State of Civics Poll

[Hickman888]

I think stability in and of itself must be considered amongst the pros and cons of of a civic, so at some point in a game strong combinations like that must be abandoned to create a more governable realm.

In regards to egalitarian vs individualism, I really think the "spend gold to finish production" should be moved to either individualism or free enterprise, to represent the ability to conjure resources from private business outside of the public sphere. Perhaps +1 hammer to town for individualism as well, as another incentive against egalitarian?

The way I interpret it, the 3 late game Economy civics are meant to represent a choice: Free Enterprise boosts , Central Planning boosts , and Public Welfare gives a small boost, as well as a way to rush production. A little taste of both.

The issue here is that of the 3 late game Society civics, Individualism is the only one that can be used to directly boost production, but it suffers a stability penalty with Public Welfare, which is the civic that allows you to actually do something useful with your ; Rush production.

So I'm kinda torn here in my opinion, because on the one hand I love the current choice that the economy civics force you to make, between commerce and production. But on the other hand, it feels like the Society category doesn't have too much cohesion with the Economy category, that other civic categories seem to have with each other.

I think I'll wait until the new map to really make a definitive statement, though. That could potentially turn the current meta on its head.

 

[Leoreth]

The main concern I have with the new maps is actually the relative value of capital specific modifiers. People have raised some good points about them becoming less valuable simply from the fact that a smaller percentage of your yields come from the capital. But personally I always considered these civics to be very strong (especially Regulated Trade seemed like a no-brainer) so let's see.

 

[BaneFire]

A simple, but rough to balance, option is to introduce unique buildings to each civic so that they have something extra to offer.

 

[Zaddy]

I'll bite on this. Before I go on, I think an important thing to state first is which game speed I play on, which civs I usually play, and what victories I usually go for. These can radically alter your evaluation of civics, so I feel it's important to let my biases be known. tl;dr at the bottom if you don't wanna read my screed.

Spoiler Biases :

Game speed: Always Marathon
Most played civs (favorites and absolute most played in bold): America, Colombia, Mali, Rome, Greece, France, Italy, Spain, England, Germany, Byzantium, Russia, Iran, China, Korea, Japan, Tamils, Mongolia (to summarize, I like conquest focused civs, or civs that require you to balance conquest with multiple other goals)
Victories: Usually domination, and sometimes UHV for civs with small cores or bad modifiers

That said, here's my take:

Spoiler Government :

Despotism - 95% of my games, I am in this civic until I have powered factories. This provides such an overwhelming advantage in creating fast infrastructure (meaning that infrastructure has a longer time to accrue benefits) or an army, that no other civic competes until factories render the need for Despotism mostly obsolete. Want quick infrastructure with a late start? Go Despotism and Citizenship and two pop whip everything. Need to get workers out ASAP? Whip Workers in Manorialism. Just as in vanilla, it's an absurdly centralizing mechanic to the point where the entire game revolves around it. S

Republic - For select "tall" civs like Italy and Korea, this is an absolute must have. If you have no need to expand or quickly whip infrastructure or units, this civic is extremely powerful. It's very situational and I don't consider using this in 90% of games, but when it's the right situation, it's really, really good. That said, I'm not sure if it's desirable to have certain civics be so all or nothing in terms of use case.

Monarchy - To be blunt, I find very very little reason to use this in my games. In vanilla, Hereditary Rule was a great civic. But that's because it wasn't competing with vanilla Slavery for a civic slot. Most happiness issues can be dealt with with some combination of happiness buildings (whipped with Despotism of course), whipping an army to grab land with happiness resources, and basic population management (ie not working coast tiles outside of the core). Who cares about double production speed Jails when you can just whip them?

Elective - This has some niche use with certain civs (Poland, Mongolia, Holy Rome, Russia, maybe some others) after you've used Despotism to whip out all your needed army and infrastructure and would rather have a nice commerce boost. Overall though, I hardly use this. Many of the aforementioned civs want to also use Manorialism to get out cheap workers and spam Vassalage + Manorialism farms, meaning there's very little benefit to the boost to unimproved tiles.

Democracy - I'm going to disagree with some commenters above and say that this civic is robust and competitive with State Party in the late game. However, this heavily depends on the civ your playing and how wide you're playing. For a typical Euro or colonial American civ, they can easily pay for an expansive empire without State Party, and Democracy allows farming for Great Persons for chaining Golden Ages to ignore stability during domination pushes. It also has positive stability synergy with some of the best civics (Constitution, Individualism/Egalitarianism).

State Party - Poor man's Democracy. You might be puzzled why I would say that, but allow me to explain. Democracy is essentially a privilege to run. If you have over-expanded, don't have sufficient modifiers to make farming great people worthwhile, or don't have the modifiers to make expansion profitable, State Party is your solution. You are exchanging the luxury of great people for the necessity of making your economy function. A lot of my favorite civs to play do not need to make this trade off, so I do not often use this civic. That said, it has it's place and doesn't need changing. Also worth noting is that it has worse stability synergy compared to Democracy (no bonus from Constitution, and the bonus from Individualism/Egalitarianism replaced with a boost from the much, much worse Totalitarianism).

Spoiler Legitimacy :

Citizenship - This is a situationally powerful civic for building basic infrastructure during the early and mid game. I will often revolt to this immediately after spawning as a Euro in order to build some basic infrastructure quickly. I cannot recall ever using the rushbuying mechanic for units outside of Tamils (where a goal to accumulate gold is followed by a conquest goal). I'm unsure if the rushbuying mechanic is intended to be more universally useful, but I never use it. This is a building civic that quickly gets replaced with Vassalage as soon as the buildings are whipped.

Vassalage - This civic has it all. The free units bonus alone can prop up a dysfunctional economy. The happiness really helps mitigate the need for Monarchy in the early and midgame. The hammer boost for farms can be amazing for certain civs (Russia and Mongolia especially come to mind) and is otherwise nice to have. The only reason I ever switch out of this is because of the negative stability that comes with late game Economy and Society civics.

Meritocracy - This civic has two uses cases to me: tall, specialist focused civs (Italy and Korea spring to mind), and late game civs running Central Planning, who appreciate the specialist commerce and bonus to watermills and windmills, where it acts as a powerful alternative to Constitution. I do not run this civic otherwise. Even with the commerce bonus, watermills outside of Central Planning are a mediocre improvement that does not compete with the long term potential of cottage spam.

Centralism - Aside from the tall civs I mentioned above, this is a civic I am forced to switch to because I can't afford the Vassalage stability malus and haven't unlocked Constitution yet. The high upkeep means this civic often cannot even pay for itself over Vassalage for Euro colonial civs. I am very rarely in this civic for anything other stability reasons.

Revolutionism - This is a civic I have complained about before and unfortunately will have to do so again. The increased Great General emergence is probably nice for a few UHVs (Mexico and Argentina come to mind), but otherwise Great Generals aren't all that important beyond one for a supermedic. The happiness decay is kinda nice, but comes at a time when your factories are coming online and Despotism is finally on its way out. Factories also mostly obviate the need for drafting with Nationhood. The hammer bonus from Workshops and Lumbermills is nice, but production is usually in abundance in the late game already, and the civs that want to build lots of Workshops (Central Planning users) have the option of the much more economically-useful Meritocracy. Happiness boosts from two expensive and situational buildings unfortunately fail to save this civic from mediocrity. Needless to say, I cannot recall a time I used this civic. Its only positive civic synergy being Totalitarianism is doing it absolutely no favors.

Constitution - For non-communist civs (and even then not a bad choice for Central Planning enjoyers), this is your bread and butter for the majority of the late game. Good civic synergy, powerful economic boost (for example, an extra merchant in each city is +3 gold per city, with caveats assuming you have available merchant slots, etc) and a production boost to a building you'll want to build almost everywhere assuming you didn't build Westminster Palace. Just generally good.

Spoiler Society :

Slavery - Useful bonuses for a variety of civs throughout the early and midgame. Not much to say, this is a fine civic.

Manorialism - See above. The faster worker bonus combined with Despotism helps jumpstart development. Obviously useful with Vassalage farm spam for civs that want/need to do that.

Caste System - This civic is more niche compared to the proceeding two, but has its use cases. The better workers are approximately equivalent to the cheaper workers of Manorialism, but the economic bonus it provides is more niche compared to the other two. High upkeep generally keeps me away from this civic unless I have a LOT of plantations.

Individualism - It's a battle between this and Egalitarianism in the late game. Can lose steam in the way later parts of the game to Egalitarianism once most of your cottages have matured, but I still love seeing the entirely of North America blanketed with Individualism + Nationhood + Human Genome Project towns in the late game. Unlocking this and Free Enterprise is usually the point where you have to bite the bullet and switch out of Vassalage.

Totalitarianism - To be honest, I forget this civic exists most of the time. Increased unit production on a tech so late into the game is just outright not needed. I usually have the required army I need for the rest of the game by the time I have this civic, and production is in abundance in any case. Most civs don't grow large enough to cause the kind of long, grindy wars that war weariness punishes. Angry population is almost never an issue by the time this civic becomes available, and the bonus it provides is minuscule. No city revolt on conquest is alright, but fails to compete with the economy-defining boosts of Egalitarianism and Individualism. This is Revolutionism on steroids (or whatever the opposite of steroids is) - weak or nice-to-have bonuses bound up together in a package that fails to address the usual struggles most civs find themselves in in the late game - paying for your empire.

Egalitarianism - The recentish move of this civic from Sociology to Civil Rights is highly painful to non-cottage civs during the Industrial era, but I digress. This is a powerful alternative to Individualism for certain civs that find a cottage economy unworkable or otherwise undesirable, or are otherwise past the point where the cottage growth boost is relevant. I have nothing bad to say about this civic.

Spoiler Economy :

Redistribution - This is a fairly narrow civic meant basically only for the early game. It's fine, and important for civs like Rome and Greece to unlock Merchant Trade before expanding.

Merchant Trade - A strong general civic that applies to most wide civs until the advent of Free Enterprise. The happiness bonus from Oases is fairly odd given that most cities that have an Oasis in their BFC will generally never grow large enough to to hit unhappiness. I'd kinda like there to be a slightly more relevant bonus (maybe like +1 gold from Merchants?) but overall this is a well balanced civic.

Regulated Trade - The yin to Merchant Trade's yang. Obviously powerful with capital-centric/tall strategies. Not much bad to say, I frequently use this, although in the late game I almost always switch to Free Enterprise or Central Planning.

Free Enterprise - Continuing the theme of this well balanced civic category, Free Enterprise is a powerful generalist civic that provides a useful boost to most civs. More powerful corporations and better trade routes make this a generically good civic for most situations.

Central Planning - My personal favorite civic. Turning almost every river tile into a slightly worse Human Genome Project Town in the mid Industrial era is absurdly powerful. Combining this civic with Meritocracy turns your watermills into amazing tiles, and giving every specialist +1 hammer and commerce is just gravy. Double production speed on buildings you'll want in basically all cities in the late game is almost overkill. I will usually run this civic unless I have a ton of coastal cities or I'm playing the Americans.

Public Welfare - As basically everyone else has noted above, this civic just isn't very good unfortunately. Corporation unhappiness can sting a bit but is usually manageable (Free Enterprise civs will usually have access to colonies that provide sufficient happiness). At the same time, happiness is not usually in such abundance that the extra commerce boost from excess happiness counteracts the loss of food and production from Central Planning, nor the raw commerce of Free Enterprise. Civs that want to spam windmills can just go Meritocracy + Central Planning and have a more useful economic civic instead. Rushbuying buildings is hilariously expensive and nearly never worth it, especially when Central Planning gets you your basic industrial base faster for free. I cannot recall a time ever using this civic.

Spoiler Religion :

Deification - This is a perfectly fine civic that loses steam to the other civics and organized religion as the game goes on, as intended. No complaints.

Clergy - A highly powerful and useful civic generally applicable during the entire game. After factories come online this starts losing to Secularism, but in general this is what I'm in for the majority of the game until the Industrial era.

Monasticism - This is definitely more niche than Clergy in my opinion. Unless I have a specific UHV goal in mind or I'm playing something tall, I think this loses to Clergy in general usefulness. I don't think this necessarily needs to be changed, but it's definitely less applicable to all situations, unlike Clergy.

Theocracy - In my opinion, I have a hard time seeing the use for this over running Conquest while you build your army in the very early game. Theocracy generally unlocks too late for a lot of Euro civs to want to use it, when they can just immediately switch to Conquest on spawn and whip out an army before switching out. No nonstate religion spread is pretty whatever IMO, I'd rather have the extra sacking gold from Conquest.

Tolerance - Aside from the select few UHVs that care about capital culture, there's hardly any reason to run this civic, ESPECIALLY now that Secularism is only a few techs away, which also removes pesky diplo penalties from differing religion. Maybe if you're going into the late game with a religious UHV this is needed? But it never feels GOOD to use, certainly.

Secularism - I feel like this is a bit *too* good over religious alternatives once you unlock it. Of course secularizing should be incentivized, but I often feel like it's kinda a no brainer. Easier diplomacy, better research, faster production of some generally useful buildings? Hard to say no to that over whatever any of the other civics offer.

Spoiler Territory :

Conquest - If I'm playing any civs that has an interest in conquest in the short to medium term (for the civs I play, that's most of them), I will switch to this on spawn if available. City Raider 2 siege with only a barracks in particular is invaluable. Obviously not something you want to sit in too long, but using this military boost to take out neighbors or scary rivals is so powerful. For example, using this boost to kill England and France ASAP as America and take some of the best land in the game for yourself while eliminating your main rivals for wonders.

Tributaries - A useful civic in general. Sometimes I switch to this just to get rid of the cottage malus from Conquest or for better stability, but the commerce from vassal cities is nice too (capitulating the entirety of Europe as Arabia or whoever and having a 50 commerce capital is fun!). Nothing bad to say here.

Isolationism - Maybe the worst civic in the game, in general. Outside of some specific instances, foreign trade routes will usually be integral to your economy, and one free specialist absolutely does not make up for that, even with mainly landlocked countries. I use this with Korea and Italy to counteract the stability malus from late game Republic. Otherwise, this civic will almost always actively tank your economy for little gain.

Colonialism - Fine enough, although as you add more colonies the relative value of one commerce ends up being dwarfed by the maintenance costs. Can also struggle early on vs Tributaries even for colonial civs (for example, I like capitulating the Incans and letting them administer their crappy land for me while giving me free commerce). The boost to slave plantations and extra XP on water units are nice to have but nothing really wows me here. In the late game a colonial empire would almost certainly benefit more from Multilateralism.

Nationhood - Drafting is mostly superfluous in the late game with factories, although it can be a useful panic button or just something easy to create some military police. The most attractive part for me is the extra Town production, which really lets cottage economies shine. If I'm not running cottages, I will almost always switch to...

Multilateralism - Low upkeep, better air units, better trade routes (conditionally), extra production from trade routes? All very generally useful. If I'm running Central Planning this will generally be what I switch to as I'm not all that interested in drafting.

Spoiler tl;dr :

S Tier - consistently, game changingly strong - Despotism
A Tier - consistently strong, or situationally game changingly strong - Republic, Democracy, State Party, Vassalage, Constitution, Individualism, Egalitarianism, Central Planning, Clergy, Conquest
B Tier - consistently useful, or situationally strong - Citizenship, Slavery, Manorialism, Merchant Trade, Regulated Trade, Free Enterprise, Tributaries, Colonialism, Nationhood, Multilateralism
C Tier - consistently mediocre, or situationally useful - Elective, Meritocracy, Centralism, Caste System, Redistribution, Monasticism, Theocracy
D Tier - consistently weak, or situationally mediocre - Monarchy, Revolutionism, Totalitarianism, Public Welfare, Tolerance
F Tier - consistently actively harmful, or situationally weak - Isolationism

 

[TsimTsigal]

Maybe Despotism should get city/distance/both maintenance increase, reflecting how inefficent tyranny is at controlling large territories? In early game it still will be viable, while early empires (Rome, Persia, maybe China but China can run surprisingly low maintenance) and colonial powers picking Despotism shall suffer a lot from it?

 

[Cosmos1985]

Or perhaps a GP generation malus? Idk - but certainly agree that it could use a nerf of some kind. As of now it's just too strong for too long for too many.

Great post, Zaddy!

 

[Dracosolon]

Despotism should get a nerf on slower speeds anyway, but another thing to consider is that if Vassalage lose the bonus, Monarchy will be a bit more valuable and Despotism a bit less.

 

[StuartKleinsen]

Just a thought: give despotism one or two on happiness in each city; means the bigger (horizontal and vertical) a civ is getting the more the malus hits.
Overall I'm open to more negative effects of civics.

 

[Hickman888]

I probably have some disagreement with the community meta on this one: Personally, I find the value for Despotism drops a lot after the Classical era, once you unlock Tributaries. Since I usually use Despotism to whip out military units, and it’s at this point that units start being a little too expensive to whip for a lot of cities. (Tributaries is such a solid civic for Medieval European civilizations, it is definitely S-Tier.)

Additionally, most of your cities in the early game do not need a ton of infrastructure. Whipping out Libraries/Markets with Citizenship is way overrated as a strategy, IMO. You’re going to add maybe +2 / in most of your cities? Not worth it. I’d much rather my cities build wealth and keep running Vassalage, so I can save that 20 /turn, than switch to Citizenship so I can build subpar Libraries and Markets. Unless you’re swimming in hammers, you can usually wait until the Settlers auto build those buildings for you.

I think Despotism gets mentioned a lot in these forums because it’s absolutely fantastic for a lot of UHVs. But that’s because, by their nature, UHVs tend to be short-term oriented, and the player must adopt a high time preference in order to get those goals accomplished in the immediate term. For most long UHVs (ie Japan, Russia, China), Despotism isn’t part of my strategy at all (unless I messed up and I need to panic whip to do something in time).

I’m also really against giving negative effects to civics, unless the situation absolutely calls for it. (Republic nerfing most land improvements in order to completely shift a specialist playstyle, for example.) I personally think Despotism is perfect the way it is, it doesn’t need a nerf. But if it must be done, I’d rather see it’s Upkeep cost increased, than anything else done.

 

[TsimTsigal]

Just a thought: give despotism one or two on happiness in each city; means the bigger (horizontal and vertical) a civ is getting the more the malus hits.

Respectfully disagree, Despotism already gives lots of indirectly, and is restrained by unhappiness. Adding base unhappiness will overnerf it.

Regarding Despotism being overrated - well, whipping IS powerful, and Despotism IS a very strong civic; it's more the fact it has rather weak competition (Republic/Elective are both situational, and it seems to be universally agreed that Monarchy is kinda meh) for majority of game, is very flexible and absolutely necessary for lots of UHV (i don't think you can achieve like 10 of them without whipping, most notably Egypt, Khmer, Incas and India). Buffing Elective and Monarchy can be a possible solution, but i'd personally rather see Despotism having a situational drawback to make it less autochoicey.

 

[Zaddy]

I probably have some disagreement with the community meta on this one: Personally, I find the value for Despotism drops a lot after the Classical era, once you unlock Tributaries. Since I usually use Despotism to whip out military units, and it’s at this point that units start being a little too expensive to whip for a lot of cities. (Tributaries is such a solid civic for Medieval European civilizations, it is definitely S-Tier.)

Additionally, most of your cities in the early game do not need a ton of infrastructure. Whipping out Libraries/Markets with Citizenship is way overrated as a strategy, IMO. You’re going to add maybe +2 / in most of your cities? Not worth it. I’d much rather my cities build wealth and keep running Vassalage, so I can save that 20 /turn, than switch to Citizenship so I can build subpar Libraries and Markets. Unless you’re swimming in hammers, you can usually wait until the Settlers auto build those buildings for you.

I think Despotism gets mentioned a lot in these forums because it’s absolutely fantastic for a lot of UHVs. But that’s because, by their nature, UHVs tend to be short-term oriented, and the player must adopt a high time preference in order to get those goals accomplished in the immediate term. For most long UHVs (ie Japan, Russia, China), Despotism isn’t part of my strategy at all (unless I messed up and I need to panic whip to do something in time).

I’m also really against giving negative effects to civics, unless the situation absolutely calls for it. (Republic nerfing most land improvements in order to completely shift a specialist playstyle, for example.) I personally think Despotism is perfect the way it is, it doesn’t need a nerf. But if it must be done, I’d rather see it’s Upkeep cost increased, than anything else done.

We might play on different speeds or whatever, which probably really affects our evaluations, but here's my thinking:

1) Wealth is highly nerfed from vanilla. It only works at 50% effectiveness and isn't affected by hammer modifiers, unlike vanilla where it's at 100% and takes hammer modifiers like forges into account. For this reason I'm super low on building wealth/research in this mod. It's usually very low impact and I'm only doing it if I have literally nothing else to do.

2) This also isn't really any either/or I like to think. In the early game you'll often have excess population growing onto crappy unimproved tiles. While you're busy whipping all this stuff, your workers can focus on building improvements on tiles you actually want to work. I'm not saying one should build a market in EVERY city of course, it's contextual, but the value proposition of spending one turn two pop whipping a market that provides like 2/turn + potential happiness vs growing onto unimproved tiles working wealth for 6/turn favors the former unless you're under a huge time crunch, especially because you can instantly move along to building wealth, or put the overflow into an army or another useful infrastructure building.

3) During a lot of the early game you're benefiting from the Rise of X modifier that gives you a ton of free unit maintenance, which means during a lot of that time that benefit of Vassalage isn't actually doing anything for you. Don't get me wrong, it's a crazy modifier, it's just not that useful during the early part of the game, which is one of the reasons I'm so comfortable spending the early game sitting in Citizenship.

4) It seems like your strategy seems to be building an army out with Tributaries, but I actually think Despotism + Conquest gets you a better army faster. In the case of Euro civs this can be especially valuable, as it lets you get a handle on your rivals early so you can control wonderbuilding and colonization much better. Maybe I've missed the effectiveness of Tributaries, but it's pretty easy to conquer/capitulate most of continental Europe by 1350 (on Marathon) or so using my strategy with civs like France, Spain, Holy Rome, etc. Tributaries is definitely good (I have a 50 commerce capital as France right now from capitulating Spain/Portugal/Poland/England/Inca), but I think it really comes into its own later on once you actually have people to vassalize. I would rather just whip my initial army out fast.

 

[Hickman888]

We might play on different speeds or whatever, which probably really affects our evaluations, but here's my thinking:

1) Wealth is highly nerfed from vanilla. It only works at 50% effectiveness and isn't affected by hammer modifiers, unlike vanilla where it's at 100% and takes hammer modifiers like forges into account. For this reason I'm super low on building wealth/research in this mod. It's usually very low impact and I'm only doing it if I have literally nothing else to do.

2) This also isn't really any either/or I like to think. In the early game you'll often have excess population growing onto crappy unimproved tiles. While you're busy whipping all this stuff, your workers can focus on building improvements on tiles you actually want to work. I'm not saying one should build a market in EVERY city of course, it's contextual, but the value proposition of spending one turn two pop whipping a market that provides like 2/turn + potential happiness vs growing onto unimproved tiles working wealth for 6/turn favors the former unless you're under a huge time crunch, especially because you can instantly move along to building wealth, or put the overflow into an army or another useful infrastructure building.

3) During a lot of the early game you're benefiting from the Rise of X modifier that gives you a ton of free unit maintenance, which means during a lot of that time that benefit of Vassalage isn't actually doing anything for you. Don't get me wrong, it's a crazy modifier, it's just not that useful during the early part of the game, which is one of the reasons I'm so comfortable spending the early game sitting in Citizenship.

4) It seems like your strategy seems to be building an army out with Tributaries, but I actually think Despotism + Conquest gets you a better army faster. In the case of Euro civs this can be especially valuable, as it lets you get a handle on your rivals early so you can control wonderbuilding and colonization much better. Maybe I've missed the effectiveness of Tributaries, but it's pretty easy to conquer/capitulate most of continental Europe by 1350 (on Marathon) or so using my strategy with civs like France, Spain, Holy Rome, etc. Tributaries is definitely good (I have a 50 commerce capital as France right now from capitulating Spain/Portugal/Poland/England/Inca), but I think it really comes into its own later on once you actually have people to vassalize. I would rather just whip my initial army out fast.

I play on Normal speed, and for this post I’ll be talking about European civilizations in the Medieval era.

1.) Wealth is a secondary priority for me as well, with building a military quickly being first. I typically rush to the Renaissance as quickly as possible, in order to settle-build Libraries/Forges/Aqueducts/Harbors. Since I know all this key infrastructure is coming imminently, that’s why I don’t worry about building a lot of structures in the Medieval. Building wealth, while not too powerful, will still help get me to the next era (and thus, get me to that key infrastructure) a little bit faster.

2.) Well, with the nature of production in Civ 4, this actually is an either/or situation. At any given point, you can only put your hammers towards one thing at a time. Also, I typically don’t allow my cities to grow larger than 4-6 in the Medieval era. I use all that extra food for military production! And since my cities won’t grow too big, I don’t need to worry about training more workers, at least not initially. My starting 2 will do just fine.

In the old Rush/Turtle/Economy strategy dichotomy, I’m definitely outlining a Rush. I’ll probably make a video talking about this strategy more in depth, since I never see it mentioned in the forums. Think of it like this: in the turns that it took you to construct/whip out a Citizenship Library and Market, I’ve already constructed an Elective Barracks, Stable, and trained a Lancer and a half. Any economic opportunities I missed out on by forgoing a Library/Market will be gained by capturing the rich core city of my neighbor.

3.) Fair point about unit upkeep being free for the first 10 turns, and Vassalage being mostly useless in this time. But, as mentioned previously, I’m outlining a Rush strategy. I could use this time to quickly build infrastructure, but I don’t want to waste precious turns that could be better spent on training my military. And by the time that my military is in a spot that I want it to be, I’m already nearly out of the Medieval era anyways, and a lot of buildings are about to be auto-built.

4.) I pair Tributaries with Elective, since I never let my cities grow large with this strategy, so I also receive double production of Barracks/Stables. But I can’t really comment on Despotism/Conquest vs Elective/Tributaries, since I’m so partial to the latter that I always run it. I’m just afraid of running Despotism as a Medieval European due to the lack of luxury resources around. For me, the main appeal of Tributaries isn’t the vassal-commercial boost at all, it’s the ability to rush.

 

[UniqueUsername]

I don't know why everybody dislikes monarchy. The happiness-bonus for troops is great, it allows your core cities to grow even further than your happines ressources would allow. It's basically the opposite of Despotism. With Despotism, you sacrifice unhappy population, with Monarchy the extra population is not unhappy and can become specialists. And, to make this strategy work even better, Monarchy gives a stability bonus when run with Monasticism. Great people incoming!
Of course this is only usefull when your civ has core cities with food ressources and a landscape where cities really grow big, like China. Xian (wheat, pig, rice), Kaifeng (pig, deer, rice) and Beijing (wheat, pig, fish) start with 3 foord ressources in their work radius each (they overlap a bit). Perfect civilization to run monarchy and have mega-cities from the start.

 

[TsimTsigal]

I don't know why everybody dislikes monarchy. The happiness-bonus for troops is great, it allows your core cities to grow even further than your happines ressources would allow. It's basically the opposite of Despotism. With Despotism, you sacrifice unhappy population, with Monarchy the extra population is not unhappy and can become specialists. And, to make this strategy work even better, Monarchy gives a stability bonus when run with Monasticism. Great people incoming!
Of course this is only usefull when your civ has core cities with food ressources and a landscape where cities really grow big, like China. Xian (wheat, pig, rice), Kaifeng (pig, deer, rice) and Beijing (wheat, pig, fish) start with 3 foord ressources in their work radius each (they overlap a bit). Perfect civilization to run monarchy and have mega-cities from the start.

Monarchy is good, it's just it doesn't really compete with Despotism (specially in China: lots of luxuries and food, growth-focused UP -> guilt-free whipping every X turns, + relative lack of production, + no need for Jails) and Republic (which is situationally OP).

It's also seems to be universal consensus that Clergy > Monasticism most of time.

 

[UniqueUsername]

(Republic/Elective are both situational, and it seems to be universally agreed that Monarchy is kinda meh)

Monarchy is good, it's just it doesn't really compete with Despotism (specially in China: lots of luxuries and food, growth-focused UP -> guilt-free whipping every X turns, + relative lack of production, + no need for Jails) and Republic (which is situationally OP).

It's also seems to be universal consensus that Clergy > Monasticism most of time.

Clergy gives the stability bonus with monarchy as well, so we don't have to debate about this.

 

[TsimTsigal]

I think i made it clear that it's competition that makes it meh. HR effect is good but next to whipping/+1 per specialist it's meh.

 

[BaneFire]

Monarchy is good, it's just it doesn't really compete with Despotism (specially in China: lots of luxuries and food, growth-focused UP -> guilt-free whipping every X turns, + relative lack of production, + no need for Jails) and Republic (which is situationally OP).

It's also seems to be universal consensus that Clergy > Monasticism most of time.

Idk I never ran despotism very long as China. Much prefer stacking a few archers in Luoyang to get a massive happy Dujiangyan pop and pump out GS.

 

[Dracosolon]

Same, as China even with Monarchy I'm constantly running out of extra happiness and need to pump out more troops/improve more resources/get more happiness-related techs. China has good terrain and a specialist-focused UHV ans UB so Despotism makes less sense.

 

[TsimTsigal]

Same, as China even with Monarchy I'm constantly running out of extra happiness and need to pump out more troops/improve more resources/get more happiness-related techs. China has good terrain and a specialist-focused UHV ans UB so Despotism makes less sense.

I don't think it's possible to meet deadlines of Cathedrals UHV goal without whipping, and possibly Research goal without whipping Taixues. China lacks production (save for Xian and Luoyang, the last one mostly due to chopping - these cities will most likely be used to be build Wonders), and you have to produce a lot before deadlines. After this point you probably have built enough infrastructure to afford switch if you wish, but honestly the best way to react to unhappy population is to convert pops into production/soldiers as soon as from whipping goes away, then use it to bully AI into giving you luxuries (optionally with cities, China has a great core/historical area and can afford a lot of expansion, especially in rich areas like SEA). Stacking Granary + Aqueduct + UP (aka cities need but a quarter of to grow recuperate loses; it essentially means that Chinese cities do it not 25% but twice as fast as others) also means that you can afford absolutely sinful sacrifices of population with miniscule effect on economy.

 

[UniqueUsername]

Of course it's usefull to sacrifice population to get a Taixue (and maybe again for a temple, but that is definetly not necessary for UHV goal 1). Nobody said you should never run despotism as China. BanFire for example said: "Idk I never ran despotism very long as China." But every time (!) you whip a population point, that could be a specialist instead with monarchy. The cities can grow up to their theoretical maximum from food and run several specialists.
That is a big effect on economy in itself. Give the buildings you whip out of that population really more to your economy than all this specialists would do?