Tier 4 governments - Are they worth it?

[Inhalaattori]

Here are the new tier 4 governments:

• Synthetic Technocracy (Optimization Imperative): 1 Military, 2 Economic, 1 Diplomatic, 5 Wildcard policy slots. +3 Power in all cities, and +30% Production towards all city projects. -10% Tourism.
• Corporate Libertarianism (Venture Politics): 2 Military, 1 Economic, 1 Diplomatic, 5 Wildcard policy slots. Commercial Hubs and Encampments provide cities with +10% production, bonus to accumulating resources with improvements. -10% Science.
• Digital Democracy (Distributed Sovereignty): 1 Military, 1 Economic, 2 Diplomatic, 5 Wildcard policy slots. +2 Amenities in all cities, and +2 Culture per specialty district. -3 Combat Strength for all units.

To me it seems that they are not worth it especially if you are going for domination victory. Fascism is simply better than any of the new governments if you are going for domination. I also feel like Corporate Libertarianism is clearly weakest tier 4 government and I dont really see it being great for any victory type.

We must also remember that some of the best policy cards like New deal or Martial law can only be used in specific tier 4 government.

I feel that the devs made them so bad, because they wanted them to be on the same level as tier 3 governments or only little stronger. So you have to actually think if it makes more sense to change your government or stay in the old tier 3 government.

 

[Draco84]

Digital democracy would generate a lot of culture, I haven't studied the new civic tree, but I'm thinking the culture will be pretty useless by then.

 

[Ivan Hunger]

The tier 4 governments are designed around using the future era purple cards, most of which we still don't know. Assuming those cards are very powerful, switching to a tier 4 government will probably be worth it.

They will be especially useful if you end up getting a dark age in the future era, since you will be able to slot in multiple purple cards and black cards at the same time.

 

[Trengilly]

If you are going for a domination victory the game should be over before you get to Fascism.

I'm pretty sure the extra policy slot, extra diplomatic favor, and access to unique late game policy cards will make the Tier 4 governments the way to go if the game plays that late.

 

[Melliores]

Well, Modern era and later units have a resource maintenance per turn, so build a few and that will add up quickly. Taking that into account, finding new ways to generate more strategic resources apart from conquest will be something you will definitely need to do for Domination victory. Also the malus is only for cities without a Governor from what I saw on some of the screenshots.

Technocracy will allow you to run City projects on more cities, which will be useful for more than Scientific victory. You can use this for Diplomatic victory as well, for all those scored competitions. If you are playing with one of those Loyalty civs, like Phoenicia, Eleonor or Mapuche, you can run the Bread and Circuses project way better on multiple cities and start peacefully conquering your neighbours.

Digital democracy will allow you to have even bigger cities (more population, more districts), which in turn means more culture and Great People.

Which reminds me - does having a new Era means that there will be new Great people as well ?

 

[Archon_Wing]

Probably Synthetic Technocracy if you're not going culture or diplomatic.

Corporate Libertarianism seems pretty bad with the penalty to science. Production from encampments seems more like a meme and the only thing that truly requires production is science victory to begin with. Digital Democracy seems problematic with the weaker units; looks like something that is used to finish already won games.

 

[UWHabs]

I could definitely see a good argument for staying in Democracy if you have a lot of allies, since +4f/+4p per trade route could be a pretty huge bonus, enough to make up for the missing extra policy slot. But as mentioned, I think it will really come down to how big those tier 4 wildcards are, and how many of them you need to slot in. I definitely hope that they end up replacing virtually all of the earlier policy cards, and so we end up with fewer late cards, but have them be much more powerful.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Digital democracy would generate a lot of culture, I haven't studied the new civic tree, but I'm thinking the culture will be pretty useless by then.

Having a high culture output protects you from the pressures of other people's Tourism.

AFAIK, the model is pretty much the same as Civ 5's, i.e generate enough Tourism over lifetime to overtake their Culture output.

 

[Ivan Hunger]

If nothing else, corporate libertarianism will be a fun choice if you decide you just want to randomly spam all the wonders that never got built over the course of the game.

 

[Josephias]

I fail lo see why -10% to science is such a penalty as you are proposeng when you have mostly everything researched. Yes, maybe you GDR cannot have the last little gadgets to jump over mountains or wade the seas, but instead, you have the production and resources to have three of them. I find the second scenaryo more scary, indeed.

 

[Siptah]

I don‘t think they are useless.

Synthetic Technocracy seems pretty powerful for a science victory which involves quite some projects and +3 power per city isn‘t nothing as well.

If you don‘t intend to fight in the very late game (as most of my games are), I don‘t think the downside of digital democracy is a problem. It‘s also very useful to stop other civs from getting a CulV. Scotland will love it anyway.

I agree with @Josephias that -10% science in the future era might not be that much of a setback.

 

[acluewithout]

I’m not a huge fan of the negative CS, not because it’s likely to have much impact but just because... it feels a bit sucky and blunt. I’d rather something more indirect like increased war weariness or increased unit maintenance cost.

 

[racha]

I take the simplistic view - more card slots are more card slots.

 

[Sostratus]

Fascism is simply better than any of the new governments if you are going for domination.

Well, they certainly nerfed CL between press build and the stream, but, you can no longer slot a legacy card while in that government.
This matters because CL, which has the extra wildcard slot over fascism, means you can switch and run exactly what you were running:
4/1/1/2
vs
2/1/1/5 or redistributing wildcards
4/1/1/3
but you can also slot the fascism legacy because of the extra slot. So you are ultimately swapping +50% unit production for +20% production in cities that would be building units and the strategic boost. Before when it was +30%, I think it was a very fair comparison. I imagine enough time under fascism will have you near the limit of the tanks, nukes, robots, and planes you can support, so I think the "grizzled fascist" will enjoy having the extra capacity at that point. We don't know how much resource per deposit oil and aluminum and uranium give, but its still hearty. As others said, I don't think the science penalty will matter much. There's still a future era civics tree which has the powerful cards, and 10% is easily offset via amundsen scott or running the int'l space agency diplo card from globalization.

Looking at it I think that they made technocracy the favorite son. The buffs since the press build just really put it over the others. DigiDem's bonuses are really good too- +2 amenities is free robber barons, or it helps you grow, or it just locks you in for ecstatic everywhere; +2 culture/district is insanely strong and should shield you from enemy tourists while you export your blue jeans and pop music. eating that -3 CS isn't fun though. A good diplo game might mean you don't go to war anyways, but that's still not fun when there are warmongers who could take advantage.

But the best slots, free power and 30% toward projects and the penalty is just -10% tourism? Which you can totally ignore since culture, not tourism, is the defense from tourism? The Sheep of Balance says this is Baaaad.

 

[Ferocitus]

If you are going for a domination victory the game should be over before you get to Fascism.

On small maps against a small number of civs.

 

[drubell]

They're focused on boosting yourself to whichever VC you're moving toward, so yeah

What I'm more interested in is if we'll see an AI player will follow the VC path their tier 4 government boosts.