Is it wise?

[Nightmare99]

Is it wise to stay in bureaucracy if you have a good science city as capital or should change to that civic at the bottom dont remember name as fast as it come possible?

 

[Cam_H]

Bureaucracy is certainly one of the strongest Legal civics available if your capital is a solid Science City.

Free Speech is excellent for a game heading for a Cultural win (it is the ideal civic for this victory-type), or an Empire with a massive Cottage-based economy where a large portion of your commerce haul is coming from outside the Capital and from Towns.

It boils down to an extent of number crunching and the direction of your game, but 'generally' a Science City Capital supported by Bureaucracy is a solid position to be in.

 

[drkodos]

The larger the empire the less effective the bureaucracy. It's a diminshing returns type of gig.

 

[futurehermit]

^^^ good point, i never really thought of it that way but it's very true. basically the way i've intuitively approached it is that i'll stay in it until nationhood or free speech come online (i.e., once i hit liberalism). by that time my empire is usually large anyways so yeah it makes sense to move out of bureaucracy anyways...

 

[Naismith]

I noticed post 2.08 that my usual rule of thumb for switching out of Bureaucracy (to Free Speech) wasn't working so well. I finally realized that the faster tech pace (Monarch, epic speed) meant that the rest of my empire wasn't as large or developed by the time I hit Liberalism. Now I find myself staying with Bureaucracy longer than before.

 

[svv]

Couldn't you just test it by writing down the research time to your next tech and net empire income, saving the game, changing to free speech, and (after anarchy period, if applicable) seeing if the research is taking longer or shorter and/or if the net income has increased or decreased?

 

[Naismith]

Couldn't you just test it by writing down the research time to your next tech and net empire income, saving the game, changing to free speech, and (after anarchy period, if applicable) seeing if the research is taking longer or shorter and/or if the net income has increased or decreased?

I've done exactly that before. It kind of feels like cheating, though. I rationalize it by telling myself I could go through a manual calculation of beakers, etc. with both civics, so I'm just saving myself some time.

 

[mutax2003]

In typical games, I find that I usually stay in bureaucracy untill I hit democracy, then I switch to: democracy, free speech, emancipation.

 

[Dirk1302]

I usually stay in bureaucracy (try to build oxford as early as possible) quite long because i tend not to have much cottages. I switch to free speech if i have captured a lot of towns or have cultural issues on the borders.

If you have lots of cottages it pays to move on to free speech when they're mature.

 

[Dirk1302]

I've done exactly that before. It kind of feels like cheating, though. I rationalize it by telling myself I could go through a manual calculation of beakers, etc. with both civics, so I'm just saving myself some time.

This seems entirely reasonable with me. I'd do it myself but i hate the time the comp needs to reload. In Civ3 you could switch as much as you liked in the same turn after the anarchy period.