Various Thoughts on Freedom, Autocracy and Order

[Marshall Thomas]

I really like the new post-Renaissance diplomacy based on social policy selection. It's realistic and it feels like civics and government choice have returned. You can now actually say, "that country's a democracy or a communist regime" -but still with variations, which is nice. I hope it is expanded on in a later update/expansion.

One thing that I think should be looked at is that a civ with Freedom (a democratic country) can declare war on another civ with Freedom just as easily as a civ with Autocracy (a fascist, totalitarian country) can declare war. Very, very rarely have modern democracies declared war on other democracies. The only rare exceptions I can think of were because of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" alliance type situations.

I also think that democracies (civs with Freedom) should suffer from some form of war-weariness. To balance this war declaration limitation and war-weariness penalty, Freedom should be buffed a little.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm sort of surprised by the weakness of the left and middle sides of the Freedom tree. In my current game I chose Freedom as soon as it was possible and my next two choices were the two on the right side (the one that let's specialist consume half food and the one that let's specialist create half unhappiness from population). The opener (+25% great people generation) and these two are excellent, but I find the rest somewhat weak. Universal Suffrage isn't usually needed against the AI. Constitution's +2 culture per wonder doesn't seem that great to me even if I've built a decent amount of wonders (and it doesn't really make sense as an abstraction; but that's not a game-play issue). and the one which allows 8 units upkeep-free probably only amounts to +16 to +24 gold-per-turn at a time when there are better options for improving gold-per-turn.

When I picked Freedom, I assumed I'd never consider picking anything that was still available from the first three trees; but that's exactly what I ended up doing. I chose Military Caste from the Honor tree (+1, +2 per garrison). This would provide me with at least as much culture as Constitution and about 12 happiness (as I had about 12 cities) on top of that. Later the policy from Honor that allows happiness from wall and castles was still better for me than anything Freedom had to offer.

I think that maybe the last three policy trees need to be stronger in comparison to the first three. It's also not realistic at all that an industrial/post-industrial era democracy could institute a military caste system. I know Civ's a game, not a historical simulation; but it does strive for historical abstractions (some of which take some imagination). But I can't think of an abstraction for a modern democracy adopting a military caste system; or suddenly receiving happiness from ancients walls and castles. I can maybe see that citizens who have been granted universal suffrage might defend their cities with more determination.

Is Universal Suffrage and the two on the left side of the Freedom branch better than I think? Or is it common to chose from Order (or Tradition or Liberty) after you have access to the last three branches (Freedom, Autocracy and Order)? Thanks in advance

 

[El Caballerion]

It's kind of a weird situation though.... we know that the USA (supposedly represented by FREEDOM) doesn't get along with Cuba (supposedly represented by ORDER), but what about the cozy relationships the USA had with Chile under Pinochet (FASCIST/ORDER or AUTOCRACY), Nigeria (DICTATORSHIP/AUTOCRACY), China, (COMMUNISM/ORDER), Saudi Arabia (ABSOLUTE MONARCHY/AUTOCRACY or ORDER), and many many many other examples.

Lots of gray area in here... essentially, it's not a question of government. It's a question of "If you're willing to trade with us, give us cheap labor/resources, we're all gonna be buddy buddy."

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Just because Chile adopted "Order" does not mean that USA automatically hates Chile.

Just because Pacal adopted "Order" does not mean he hates me because I adopted Freedom.

Think of it this way, USA had a lot of negatives modifiers with Cuba, but very little negative modifires with Chile.

In Civ 5, you still can be friends with a Facist nation despite being in Order, of course, it helps being in the same "clique".. but it always help, and you will always think slightly less of people if they aren't in your "clique".

 

[Drawmeus]

The problem with war weariness is that it becomes a tool for your enemies to use to conquer you because it ends up sabotaging your economy. It's realistic for a country like the US to become weary of protracted wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq - all of which would be city states in Civ V terms - but it's totally unrealistic to think we'd weary of a war against the Soviets or China in which invasion of the US mainland is a real possibility. Yet that's exactly how it would (did) play in a Civ game.

 

[thadian]

I would rather goad an enemy into attacking me so i can deny peace and hold eternal-weariness campaigns against happiness.

 

[Gali]

Order is quite strong I think. plus 1 at opener and then 25% and double speed facs, the next one is weak but gold income is nice and with tall empire which you'll probably have since order best fits science you'll have lots of buildings, it equals the freedom policy at least. And Communism is a great policy. The other two are definitely meh but not bad and since you're going freedom for cultural victories anyway no need to worry about finishing. Great Engineer from faith is great

Autocracy seems weak to me, why would I need GG or GA if I'm a warmonger or in any circumstances for that matter and who needs bonuses against Ai except at immortal or above. Still the plus 3 from courthouses can be nice and anti-spy bonus can be fun. If you're going warmonger the bonuses will probably impact you more.

For Freedom it suffers from the same problem as Piety, it only really pays for itself with cultural victory. Its quite strong there but otherwise meh. Maybe if you go mass specialist freedom will help or mass faith for piety, but I have done fine with religion with no piety. Theocracy is a joke and mandate of heaven can be good with G and K happiness levels but still is quite weak. Far stronger to go rationalism for massive science boost and faith bought GS'.

 

[MadDjinn]

the 8 free units from Freedom adjusts the gpt savings over time as the maintenance costs of units changes over time.

In the endgame, maintenance costs are upwards of 4gpt+, so that's ~32 gpt.

Freedom is meant for a tall/small empire, not a wide one. So it's going to benefit a lot more from the Freedom tree than a wide empire would.

 

[nefloyd]

Autocracy is awesome if you want to keep a military tech lead. They get another -25% to enemy spying that you can't pick up anywhere else. That means not giving your best opponent tech parity at a key moment.

You buy more generals so you can use Citadels to wipe out AI forces, either on the offense or leaving them behind as a defense. I've never seen a Civ actually pillage it (I have had a city-state do it). Admirals you can buy more of because you can spend them healing up to 7 tiles worth of units.

Double strategic resources? Ohhh yes. I've gone autocracy a few times when the AI just won't let me be and I embark on war-til-the-end.

 

[Zenstrive]

Freedom is less happy producing than Order, so if a freedom country goes to war and puppets lotsa and lotsa cities, the country will be less happy.

Order, on the other hand, gives people in cities happiness because, well, things are tidier and neatly ordered.

Autocracy thrives on the war-minded people, but needs money to maintain happiness (courthouses give happiness, that's it).

So I guess USA is Autocracy (war, war everywhere, sapping off in-country poeple's happiness), Russia is Order (communism with a lot mafia-taint), and ....nobody is Freedom Modern countries have a streak of fascism one way or the other.

Just a thought.

 

[Kabloosh]

Order has always been my favorite even if I'm warmongering since I am a big fan of the production boosting it provides. I do like autocracy if I'm a full blown warmonger but at a certain point you have so many strategic resources it doesn't really matter to double it up and units are already pretty effective as long as you are smart about it so it feels kind of mitigated if you are already super strong. Its useful to go down if you are on a water map with certain resources lacking such as uranium and aluminum.
Freedom. It always looked the most bleh especially considering I ended up usually expanding out or having a few occupied cities. Its good if you are aiming for a cultural victory though. Order still feels the most well rounded of the 3 though.

A lot of real countries have a lot of policies from all 3 trees. The US isn't a true democracy either. Its a republic where we elect people to make the decisions in the "interest"(lol) of the "people"(rich people).

 

[smallfish]

Autocracy is awesome if you want to keep a military tech lead. They get another -25% to enemy spying that you can't pick up anywhere else. That means not giving your best opponent tech parity at a key moment.

I'll want to add that the culture pillages you get is plain amazing. It helps a lot if you aren't keeping an eye on culture buildings, and also allows you to finish SP trees faster than you normally would.

 

[Adjuvant]

If we're going to be philosophical about it, "democracy" is an overused term with gradually "greyer and greyer" parameters. People call the USA a "democracy" but it really isn't, at least not a pure democracy.

We could call the USA a "representative democracy" but how often does the public really "call the shots"? Politicians placate us with a popular decision now and again, but ultimately the decisions rest in the hands of the "knowing few". Now we're "drifting" from democracy to "republic".

It would be nice if the USA really was a republic, though, but if you're honest, you'll say it's not. Every (read:every) big decision made by congress is a conflict between corporations or "corporations and the public". Big insurance companies are corporations, and I can't think of a new law that's affected my life, personally, in that last 20 years that somehow hasn't benefitted insurance payouts; from seatbelts to motorcycle helmets, from indoor smoking to food additives, from big oil to gun control, insurance companies always want a legal reason to lowball customers.

So America's gone from high ideals of democracy to expansionist, isolationist empire, to republic to corporatocracy and no one really noticed the transitions, it's been so slick. Our true ruler is the almighty dollar and our overlords are insurance salesmen. Why should we get along so poorly with Cuba? They don't have enough money, and that's the bottom line.

Moderator Action: I really can't see what this post has to do with Civ5 -> spam in the context of this thread.

 

[StormEye]

I just cannot stop selecting Order in GK.

The ability to purchase Great Engineer with faith is too strong for me not to get it.

 

[Harv72b]

Ugh...I remember war weariness from whatever Civ that was (III?). I do not want that back.

As far as Freedom's less-than-overwhelming sub-policies, the other Industrial trees have their share as well--in Autocracy, Populism and Total War have never been a big help for me (the former because I'm generally fighting with overwhelming force at that point in the game, the latter because it's too late in the game to be a difference-maker), and in Order, United Front and Nationalism have always seemed liked wastes to me--I do not want more level one anti-tank guns, tyvm, and if I'm fighting a war that late in the game & in my own territory, and it's so close that a 15% combat bonus would make a difference, then I have bigger problems.

Besides which, the big reason to fill out the Freedom tree is for the finisher, which can provide a huge late-game boost for cultural or science wins (providing you've planted enough great people up to that point).

 

[nefloyd]

Should also note that trying to build Big Ben and going 3 deep in commerce pairs really well with autocracy - you get 33%, 25%, and 15% combined discount on buying units directly. That's either 42% of original cost or 27%, I'm not sure which

 

[Olleus]

Its 27%. Did that pre G&K and could be units stupidly cheap. I mean, ~400 gold for a B-27 stupid. Very powerful combo, but does require a lot of investment.

 

[prince_caspian]

Freedom is still the most selected SP among the 3 for me, the finisher is really good for the multiplier on GS/GA tiles. Besides space and cultural victories are more easily doable than in vanilla and both favor tall over wide. GAK has unfortunately made domination much harder - walls, tech tree, AI is smarter, no more SB rush, etc. I know both Order and Autocracy have been buffed but I just do not know how they can fit in.

 

[dexters]

Just an interesting aside.

AI's have favorites in terms of their policy choices and it seems like Ghengis Khan favours Freedom.

I've seem him pick that 2 games in a row. I'm still wrapping my head around that. Is that a joke from the devs because they think Khan will be a crippled small empire if they last that long and thus would benefit from the Freedom tree?

Mongols actually performed well in my last game and they had a lot of cities, and they still picked freedom.

 

[Prophet Skeram]

I really like the new post-Renaissance diplomacy based on social policy selection. It's realistic and it feels like civics and government choice have returned. You can now actually say, "that country's a democracy or a communist regime" -but still with variations, which is nice. I hope it is expanded on in a later update/expansion.

One thing that I think should be looked at is that a civ with Freedom (a democratic country) can declare war on another civ with Freedom just as easily as a civ with Autocracy (a fascist, totalitarian country) can declare war. Very, very rarely have modern democracies declared war on other democracies. The only rare exceptions I can think of were because of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" alliance type situations.

I also think that democracies (civs with Freedom) should suffer from some form of war-weariness. To balance this war declaration limitation and war-weariness penalty, Freedom should be buffed a little.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm sort of surprised by the weakness of the left and middle sides of the Freedom tree. In my current game I chose Freedom as soon as it was possible and my next two choices were the two on the right side (the one that let's specialist consume half food and the one that let's specialist create half unhappiness from population). The opener (+25% great people generation) and these two are excellent, but I find the rest somewhat weak. Universal Suffrage isn't usually needed against the AI. Constitution's +2 culture per wonder doesn't seem that great to me even if I've built a decent amount of wonders (and it doesn't really make sense as an abstraction; but that's not a game-play issue). and the one which allows 8 units upkeep-free probably only amounts to +16 to +24 gold-per-turn at a time when there are better options for improving gold-per-turn.

When I picked Freedom, I assumed I'd never consider picking anything that was still available from the first three trees; but that's exactly what I ended up doing. I chose Military Caste from the Honor tree (+1, +2 per garrison). This would provide me with at least as much culture as Constitution and about 12 happiness (as I had about 12 cities) on top of that. Later the policy from Honor that allows happiness from wall and castles was still better for me than anything Freedom had to offer.

I think that maybe the last three policy trees need to be stronger in comparison to the first three. It's also not realistic at all that an industrial/post-industrial era democracy could institute a military caste system. I know Civ's a game, not a historical simulation; but it does strive for historical abstractions (some of which take some imagination). But I can't think of an abstraction for a modern democracy adopting a military caste system; or suddenly receiving happiness from ancients walls and castles. I can maybe see that citizens who have been granted universal suffrage might defend their cities with more determination.

Is Universal Suffrage and the two on the left side of the Freedom branch better than I think? Or is it common to chose from Order (or Tradition or Liberty) after you have access to the last three branches (Freedom, Autocracy and Order)? Thanks in advance

2 Culture per wonder/turn is insane and a complete MUST HAVE ASAP when you go for a cultural victory - maybe less so on high difficulties, but on Prince, it's easily 30-40 culture/turn and keeps getting (a little) better as you go.

 

[Wuddel]

Well I am playing a "slow warmongerer" game at the moment. Meaning I have 4 units. I really do not get why people need this massive armies. To keep my Empire up I am going down on the Order tree. But really. With the buff to commerce I always focus there.