Autocracy
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Introduction
Autocracy, available in the industrial era, is for militaristic civilizations, dreaming of world conquest. However, adopting Autocracy brings a diplomatic hit to those who believe in Freedom or Order. Autocracy is a great policy branch if you want to end the game on a dominating note as you will be able to field a larger army, gain bonuses to combat and get extra happiness from courthouses as you annex your way through the world.The Policies
General Use
The Policies
Autocracy
Adopting Autocracy reduces Unit
Gold Maintenance costs by 33%, allowing an empire to field a larger military. Receive 10 
Culture as a plunder for each point of Culture produced in the captured city. Autocracy cannot be active at the same time as Order or Freedom.The Autocracy Opener is one of those policies that gets better with time. As the turns go by, unit maintenance costs increase. Near the end of the game, you can end up seeing maintenance costs of over four
/unit. The Autocracy opener reduces that cost down to a more manageable level, allowing you to either field a larger army for the same price, or use those savings to increase your GPT and thereby have more money for building or unit purchases, or for maintaining City State friendships and alliances.The culture bonus helps you fill out Autocracy faster via conquest. The plundered culture is ten times of the culture put turn produced in the city the moment before being captured. If you capture a capital with some wonders, you could gain 500-600 instant culture points, while each normal city offers about 150 culture points.
Militarism
Gold cost of purchasing units reduced by 33%.With all of that extra gold you saved with the Autocracy Opener, why not buy more units? Late game units become much more cost effective to purchase with Militarism. If you have managed to 'acquire' Big Ben, then you will have a 48% discount on all unit purchases. You can also add Mercantilism to the mix, but it is a multiplicative modifier with Militarism. With all three, you are looking at a very nice 61% discount on your unit purchases. Often, you will find that the
cost of a unit is even lower than the 
cost.
Populism
Wounded Military Units inflict 25% more damage than normal.Tired of the buzzing sound you hear when enemy fighters give paper cuts to all of your units? Still clearing your head after that Atomic Bomb landed next to you? Populism will help make the enemy pay for not killing you outright. With the added bonus you overcome some of the reduction in damage for being wounded, but you will never go above what a full health unit can give for damage.
Instead of a 10% reduction in damage given, per 20 hit points lost, Populism changes it to:
- 100-70 HP: 0% reduction
- 60-30 HP: 10% reduction
- 20-1 HP: 20% reduction
Fascism
Quantity of Strategic Resources produced by the empire increased by 100%. All Great Generals receive +2
Movements.Requires: Militarism, Populism
Need three Nuclear Missiles, but only have four uranium? How about sixteen helicopters? If you happen to be unlucky enough to miss out on the treasure trove of Coal, Oil, Aluminum or Uranium, Fascism will at least double your supplies on those necessary late game resources, provided you can find some. Maintaining a massive high tech army take resources, and this is a good way to get enough to ensure you can 'liberate' more (as well as allow you to still build late game resource-based buildings).
For Russia, this policy is extremely beneficial if you only have a small uranium supply. While Russia's Unique Ability doubles the uranium supply, Fascism allows for a 4x multiple of those uranium deposits. So if you happen to be stuck with only 4 uranium, it will be doubled to 8 via the UA and then to 16 with Fascism. Arabia gains the same 4x multiple benefit from Fascism as Russia does, though for Oil instead of Uranium.
The doubled movement of Great Generals could be useful when you want to build Citadels. A General can go to a forested hill, and build a Citadel in the same turn. With Fascism, Mongolian Khans will have 7 movements, which means they could even be used as scouts.
Police State
+3
Happiness from every Courthouse. Build Courthouses in half the usual time. The effectiveness of enemy spies is reduced by 25%. Your counterspies have a 25% increased chance of catching enemy spies.Requires: Militarism
One of the major drawbacks to 'acquiring' a massive empire via 'aggressive diplomacy' is that your unhappiness skyrockets when you add new high population cities. Adopting Police State will increase local happiness by 3 if a courthouse is present. Since the city is now annexed, you'll have more control over the cities build plan, and therefore can manage the population and cities happiness as needed.
The second part of Police State is about espionage. If you have Constabulary, Police Station, and The Great Firewall, there will be a 100% chance to catch enemy spies… However, if you don't have those buildings, you could put a counter-spy in the city instead, and it will almost always be able to kill an enemy spy.
Total War
+25% Production when building Military Units and new Military Units start with 15 Experience.Requires: Fascism, Police State
Missed the Brandenburg Gate? No problem. With a Barracks, Armoury and a Military Academy, you can now have units that start with 60 XP (75 XP with the Brandenburg Gate) to spend on three promotions. This will give your units a great head start on hitting those key fourth and fifth promotions. (Air units can start with Logistics or Air Repair) With this policy (and Militarism) , now you get both production and gold cost reduction for military units
Given that this must be your last policy choice in Autocracy, it also effectively gives you two policies in one (the second being the Finisher).
Finisher
Adopting all Policies in the Autocracy tree will grant a 25% attack bonus to all Military Units for 50 turns.One last push to be able to dance on the graves of your enemy. 50 turns of +25% attack bonus should be more than enough to end a game with a 'bang'.
General Use
Autocracy is obviously only a good choice when you are preparing for a massive military campaign to end the game with a Domination Victory. Even then, it should only be considered when fielding 50-100+ units on large or huge maps. If you happen to have your gold and science requirements under control and are only worried about the happiness hits from taking cities (and keeping highly promoted units alive), then Autocracy is a decent policy branch choice. As well, it can be a better choice to annex cities that are far from your core to keep the fight going, meaning that both Police State and the unit booster policies here will help.If you're looking for a fun all war scenario, then a late era start (Industrial, Modern, Future Era) can jump straight into Autocracy. As all policy branches are available, there's no need to only rely on Honour for your fighting skills.
Note: Amended from vanilla Autocracy by MadDjinn, this article is in G&K version.