and you get your reward from the commerce bonus. Reaching city size is of the utmost importance. You get 4 gtp from additional free unit support, +1 or +3(if commercial) base commerce in the city tile, +0 or +1(if the tile has a regular production) shield from the city tile and of course you get the yield from any additional citizen aswell.

If you played bad(or were forced to play bad by military pressure), than switching to republic may have a negative impact onto your net commerce. But if you played well, than your net commerce in your first turn as republic may be twice or trice of what it was in your last turn under despotism. So that is quite a change for the better. Still even that may be insignificant compared to the removal of the despotism penalty.

justanick said:

For a proper utilization of republic you need to let your populace grow. You need relatively many towns of relative low size when leaving despotism. The low size is a result of producing many settlers and thus inevitable. The low size eases the anarchy period as those low size towns are easily made happy. Once you are a repulic you need to grow fast and the removal of the despotism penalty makes this easy. Get your towns to city size and you get your reward from the commerce bonus. Reaching city size is of the utmost importance. You get 4 gtp from additional free unit support, +1 or +3(if commercial) base commerce in the city tile, +0 or +1(if the tile has a regular production) shield from the city tile and of course you get the yield from any additional citizen aswell.

If you played bad(or were forced to play bad by military pressure), than switching to republic may have a negative impact onto your net commerce. But if you played well, than your net commerce in your first turn as republic may be twice or trice of what it was in your last turn under despotism. So that is quite a change for the better. Still even that may be insignificant compared to the removal of the despotism penalty.

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I think I had only 3 or 4 towns when I switched. I had started surrounded by a lot of jungle which slowed expansion considerably.

I did not know that about size 7+ cities in Republic.

walletta said:

Is it possible to switch to Republic too early (from despotism)?

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That depends on the victory condition you plan to achieve. For domination on smaller maps and 100K victories you don't even need Republic as there pop rushing is the better way for production.

walletta said:

I think I had only 3 or 4 towns when I switched.

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How did you achieve to get republic early with such a minuscule empire? By the time you leave anarchy you should have more like 16 towns, however small they may be.

walletta said:

I had started surrounded by a lot of jungle which slowed expansion considerably.

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That would seem to be true, but it is even more reason to spam out settlers as they kill jungle by founding towns. The most relevant bottleneck at building settlers is reaching size 3. For that you need 2 worked tiles, the city tile and a second tile that is not jungle. When the population would reach size 3 the settler is to be finished. Even in jungle-rich terrain 10+ towns should be possible by the time you can have republic.

If you are confronted with extremely jungle-rich terrain feudalism might be an option. Unfortunalty it takes quite a while to get the needed technology. The decision you describe might be one of those rare cases where the choice for the first postdespotic government might be less trivial than usually.

justanick said:

How did you achieve to get republic early with such a minuscule empire? By the time you leave anarchy you should have more like 16 towns, however small they may be.

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Republic slingshot combined with those cities being gold-wealthy, perhaps? If you start with Alphabet, go Writing first, then Code of Laws and Philosophy, it's only three (albeit somewhat expensive) techs to the slingshot. 3-4 towns may be a bit low, but if they're wealthy, and particularly if the capital, say, wonder-rushed the Colossus, I could see it happening. And with the surrounding terrain being jungle, that would discourage growth.

It also depends on the map size - 3-4 towns on Tiny is relatively more than on Standard.

But indeed I'd say it is possible in some situations to switch away from Despotism too early, particularly if you have high demands for workers due to poor terrain, and/or a very high number of military units due to war. I've occasionally had games where even Monarchy was less preferable than Despotism shortly after I researched it due to having too many units relative to Monarchy's support limit, and it's less rare to run into that with Republic.

I do like the suggestions from Buttercup. While I like the concept of governments in Civ3, in practice I do think it would be more interesting if there were more reasons to change them. In a lot of games, I'll just switch once, to monarchy or republic, and stay there. And generally it's desirable to do so as early as possible. Occasionally I might switch from monarchy to republic or vice versa, if my playstyle becomes much less or more warlike than it was early game. But generally, I choose one and stick with it. I can't recall ever switching to Democracy for strategic reasons, nor to Fascism. Feudalism I have done once or twice, but it's extremely niche.

Communism I've done occasionally since it is unique, but I can't say it's ever worked out strategically in practice. It's late-game to start with, but even if it is still competitive, it often winds up being the case that your most-productive cities become much less productive, whereas your old unproductive cities are still not very productive due to lacking courthouses/police stations. In theory it can work out well, but it doesn't necessarily work out well in practice.

TL;DR: I do like the concept of distinct governments in Civ3, but agree that they could use more strategic depth to make them more than, in essence, a choice between very-warlike-government (Monarchy) and everything else (Republic) in 95%+ of games.

Quintillus said:

But generally, I choose one and stick with it.

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That is indeed preferable.

Quintillus said:

Communism I've done occasionally since it is unique, but I can't say it's ever worked out strategically in practice. It's late-game to start with, but even if it is still competitive, it often winds up being the case that your most-productive cities become much less productive, whereas your old unproductive cities are still not very productive due to lacking courthouses/police stations. In theory it can work out well, but it doesn't necessarily work out well in practice.

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Well, the thing about new governments is that you must prepare yourself for them. If you did before entering anarchy what you could do to have good start into the new government, than things go on much smoother. For communism this means to have many courthouses, as they save more than 12.5 percentage points in corruption for few bucks. Police stations can still be built later, they only save a bit more than 6.25 percentage points for twice the costs. The preparation for the first postdespotic goverment is much simpler: Spam out settlers. Let your population expand first and explode second. First you need many towns, changing those cheap low populated towns into quality cities can still happen after leaving despotism.

Quintillus said:

But indeed I'd say it is possible in some situations to switch away from Despotism too early, particularly if you have high demands for workers due to poor terrain, and/or a very high number of military units due to war. I've occasionally had games where even Monarchy was less preferable than Despotism shortly after I researched it due to having too many units relative to Monarchy's support limit, and it's less rare to run into that with Republic.

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I rather disagree here. Military threats make it less favourable to switch, but it remains necassary. A short term disadvantage in net commerce must simply be endured till the advantages will overweight. Else you would lose in the meantime a lot to higher corruption and lower base yields on food, shields and commerce.

Going for monarchy or feudalism instead of republic might be an option but even that can be questionable choice if chances are that in the mid run republic would still offer a substancial advantage. And that tends to be the case unless you intend to do some continuous heavy military investment. Than monarchy and sometimes feudalism will be preferable. Also having many highly corrupt cities favours those governments as the commerce bonus there will be corrupt, thus the relative importance of free unit support and scientist experts will increase subtancially. But if your only or at least your main challenge is jungle, than republic tends to be favourable. The intial investment into the jungle will be higher, but so will be the yields of using those soon to be grasslands later.

the main concern of ultra-early republics is the unit support for workers. it can drawn you. but you need the workers to get the faster-growing republican towns productive. but it is rare. most of the times you won't have Rep before you have planted a few towns to cover the costs for some workforce. and I am talking about 1500bc here...
t_x

Quintillus said:

Republic slingshot combined with those cities being gold-wealthy, perhaps? If you start with Alphabet, go Writing first, then Code of Laws and Philosophy, it's only three (albeit somewhat expensive) techs to the slingshot. 3-4 towns may be a bit low, but if they're wealthy, and particularly if the capital, say, wonder-rushed the Colossus, I could see it happening. And with the surrounding terrain being jungle, that would discourage growth.

It also depends on the map size - 3-4 towns on Tiny is relatively more than on Standard.

But indeed I'd say it is possible in some situations to switch away from Despotism too early, particularly if you have high demands for workers due to poor terrain, and/or a very high number of military units due to war. I've occasionally had games where even Monarchy was less preferable than Despotism shortly after I researched it due to having too many units relative to Monarchy's support limit, and it's less rare to run into that with Republic.

I do like the suggestions from Buttercup. While I like the concept of governments in Civ3, in practice I do think it would be more interesting if there were more reasons to change them. In a lot of games, I'll just switch once, to monarchy or republic, and stay there. And generally it's desirable to do so as early as possible. Occasionally I might switch from monarchy to republic or vice versa, if my playstyle becomes much less or more warlike than it was early game. But generally, I choose one and stick with it. I can't recall ever switching to Democracy for strategic reasons, nor to Fascism. Feudalism I have done once or twice, but it's extremely niche.

Communism I've done occasionally since it is unique, but I can't say it's ever worked out strategically in practice. It's late-game to start with, but even if it is still competitive, it often winds up being the case that your most-productive cities become much less productive, whereas your old unproductive cities are still not very productive due to lacking courthouses/police stations. In theory it can work out well, but it doesn't necessarily work out well in practice.

TL;DR: I do like the concept of distinct governments in Civ3, but agree that they could use more strategic depth to make them more than, in essence, a choice between very-warlike-government (Monarchy) and everything else (Republic) in 95%+ of games.

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This is about what happened. I had high support costs as I had spammed workers rather than settlers, to hack my way through the dense foliage.

The above is what happened to me also, which is what prompted me to write about Civ3 governments. It was the most interesting first half of a civ game I have played in a long while, I had to pull out lots of tricks to save my monarchy from bankruptcy. I agree the republic is OP and I bow to your experience, but what I wanted to say is that the Civ3 model of government is more true to life than other installments ONLY in the sense that in order to truly switch from one government to another there has to be a revolution. The previous ruling class, the old order if you will, will never willingly step-down, they won't be guilted into resignation, you have to depose them in one way or another.

The main difference between Republic and Monarchy choices in the early stages relate to two things when I play: How many Units do I want and how much War Weariness do I want. If I'm on an Island with just one or zero island competitors then I'll probably go Republic, but if I'm on a Pangaea with oodles of land to munch up and wars to prepare for then I'll probably stick with Monarchy. Why? Because at Regent you're still going to be ahead Technologically whichever you choose, but on Pangaea it's just so much less hassle (read, easier to play lazily) to stick with Monarchy. Very few rioting cities and when you look at your 'allowed Units' its, oh that's nice, allowed 300, Currently owned 305. It's just a bit slower going at 7 turns per Tech instead of 5 or 6. So yeah, from a gaming perspective, the path of least resistance is most certainly a potentially desirable option (even if it's not quite as efficient).

That logic has the flaw that risking more hassle with city management means to have techs more early and thus having better units which means less hassle in the warfare. But in general i think you have made a good point. Also there is the psychological effect. War wearyness may make you aim for peace too early and thus reduce the performance of you overall strategy. Monarchy encourages a more steady gameplay. Republic is more like get city up to specs ASAP so you can research for cavalry at 4 turns per tech and then steamroll your enemies with cavalry. If you intend to go for any serios war before cavalry monarchy tends to be favourable.