Governments and wonders

Nisku

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 12, 2004
Messages
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Just for starters I play on Monarch level usually and I usually choose a huge pangea or continent map sometimes I do custom 240*240.

I noticed here that the choice seems to be the colosuss for an early ancient wonder. I usually go for the pyramids or statue of zeus why is the colossus better?

As for governments how do any of you make the republic government useful. I find in times of war that I just don't have enough support for my army under a republic and the 2 gold per unit is way to high when I go over the support. In times of peace I don't have enough support for just my defense and workers. I used to go republic all the time before I started using conquests. I've even found feudalism to be more usefull then republic for times of peace.

Feudalism seems to have a bad reputation but I find I can create huge hordes of workers with it to wipe out jungles/marsh/improve terrain then switch to democracy or communism/fascism when my cities start getting bigger. For example the game I'm playing now I picked a religous civ just to check the differences in governments. I went monarchy first then switched to feudalism. I had 190 support on monarchy and around 250 with feudalism, I made an army of 100 workers and cleared out every jungle and marsh plus I had a large enough army to deter any AI attacks. Under republic even without the huge amount of workers and just a defensive army the unit costs were way to high.
 
I used to use Republic loads before Conquests, but now I've been using Fascism as my War government -- well, when I'm Religious and switching Governments isn't so pricey.

Some people seem to say that Republic can work if you sort out cash flow, luxuries, corruption...etc but for me at least it, it'd probably be more a case of luck at the moment -- but I haven't really tried with Republic in Conquests after my initial attempt soured.

At the moment I am tending more towards Monarchy as my first government other than Despotism. Then if it looks like mostly peace ahead, Democracy. I guess if I was planning a Conquest victory, and I wasn't Religious, I'd go Monarchy --> Fascism and stay at that till the bitter end. Or I might skip the Monarchy step completely, if I could get away with it!

Been playing as some of the Religious civs from my Trait mod (see my signature) so switching governments as I need it hasn't been so bad. My general Religous trait Govt changes would be Monarchy --> Democracy --> Fascism. (Switching Fascism and Democracy as Peace or War ebbs and flows).
 
If you can get SoZ, get it.
Even on huge maps I'd rate this as one of the best wonders in the game.
As for the pyramids, I seldom get it at monarch and higher on huge maps, too many competitiors I guess.
The Colossus is great on higher difficulty levels as it allow you to do some self research or get more gcs for upgrades.
 
On a huge pangea, pyramids are VERY useful. The Colossus is better on small maps, because there you have fewer cities. The Statue of Zeus is useful on any map, if only to prevent the AI from getting it.
 
Thanks for answering I was starting to get dissapointed when the thread "I kill everyone ...... including myself" had 14 replies and mine still had zero.

Since I posted I've been having more fun with feudalism. I started an emperor level game on a standard map with Arabia as my tribe. I skipped monarchy and republic didn't bother to research them or trade for them. Went straight from despotism into feudalism. It was a great move. I have huge unit support and could pop rush military units/workers like mad. The first thing I did was take the pyramids from the iroqouis for the quick population growth. I'm a little behind in techs but can extort those form the AI in the peace deals I make and what does that matter anyway when my horde of Ansar warriors decends on the enemies cities. The only problem I had was during one war the war weariness started to bother my serfs so I had to make peace, I was still victorious just not as victorious as I would have liked. Now I'm not sure where to go if I stay close to within my OCN I may go for fascism or democracy if not I'm going to go into communism when the time comes.
 
Originally posted by Nisku
Thanks for answering I was starting to get dissapointed when the thread "I kill everyone ...... including myself" had 14 replies and mine still had zero.
Next time just put the word "nuke" in your thread title and you'll get plenty of responses. ;)
I've been playing with Feudalism, too. I think it requires a little different way of playing (more but smaller cities among other things) but definitely shows promise.
BTW, I rarely build Colossus unless I'm going for a cultural win or get beaten to another wonder and it's still available.
 
I'm going from despotism to monarchy ... and I'M sticking with the monarchy till the end... I don't get the advantages of the others governments maybe you'll help me ...
For the wonders... I never get the colosus ... not even for the pyramid, my capital is going for settler, spearmans, settler, spearman again (I think there's a pathern here) Much better to get territory before getting powerfull cities... unless I start near the arabs... thos who seems the AI's favorite Civ to get in a Hurly war!
 
The other reason that the Colossus is better on smaller maps is that technology prices are lower, so the extra 5-10 gpt counts for a bigger share of the tech cost -- in addition to the bigger share of your GDP.

Republic was intentionally weakened in C3C. You definitely get more use out of it if you're planning on peace. It's no longer a matter of being penalized for fighting a long war; you're penalized just for having a standing army. The commerce bonus is still really good, though, and Republic comes a long time before Democracy.

It appears that government of choice is a much more subjective call now. That's a good thing, and it makes the game more interesting to play.
 
Well I have played monarchy under republic very effectively. It's great for peace and war though democracy is probably slightly better for peace due to faster worker efficiency. You do pay 2 gold per unit but then you do also get 4 support per metro which are quickly achieved so it would seem to balance reasonably well with other governments. Democracy seems to collapse way to quickly and easily in war. To me Republic is a no nonsense government that will work well in times of peace or war and a good choice for those who are not playing religious civs.

I don't really like statue of zeus why do you people? I spend 200 shields building it when I could have spent those building swordsman and than continue to build them after 200 shields in probably less than 5 turns. Extra speed is nice but if the rest of your army can't keep up it's not to helpful.
 
Originally posted by Kaboth
I don't really like statue of zeus why do you people? I spend 200 shields building it when I could have spent those building swordsman and than continue to build them after 200 shields in probably less than 5 turns. Extra speed is nice but if the rest of your army can't keep up it's not to helpful.

Well, for starters the extra HP the Ancient Cavalry have is really nice. And 200 shields is only going to get you 6 swordsmen (almost seven if you micromanage and don't lose shields on overproduction), which will never retreat and so die a lot more. The Statue, even if you don't build it late, should get you at least 15 AC's before it expires. Plus once the Statue is up and producing units you can still go and build more units - as long as you keep expanding so you can support a larger military. And if you get a Great Leader, an army of AC's is deadly.

I don't really worry about getting wonders in the Ancient Era. The best ones are hard to get (except Great Library, which is pretty easy if you play a civ that starts with Alphabet and beeline for Philosophy). I'd really like to try out the Temple of Artemis but I won't try to build wonders at the expense of expansion/settler production in most cases.
 
I don't exactly *love* the SoZ -- but it's very handy getting Ancient Cavalry when you have either no Horses or Iron -- or both!
 
Originally posted by whatever_du
I'm going from despotism to monarchy ... and I'M sticking with the monarchy till the end... I don't get the advantages of the others governments maybe you'll help me ...
For the wonders... I never get the colosus ... not even for the pyramid, my capital is going for settler, spearmans, settler, spearman again (I think there's a pathern here) Much better to get territory before getting powerfull cities... unless I start near the arabs... thos who seems the AI's favorite Civ to get in a Hurly war!

The pyramids make your expansion faster, because your cities are growing faster and therefore you can build settlers faster.
 
I always make my capital a settler factory also, it's usually one of my first two cities that I set for getting a wonder. I find I'm gaurnteed to get one ancient wonder, maybe not the one I want but I'll get one of them. The pyramids have been working good for my pop rushing strategy in feudalism. Sometimes on Monarch if I have a good starting location I can even set two cities to wonder building.

Kaboth, the four support for a metro is great but how do you survive in the early game, if I remember right it's one support for town and three for city. I can't field enough workers along with having a defensive army with the low support and two gold per unit price of republic. You can't get the four support from metros until you have hospitals. I've noticed the AI nearly always goes into republic and bankrupts itself in short order.

Whatever_du, I wouldn't suggest going from monarchy to feudalism I would pick one or the other. You are missing out though if you haven't tried communism or democracy. Democracy gives you a huge gold bonus for science if you plan on peacefully winning the game. Communism can help out greatly with corruption if you are a war-monger and you have the latest patch, it's much better then monarchy and worth the anarchy period. Fascism I'm not sure about I suppose it would be good if you had a smaller sized empire under the OCN and you wanted to wage war.
 
Kaboth, the four support for a metro is great but how do you survive in the early game, if I remember right it's one support for town and three for city. I can't field enough workers along with having a defensive army with the low support and two gold per unit price of republic. You can't get the four support from metros until you have hospitals. I've noticed the AI nearly always goes into republic and bankrupts itself in short order.

Well I understand your doubts I am playing England (commercial/seafaring) atm so that is probably why I am playing Republic successfully, though the seafaring trait is having little effect because it is a 60% water continent map. I snared no wonders in ancient age, just focussed on swordman/medievil infantry to crush my hurt my neighbours and gain more territory. Then I snared most of the middleage wonders including adam smiths. Middle ages was really easy I was researching techs in the min 4 turns at only about 40-60% science and makes about 300 gpt. And most of my cities, have all city improvements that can be built at this point. Cities that I capture turn all their people into workers before I let the cities grow with native English people. So I'd say republic works well for commercial civs, at least on Monarch diff.
 
Hi, I want to use Feudalism as my main government type (the reasons can be found in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_1/002-1506790-1237666?v=glance&s=books )

But did not come to discuss politics, may questions are thus, In the book it says that "Feudalism" city improvements have no maintenance cost. But in playing, this does not seem to be correct, also what was changed with the other forms of government?
 
Feudalism improvements cost maintenance. Without maintenance costs, in testing the AI would always prefer Feudalism and never leave it. The bleepers neglected to change the documentation, however.
 
Seric - Yes it has the same military police as monarchy. It is the same as monarchy except for the unit supports, war weariness and hurrying production. Feudalism has low war weariness, monarchy has none. For unit supports monarchy has 2-town, 4-city and 8-metro, feudalism has 5-town, 2-city, 1-metro. For hurrying production monarchy uses gold and feudalism uses popluation. The war weariness in feudalism is the only thing that can sometimes cause me problems but the using population to hurry production is really good. I can give you some tips Seric on what worked for me if you like.

Jaybe - I really wish they would fix the AI's government choosing behaviour in the game. It seems to b-line for either republic, democracy or fascism, it would be nice to see a little more variety.

Well I lost that game I mentioned in my last post. I've started another game, large map, emporer, using Arabia again. This time I decided to make my cities even closer doing the X_X__X_X for city placement. I'm beating the AI around good. I'm suprised at how well I'm doing I used to always play on Monarch. I even started on a small island with only carthage as my neighbours and only one luxury resource on the island.

I destroyed Carthage in the ancient age with an archer/swordsmen rush. I needed to get a foot hold on the main continent my map was 3 smaller continent/islands and one big continent. By the time I reached Ansar warriors I was starting to really fall behind being on the small island and all. Well with feudalism and the huge unit support from all those small cities I was able to make an army of about 100 Ansar warriors :lol: . I got on the continent and annhilated the chinese and took all there cities.

Then I waited until democracy and switched into that, caught up and even got a little ahead in the tech race. I then waited again until I researched tanks and declared war on the largest civ in the game. Since I'm religous I switched over to communism in the middle of the war and that is working really well also. The game is in the bag now just a matter of mopping up the enemies. :goodjob:
 
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