Civics choices with the Pentagon

[TheRealCzar]

The situation:
Muliplayer (PBEM) game on Vanilla civ4, highland map, 3 remaining human players, roughly speaking they control left, centre and right respectively. The game is on the cusp of the industrial revelution, centre has just developed assembly line, and built the pentagon

left and right are weaker in every demographic than the centre, and have recently allied and attacked centre from both sides.

I'm playing centre, I can repel the enemy easily enough, as they must attack slowly along limited lines (due to ridges), with railroad, I can so far get my entire force to bear on the enemy stacks, and I have knocked out two large stacks this way.

While I'm sure i can defend forever, attacking will be very difficult.

While I have a small technology lead at the moment, and a stronger economy than either left or right, with combined research, I would lose ground slowly over time.

My current civics are Representation-nationalism-serfdom-mercantalism-theocracy

so to the question:

I have just completed the Pentagon. Looking at my civics, I can either:

A) Go free religion, using pentagon to replace the +2 from theo, and keep producing units with 6 starting exp, this will help me maintain the tech lead, and keep my people a little happier. note that none of my enemies have my religion in any of their cities, so inteligence is not an issue.

I would likely also change from nationalism to free speach for the extra gold.

B) go for the vassalage for 10 starting exp and those 3 delicious promotions. i'd lose nationalism, but I don't mind that, since the need for drafting is over, and at 2 pop / inf, too expensive.

I'm inclined to go for option A. It will be combined with a change to emancipation, to hit my enemies with unhappiness, now my railroads are in place.

Fascism and communism are open to research, but I rely heavily on the +3 beakers per specialist from republic (with mercantalism and statue of liberty) so police state is not so appealing, and my distance from cap maintenance is only about 30 gold a turn, so i don't fancy shifting from mercantalsim. down the road, I will likely do a double swap to increase military prod and more importantly reduce War weariness.

I hope that makes some sense. I thought I'd see what better players than I make of this mid-to-late game civics question.

 

[Refar]

I think it kind of depends on what you wan to do:

I think i would prefer to use a probably weakness of a opponent (After they loose some troops and start suffer from WW) to counterattack - allways beeing on defence would make me worry at at some point a stack might get through. But if you think the un-successfull war against you is drain enought on your opponents economy/tech rate to let you win... You might prefer turtling and "defending forever" (or at least till going into space) - then you can live without those extra poromos and choose civics that help your economy. If you can hold them back, your enemies WW should mount up soon (as they keep fighting and loosing on your soil)

If you want to turn it over and attack, you should stick with War-Time civics to make better (promos) Units Faster (by perhaps even going into police staate at some point - when you atack you will start to collect some WW). You will need lots of troops to hold the fron on one side, while going after the other guy.

 

[oyzar]

Nuke em. With a slight tech lead you can nuke them before they know what happened if you have it set up properly(especially if you can stop them from accessing uranium). You want police state + mount rushmore + jails in all cities eventually as a modern era war racks up ww incredibly fast..

 

[Quotey]

Are you Spiritual or not? That's very important. If you are Spiritual you can build units to 1 turn 1o completion, switch into war civics for 5 turns and produce a 3 promotion army, then switch back to econ civics.

 

[oyzar]

He obviously isn't spiritual or he would have mentioned it . The leader and traits do play some importance and without knowing the full game situation it is rather hard to give specific advice.. My instinct tells me that if you aren't going to be drafting one of the other civics will beat nationhood by a long shot. If you produce most of your units the hard way getting 3 promotions doesn't hurt...

 

[TheRealCzar]

I'm playing as Qin, Ind\Fin, so it will cost me a turn of anarchy to change. If i was spi, I wouldn't even be asking because I could change as and when i needed.

I don't intend to defend forever, I'm just pretty sure I could. However, if I did that, I wouldnt be sure of out-teching as far as space flight. I should get to bombers and tanks before my enemies, so i will want to make that count.

counter attacking is my plan, right is spent and left is throwing his last men to their deaths. There is a gap in his armour (lol, I tried to say "ch ink" in his armour, but the sensor blanked it ) that allows me to dump my cav within strike range of one of his key cities with only a turn's notice, and he hasn't linked up his coal yet, so his movement is sluggish: I hope to knock out left, then right is buggered.

The thing is, and I should have clarified it in my question, is the extra promo worth it? It seems to me from my experience with this highland setting, that its not what you strike with, but rather when and where. I have used guerrilla II to good effect already for speedy infantry over foothills, but I can get them with two promos, so the third would only be for combat I or something. In another game with lots of sea, combat I+II and amphib is great, but there's not even many rivers in this game. City Raider III tanks are appealing, so when I get that far I might change again. (I appear to have decided firmly on A, I just needed a soundboard to throw my argument against )

Left dropped a massive stack in my territory, all veterans, no chaff, but because it was a four turn march (and my scouts had spotted it a turn out) I had time to get my own army in place, battered his stack with 16 cannons and then it was a turkey shoot. Would an extra promo have benefited him any?

 

[Quotey]

Would an extra promo have benefited him any?

Depends what units. If he had units that could recieve Drill, Drill 3 reduces collateral a lot, I believe. If he had a stack of whatever Mounted Units counter cannons, perhaps Flanking might have helped.

e: Forget about hte mounted units bit, forgot you're playing Vanilla.

 

[TheRealCzar]

Depends what units. If he had units that could recieve Drill, Drill 3 reduces collateral a lot, I believe. If he had a stack of whatever Mounted Units counter cannons, perhaps Flanking might have helped.

e: Forget about hte mounted units bit, forgot you're playing Vanilla.

afaik drill doesn't reduce collateral in vanilla either, and in BTS it doesn't reduce it significantly enough to avoid getting battered by 16 cannons, and if it did, I have more cannons than I know what to do with (and they're upgraded with extra collateral too )