[R&F] Democracy vs Communism production bonuses

[rattatatouille]

With Rise and Fall overhauling the Government systems one of the biggest changes was to a few Governments. Namely, Communism and Democracy have been changed to a very large degree from vanilla.

Here's how each Government stacks as of Rise and Fall:

Democracy: Major bonus: +2 Production and +1 Housing per District. Minor bonus: 25% discount on purchases with Gold.
Communism: Major bonus: +0.4 Production per citizen in cities with a Governor. Minor bonus: +10% Production.

So you might be thinking that Communism works better for tall while Democracy works better for wide. While that isn't completely inaccurate, that doesn't quite paint an entirely accurate picture.

Keeping in mind that percentage bonuses in Civ 6 are applied after all numerical bonuses, our formula for total production under Communism would be: 1.1 * (city size * 0.4 + base Production).

While for Democracy, the formula is: base Production + number of Districts * 2.

Keeping in mind that you get 1 district per 3 population after the first one (i.e. the formula for District cap is floor(population / 3) + 1), we thus get the following:



As you can see, Communism only eclipses Democracy in Production if you have both a large city population AND a high amount of base production (around 2.7 production per pop or so).

The difference, of course, is that you only get the bonus production from Democracy by building Districts (which in of themselves have a production cost) while with Communism you get the boost as soon as a Governor is established. Given that Governors are finite while Districts are not, however, it's easier getting the production boost from Democracy for a large empire, and the ability to accelerate production through chopping still exists as a way to quickly get Districts online.

TL;DR: Democracy > Communism for all but the tallest empires.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Of course not. Districts have cost, they cost a lot. So you don't always build districts to meet the pop threshold. The most often case is a 7~10-pop city with only 1 or 2 districts.

 

[Cerilis]

Good to know, thanks.

 

[rattatatouille]

Of course not. Districts have cost, they cost a lot. So you don't always build districts to meet the pop threshold. The most often case is a 7~10-pop city with only 1 or 2 districts.

Yeah, at that point it's fairly even (depending on your average production per pop).

 

[Bad Wolf]

Yeah Communism definitely needs a major boost to make it viable. I took one look at the R&F version and was like, "Why would anyone EVER choose that over Democracy or Fascism???"

 

[aguliondew]

So Communism is slightly better for production in tall civs while Democracy is better for wide civs. This mean that democracy will still be the more picked government. Domination is the common way people beat the game.

 

[rattatatouille]

Here's how it looks like with doubled bonuses (i.e., Communism Govt with Communist Legacy card) Keep in mind that the 10% bonus only applies once.



Here's how it looks like if you had one Govt but had the Legacy card of the other (So Democracy with Communist Legacy and vice versa).



As you can see the 10% minor bonus is the deal maker for the latter.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Here's how it looks like with doubled bonuses (i.e., Communism Govt with Communist Legacy card) Keep in mind that the 10% bonus only applies once.



Here's how it looks like if you had one Govt but had the Legacy card of the other (So Democracy with Communist Legacy and vice versa).



As you can see the 10% minor bonus is the deal maker for the latter.

So the most productive people are communists who remember what democracy used to be like???

 

[UWHabs]

Also remember that Democracy gets housing, as well as decreased purchases. Whereas Communism only gets the production. Definitely it could use an extra boost - maybe Communism should also eliminate the time it takes a governor to establish? That would certainly be a neat extra boost that would definitely make it tempting to use more often.

 

[Bad Wolf]

That would certainly be a neat extra boost that would definitely make it tempting to use more often.

Especially if that were the legacy bonus!

 

[Sostratus]

As I tried to walk through in a similar manner here,

The line of thinking that the devs lead a player down, like this:

So Communism is slightly better for production in tall civs while Democracy is better for wide civs

is actually untrue.
In almost every realistic situation of a standard game, you'll unlock tier 3 governments fairly late into the game- this implies your big cities (which benefit the most from communism) have had time to develop. The mere existence of democracy's district bonus is enough to give rise to strategies that utilize it; You aren't just dropped into a game 200 turns in; you can develop to target certain objectives (in this case, aiming for democracy's boni means you'd make sure you have more districts in place.)
The conditions necessary for communism to eclipse democracy even with governors are virtually impossible (7 or less cities, all of which have very high citizen productivity yet also very high population yet also few districts.) But all of this analysis ignores the fact that you can have 7 governors, but vastly more cities.

As you can see, Communism only eclipses Democracy in Production if you have both a large city population AND a high amount of base production (around 2.7 production per pop or so).

What's important to keep in mind is that the requirement of high population - at least in the 20s- and high productivity without many districts is incredibly hard to achieve. For example, to achieve average productivity of 4 means everyone is working a grassland hill mine. But then, you also need to work farms to have enough food. But wait- if your citizens are so productive, what constraint prevents you from putting down districts that make democracy superior? And these conditions have to apply to all your cities for the empire-wide net advantage to go to communism.
Districts also aren't just production sinks. They are themselves very powerful, and you're going to want to build a lot of them anyways. You'd be handicapping yourself to get to a point where your empire benefits more from Comm. than democracy.

IMO, democracy and communism should swap legacy bonuses, with the governor-citizen bonus being buffed to 0.5-0.75. Democracy has a superior card distribution (and the aforementioned housing and gold benefits) on top of almost always beating communism at its raison d'etre- production.

 

[Shorlin]

Its nice to see communism exposed as a garbage tier ideology, but for gameplay purposes it definitely needs a buff.

 

[Riker]

Its nice to see communism exposed as a garbage tier ideology, but for gameplay purposes it definitely needs a buff.

That actually never happened

 

[Bad Wolf]

That actually never happened

True, communism has never been buffed.