Democracy and unit support

[del62]

For unit support democracy is much better than rebublic, and probably best of all due to the large amount of extra trade generated and each unit costing only 1 gpt,

do you think this a fair statement?

 

[vmxa]

Demo is not worth a crap unless you play low level games. You have several problems with Demo. You have to research an additional tech that you do not need, You then have to revolt a second time. Now you have zero unit support and WW is a huge problem.

Yes you get 150% worker, not a bad thing, but you can live without it. Rep has 1/3/4 unit support, so 3 per city is going to offset a lot of extra gold.

 

[Padma]

For unit support democracy is much better than rebublic, and probably best of all due to the large amount of extra trade generated and each unit costing only 1 gpt,

do you think this a fair statement?

Taken strictly at face value, I think that is probably a fair statement.

BUT

everything vmxa has said is also true. Which is why few of the "good" players ever switch to demo.

 

[timerover51]

Side note to Padma, I thought that I was the only retired 1st Lieutenant on the Forum, albeit Army and not Air Force.

With respect to democracy, since you appear to agree with Vmxa comments, is that an indication that the majority of the "good" players are warmongers, and that if you are not a warmonger, you will never be a "good" player?

Since I go to war only to test unit combat value revisions, it would appear safe to assume by your standards that I will never be a "good" player, preferring the builder to the warmonger.

 

[TheOverseer714]

If the OP had said Democracy is by far the best government for peaceful building and making lots of money, I would agree. Supporting tons of troops is fine, but being able to use them very long is another thing. Democracy makes fighting wars very problematic, so raw troop support means very little in this case. My one 100k game was as a democracy, but my wars had to be very short after switching. I traded for it instead of researching it, and I was the Celts, so the short anarchy made it worthwhile. It takes plenty of luxuries to keep the people happy. I consider it a "specialty government" for all these reasons, and very rarely play using it. For builders who have plenty of luxes, it is the berries.

 

[Padma]

Side note to Padma, I thought that I was the only retired 1st Lieutenant on the Forum, albeit Army and not Air Force.

With respect to democracy, since you appear to agree with Vmxa comments, is that an indication that the majority of the "good" players are warmongers, and that if you are not a warmonger, you will never be a "good" player?

Since I go to war only to test unit combat value revisions, it would appear safe to assume by your standards that I will never be a "good" player, preferring the builder to the warmonger.

I wouldn't say that if you are not a warmonger, you will never be a good player. But even a peaceful builder has to be *prepared* for war, at the very least. I rarely have played above Monarch, and admit I prefer to live peacefully with my fellow man. Yet, I rarely bother to switch to Demo, for reasons that vmxa cited: Demo comes too late in the tech tree, it requires a "dead-end" tech, and it forces another Anarchy period. All for a boost that is, in effect, rather negligible. I find that if I stay in Republic, I do quite as well.

I tested it some years ago, using save games to switch to Democracy, and found that the additional Anarchy time ate up most of my perceived gains, so I haven't bothered to do the switch, since.


(Aside: we are few and far between. My last active-duty rank was E7, but I carried a commission in the reserves for most of my AD time. After I retired, the "30-year clause" (as the Army refers to it) kicked in, and my retired rank became my commissioned rank. )

 

[Puppeteer]

In vanilla Civ III and PTW, unit support for Dem and Rep are the same. In Conquests you get free unit support for towns/cities/metros (1/3/4 or similar) for Republic and 2 gold per unit over the limit. Dem has no free unit support per city, so if you have tons of large cities then Republic might actually be cheaper on unit support.

But if unit support is a problem you can always start a war.

 

[Spoonwood]

With respect to democracy, since you appear to agree with Vmxa comments, is that an indication that the majority of the "good" players are warmongers, and that if you are not a warmonger, you will never be a "good" player?

I don't see where you get this from anyone's comments here. You can certainly beat Deity without warmongering... and given the right game you can probably do it without fighting a war ever. My "Deity Builder" game either will come close to this, or could have done this if I had done things a little differently. I have plenty of saves in my write-up in the stories section. Democracy sounds good in principle, but for a competitive research-based game (if you play peacefully for non-cultural builder winning conditions your game comes as research-based) a 6-turn anarchy sounds like suicide. Unless you play as religious, I'd forget about Democracy for a builder game. On top of that, the anarchy period makes it more likely the AIs will attack you during that period.

 

[timerover51]

Guys, I have discovered that if you do a change of government while in a Golden Age, your anarchy last one, repeat one, turn. Not six. I have been watching this a while, and try to time my Golden Age to my switch from Depotism to my modified Monarchy. I do not play religious, as yet, so it is not a result of that. As near as I can tell, the anarchy period is covered in the source code and not accessible from the editor. Therefore, I am not doing anything to shorten it, except having it take place during a Golden Age.

 

[Greyhawk1]

Biggest problem for me in Democracy is that it makes you vulnerable to the fairly random nature of the AI. All they have to do is keep you in a war and you will eventually be forced back into a more war friendly government.

In my current game (only my 3rd since I restarted playing) the Russians have declared war on me no less than three times while still in a peace deal. Luckily I have a lot of luxuries so my lead time on war weariness is pretty long. Without those my Democracy would have had to be rolled back long ago.

I think the game should give you more points for having a long-lasting democracy

 

[darski]

While I was still playing on Vanilla, I tried Dem a few times and I found that it had an amazing benefit over Rep for the commerce value alone. Granted I had most of the luxes in those games (own enough land and you have luxes) but I also found that the AI was (it seemed) more willing to attack me while I was in Demo.

At one point I switched to Communism instead of Monarchy (when the anarchy hit for the WW) and boy was that a shock to my little Demo sensibilities.

I have been thinking of trying it again but those wars are just too much. My next game will be Celts so it might be worth it to try if the AI will do the research for me.