On Monarchy

[soprismb]

You guys know I'm a newbie but I want to ask this at the risk of showing my a$$ in stupidity.

Doesn't monarchy seem like kind of a poor choice even for cultural victory? Feel free to correct me but here is what I think. You only get palace bonus in monarchy. It's REALLY small too...it's a 1/1 culture/population in your capital +5 MAXIMUM. Maybe I'm a different style player but the +50% sci/gold of democracy is so much better because you can rush cathedrals if you want/have the ability. Isn't that better?

As I'm writing this, though, let me ask, is the +5 culture bonus from palace a Base number? That is, if say you have a capital with a temple and a population of 10, how does that work? By my count you get the 10x2 for a 20 in culture. Does the cathedral just add 5 on top of that to make it 25 or does it go 5+10=15x2=30?

I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts on this because my estimation culture is the hardest to achieve.

Thoughts?

 

[bonafide11]

Monarchy is useful early on (for the English), but it does not have as significant of advantages of Republic or Democracy later on. However, if I'm at war in the modern era, and I don't feel like losing my libraries to fundamentalism, I'll switch to Monarchy. Why? I'm done building settlers, so Republic has no upside, and in Democracy, the enemy Civ can force peace on me, so Monarchy is the only government with an upside that allows me to be at war. However, the extra 5 culture points you get for it are not that significant if you're trying for a cultural victory.