Social Policy Game 1: Autocracy

[Martin Alvito]

Whatever you do, you need to get a Settler on that Deer tile west of Athens. Unbelievable site, should have been your seaport. I also still think you want to go SW of Karakorum, but with what we see now I'd three-space it, picking up the Spices and two of the three Hills to the SW of Karakorum in the initial radius. The Gems tile is now a much lower priority.

Not sure how quickly the AI acquires cash on Emperor, but IIRC grabbing up the stuff on the west side of the lake isn't likely to return a profit and the sites are meh.

I'd go Calendar first, then Construction and build Libraries in the meantime. Agree that Astronomy needs to be your longer-term goal.

Liberty isn't necessary for ICS. It'll speed things up a bit, but at this point in your game it really isn't worth it. Either you go for it right off the bat, or not at all.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Wait... is this an ICS or a Culture game? I can't imagine them working in tandem.

If you are pushing culture then I'd make one more city at MOST. Five cities makes it almost unbearably long to get policies. Six pretty much removes the option of late game culture options.

 

[Nunya]

If we're going to be showing off policies, ICS isn't really an option. Especially when it comes to Inudstrial Era policies.

I've done some testing and I figured out how Police State works. Normal cities give 2 per city + 1 per population. Occupied cities give 5 per city and 1,34 per population. Police State halves the from occupied population (dropping it to 0.67 per pop), but not the from number of occupied cities. Planned Economy and Forbidden Palace however, seem to affect both regular and occupied cities (based on reports from these forums).

So basically with Police State an occupied city produces +3 , but occupied population produces -33% compared to normal population. A size 9 city occupied city breaks even, but larger occupied cities produce less than normal unhapiness.

With Forbidden Palace (or Planned Economy) thrown into the mix a size 5 city will already produce less than normal . And with Police State, Forbidden Palace, and Planned Economy occupied cities produce a straight 33% less than regular ones. Then if 60% of your population lived in occupied cities Police State would reduce overall unhapiness by 20% (on level with Theocracy).

So the general plan for your game would be:
1. Build Forbidden Palace.
2. Keep number of your own cities farily low.
3. Get Police State.
4. Go conquer the other continent. Puppet cities, then anex them when they grow to size 5. Never build courthouses.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Interesting -- Police State allows for Courthouseless annexation?

 

[vranasm]

now that's really interresting... too bad it's so late in the game

 

[Bandobras Took]

Late game never stopped me in Civ 4 -- I never was a big fan of Sim Axeman.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Wait... is this an ICS or a Culture game? I can't imagine them working in tandem.

Just responding to the OP's thesis that Liberty is needed for ICS. As I see it, the two city sites I mentioned are totally worth killing your Culture for. Nothing else seems worth the tradeoffs.

So basically with Police State an occupied city produces +3 , but occupied population produces -33% compared to normal population. A size 9 city occupied city breaks even, but larger occupied cities produce less than normal unhapiness.

If that's the way it works, this mechanic may be breakable. I've got some France and Babylon ideas that I'll have to test out. Not that those two civs need the help.

The question is how best to get to Dynamite and still have some SPs. You'd want to run a pure warmonger game, and Dynamite is by FAR the fastest way to pop Industrial. It also has the nice side benefit of unlocking the game's most dominating unit.

 

[pi-r8]

I had no idea that Police State was so good! That's interesting.

The easiest way to get a lot of SPs is the warmonger route. Just conquer and puppet everything you can, right from the beginning. Ironically this works best on immortal and deity, because on lower levels the AI won't settle enough cities for you- you'll just end up wiping them out. But once you've got 20 or so puppets the SPs really come fast, and then you could switch to autocracy+order when you've hit the industrial era. I'd definitely use france for that, though.

 

[Martin Alvito]

The solution is either France or Babylon with a Rifle rush. The only question is probably whether you're better off with France and Scientific Revolution, or Babylon, Freedom, double GS points and saved SPs. That probably depends on how many self-settled cities end up being optimal for teching, since puppets are so bad at that.

Either way, you should be able to hit Industrial around 140 or so, possibly earlier, which is excellent for a strat that doesn't involve Universities.

 

[dfn]

I played a few games with Police State, and I really liked how Egypt interacts with it.
Puppet a city, it builds Egypt's UB pretty much automatically for you, and you get to keep collecting SPs. During one of my games, I ended up with 24+ SPs (playing a normal warmongering game, not going for a culture win).

I usually rush to Biology and use Horse units until then. After bio, it is Infantry --> Mech. Infantry. I used to always go along the bottom of the Tech Tree, but I really like culture, so now I usually concentrate on the top half. It seems to provide more synergy with culture/happiness/warmongering and Autocracy (FP, Big Ben, etc.). I really like the high happiness + cheap military style of play Autocracy is good with.

Seriously, in the past week or so, Autocracy went from my least favourite tree, to my most favourite tree. I love conquering a lot of cities, not worrying about happiness, and being able to purchase an entire army in a turn.

Autocracy + Militarism + Police State = joy. Populism is just gravy.

 

[pi-r8]

I know you can get it really early if you want to, but why would you want to do that? There's no way you'd have enough culture saved by then to get planned economy and Police State. Especially if you're also spending social policies on Rationalism of Freedom.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Depends on how much you've founded and puppeted. You can substitute Freedom for Planned if you have a specialist building in any city, because working a single specialist will give you +1 Happy. Given only two founded cities, the French could run Freedom + left side Rationalism + Police State for just 2,560 Culture, which is easily doable early on. The Babs could run Freedom + Police State for a lousy 410.

Now, in a perfect world we'd like to run Order, which is probably only happening with the French. But that's going to slow down teching to Industrial considerably, narrowing the Rifle and Artillery conquest windows. So I suppose there are actually two questions to resolve:

1) Is the Order payoff worth holding off on mass annexation for 30-40 turns?
2) What is the optimal number of Libraries given the culture tradeoff?

The answers to those questions will dictate which civ and which SP path.

 

[dfn]

...the French could run Freedom + left side Rationalism + Police State...

The Babs could run Freedom + Police State...

I thought Freedom couldn't be active while Autocracy is? Does this work?

 

[Danceofmasks]

Can't be active at the same time .. nor autocracy with liberty either, which hurts.
I think that's the main issue with autocracy, it's not that it's bad at all .. it's great. It's just the stuff you have to give up hurts so much.

 

[pi-r8]

Weird... I really can't see any reason why they have to prevent you from running autocracy at the same time with liberty or freedom. I guess it's just for flavor, but it really throws off the balance since liberty and freedom are both so good.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Autocracy by definition is the iron-fisted rule of a military regime.

They're not all that big on civil liberties or granting their people "freedom".

 

[Nunya]

That's true. But I wonder how come then that Order is not incompatible with Commerce.

I think that from a purely gameplay perspective it would have been better if all the social policies were compatible with each other.

 

[DonChipotle]

Weird... I really can't see any reason why they have to prevent you from running autocracy at the same time with liberty or freedom. I guess it's just for flavor, but it really throws off the balance since liberty and freedom are both so good.

Same reason you can't have Piety and Rationalism. They wanted you to have to choose between different compelling options. The only thing that throws off the balance is that Liberty and Freedom are so awesome, and Autocracy is so meh. They need to balance the game a bit more so that it's actually a difficult decision for a conqueror.

 

[The Tollan]

Just an observation, not picking at things here, but technically autocracy would just indicate the rule of one person (could include all sorts of governments like various forms of monarchy and dictatorship).

The Autocracy tree generally represents things such as military regimes and dictatorships. It seems to mainly refer to modern authoritarian governments. So the terminology for the SP tree is not entirely accurate.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I thought Freedom couldn't be active while Autocracy is? Does this work?

Good point, thought it was just Liberty. Pretty much forces you to go France/Order, then. Probably save GS's and pop the last three techs. Wonder if you want to grab Cannon first. Musketeers aren't a bad substitute while you wait on Rifles.