T3 - R&T - long term Government goals.

It is clear we need a better Government than Despotism. There are only 2 real candidates for our victory quest; The Republic and Democracy.

The Republic has the benefit that we can get it fairly quickly. Its downside (compared to Democracy) is that we pay double for units over the unit-limit, corruption is higher and our workers are slower.

Democracy has another problem; it requires 2 optional techs; Printing Press and Democracy itself. Going for Democracy diverts us from researching other useful techs first (Astronomy, Gunpowder, Military Tradition to name a few).

Also: We are currently researching a tech not leading to Democracy; Engineering. We have already put too much beakers and time into that to change now.

I say we try to get The Republic as soon as possible (via trade) while, depending on the time we get The Republic, go towards Democracy in techs. If The Republic is obtained quickly; we'll revolt to The Republic, while taking a right turn in research to Education and Astronomy.
If it isn't obtained by the time we have Theology, we go for Democracy and revolt to that.

There is another aspect to this; The Dutch have both The Republic as well as Monotheism. Let's assume we obtain Monotheism through some other way, while still not having the Repubic-tech. And the dutch have Theology as well. Then it would be my choice to obtain Theology (perhaps during peace) to go Democracy and if we can't obtain Theology we take The Repubic.

This way we are betting on 2 horses, without the chance to loose a bet.
What do you say ?

Can't fight wars easily in democracy and it's a long time to wait. Can't afford two bouts of anarchy either. Democracy is nice, but too many downsides IMO. I prefer Republic and ICS to pay for support.

Whenever playing a peaceful game, I always go for democracies. Improved worker speed and lowered corruption are nothing to sneeze at.

well i say republic, RegentMan im new and am not completley sure of our goals, BUT with all the talk and everything about striking India after the Dutch war, to me it doesn't sound very peacefull.

Mad-Bax, you're right democracy has too many downsides to make it more effective then the Republic

Agree with mad-bax and Ranger99.

Rik Meleet said:

... Also: We are currently researching a tech not leading to Democracy; Engineering. We have already put too much beakers and time into that to change now. ....

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True, but it does lead to another very useful tech...

Well, post-foreign wars we're going to be peaceful. However, we're talking of switching to republic while maintaining an army of conquest where each unit costs 2 gold per extra unit, so a war argument is out the window. I fail to see why democracy is horrible when compared to republic.

RM: Democracy is not horrible. In fact, if it was available around the same time as Republic, then I would be for it. Especially double worker speed is very useful in this stage of the game. But unfortunately it's not available now, and it's a long wait.

Concerning the war argument: there are two sides to this. The effects of WW are more severe in democracy. The unit upkeep is worse in Republic. It is not so easy to tell - at least not for me - which is more important now.

However, by the time Democracy is available our empire should have grown a lot (in number of cities, and their size), but our army will not be much bigger than it is now. Thus upkeep costs are hopefully less of a problem then.

It is definitely to our advantage to change governments as quickly as possible, even with the upkeep costs. We are wasting a lot of production and food to the despotism penalty. That alone offsets the potential cost of upkeep in Republic. We also need to have the courage to leave the core without MPs because in Republic every unit needs to have a real purpose. That is why many top players build very few defensive units, sticking with an easily defensible border and fast offensive units to counter any landings by sea.

If we were planning to stay at war late into the M.A. or early I.A., then we should consider Monarchy for its lower War Wearieness and higher upkeep.

A 2nd switch to Democracy might actually work out pretty well, if we're not in a rush to switch as soon as we get the technology. The ideal way to handle it is to complete our expansion (and thus most of our wars) prior to the switch, and be in a position to go with mainly culture builds after that point. If we can get the faster workers before steam power, then the massive railroading project will go faster, giving us more leverage. The push to railroads will more than offset anything switching to Democracy might cost us.

It is an interesting suggestion actually. Monarchy and Republic are much closer together in C3C than before. We would be able to build an support more workers aswell as units in Monarchy and switch to Democracy ten turns before steam. We will lose maybe 6 turns of culture and production due to the second anarchy period, but I wonder how much we can claw back through the increased railing and forrestry rate, plus lower corruption?

Since we are not playing for the fastest finish and just want to win, then as an experiment I would like to try this idea.

I am converted. Let's go Monarchy and then Democracy. It's so British too!

Monarchy is not an option. War Weariness is overestimated in The Republic and Democracy. Monarchy is only an option with a huge standing army (3 to 4 times larger than we have at the moment) or when we are suffering tremendously from WW (always war games).

That's not the case in this game, so Monarchy is not an option.

It's The Republic or Democracy.

Rik Meleet said:

It's The Republic or Democracy.

Click to expand...

Worker speed alone makes me for democracy. Plus, by the time we get to democracy, we won't be in many (if any) wars, thus WW isn't an issue. Decreased corruption and immunity to propaganda are also quite nice.

Rik Meleet said:

Monarchy is not an option. War Weariness is overestimated in The Republic and Democracy. Monarchy is only an option with a huge standing army (3 to 4 times larger than we have at the moment) or when we are suffering tremendously from WW (always war games).

That's not the case in this game, so Monarchy is not an option.

It's The Republic or Democracy.

Click to expand...

The advantages of being a Republic outway the any benefits of being in a Democracy. The unit support, or lack thereof is a big killer in a Democracy. It used to be that If you could be in a Republic, it is was better to be in a Democracy, but not in . Republic is the onloy way to go.

I think this argument is misrepresenting the facts.

Monarchy
Corruption is Problematic
Free Unit Support is 2 per town, 4 per city, 8 per Metropolis
Unit support cost is 1 gold per unit above quota per turn.
Worker rate = 2
Assimilation chance = 2%
Draft limit = 2
Military Police limit = 3
War Weariness = none
Standard Trade Bonus? = No

Republic
Corruption is Nuisance
Free Unit Support is 1 per town, 3 per city, 4 per Metropolis
Unit support cost is 2 gold per unit above quota per turn.
Worker rate = 2
Assimilation chance = 2%
Draft limit = 1
Military Police limit = 0
War Weariness = low
Standard Trade Bonus? = Yes

Democracy
Corruption is Minimal
Free Unit Support is 0 per town, 0 per city, 0 per Metropolis
Unit support cost is 1 gold per unit above quota per turn.
Worker rate = 3
Assimilation chance = 4%
Draft limit = 1
Military Police limit = 0
War Weariness = High
Standard Trade Bonus? = Yes

From this it is clear to me that the best thing to do is to go to republic and stay there.

However, it would be interesting for me at least to go to Monarchy and then Democracy. We can then go for all out war until steam and then switch to democracy. We will have a lot of towns (Size 6 or lower) due to ICS. We can therefore support twice as many units for free, and pay only half as much for additional units. In turn this means that we can build a lot of workers and which can be used to rail in democracy at a high rate. This will increase the productivity of our towns much quicker. The lower corruption will amplify this.

Other factors include:
In monarchy we can delay markets a little and build culture instead. We can garrison cities that get big.

We have been at war with Persia for a long time. If we switch to Republic we could have a war weariness problem.

We do not need to research at a huge rate since we are killing the AI research rate anyway.

It's just more fun from a "story of the game" perspective. It mimics British history too.

So Republic is the "conventional wisdom" route of course. But Monarchy to Democracy does have advantages, and is more interesting in many ways.

Last time WE POLLED THIS Democracy wasn't a popular choice. The Republic won, but Monarchy had a lot of support.

We can get the Republic from the Dutch anytime we want it. We want to reduce them first to two cities, and then try to get both the Republic & Monotheism. Hopefully they’ll have researched Feudalism by then (they’ll target that rather than Theology because it enables their UU) & we can get Feudalism, then trade that for Monotheism and the Republic. I’ve started a thread discussing this HERE so we’ll be clear what we should obtain in our peace negotiations.

Unless one is religious, changing governments twice rarely pays. The Republic isn’t that much less desirable than Democracy. Once we’re finished with our wars we’ll be disbanding almost all of our military anyway so the unit upkeep cost won’t come into play. Indeed, if one has a bunch of cities – and we’re going to have a bunch of cities – unit upkeep becomes negligible: we’ll get 3 free units per city whereas Democracy gets none. We can easily win this game without researching anything other than the bottom tier of techs through Military Tradition, plus the top tier through education. Unless we want to have fun, as mad-bax suggests, I don’t see how getting Democracy pays off.

However, we should also clarify how we plan to win this game. The External Consulate plans to take all of the territory up to and including Gordium, giving us lots of room to expand. I assumed that after we finished the Dutch war, completed a final solution for India, and took China that we’d start warring much more selectively and at a slower pace so that we can develop infrastructure. We still want to cripple or polish off the French fairly quickly so they wouldn’t grow too big before gunpowder, and also to provide an avenue to Portugal so that we could capture the Pyramids; but I assumed our warring would become much more intermittent.

If we decide we would like to get Democracy, then revolting to Monarchy makes sense. I’d be inclined to build libraries like mad and ramp our research to the max in order to get to Military Tradition. Then we’d do a mass upgrade of horses/knights and in fairly rapid order take as much territory as we want. I wouldn’t research Education and I would wait until the end of our “annexing” period to take whatever city builds the Great Library, so when we take that we can catch up on top tier techs. Then we could beeline to Democracy, revolt to that, and have a peaceful builder’s game.

I'm bumping this thread. We're at a turning point of the game, and this thread has some interesting discussion. Although I think we want to head for the Republic, and continue in that throughout the game, m-b makes an interesting case for a monarchy/democracy strategy that we shouldn't forget about. We're going to be at war off and on for quite awhile, and it may make sense to concentrate on war first, then building culture second. (I don't suggest we won't build culture while we're in Monarchy; just that war will be our principle occupation.)

Also, another long term government goal we should have is to attract some sourt of activity. I have not seen this much stagnation since Demogame 2 (well, both DG2 and DG6 are both played on emperor level ).

I would still like to go monarchy - democracy just for the fun of it.

I would also like to run straight for Military tradition and cavalry, then get economics and smiths and our GA which we can use to go culture mad instead of unit mad.