How to wage an effective war with a democratic government:

[Bamspeedy]

I think you're right, but still, after 20 turns you have to declare war again, or the treaty will be silent prolonged. This is the same for trade treaties and so on. I think this means that after 20 turns, you can declare war (by renegotiating peace, and cancelling the agreement) without damage to your reputation.

It depends on what you got in the peace treaty. If you had any per-turn deals (gold/turn), then after the first 20 turns you will be contacted and asked to renew the peace treaty or to declare war, after this second set of 20 turns then yes, it does silently prolong (you can declare war without a rep hit). If you just got a lump sum of cash, techs, or cities, then after the first 20 turns you can declare war again without the reputation hit.

Just be careful, that when you get asked to renew or end the peace treaty you don't have any units in their territory if you decide to declare war, or you get a reputation hit.

 

[Trinity]

I'm in a democracy now. I'm sending workers up to Kandahar to build fortifications up in the mountains and hills around the city in the core boundary. The city has 5 gem resources now within city limits after expansion. I've got 18 infantry, 6 cavalry and three ironclads stationed there. I seriously doubt Persia will try and attack those positions. They will be fools to try. Persia signed a peace treaty immediately after I took it.

Now how do I improve my relations with them from furious to cautious?

 

[Lawrence]

Now how do I improve my relations with them from furious to cautious?

Easy, sign an MPP with ROP with them. They might turn gracious!

 

[Night Raider]

This is a great thread; I have been using a variation of this strategy for sometime. I, like Moonsing only play on maps of large or bigger, personally I like maps that I can have all 16 civs involved. A few areas where I differ though are this:

1. I never raise a city, instead let the governor control the attitudes, I have taken cities as large as 28 pop, they actually were bigger than this but I like to bombard large cities to soften up the resistance and as we all know that usually kills off a few citizens in the process, and not had them flip, by the time the governor has them firmly under control and the city growing again, the pop could be down to 4 or 6, there happy and starving to death.

Only once have I had a city flip by letting the governor govern the attitudes, I took the city from the Chinese, and found that it was a city full of Iroquois, which was a surprise on my part, I had not realized they were at war, the Iroquois had three cities surrounding it, it was basically a peninsula into the Iroquois Nation, which was why I wanted it in the first place, but I was not surprised when it flipped.

Once you have a large enemy city in your possession you can always make workers to reduce the size of it, and flood it with your workers to help prevent a flip, these have been discussed in other threads so I will not elaborate.

2. I never send my troops overseas unless I have to or I control the entire continent that I am on, that does not mean I do not go overseas, I just like my empire to be contiguous and easy to defend, exception, I will snag small islands in a heartbeat, great outposts, easy to defend, great for staging invasions later in the game and the AI rarely builds marines to even try and take these. Luxuries are nice but not necessary, temples, cathedrals and coliseums all work very well and you need them anyway. I am not saying they are not important; it is just not necessary to have far flung empires that are hard to defend for the sake of spices, when one can dominate your neighbors. I do use Moonsing’s strategy for strategic resources though.

Another note to go with this, war weariness seems to lessen when you are fighting a foe that has been a nemesis for centuries, even if you are the one to declare war, has anyone else noted this or is it my imagination?

3. On Point 5, Moonsing is correct; the AI’s buddies have probably joined the fray, but probably not as a MPP, just an alliance. If you can make peace with the first person you went to war with, you can then concentrate on the others, this has two benefits: you made peace, which gives you happy citizens, two; they declared war on you, not the other way around, so your citizens war weariness is greater, if you notice war weariness on the rise try making peace with one of the AI’s if multiple are involved, if you can make peace with one your citizens will give you more time to conduct military maneuvers on the others. Domination is the name of the game.

4. Mr. Biggboy is correct; Post 4, Universal Suffrage and Police Stations do help.

5. Press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-F12-Esc-Tab-PgDn-Home-Break to unlock a secret Civfanatics Website!! This does not work, you forgot to press F6 also.

6. Lawrence is correct on the 4th Commandment, always keep 4 or 5 Cavalry or Armour in reserve to kick out invaders; this seems to be a huge factor on the war weariness chart for democracies.

 

[Night Raider]

Now here is a question for everyone out there, my current game, I am playing on Earth, Marla Singer’s Earth, I decided that in this game I would try never declaring war on anyone, but if they declared war on me I would try to wipe them completely out of the game, it is 2004 now and I only have destroyed the Russians, this is a tuff policy on this world. Now here is the situation I am in Africa, Egypt to be specific, and the Aztecs are in North America, we have never gone to war, we have never even set units in each other country as far as I know, they are pretty much wiped out by the Greeks and American’s yet I seem to be the one taking the hit for it. When I go into diplomatic relations I get reminded on how I double-crossed the Aztecs, any ideas on why this might be?

 

[Trinity]

The Aztecs are mad at you? Did you make a deal with the Greeks while they were at war with the Aztecs? That's probably it.

Well here's an update. We are going to have to surrender to Babylon very soon. No sooner than three turns after my last post war-weariness hit and nearly shut down the country. I had rioting in 40% of the cities. Here WE were ATTACKED by Babylon. They had moved a stack of 10 infantry into our territory right next to one of my border cities! I told them to leave. They declared war. This is a f*cking DEFENSIVE action. :aargh3: This is NOT Vietnam!

It's in critical places too, and in very stupid places. Police stations do virtually nothing to reduce war weariness. We have not lost any cities. Tanks are just hitting the ground. Babylon is ready to implode.

Can you imagine if troops invaded the United States and were approaching say Seattle, that the country would want to surrender? Do you think for a second that the President would not put the country in a state of Martial Law? Would people actually stop going to work in the factories? I don't think so. Of course the Supreme Court might rule Martial Law unconstitutional, but in reality I can hear the president -- to quote Andrew Jackson, "The Supreme Court made their decision. Let them enforce it." As he and the military proceeded to ignore it when confiscating Cherokee land -- and he is thought of as a national hero?

Also the movement is so unrealistic. It takes years to get a unit from a city to the front instead of weeks. Under these rules the US would have had to surrender to Japan in WWII!! And Britain would have been controlled by the Nazis. Russia may have eventually beaten Germany, but we already were starting to bomb Germany when Stalingrad was retaken in 1943.

Settling with Babylon will cause me to break an MPP with Persia. Persian wanted it and I got 300 gold per turn for it! They are now polite. I switched all non-shield or low producing tiles to entertainers. Quelling the riots cost me 250 gold per turn. My own cities can starve themselves down to a managable size. I have all cities set at zero growth. If this doesn't work, they will see Joan Stalin very soon -- they sort of are. We'll either switch to back to Monarchy or go to Communism. It isn't as if this is a police action. Babylon invaded us. Not the other way around.

My science is going very well, and changing governments will cripple this. And if I am forced to surrender, I'm going to surprise first-strike nuke the hell out of Babylon as soon as I get ICBMs. They will be nuked back to the stone age.

I think Democracy is totally unrealistic. War weariness should be high if and only if you were the aggressor. It should be none if you were defending yourself. So I guess modding it is the only choice. I think they should be allowed martial law units. Or does the game make it Democracy of the 1960s instead of Democracy of the 1940s?

I want Hammurabi dead! I want his family dead!

 

[No.Dice]

Don't Republic and Democracy both get the same commerce bonus? One additional commerce in any square that is already producing one. Techs can be bought just as easily as a republic.

Republic however lets you stay at war for centuries at a time, with almost no micromanagement, while you can only fight for a few dozen turns at max as a Democracy, meanwhile endlessly micromanaging the hordes of cities you'd need to generate that 3k per turn income.

I believe the corruption difference is miniscule as well, although maybe somebody else could shed some more light on that.

In the rare case that your starting position has a few luxuries, this could mean only one period of anarchy. However this is an uncommon occurance, and you can't really count on it.

What makes Democracy the better choice? Slightly faster workers help you lay those initial railroad tracks, but it doesn't seem to outweigh the benefits of minimal war weariness.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Zachriel
That's fine as long as you want to be known as Moonsinger, the destroyer, or Moonsinger, the murderer of millions, or Moonsinger, the slaughterer of children, the destroyer of dreams.

The last time I talk to my citizens, they are extremely happy. Moreover, those civs that I destroyed, they can call me whatever they want; they have the right to do so during their last dying breath. After that, no one on the planet would remember about their last words. And if you ask any of my citizens, they would remember me as "Moonsinger, The Magnificent" and every day on my planet is really the "We love the Goddess Day".

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by No.Dice
Don't Republic and Democracy both get the same commerce bonus? One additional commerce in any square that is already producing one. Techs can be bought just as easily as a republic.

You may be right about that. However, when I'm in Democracy, I really hate to switch to anything else just becuase of the war. In most game, my civ is not a religious civ; therefore, I would loose at least 4 turns to switch to Republic and another 4 turns to switch back. That's at least 8 turns of no production or research; therefore, it's best just to stick with whatever current government that I have before the war (which is Democracy) and try to make the best out of it. Like Night Raider just said, fighting war in Democracy is really like talking a walk in the park. It's a lot like what's happening in the real world. Look at the USA, we don't switch government every time we need to fight a war.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Night Raider
When I go into diplomatic relations I get reminded on how I double-crossed the Aztecs, any ideas on why this might be?

Sorry! I don't have any idea on why that might happen Since you are trying to be peaceful, this is really not my area of expertise.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Moonsinger

The last time I talk to my citizens, they are extremely happy. Moreover, those civs that I destroyed, they can call me whatever they want; they have the right to do so during their last dying breath. After that, no one on the planet would remember about their last words. And if you ask any of my citizens, they would remember me as "Moonsinger, The Magnificent" and every day on my planet is really the "We love the Goddess Day".

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart . . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is <Moonsinger>, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

 

[Night Raider]

I forgot to mention one point on my strategy above, when you capture the 28 pop city and let the governor manage the city, set the production for a settler, once all the resistors are out, rush the settler, assuming you have the gold. If the citizens are going to die, you might as well get a few new cities for your efforts in conquering your enemy’s city, this has the added benefit of helping to insure that the city does not flip.

Also, I had a second city flip last night using the technique of letting the governor run the city, so maybe it is not as good as I thought, it was deep inside my newly acquired territory which was a little disturbing. If anyone else tries it, give me some feedback on what you think.

 

[alexman]

Originally posted by Moonsinger
By the end of the Middle Ages, my civ would normally generate 3000+ gold each turn (about 500 less golds for none comercial civ)....

There isn't such a big difference for commerical civs. At the end of the middle ages, you don't have hospitals, so your cities are size 12 and smaller: no center-tile bonus for commerical.

The other benefit for commercial civs is optimal number of cities is +1. This accounts for about 33 gold per turn, estimated generously.

How I got this estimate: Corruption due to number of cities (50 N/Nopt) is zero at the capital, and 50% at the last city within the optimal. Commerical civs add one to the optimal, so the same city would generate 50{Nopt/Nopt - Nopt/(Nopt+1)} = 50/(Nopt+1) more gold. That's 2% extra gold for large maps (Nopt=24) and 1.5% extra for huge maps (Nopt=32). A city of size 12 produces, say, 35 commerce in Democracy. If the city has a marketplace and a bank, that gives you 70 gold. That means, even if they are maximum size, your border cities will give you about one extra gold each. Between 1.4 and 1.0, depending on the map size. Your capital gives zero extra gold. Lets say you have a Forbidden palace, optimally placed so you get twice the optimal number of cities. Then, since corruption due to number of cities is linear with number of cities, the gold saved for being commerical is the gold saved in your border cities times Nopt. That's between 34 and 32, depending on your map size.

Assumptions: Your empire has twice the optimal number of cities, all of maximum size (12), all with a marketplace and a bank, with a FP optimally placed so that there is no overlap with the capital.

In pracice you might have more cities, but they will not all be of maximum size. These two effects have opposite effects in calculating the benefits of commercial civs, so I chose to ignore them both. If you don't have banks in all your cities, or if your FP is not optimally placed, (both quite likely) the benefits of being commercial would be even smaller.

 

[No.Dice]

Originally posted by Moonsinger

You may be right about that. However, when I'm in Democracy, I really hate to switch to anything else just becuase of the war. In most game, my civ is not a religious civ; therefore, I would loose at least 4 turns to switch to Republic and another 4 turns to switch back. That's at least 8 turns of no production or research; therefore, it's best just to stick with whatever current government that I have before the war (which is Democracy) and try to make the best out of it. Like Night Raider just said, fighting war in Democracy is really like talking a walk in the park. It's a lot like what's happening in the real world. Look at the USA, we don't switch government every time we need to fight a war.

I was thinking more along the lines of a despot ---> monarchy ---> Republic route, rather than a switch to democracy. Republic comes a good bit earlier in the tech tree, allowing an earlier switch. However, to be fair, most civs can't support an efficient Republic until about the time democracy becomes available anyway.

The Monarchy switch in between is used to build up your infrastructure, compensating for the loss of your military police when switching to either of the representative type governments. If you're especially blessed, and have access to 3-4 luxuries in the early game, this would mean only one period of anarchy for the entire game, switching directly to republic from despotism.

Wouldn't it make more sense, (after building up your infrastructure a bit) to switch to Republic rather than Democracy, and stay there the entire game?

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Zachriel
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart . . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is <Moonsinger>, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

You must be mistaken me with someone else. My civ goes on living forever after I'm long gone. The last time I check, they were naming their spaceship after me. Therefore, their history book would remember me as "Moonsinger, The Magnificent". If it wasn't for me, they wouldn't be where they are "among the stars" today.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by No.Dice
Wouldn't it make more sense, (after building up your infrastructure a bit) to switch to Republic rather than Democracy, and stay there the entire game?

Sure, it may be a good idea to stay with Republic until we finish building the railroad. With railroad, we could move from west to east, north to south or wherever quickly. Therefore, war can be ended within 20 turns or less.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Moonsinger

You must be mistaken me with someone else. My civ goes on living forever after I'm long gone. The last time I check, they were naming their spaceship after me. Therefore, their history book would remember me as "Moonsinger, The Magnificent". If it wasn't for me, they wouldn't be where they are "among the stars" today.

Oh. You are right. That was Ozymandius.



My mistake.

 

[No.Dice]

Originally posted by Moonsinger

Sure, it may be a good idea to stay with Republic until we finish building the railroad. With railroad, we could move from west to east, north to south or wherever quickly. Therefore, war can be ended within 20 turns or less.

Why would we switch at all, If Republic is going to allow us everything a democracy does, with the freedom to fight wars with practically no time constraints?

 

[dikwhit]

well, worker speed increase, if it is wanted.

 

[alexman]

...well, and corruption. In this respect, Democracy I think is better than people realize.

Democracy has a government corruption distance factor of 4/9. Republic has 2/3.

Assuming an average city distance of one tenth the map size (10 tiles on a standard map), and a courthouse in each city, you get about 5% of each city's commerce that goes to your treasury instead of to corrupted officials' pockets. If you have 60 cities, each working terrain worth an average of 35 commerce, that's an extra 210 extra gold per turn (if they all have libraries, universities, marketplaces, and banks).

Is it worth the gold, science, and time lost to Anarchy and to research Printing Press and Democracy? I don't know. But Democracy certainly gives you more money once you're in it.