So I hear some of you guys like the pacifism civic?

[Monkeyfinger]

I called the Sfvnhkfgmbyujubglkhnbjmfukyhb Paya a bad wonder because OR and Theocracy are easy to get without it, FR is only good at the late point of the game where you'll have Liberalism, and Pacifism just blows. A bunch of people jumped down my throat regarding that last point.

Why? This is Civ4, where even if you're not a bloodthirsty fighter you need to keep around a decent sized military to keep those AI vultures from seeing you as plump carrion and picking you apart, so pacifism's going to make your upkeep costs balloon while hitting you with the opportunity cost of losing either fast infrastructure + easy to build missionaries, or stronger units + a nice one finger salute to the AP owner (if you aren't him). And for what? A few extra GPs over the course of the game. To me, a few lightbulbed techs or a couple golden ages don't really seem worth spending heaps of gold on in addition to sacrificing infrastructure or troop strength.

 

[DaveMcW]

If troop strength is that important to you, avoid Pacifism.

But it's a great civic to run in a short burst between wars.

 

[bazola]

Well I don't lightbulb and have never used more than 3 GP for golden ages in a given game. I also almost never run pacifism. When I realized this the other day I attempted to run a super-specialist economy with pericles, parthenon, national epic, and pacifism. Was getting great scientists at 8 turns when all was in place. My capital was running at the 600 beaker mark earlier than I've ever seen it with this strategy. While I don't know that running it for the whole game will ever be effective, it's definitely a good opener for a settled scientist strategy.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Pacifism isn't a game long civic. Its a civic where you trade cash (through higher troop upkeep) for great people. Since great people can be settled or lightbulbed to provide research in excess of what you might lose by dropping the science slider to pay for the upkeep, it can be worthwhile.

It is particularly worthwhile for Spiritual since you can alternate periods of caste system+pacifism for tons of GPP.

For other civs it can be useful to run pacifism after philosophy to get to liberalism quickly.

Eventually the maintenance is too high, but if you are secure diplomatically then you can run it fairly late into the game. Once you get nationalism you can always raise an army in a hurry.

 

[Carnage04]

Earlier on before your army gets out of control, pacifism rocks. Right after Philosophy, you are going to be gunning for Paper and Education. You will be needing 600-1000 GPP to get your next Scientist. Having a city doing 40-50 a turn compared to a city doing 80-100 per turn is huge. The Sooner you get to Education, the sooner you start building Universities and Oxford, the sooner you get that free tech at Liberalism.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Relatedly, could someone tell me how Pacifism actually works? I assumed it cost me $1/military unit, but that's not the case.

Instead it seems like (based on looking at it once):
Without it, you pay maybe $.5 per unit in excess of some number like 7.
With it, you pay $1 per unit in excess of some number like 7.

If that description is correct, it's only marginally costing you .5 per unit in excess of ~7, which is comparable to other civic's upkeeps if you're not in a war.

 

[Bast]

Relatedly, could someone tell me how Pacifism actually works? I assumed it cost me $1/military unit, but that's not the case.

Instead it seems like (based on looking at it once):
Without it, you pay maybe $.5 per unit in excess of some number like 7.
With it, you pay $1 per unit in excess of some number like 7.

If that description is correct, it's only marginally costing you .5 per unit in excess of ~7, which is comparable to other civic's upkeeps if you're not in a war.

Really? I didn't know this. Can someone confirm?

Pacifism just looked a lot better if this is true.

 

[SevenSpirits]

I jsut tried it out in WB, and it's not quite how I thought.

There are two unit cost numbers, the unit cost and military unit cost.

Unit cost is, you get some number of units free, but beyond that you pay, I think 1 per unit. This includes stuff like workers.

Military unit cost is zero unless you have pacifism. If you do, you pay an extra 1 for every military unit beyond some number.

Those base numbers are based on your population. Thus if you have well-developed cities like I did in my game, you don't have to pay much. I had about 7 cities, varying around size 10 (actually, it must have been higher than this), and about 20 military units. I was paying about 4 gold per turn, total, for unit maintainance. This is what surprised me and prompted me to post here. Thinking back, I guess I was paying zero for unit maintainance and 4 for pacifism.

So Pacifism is interesting in that it actually becomes cheaper if you have more population, whereas the other civics become more expensive.

For better information about unit upkeep, I found this article: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=141475

 

[Unconquered Sun]

Pacifism is the religious civic for SE and a good one for selective GPP bursts for any other economy. Keeping a large army in peacetime is newb anyway.

 

[KMadCandy]

but if you are secure diplomatically then you can run it fairly late into the game. Once you get nationalism you can always raise an army in a hurry.

sometimes i'll have a neighbor that loves me but also loves to go to war. ends up alex a lot of times; i've seen people post about hating alex but i love the guy, never had a problem with him at all. so if i want to do a peaceful builder thing for a while, i use leaders like that as my attack dogs if somebody else does declare war on me. i've done that with tremendous results, buying time to whip/draft/scrounge together the army i didn't have standing around waiting since i wasn't planning on a war yet. alex's troops are military power that i have access to in a way (for protection, altho if he takes over cities i don't get the cities), but it's not shown on my powergraph/demographics and i'm not paying upkeep for it.

This is Civ4, where even if you're not a bloodthirsty fighter you need to keep around a decent sized military to keep those AI vultures from seeing you as plump carrion and picking you apart

the definition of "decent sized military" varies by player, and in a game like i've described above i probably get by with a heck of a lot less troops than you do. pac doesn't cost me "heaps of gold" like it apparently does you.

edit: polycrates has a good point below, about the civic itself being free. i remember a one game where i had a pretty big army (for me anyway *giggle*) sitting around after a war, running OR to build infra in the cities i'd captured. i switched into pac, expecting it to be pricey. it ended up saving me money, simply because OR had been costing me so much!

 

[Polycrates]

I called the Sfvnhkfgmbyujubglkhnbjmfukyhb Paya a bad wonder because OR and Theocracy are easy to get without it, FR is only good at the late point of the game where you'll have Liberalism, and Pacifism just blows. A bunch of people jumped down my throat regarding that last point.

Why? This is Civ4, where even if you're not a bloodthirsty fighter you need to keep around a decent sized military to keep those AI vultures from seeing you as plump carrion and picking you apart, so pacifism's going to make your upkeep costs balloon while hitting you with the opportunity cost of losing either fast infrastructure + easy to build missionaries, or stronger units + a nice one finger salute to the AP owner (if you aren't him). And for what? A few extra GPs over the course of the game. To me, a few lightbulbed techs or a couple golden ages don't really seem worth spending heaps of gold on in addition to sacrificing infrastructure or troop strength.

I was one of the guys doing the throat-jumping (I get crabby in the morning without my coffee ), so I'll explain my perspective.

It's not the sort of civic you use for the entire game. And when you use it, you really have to focus on squeezing everything out of it or it's not worth the cost. If you're only running a single GP farm, it's hardly going to be worthwhile. It generally needs to be run with Caste System to be useful too (the exception is late-game, when troop cost pales a bit in comparison with other costs, and you can run enough specialists in other civics anyway). And you probably want to grow your cities before you switch, so you can go straight to max specialists.

Pacifism is fantastic for a Spiritual civ in particular, since it's very easy to build up a little cash reserve, then switch to CS/Pacifism and run enough specialists in almost all your cities that they're starting to starve, and then switch back 10-15 turns later with a huge accumulation of GPPs. Do this a few times and you'll be swimming in GPs. In the meantime, you're still running almost fully-developed cottages.

As for military, you're going to be hurting a bit if you're trying to run a big offensive campaign while under pacifism (though Spiritual can manage it okay with short bursts), but the added price for just a good standing army is not particularly prohibitive. The far bigger cost is the lack of gold income because everyone has abandoned the land to go work as specialists (though a merchant-specialist city can fix that up no problem). Also, remember that it has no upkeep, which can make a big difference from Org Rel. I generally make Genghis Khan look like a peacenik, and I run Pacifism all the time. Don't be fooled by the name

And the great people themselves are fantastic if used right. Any loss in research from the pacifism costs should be more than made up by the massive extra beakers from lightbulbing techs or stealing techs, or the gold from a shrine or whatever.

So yeah, I find myself often racing to bulb Philosophy just so I can start running pacifism. The other thread actually inspired me to try beelining aesthetics with a Spiritual civ and using Schwedagon to bypass the religious techs completely, in favour of lots of early great scientists and great spies from pacifism. Could work well, I think

 

[Unconquered Sun]

Dunno. If researching, Philo is a must for Lib anyway, so most people take this road and lightbulb it early.

Maybe, if you've got gold, and good hammer city, you can build the Paya to use Theocracy while staying on the path to Lib.

 

[futurehermit]

pac is great! no need to build the SP for it though. just bulb phil with your 2nd GS (1st goes to academy in capital)

 

[aelf]

Interestingly, running Vassalage together with Pacifism saves you on unit upkeep, since Vassalage gives you free units. Of course, you have to weigh this against not running Bureaucracy. It's useful when you want to build up some semblance of an army while wanting to get GPs quick.

 

[Percy]

Interestingly, running Vassalage together with Pacifism saves you on unit upkeep, since Vassalage gives you free units. Of course, you have to weigh this against not running Bureaucracy. It's useful when you want to build up some semblance of an army while wanting to get GPs quick.

I've read somewhere (no link, sorry), that this wasn't actually true, and that Pacifism cost you the same regardless of your civic.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Me too, in fact I think there was a discussion about that during one of aelf's challenge threads, I think it might have been the Fred game.

 

[lukep]

pacifism is great when pursuing a wonders/settling GPP strategy.

Just finished a monarch game like that where as Louis, i had a semi isolated start (washington with me on a small island). i did not encounter anyone else before 1500 or so. The land was rather bad but with stone+marble nearby.

I built 18 wonders in Paris, settling the GPs. Pacifism was key to keep the flow of GP running. I was keeping on tech (was beaten to liberalism though before encountering others) and running with no deficit at 90% science. of course almost all came from Paris (700 ). settled 19 GPs.

launched in 1915, could have won by diplo too.

 

[axident]

Interestingly, running Vassalage together with Pacifism saves you on unit upkeep, since Vassalage gives you free units. Of course, you have to weigh this against not running Bureaucracy. It's useful when you want to build up some semblance of an army while wanting to get GPs quick.

I think someone did a WB experiment on CFC and showed that what you wrote is not quite true; Vassalage is not really free/not-free, in that Vassalage deducts upkeep, bringing it to zero for more units, but Pacifism adds it right back. So you can't get around Pacifism's higher unit costs by running Vassalage and staying below the Vassalage "free" unit number.

 

[aelf]

Actually, I remember the discussion now. It's in one of the Immortal Challenges (either 2nd or 3rd). Ah, found it. Here it is:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=211723&page=11#214

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=211723&page=12#227

The second link gives a comparison with just switching to Pacifism. So Vassalage does save you some money on unit upkeep when you combine it with Pacifism. I think this doesn't mean you can get around Pacifism's 'penalty' by staying under Vassalage's free unit number, but I didn't claim you could do that anyway.

 

[Percy]

The second link gives a comparison with just switching to Pacifism. So Vassalage does save you some money on unit upkeep when you combine it with Pacifism. I think this doesn't mean you can get around Pacifism's 'penalty' by staying under Vassalage's free unit number, but I didn't claim you could do that anyway.

o.O ?

Vassalage saves money on unit support, that's a fact. But it does not synergize with Pacifism at all.
Pacifism increases your military costs, regardless of the other civics.
Vassalage reduces your military costs, regardless of the other civics.

So, yeah, Vassalage can help you compensate for Pacifism's increase in upkeep, but it doesn't have any particular synergy, since Vassalage doesn't do more for Pacifism than it does for other civics.