the best civics

[Joshua368]

Any commerce is good commerce, right?

Specialists don't give commerce though.

 

[salty mud]

Specialists don't give commerce though.

I've been playing Civilization IV longer than I have been a member on these forums and I STILL don't understand the basic concepts! No wonder I'm so bad at it.

 

[Joshua368]

I've been playing Civilization IV longer than I have been a member on these forums and I STILL don't understand the basic concepts! No wonder I'm so bad at it.

All you have to do is keep an eye on the icons, everything in civ is icon coded. is commerce, is science, is gold. Just keep the icon in mind whenever you see it.

 

[Sciguy001]

It's sort of funny how slaty mud has 300 more posts than joshua and has been on the forums two years longer.

 

[Tephros]

Somebody explain free religion to me. It's a 10% science boost. That's like, not even half a building. The +25% from organized religion towards buildings is going to give you more buildings like libraries, universities, observatories, laboratories, banks, markets, grocers, etc. earlier in those mediocre production, commerce cities. This should dwarf what you get from free religion at any point up until you've built every building that could benefit the city, which won't happen for most cities.

Then the +1 +1 from each religion doesn't help much. Chances are if I have enough religions in my cities for that to be useful, I'm either on a pangea map or going for a cultural victory. Otherwise I spent way too much time building missionaries. If I'm going for a cultural victory happiness is not often an issue. It's the biggest cities that need happiness, and those cities have cathedrals if they need happiness. By switching away from the other civics, you lose 2 of 3 happiness from state religion cathedrals not counting incense. So in order to see any benefit here we need more than 3 religions in that city. But then with organized religion I could have just built more temples and other happy-boosters.

Oh yeah not to mention losing benefits from U. of Sankore and Spiral Minaret.

At least it has lower civic upkeep, but I don't think that would make up for the other disadvantages. I guess it would make sense to use it if you don't have any religion at all, in which case the better civics wouldn't work anyway.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Free religion is good for diplo

 

[PhroX]

Free religion is good for diplo

Exactly. There are times when having a state religion is just too painful in terms of diplomacy modifiers, so you may as well use Free Religion to get some kind of bonus. It's not fantastic, but it's better than no religious civic at all.

Overall, I wouldn't say I have a favourite. It really depends on the situation. About the only ones I never use are Environmentalism (compared to the power of SP or a corp-fueled FM, it just seems rather...meh) and Serfdom (by the time I get it, most of the major improvement works are done).

I didn't used to use Vassalage much, but I've found it's very nice when you're an organised leader - due to the free units and organised bonus, you're essentially running it for free.

 

[Tephros]

Free religion is good for diplo

Slay them all.

 

[Iranon]

My opinion for the single most powerful civic in each category:

Government: Representation. It's a free happiness boost where we need it most, and most empires should have a significant amount of specialists (be it for efficient research or GP generation early on, free specialists from buildings/Mercantilism or simply because we can work all worthwhile tiles while still having food left over, possibly thanks to a food corporation). 3rd most powerful civic in the game.

Legal: Undecided. The last 3 are very very close in power level and too diverse in their applications.

Labour: Slavery. No production worries at all as long as we have food, and a conversion rate that often beats working hammer tiles in the early (small cities) and late (Kremlin, excess food from corporations/Biology farms). Extremely efficient with a little bit of micromanagement and very versatile as well. Most powerful civic in the game.

Economic: State Property. State Property's maintenance reduction and production bonus alone are good enough to rival the effects of its competitors, giving access to flatland improvements that rival mature towns without the need of growing them pushes them over the top. I don't use it much because I usually prefer corporations (bigger investment, bigger rewards), but I'd say it's objectively the second most powerful civic in the game.

Religious: Organised Religion narrowly wins this. It fades away towards the end of the game when there are plenty of hammer modiefiers around, but such a noticable overall bonus is a huge edge for much of the game.

***

Having said this, synergy trumps raw power. Obvious example: Despite their failings (needing to be grown and taking 2-3 civics to reach their full potential) cottages come into their own before other improvements and can be built on a great variety of tiles. Hence, the combination of Universal Suffrage + Free Speech (+ Emancipation) is more than the sum of its parts.

 

[champ82]

Just for the record, bureaucracy boosts commerce (from cottages and trade routes) and not raw science or gold like you get from specialists and representation. Bureaucracy + specialists is not a very good combo, except for hammers from priests and engineers. Better off with cottages instead.

They are both really powerful civics though.

Didn't know that, thanks. It always seems like my science goes up though when I turn on Buraucracy. Am I imagining this?

 

[champ82]

But state property isn't just about reduced city maintenance, it's not like the communist government in Civ3. Often times I find the workshop/watermill boost to be even more important.

I know. But if you can swing Constructions or Mining and Sushi or Cereal Free Market, it is almost always still going to be better. I think a civ would have to be sooooooooo huge or have very few corp resources for state property to trump a good corporation combo. Without corps I generally agree that State Property is in most instances the best.

In my current game I'm squaring off with Hanibal who is running environmentalism and Creative Constructions. He's bigger, richer and more productive than my state property civ. He's the AI though, so my generals are infinetely smarter.

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Hard to pick "the best". Like everything else, civics are highly situational.
There are some games where I can't imagine switching out of civics like Police State or Nationhood.
There are games where you run vassalage in the late 1800s to please Mehmed and get a diplo win.

We can talk about the less desirable civics.
Serfdom is garbage, but if you are spiritual you can switch slavery/serfdom to cut the risk of slave revolts if for some reason you still don't have caste system.

Environmentalism is VERY situational. I can think about a small empire going for a space win, but that's it. SP or FM are almost always superior. Or maybe you want Sitting Bull's votes. Then environmentalism becomes the best civic.

Mercantilism. Free Market comes right after it and is generally superior. Still, in my last culture win, I ran Mercantilism to the end of the game. I've built the Statue of Liberty, so I had 2 free specialists in every city, boosted by the Sistine and Representation. Still, I don't know if it was the best choice. Probably the extra commerce from FM converted to culture was superior.

 

[Joshua368]

Didn't know that, thanks. It always seems like my science goes up though when I turn on Buraucracy. Am I imagining this?

Even if your capital doesn't have any cottages, it probably still has some commerce. From tiles (like coast or rivers...) or trade routes. All this will go through the multiplier and boost your science, even if specialists do not.

If you mouse over your science/culture/gold in the top right corner of the city screen, you can see exactly what makes it up and how the multipliers are working.

 

[Tephros]

Didn't know that, thanks. It always seems like my science goes up though when I turn on Buraucracy. Am I imagining this?

It will go up provided your science slider is above 0%. Science is produced in different ways. Commerce refers to the gold coin symbol: This can be converted into , , , or with various modifiers depending upon technology, infrastructure, and the position of your sliders: e.g. all at 0% means 100% converted into .

In contrast, the scientist specialist produces directly in much the same way a shrine produces gold directly. The modifiers still apply, but the slider has nothing to do with it.

Bureaucracy gives a 50% bonus to the base commerce of your capital. So say with trade routes and tiles worked you are bringing in 20 base commerce. Bureaucracy boosts this to 30. Then suppose you're at 50% science, 15 commerce is converted into beakers and then a multiple is added to this (e.g. all science buildings put together except monasteries would add +200%, yielding 45), and the other 15 goes to with its own multipliers.

 

[UWHabs]

Most games you don't really want to worry about switching stuff around, so deciding to swap Merc->Free Market is a tough decision.

Depending on my situation, I often find that Theocracy ends up as my favourite civic to run. If I mobilize for war, it's so much nicer building units with 5 XP than with just the base 3 from barracks.

Otherwise, one problem I find with HR is as someone said above being too dependant on it. Especially if you have like 8 units in a city to let it grow, then your neighbour DoWs on you. I often lose 3-4 of them counter-attacking their stack, and now my city is sitting with like 4 unhappy faces. Or my city's about to grow, so I switch to build yet another longbow, slowing all my other production (since I can't get myself to just stop the city from growing).

But sometimes you can get a big difference. I have a large empire now, and switched from Rep to US, and went from like 2800 beakers a turn down to like 2200. Being spiritual, I think I'll switch back once my 5 turns are up, but especially in a sprawling empire with the Statue of Liberty, I think I under-valued how much those 3 beakers per specialist were actually netting me.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's sort of funny how slaty mud has 300 more posts than joshua and has been on the forums two years longer.

As long as I'm left out of this discussion......

 

[Ian Kognitow]

It seems curious to me that Representation would seem to be favoured over Universal Suffrage. The ability to rush buildings via US rather than whipping seems invaluable, particularly by around the mid-industrial age when BFCs should be fully developed in all major cities and one would generally not want to do anything to slow population growth. Besides regularly saving valuable turns for late infrastructure, being able to rush theatres, libraries, and courthouses in newly conquered cities is rather essential.
The extra hammers from towns are often particularly valuable for largely cottaged cities and can also give an appreciable advantage if city production is switched to research (to partially compensate for switch from Rep) or Wealth (a couple decent cities building wealth coupled with town hammer bonus can practically match benefits of State Property.)
Of course it's great to be able to switch between them strategically via Christo Redentor or Spiritual trait but as far as a more 'regular' civic--especially if one is still out conquering/needing to develop new infrastructure--Universal Suffrage seems to be much more beneficial.

 

[Joshua368]

It seems curious to me that Representation would seem to be favoured over Universal Suffrage. The ability to rush buildings via US rather than whipping seems invaluable, particularly by around the mid-industrial age when BFCs should be fully developed in all major cities and one would generally not want to do anything to slow population growth. Besides regularly saving valuable turns for late infrastructure, being able to rush theatres, libraries, and courthouses in newly conquered cities is rather essential.

Rushbuying improvements is really ineffecient without the Kremlin (3 gold : 1 hammer) and even with the Kremlin you still have to be stockpiling gold specifically for the purpose of spending it. Frankly by that point in the game most of my cities have factories/coal plants up and can build all their basic infrastructure in under five turns anyway. You make a point with newborn cities but typically I don't have too many of those by the end game.

So when I run US its usually just for the +1 hammer per town, which can be very nice. Not enough to justify losing the science though from the dozens upon dozens of specialists I'll have running by that point in the game... and several settled great people too.

 

[Ian Kognitow]

Rushbuying improvements is really ineffecient without the Kremlin (3 gold : 1 hammer) and even with the Kremlin you still have to be stockpiling gold specifically for the purpose of spending it. Frankly by that point in the game most of my cities have factories/coal plants up and can build all their basic infrastructure in under five turns anyway. You make a point with newborn cities but typically I don't have too many of those by the end game.

Not so much newborn but newly captured. Since all culture buildings are automatically destroyed upon capture, theatres and libraries are typically needed as soon as possible to expand one's own culture. And courthouses are right there as well if it doesn't have one. Unless your economy is really bad, the costs shouldn't be that bad with maybe a couple turns of production, and the savings from getting the courthouse asap can mitigate a significant amount of that cost. Also, if the captured city's borders are limited by cultural pressure, Universal suffrage can be the only way to establish your own culture buildings without slavery.

As far as your own established cities, it can still be a big benefit to rush with only a few turns remaining. If the city doesn't have other important stuff queued up, it can just be switched to wealth, which then makes the actual cost of the rush much less.

 

[Joshua368]

Not saying it isn't useful, just that it's usually less useful than the +200 to +300 beakers and +3 rep will usually give you.