Communism

[superslug]

So far as I can see in the readme of C3C 1.20 there were no alterations to Communism. This instigated some wonder on my part.

We know that Civ4 is under development...from scratch. I also hold the personal (and not singular) opinion that patch 1.20 is an overdue steaming pile of radioactive crap that ignored more bugs than it fixes...and is already proven to have caused some.

I seriously doubt that we'll ever see a patch again, and if so, I doubt Communism will change.

SirPleb has mentioned in his game thread that he considers the current form of Communism generally overpowered and something he hoped would be toned down.
(@SP: Forgive me if I'm misparaphrasing you in this thread, but I wasn't about to jack yours!)

I'm currently using Communism in my current game and it is indeed very very powerful. The thing is, I have no way of deciphering whether or not it's too powerful...especially for milked games. Granted, the production/corruption is significantly better than it used to be, but I see potential factors that still (maybe) balance this:
1) For a milked game, you still need to switch to Democracy in order to cash rush Aqueducts, etc. That does mean an extra bout of Anarchy for nonReligious civs.
2) It's an extra tech to research and anarchy to eat when the AI are likely laying down rails and building Cavalry.
3) In III and PTW, Communism was the definitive "suck" government. (Despotism doesn't count, everyone has to use it at some point.) Now that Feudalism and Facism have been served up as the suck governments, it makes sense that Communism is a good government, since it maintains a majority of governments being usable.

Has anyone else used C3C Communism yet? Any comment on my assessments?

 

[Moonsinger]

Yes, Communism is very powerful in C3C. However, I'm not too worry about it because there are ways we can benefit greatly from it. For example, if we can keep the AIs in Communism or Facism long enough, they would end up with a huge stockpile of gold that that couldn't spend on anything else. The key is to reunite the free world against the communist world (just like NATO and PACT during the cold war, I guess). I sometimes even go a step further to stir up wars to break up the communist alliance. Therefore, in the end, they each end up with a huge stockpile of gold and can't really spend their their money on anything. Sure, with the low rate of corruption, they can build a lot of units to throw at us, but that doesn't matter to us because with our limited supply of cannons or artilleries (at least 50 or more), they won't have much of a chance. In the end, their stockpile of gold will eventually end up in our treasury, isn't that great?

 

[Aeson]

I think that the extra benefits of Communism (along with specialists) in C3C are going to be pretty well balanced with FP benefits in Civ/PtW.

 

[superslug]

Well, some of my initial assumptions must really be question now. 1.22 is out already to address issues in 1.20. There may be hope for Firaxis yet...

You've got an interesting point Aeson. I didn't even consider comparing Communism to the FP trickery we used to pull to defeat corruption...and I can testify that in my current game, the Communism corruption still doesn't hold a candle to an old fashioned remote Palace jump...