Large Deity populations and Democracy vs Police State

[pwoz]

I just had a deity game that went quite well (actually the start would be very good for anyone looking for their first deity win). I was dealing with huge population AI's, especially since one was Gandhi.

I was busy making them my huge population cities and I found that democracy gave me a lot more happiness than Police State would have. I was essentially annexing cities and buying a courthouse and slapping as many specalists as I could. I found it easy to afford to do this with the ~70,000g I had from peace treaties. I ended up with an empire that was absolutely massive while still running 30-50 happiness.

Now this is only my second deity win, as I haven't played that many deity games, but is this usual for a domination approach, or does autocracy stay ahead sometimes. There are definitely some other nice bonuses for warfare on autocracy, but it was kind of hard to pass up 3000 beakers per turn, 1000g per turn and massive happiness from running all those specalists. All the artists kept my policies coming in at a decent rate too. I ended the game with full liberty, 4 in patronage, 4 in rationalism and 3 in freedom.

I read snarzberry's autocracy thread and obviously it worked, but it also seems like it's more of a "can I win while doing this" rather than "this helped me win" type of thing.

 

[bhavv]

Democracy? Do you mean freedom vs autocracy?

 

[pwoz]

Democracy is the happiness policy in freedom, police state is the happiness policy in autocracy.

 

[snarzberry]

If you have a large population with many cities then yeah nothing is going to compete with Freedom's Democracy in terms of happiness. You're going to get a whole lot of happiness and you don't have to do anything to get it other than have a lot of specialists posted, which you're going to want anyway. The fact that puppets post merchants is also a significant benefit to this policy. It's just plain better than Police State as far as happiness is concerned.

But if you're asking the broader question of Autocracy Vs Freedom when it comes to a deity game war push for domination victory then all of the other policies need to be considered when making your choice, as you alluded to. I don't find happiness to be that difficult to manage once you have a massive engine of population and gpt up and running. You are able to purchase happiness buildings, you can annex and build courthouses (even more effective with Autocracy) and there are a few wonders that really inject happiness when captured.

So overall I would still easily take Autocracy over Freedom when there's still 70 - 100 turns at least left in the game and I'm going to be spending it all at war, but yes Democracy is the tops as far as happiness policies individually go.

 

[bhavv]

Oh right, the social policies. I've rarely ever tried more than 6 cities, but once I have the right side of freedom plus statue of liberty and several size 20+ cities, I will eventually end up with a 40 plus surplus happiness from filling your specialist slots.

Currently I just managed to pull of wonder whoring with Sejong on emperor difficulty, but with just two cities, basically using OCC tactics but with liberty and having a really cushy river start with room for two huge cities.

I managed to pop 25 specialists by 1850 AD, running my specialist slots at max capacity through the game and keeping progress equal for scientists, merchants, artists and engineers, but two cities didn't provide enough tech rate in the end game, and getting 4-6 cities setup means I lose a wonder of two on emperor. Freedom was a definite requirement, and is my second tree filled after liberty, then I pick up secularism first and fill tradition.

I've never gotten to try autocracy or order, but I don't play large empires so wouldn't know how well they work, but the freedom opener, right hand policies, top left and finisher are far too powerful for me not to use, and multi poping lots of great people is easy.