State Property... huh?

[kochman]

Please explain to me how state property actually increases food production? Pretty much anywhere that has used this civic in the real world has had food shortages... I don't get it?

Evidence is clear...

 

[zyphyr]

Game Balance

 

[ICNP]

Most of the countries didn't have proper food levels even before switching.
Care to list an alternative? I do agree its silly, but I like the no distance maintenance part, because it fits to the Russian strategy on Earth maps.

 

[deanej]

How? Well, as greed and corruption don't exist in civ (unlike RL), your citizens are perfectly happy to go move onto collective farms and give all the food produced to the state, which is then distributed without any officials taking more than their share.

Compare this to RL, where people resist moving to collective farms, don't produce at optimum efficiency because "for the good of society" is not enough motivation to work hard (unlike civ, where it is), and state officials take all the good food and leave the scraps for everyone else.

It's not that communism doesn't work, it's that human nature doesn't allow for communism.

 

[Countmonte8242]

The state distributes all the food with no cost to the needy (everybody gets some ration). Nobody is unable to afford food, so you have less food wasted than you would in capitalism. In capitalism you have restaurants / markets selling the food at a set price, and if some people are unable to afford it, the food may rot / waste before they get it.

You'll argue that this doesn't increase the actually food production which is what we see in the game. But the food availability to the people should actually increase, its just that in the game they show it in an unrealistic way.

 

[hewhoknowsall]

Why does hierarchy rule increase happiness per military unit?
Why is universal suffrage very different from representation, even though the former is basically the same thing only that voting is extended to everyone (aka an upgraded version)?
Why does the caste system allow for unlimited specialists?
etc.

There are quite a bit of unrealistic parts about certain civics, but then again it's just a game and the developers need to make the game balanced.

However, for state property it might actually make sense. In a communism like country, food is distributed evenly among the people and is handled without as much corruption...in theory. In practice it's totally different though.

 

[kochman]

The state distributes all the food with no cost to the needy (everybody gets some ration). Nobody is unable to afford food, so you have less food wasted than you would in capitalism. In capitalism you have restaurants / markets selling the food at a set price, and if some people are unable to afford it, the food may rot / waste before they get it.

You'll argue that this doesn't increase the actually food production which is what we see in the game. But the food availability to the people should actually increase, its just that in the game they show it in an unrealistic way.

My argument is actually that in State Property situations there are still restaurants, are there not? I mean, even the CCCP had restaurants, right? Therefore, the food is still wasted.

I do agree with this answer the most though, because there probably isn't food sitting in silos rotting because subsidies (which is not really true capitalism, but that's another point) to farmers buying up "unneeded crops" to prop the prices up and keep people in jobs no longer needed in such great numbers by society.

 

[kochman]

Why does hierarchy rule increase happiness per military unit?
Why is universal suffrage very different from representation, even though the former is basically the same thing only that voting is extended to everyone (aka an upgraded version)?
Why does the caste system allow for unlimited specialists?
etc.

Feel free to start your own thread with your own questions...

 

[Sveon]

State property is available when you learn communism but should not nessisarily be confused with communism. Scandinavian countries focus heavily on state property but can hardly be called communist countries. Like most countries today including USA have a wide set of state property laws. Often with the aim of making sure the general public will be ensured fundamental rights like not having to starve if they do not own means to support themselves - a scenario not uncommon even in the early 20th century. This could also be the reason behind making workshops and watermills produce more food. Places where the working class would earn their living. Better conitions would lead to growth in these areas.
One really should not try to find clear cut parallels between Civ IV and real life as they are very vague. Most governmets today have a mix of state property, mercantilism and free market. (Some might even claim they started focus on enironmentalism but that's highly debatable.)

 

[Tarkhan]

It is interesting to compare real world governments to Civ4 Civic choices.

(Typical modern day democracy in a developed country, really.)
-Representation AND Universal Suffrage. (Yeah, a current day democracy is typically both, heh)
-Free Speech
-Emancipation
-Here we go....Free Market and State Property...And we will put a little Environmentalism on top!
-Free Religion

See if I use Canada and the US as examples, Canada has a bit more State Property(Like Hospitals), and the US has more Free Market. Environmentalism is becoming more important as well.

 

[killmeplease]

In the game population growth is based on food, so an actual idea for SP isnt "more food on factories" but "faster growing population" as a sotialist state provides better life conditions to lower classes (particulary, industry workers) while under non-SP economy wealth tends to be accumulated in hands of few whereas common masses of people live in poverty. Although today every developed country have elements of lower class support in their economies. What SP does is guaranteing that every civilian will have a habitation, will not to die of starvation and will be able to keep children.

 

[kochman]

I think that sounds more like feel good ideology than game mechanics, but, nice try dude.

 

[killmeplease]

I do not propagandize sotialism I just assume what the reasoning it could be for developers to give SP such a bonuses.

Also I have to say that in RL there was no much difference in birth rate between late USSR and Western Europe/USA. As well as birth-rate social programs in modern Europe are near to effectless. This mean, common opinion that financial stimulation of families increases birth-rate is false.

 

[Baldyr]

Firstly, I think its rather stupid to discuss ideology on these boards. (Or any boards, for that matter.) So I won't.

Secondly, I have been under the impression that the bonus under State Property has the heavy industrialized regions (Workshops) produce some of their own food (half, actually). Like many military units did in the USSR - they ran their own farms and sold the surplus. (The money was then only allowed to be used to the benefit of the enlisted men who worked the farm.) Why shouldn't factories do the same? I could be dead wrong about this, though!

Thirdly, the "bonus" could also be interpreted as Workshops under State Property not having the -1 penalty they would otherwise. Again, the industry workers might not consume less food, but rather supplement their rations by growing some of their own.

Finally, I think I pretty much nailed this very subject in this post yesterday:

Spoiler :

The beauty with Civ4, I think, is that the Civics system allows you to interpret things your own way. Any given state or type of government will be represented by different Civics depending whom you ask. And one can also use different definitions depending on strategy or attitude. Or have your nation be an idealized or demonized version of its real world equivalent.

As an example I could have the USSR be a godless (Free Religion) bureaucratic police state that has enslaved its populous. Or the same nation could be a nationalistic union of local soviets (Representation) that has emancipated its citizens from bondage and is working for the cause of world peace, adopting a strictly defensive military policy (Pacifism). Or a fanatical necrocracy ruled in the name of a dead man in a mausoleum by his ancestors (Hereditary Rule & Theocracy) that has subjugated its neighbors into subordinate Soviet Republics and satellite states (Vassalage), organizing it's own citizens into the proletariat, the intellectuals, the armed services, the security services and the nomenclature (Caste System). Or...

The only constant would be the civic State Property, but I'm sure even some of the other economy civics could be redefined to pass as "socialism" or "communism". You could also always claim that your version or interpretation is a "what if" type situation or a "potential" development that never occurred in real life. After all, the aim of most types of governments (except the domains of warlords) is to benefit its citizens (and leaders, which goes without saying). People will always be arguing that they're not meeting this objective, or believe that they themselves are disenfranchised in one way or another. The question of what system serves its citizens the best will never ever be universally accepted as every form of government will inevitably contain conflicting interests (like security vs privacy, freedom vs justice, and so on).

I consider this open-ended approach to governments to be one of the strengths of this particular edition of Civilization.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

State property is not economically efficient at all. It's a pathetic government economic alignment in real life.

In order to give it any relevance in-game whatsoever, civ IV generated a made-up set of effects that have nothing to do with actual state property to make it among the better civics in the game rather than complete garbage.

It's a shame they couldn't find a way to make serfdom remotely useful. If you look into high-level play, every other civic is used in some situations. Serfdom is never used. Couldn't they have buffed it? Even the AI generally knows better than to run it.

 

[avdale]

A bit off topic but I believe the reason why Serfdom is so horrendous is not entirely its fault, its what it has to compete with. Looking from a development point of view Caste+Slavery are so gamebreaking that they would be used preferentially. What then follows is "Why not make something as good as caste/slavery then?" With spiritual as a trait we already see some very gamey transitions between Slavery/Caste every nearly every cooldown, adding a third option into the mixture would make things unduly complicated.

In short: Serfdom sucks as Firaxis new it would never be used over Caste/Slavery and if they made it competitive that area of civics would be bloated and unwieldy.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Slavery could easily be toned down and serfdom buffed.

One of the pissiest things about events is the slave revolt. The slave revolt is annoying, but its cost isn't so great as to affect the decision to use slavery on a ROI basis. What we have then is chancey annoyance, although I suppose that is the story of events in general.

 

[killmeplease]

State property is not economically efficient at all. It's a pathetic government economic alignment in real life.

it's a state property (more specifically, planned economy) rose Russia from ruins and industrialized it in less than 20 years, without foreign investment at all, so in WWII Soviets could fied technically advanced 10-million army. so its effectiveness was proved. it's quite another matter that it has some major drawbacks that are not reflected in the game.

 

[Iranon]

Food shortages are very easy to reconcile with State Property... if I run it I often replace farms with workshops. Excess population will be whipped away or just left to starve depending on whether I can switch civics at will. I find this matches some real life events to a chilling extent.

*
Most countries with command economies were authoritarian and discouraged open discussion of their failings, and therefore organised attempts to remedy them. At least a free market is to some extent self-correcting.
Some countries had impressive increases of industrial output under State Property, but swerving back and forth between 'screw living standards, heavy industry is what we care about' and 'oops, we need some consumer products fast if we don't want an uprising but our economy isn't even set up for this', red tape and nepotism certainly didn't help things.

From a game perspective, State Property often came bundled with Police State... nothing we should expect wonders from with regards to the economy. Also, we can assume that most developed countries have some well-stocked corporations - State Property having some advantages is definitely reconcilable with it being a horrible choice for countries that have functioning market economies in place.

 

[Baldyr]

State property is not economically efficient at all. It's a pathetic government economic alignment in real life.

Well, I don't think it amounts to much in the game either - as an economic civic. No extra trade route (Free Market) and no free specialist (Mercantilism). The lowered maintenance cost only adds up to that much per city (on average), and should easily be compensated for with say an additional international trade route of 10 per city, with +100% from Customs House. With a 20% tax rate that would still give you 4 , before +100% from modifiers (Bank, Marketplace, Grocer). Thats 8 to cover maintenance and 16 additional to spend on and stuff, with their associated multipliers.

Am I incorrect or do you really save that much in maintenance costs when you cut off the distance to palace part? In any case, being able to utilize corporations with any other civic should more than compensate any saving in city maintenance costs.