Democracy vs. Republic

[King Of America]

I'm trying to understand teh differences between republic and democracy -- they don't sound terribly different in the manual--but they obviously are different.

Here's what I know now -- can someone please add:

1. War weariness -- bigger problem in democracy

2. Worker speed -- 50% (?) faster in democracy

3. Corruption -- less in demo. but I haven't seen any numbers (doesn't mean they are not out there...) and it's still a problem in big civs.

But...my list doesn't seem to account for the much larger commerce that other people report for Democracy.

If anyone can supply a few missing links (yes, articles are welcome), I'd be grateful.

 

[thetrooper]

Less corruption - more money. That's the missing link.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

And, from a certain army size, unit support is cheaper in Demo.
Say, your cities can support 100 free units in Republic; if you have more than 200 units, Demo is cheaper, since one unit costs only 1gpt. A rare circumstance, especially above Emperor, but it can happen, like when you're preparing a huge nimber of units to overrun a neighbor in a couple of turns. Especially on Archipelago maps, where you also need lots of ships.

 

[Vegasgustan]

Wouldn't most of you agree that switching to Democracy from Republic is not worth the Anarchy though? I guess if you are a Religious Civ it would be okay. However, it seems to be a little too little of a good thing. Another question, why switch to Communism? Any good reasons?

 

[MOTH]

It seems that most top players will revolt once in the early game to Republic and stay there for the rest of the game. If you are a Religous civ then they might revolt a couple of other times to get an advantage out of pop rushing in Communism.

 

[Turner]

It really depends.

Governments are such a personal thing. What works for me may not necessarily work for you. (but it might!)

Switching to communism has two advantages, both related to corruption. If you're playing C3C, you can build the Secret Police Headquarters. This increases your OCN by 25%, which means corruption goes down for all cities as the corruption/ocn ratio is recalculated.

And, of course, you get communal corruption, which means that those outlying cities suddenly become more productive.

 

[Vegasgustan]

Thanks Turner 727. That makes sense. I am a Mac guy, so it might not be worth it to me.

 

[Turner]

Well, it can still be useful to you, if you have a far sprawling empire. Keep in mind, even without the 25% bonus to OCN by building the Secret Police Headquarters, you still get a big boost to outlying cities when you're trying to bring them up to speed.

But whatever. Your game. Play it how you want.

 

[Admiral8Q]

I'm a Democracy guy. Probably because I'm a builder and tend to keep smaller numbers of troops than some other players. I prefere to have the abillity to build a large army quick when I need it rather than keep a bunch of units just sitting around eating gold.

Sometimes I even skip Republic and play on Monarchy until Democracy is available. Communism has it's benefits, but I play PTW and hear it works much better in C3C.

 

[Abaddon]

i like communism best... And for me it comes at the perfect time:

1.already had a cavalry charge to increase land so much citys with total corruption.
2.about to get arty and start the second wave of attacK, and can crank all my citys into decent production.

 

[classical_hero]

Each Government has it's pro's and con's. It just depends on your playing style and goals.

 

[jb1964]

I just finished a C3C game last evening where I would swear my switch from Rep to Demo was a waste of 6 turns of anarchy. For the rest of the game I couldn't believe the levels of corruption I was experiencing (~25-30%).

For the outlying cities I just cranked food production and turned as much of the population as I could into revenuers.