Assess This Strategy: Emancipation

[Defiant47]

I'd like to assess the usefulness and effectiveness of this strategy. It may not be good enough to warrant any attempts at it, but I wanna see how much of an impact it makes.

The strategy is beelining to democracy and adopting emancipation so that other civilizations incur unhappiness penalties, giving you an advantage. How effective would this be? (I want to assess the strategy in and of itself, ignoring the drawbacks of the beelining action)

 

[shyuhe]

the emancipation penalty is dependent on how many other civs have adopted it. It might not be so useful if you're the only civ under emancipation.

 

[Sisiutil]

Seeing as how you'd be giving up the very powerful Slavery civic earlier than usual (as well as the problem shyuhe pointed out), I doubt that this would be a very effective strategy.

It could give you a leg up on getting the Statue of Liberty built, but I don't see that as a powerful strategy either. The Mercantilism civic gives you the SoL's benefits at a time when most other civs are running it as well, meaning there's little to lose by giving up the foreign trade routes. The advantage of the SoL is to have Mercantilism's benefits while leaving behind its no-foreign-trade-routes disadvantage.

 

[shadow2k]

the emancipation penalty is dependent on how many other civs have adopted it.

Sort of. I discovered in a recent game that not only does it depend on how many civs have EVER been in it (including civs who've been eliminated), but it scales with time and doesn't go away.

I realized this when the 4 angry people from one civ being in Emancipation went away when he was eliminated, he was the only one who had even discovered Democracy. About a century later, another civ adopted Emancipation while the other two of us were still in Slavery, and my cities immediately went to 5 angry people...after one civ had been in it for two turns total. I'm sure it the unhappiness would have grown as well, but I won a couple turns later.

 

[Defiant47]

Thank you for the replies. It's what I was looking for.

Really, I guess I want to know *exactly* how Emancipation's unhappiness works. How much, how soon, by how many (civs).

 

[HalfBadger]

I don't know if it's worth beelinging just for the unhappyness, but it might be worth if you build a lot of cottages, because with Emancipation they grow twice as fast (unless I has the second efect mixed up). Also with Democracy you can pay to rush production, which kinda offsets the no slavery when using emancipation.

I'd say try it out once or twice and see if it's really worth it, or which leaders/maps it might be good for and who it's bad for.

 

[uberfish]

Quick democracy (usually done by taking it as liberalism free tech) is a pretty good strategy for space races. But it's not really because of happiness considerations, it's because it accelerates the growth of midgame cottages and lets you bring Statue of Liberty/Representation online quickly.

 

[Galileo44]

I would think that it would be very difficult to grab Democracy from Liberalism in a game on a high level. I know that uberfish is a very good player, but it seems outside the realm of possiblility for most players to pull that off on a difficulty level that they find challenging. However, i would not be surprised if there are a few people who can do it on Immortal/Deity.