Can someone explain what's wrong with communism

[sabo]

I've been using alot of the suggestions on this board, I thought that when I started my last game I'd have it all figured out (WRONG!!) I got to republic as fast as I could, and stayed there. Everything was fine, I was buying techs and trading goods so I was keeping up with everyone and ahead of most. THen war broke out again, (He started it) and it was a big one, all 8 of us were in it. I had police stations, I had luxuries, the only thing I didn't have was Uni sufferage, but I heard that it was good to have but not critical.
My corruption was at about 5%. My luxury slider bar was at 10% (is this enough?) and STILL my people started protesting after 3 turns cuz of the war. What am I doing wrong? I read one post here where a guy was republican and he had been in a war for about 2000 years. Once again I had no choice but to switch to communism, I would have liked to stay republic but I couldn't do that and keep everyone fed at the same time.

So I hear negative things about communism, can someone explain what's bad about it? Sure the production lags somewhat but if your making money you can BUY techs, also my corruption was only 7%, not quite as good as republic but way ahead of monarchy. I have a small country, if it was a large expansive country my corruption might have even been BETTER than republic. Also, the spies in communism are much better than any other government. So my questions are........



1. how can I stay republic in a war?
2. what's so wrong with communism if I really need to switch? My opinion is that communism was tailor made for wars in this game.

If someones got a saved game where they've been republic and in a war a while could you please post it for me so I can get some ideas?
Thanks

 

[marshal zhukov]

There is a limit to wage war as a republic, after that you will have to change no matter what, you just run out of tools to deal with the war weariness.
You can postpone war weariness by winning the war and by keeping battlefield losses minimal.

Science, that is the terrible thing about communism, research goes to almost nothing and even if you put 70% or 80% for science you are still going to take forever to discover technology.
I played games in which monarchy had better science than communism.
But if you don't want to ever worry about War Weariness, just play with the BABYLONIANS. Or any other religious civ. That is what I do.

 

[MuddyOne]

How the luxury slider works. It goes to each city and then takes X% of uncorrupted gold and uses that to produce happiness. Each gold produces 1 smiley.

This means that 10% would provide several smileys in your core cities, less as you move outward, until your most corrupt cities receive no benefit.

So how do you deal with war weariness in Republic? With the slider to keep your core cities producing optimally. The highly corrupt cities you have the governor manage happiness (you can hand manage, but gain no benefit for the time invested). Pluck workers from the field and set to entertainers if hand managing. Longer wars will have the governors asking you what to do as the corrupt cties can no longer avoid revolt without starvation. Starve them. A size 1 95% corrupt city will provide the same 1 shield, 1 gold that a size 12 95% corrupt city will produce. You might want to actually pack cities tightly once your in the 95% corruption zone so that they can't grow to be large- thus avoid any hand management.

Other things to consider: General advise is to have 3 luxuries and marketplaces in key cities before switching to replubic. This is for general happiness. Aquire more luxuries if planning/or get involved with a longer war. If planning a war and cannot trade/find more luxuries, guess what your first target should be. Pick an enemy that has a luxury that you you can tie into your trade network quickly.

Whats wrong with communism? Nothing. It is just little understood. In some cases it is better, in other cases it is worse, than Monarchy. From my testing though, when corruption is low, monarchy should produce more than communism. Communism shines when corruption is higher.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I have a small country, if it was a large expansive country my corruption might have even been BETTER than republic.

Not really true depending on how you define 'expansive'. If your cities are spaced far apart from one another communism may be better, because distance is not a factor with communism. Only the number of cities is. If you have hundreds of cities, the other governments will usually be better. When you have hundreds of cities and you go to communism your core cities (that should already have several improvements in them) will go from 0-10% corrupt to 50%+ corrupt. So far I have only seen communism outproduce 1 government and that was a game on chieftain level where communism did better than monarchy. But I have seen many more games where monarchy was better than communism. I haven't seen any games yet where communism did better than a Republic or Democracy (except when war weariness was extrememly bad).

 

[Moonsinger]

I have never gone with communism. Never did and probalby never will.

 

[sabo]

Mucho Gracia's

 

[Sanaz]

I only learn Communism to get Police Stations, but that is personal preference (I like cash). A long war in Democracy might not work too well without 6-8 luxuries and Marketplaces in your biggest population/production cities. In the city screen, it helps to sort by the happiness column each turn. You can then see which cities are being hit with war weariness each turn (it doesn't come all at once, it comes gradually). You'll know, because the city will have less happiness than they should - some of this may be due to foreign nationals, or past drafting. Then, by adjusting entertainers and the luxury slider, you can manage moods pretty well. You may need workers to irrigate with RR to add food to support a few extra entertainers in a city. Avoid drafting, because at war you will see that each drafted citizen has decreased your happy count by one - this will start to hurt quickly. Maybe Communism doesn't have this problem? There is a point when you really need to get out of the war in Democracy/Republic, because no matter what you do the weariness kicks in. This is the point where Communism might help.

 

[saintides]

Originally posted by Moonsinger
I have never gone with communism. Never did and probalby never will.

Same here ....

Even if I'm all wrapped up in war .. I will avoid communism like the black plague ...

 

[warpstorm]

Originally posted by saintides


Same here ....

Even if I'm all wrapped up in war .. I will avoid communism like the black plague ...

Then prepare to lose in MP.

Communism is Civ3's best war-time government, by far. No war weariness at all, martial law making your people content, low corruption, good production in your newly conquered territories, spies that actually work. The only downsides are you can't buy stuff, you have to pop-rush it (not always bad, but your people might not like it), and your tech rate might lag a little (you won't care when your tanks are rolling alll over their entertainer filled cities).

 

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by warpstorm
Communism is Civ3's best war-time government, by far.

No it´s not. Monarchy is almost always better. Only if your Palace is in a really bad position and you haven´t got a Forbidden Palace can Communism be better than Monarchy.

marshal zhukov: a reliqious civ is no better than a non-religious concerning war-weariness. It will recover from the revolt in one turn, but will automatically re-revolt the next turn if you switch back to democracy/republic.

 

[LKendter]

Tell you what - I will take Monarchy for war any day of the week. I consider that the best war-time goverment. It also features no war weariness.

Unlike Communism which spreads out the wastage, in Monarchy you can still have a kick-butt core of cities. If you had a good fp placement, then you can have quite a few productive cities.

Pop-rush under Communism - GACK - just what I don't need - unhappy, whipped citizens.

 

[bobgote]

The thing is, it is the poorest representation of communism ever! Ideally communism is not involved in war, and people are all happy. Hurry method would not be pop-rushing and it would not be solely military based.

This is my main concern with it. If Democracy can somehom (unrealistically) avoid corruption and have so much productivity, surely communism can break out of the poor historical uses of it.

I have mentioned in other threads how since it is developed later, it should have some better points, but it doesn't. Most people were along the lines that firaxis a) used historical representations, or b) that since it was made by an american firm, communism could in no way be superior to democracy i think everyone is disappointed with it's implementation in Civ3

 

[Smoking mirror]

I'm going to make a real Earth scenario when the Editor comes out; with new units and some reworking of the governments.
In Civ III Communism represents Stalinism, the state of the soviet government during the great patriotic war (WWII) a harsh government whose only real resemblence to a socialist republic is in name, and the comunal ecconomy. The actual government is a despotism, just as Civ III monarchy is a absolute despotic monarchy.
A government is made up of two parts, the economy, and the leadership. With government specific buildings (and hopefully units) a large veriety of government types, with the whole leadership spectrum from full democracy> total despotism, and economies ranging from free market capitalism, Slave economy(the people who do the work, do so for the people who own the land, like in feudalism), and full social comunal economies.

The trick is to keep the game ballanced, communism should be as good as democracy, but ballanced between war and peace; The best war government should be an emergency military council with a properly rationed regional comunal economy (think of britain during WWII, rationing meant that money was almost worthless, as the food and other goods were spread amongst the people).

The reason why governments in Civ are so simplified is because real life governments are so complicated, you should realy have two choices; government leadership and economy base.

This way you could represent many governments from history;
American Confederacy= republic leadership, with slave economy.
Tzarist Monarchy = Despotic leadership, with slave economy.
modern british monarchy= democratic leadership with a figurehead monarchy, with a "benifit state" capitalist economy
Spanish civil war Republican government= republican democratic "party" leadership, with a comunal economy.

Special buildings could be used to represent special aspects of the leadership/economy, like congress or the royal palace.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by warpstorm
Then prepare to lose in MP.

Well, you just have to wait and see about that. Don't forget that it takes about 5 turns to switch to Communism then another 5 turns or more to switch back. You are loosing about 10 turns of no production here. As far as I know, a lot of thing can happen within 10 turns.

 

[warpstorm]

Originally posted by LKendter

Unlike Communism which spreads out the wastage, in Monarchy you can still have a kick-butt core of cities. If you had a good fp placement, then you can have quite a few productive cities.

Pop-rush under Communism - GACK - just what I don't need - unhappy, whipped citizens

And under communism, I can (and do) have about a hundred fairly good (late game, 50+ shield) cities on a large map, even on the other continents. (If you've tweaked corruption, this can be even better say 60+ shields).

I will admit that pop-rushing sucks, but the martial law can make up for sparing usage. Plus if you know you are about to lose a city, you can draft and pop-rush your city down to next to nothing and give the enemy a nice little "gift"

 

[warpstorm]

Originally posted by Moonsinger

Well, you just have to wait and see about that. Don't forget that it takes about 5 turns to switch to Communism then another 5 turns or more to switch back. You are loosing about 10 turns of no production here. As far as I know, a lot of thing can happen within 10 turns.

Who said anything about switching back. Once the war train starts rolling, it doesn't stop for anything. If you go down that path, it's do or die.

 

[etj4Eagle]

Smoking Mirror, you're right that the real problem with the governments in Civ3 is that they are too simplified. And that you are forced to lump many different aspects under one label. What really is needed is the SMAC style government/social-economic system, where each of the different aspects can be set differently. That way you could create a peace time communism government, instead of the current one version.

What would have been ideal was to have a combination of the distinct goverment types and the ability to set levels independently. In this case the government types would be essentially "presets." However, if you were so inclined you could tweak the settings off their default position and custumize you government/social-econamic settings of your civ.

This would give the advance users that flexibility that SMAC had, but not confuse the novice users.

 

[No.Dice]

Originally posted by marshal zhukov
There is a limit to wage war as a republic, after that you will have to change no matter what, you just run out of tools to deal with the war weariness.
You can postpone war weariness by winning the war and by keeping battlefield losses minimal.

With a decent infrastruture, 7-8 luxuries, and marketplaces, its very possible to stay at war for centuries at a time as a Republic. The luxury slider isn't even neccessary, i've never raised mine above 10%, and only then for wars that span more than an entire age.

Of course you have to go to great lengths to gobble up the luxuries before the AI does, often requiring a few pre-Republic wars.

Theres no reason to ever switch out of Republic, unless you made a mistake and changed governments before you built up a decent infrastructure.

 

[MuddyOne]

Hurricane, Monarchy is generally better before a certain number of cities is reached and after a certain number is reached. The before number is generally surpassed before I finish researching Communism, the after number is after I acheive 80% domination.

The "certain number" does vary by Difficulty Level. I am doing some tests to nail down the numbers.

LKendter, I prefer to look at it as spreading out production. Instead of making small remote towns that are just there to hold territory, I make large thriving metropolises that actually increase my overall production by a lot more than 1 shield/1gold.

Poprushing should be used sparingly, but it should be used. This gives communism an additional spendable, renewing resource-population. A surprising amount of material can be rushed from a metropolis while mantaining WLTKD, especially if a largely unused workforce is sitting around.

 

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by MuddyOne
Hurricane, Monarchy is generally better before a certain number of cities is reached and after a certain number is reached. The before number is generally surpassed before I finish researching Communism, the after number is after I acheive 80% domination.

The "certain number" does vary by Difficulty Level. I am doing some tests to nail down the numbers.

My (limited) experience of Communism is that already a middle-sized empire will suffer so much from corruption&waste that Monarchy will be a better bet. The reduced corruption in patch 1.21 might have had a positive effect on communism, and more tweaking of the corruption might even make it worthwhile. But everytime I have tried Communism, I have reloaded and tried Monarchy. Each time has Monarchy proven to be the better choice.