Tier 1 governments

Charismatic leader is underrated. Adopting it is a good way to get envoys faster

The +2 influence points gives you an additional envoy every 50 turns which translates to +1.5 envoys at most until you unlock a T2 government. Completing city-state quests just supersedes that amount too much to become of significance in my opinion. But, it is better than nothing I guess.
If you are slotting Equestrian Orders and you have 3 strategic resources, it translates to +10.8 gpt (at the rate of 72 gold for 20 strategic resources).
So, 1.5 envoys or 810 gold?
Maybe that gold helps you complete 1 or 2 quests you wouldn't have been able to complete otherwise?
 
The +2 influence points gives you an additional envoy every 50 turns which translates to +1.5 envoys at most until you unlock a T2 government. Completing city-state quests just supersedes that amount too much to become of significance in my opinion. But, it is better than nothing I guess.
If you are slotting Equestrian Orders and you have 3 strategic resources, it translates to +10.8 gpt (at the rate of 72 gold for 20 strategic resources).
So, 1.5 envoys or 810 gold?
Maybe that gold helps you complete 1 or 2 quests you wouldn't have been able to complete otherwise?

I use it to get envoys faster, not to get more envoys. It doesn't matter how much it will directly translate into, but when. I think that's a fundamental mistake when judging how powerful this policy actually is. When you adopt it, you can get 1 envoy in 20 turns instead of 34, 2 in 40 instead of 67 and so on. If it matters to you when you gonna get those suzerainties, like in a diplo victory, it can be quite handy.

Equestrian Order is good but circunstancial. If every AI you met have horses and iron or they aren't consuming it as fast as you can sell, they won't buy it, then the choice is between faster envoys or zero gold. Having a strong production of horses/iron doesn't necessarily translate into more gold, since you might just not be able to sell it before you fill your stock.
 
Autocracy is underrated. It's good when you have expensive wonders to build but do not have high enough production to support them e.g. Forbidden palace, Kilwa Kisiwani. Works well with Gothic Architecture.
 
I use it to get envoys faster, not to get more envoys. It doesn't matter how much it will directly translate into, but when. I think that's a fundamental mistake when judging how powerful this policy actually is. When you adopt it, you can get 1 envoy in 20 turns instead of 34, 2 in 40 instead of 67 and so on. If it matters to you when you gonna get those suzerainties, like in a diplo victory, it can be quite handy.

Equestrian Order is good but circunstancial. If every AI you met have horses and iron or they aren't consuming it as fast as you can sell, they won't buy it, then the choice is between faster envoys or zero gold. Having a strong production of horses/iron doesn't necessarily translate into more gold, since you might just not be able to sell it before you fill your stock.

Valid points. If that extra envoy can get you a suzerainty 14 turns earlier and you can resell that DF at a let's say 16 gold per, it has a value of 224 gold + suzerain bonus for 14 turns.
The gap between the two alternatives isn't much though in one way or another.
So, is the swap of a diplomatic card for a military one a big detriment (from a purely mercantile viewpoint)? I don't think so.
 
Last time I saw a thread about this it changed me from being stuck in Oligarchy thinking mode. I certainly don't have a favorite anymore, and often start off with Autocracy if I haven't got enough units built. Running Agoge with Discipline has saved my ass from dealing with barbs while a drooling AI looked on my struggling cities. I find green cards are the easiest to do without, as there are now so many ways to get envoys. Diplo league can be a great card but I always set that one up so it's only slotted for 1 turn. Autocracy is the only generic way to run 2 military and 2 econ policies at once.

I'm quite likely to switch though to either Oligarchy or Classic Rep long before I take a T2 govt. If war/conflict continues I'm likely to use Oligarchy for my melee units. Also I don't always build early wonders, and rarely more than one, and many times it takes me too long to get the GP building up to make Autocracy useful to me beyond the immediate necessity of defending myself while still getting an extra scrap of culture and science from the palace.

None of the legacy cards interest me enough to worry about which one I get. I'll admit I may be overlooking something there.
 
I usually start with Autocracy and then switch to Classical Republic. At the time when the T1 governments become available, I don’t really have many districts generating GP points and running three economic or wild card policy slots is not necessary because I’m usually not building both builders and settlers out of my limited cities. Given this, the +1 yield bonus is actually more meaningful than anything I can get from Classical Republic.
 
Autocracy was fine back when it just gave +2 yields to palace, don't know why they had to mess with that.

I think mainly because they changed the legacy bonus, so they wanted it to somehow scale. Only the scaling is kind of garbage. Maybe change it to be +1 yield per red card slot in your government or something?


Some people already mentioned the tier 2 governments. I find that I use Theocracy and Merchant Republic roughly equally lately. However, I barely ever use Monarchy. Do you think the tier 2 governments should get unique policy cards similar to the tier 3 ones? It always bothered me that I can somehow slot in stuff like serfdom in a Merchant Republic (really, Venice had a lot of serfs working farmland???).

Likewise the red production cards are heavily flavoured on feudalism (chivalry, feudal contracts, etc.). It always bothered me that a merchant republic wasn't more forced to rely on gold buying their units to represent the mercenary armies they usually used, rather than relying on conscripted soldiers from their landholdings as in the feudal states.

Restricting some of the juicier cards to Monarchy, as well as giving a better bonus than the stupid housing from wall levels could maybe save it from being a useless government.
 
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Valid points. If that extra envoy can get you a suzerainty 14 turns earlier and you can resell that DF at a let's say 16 gold per, it has a value of 224 gold + suzerain bonus for 14 turns.
The gap between the two alternatives isn't much though in one way or another.
So, is the swap of a diplomatic card for a military one a big detriment (from a purely mercantile viewpoint)? I don't think so.

Both can be good options depending on the game. In my current game, speeding my envoys means a considerable science boost. Getting them earlier means I can get Geneva earlier, for a 15% boost on my science, plus another science CS to activate Kilwa Kisiwani as soon as I finish it, giving me another 15%. I won't be able to do it just with quests and civics envoys, since the AI has 6 envoys in Geneva and I'm getting a lot of trade quests in CSs that I can't reach, including the scientific ones, so I have a lot of CSs that will be stuck with an impossible quest for some time, making that envoys I generate even more valuable. Right now, I can't afford to not run charismatic leader.
 
I tend to chose autocracy quite often early on. Alot of the early wonders are really good and getting a bonus to produce them is very valuable for me.
Also autocracy is quite ok for early defence since you can run 2 red and 2 yellow cards simultaneously or even 3 reds and 1 yellow if needed. For example you can use the card for +1 production in all cities combined with the bonusses to build walls near the border and spam archers in your other cities while reducing the maintenance of those archers to 0. The +4 to melee units dont matter to much for me on the defense since I mostly use ranged units to defend myself so I just miss the exp from oligarchy.

Oligarchy is the choice if I plan to go offensive. Also I often switch to oligarchy after defending an early push from the AI and then go on a counter attack.

Classical republic is the one I use least and if I do I mostly switch there from another T1 gov later on, when I got more districs running and more economic policies I want to use.
 
Some people already mentioned the tier 2 governments. I find that I use Theocracy and Merchant Republic roughly equally lately. However, I barely ever use Monarchy. Do you think the tier 2 governments should get unique policy cards similar to the tier 3 ones? It always bothered me that I can somehow slot in stuff like serfdom in a Merchant Republic (really, Venice had a lot of serfs working farmland???).

Likewise the red production cards are heavily flavoured on feudalism (chivalry, feudal contracts, etc.). It always bothered me that a merchant republic wasn't more forced to rely on gold buying their units to represent the mercenary armies they usually used, rather than relying on conscripted soldiers from their landholdings as in the feudal states.

Restricting some of the juicier cards to Monarchy, as well as giving a better bonus than the stupid housing from wall levels could maybe save it from being a useless government.

Maybe we also need some discussion/another post about tier 2 governments. I do think it have more balancing problem than tier 1: Monarchy and Theocracy are too specific/niche, and Merchant Republic is just good for most of the time.
 
Oh btw, with coastal civs, Autocracy is strictly the better choice with the veterancy card.

I think there is too much value given to card spread but not enough to red cards for t1s. There aren't really that many good cards when you hit a t1 government to begin with.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Simply load up the game the turn you take PP. It is very likely Autocracy is about a ~5% empire boost and maybe 10% to some yields if not more, but I guess that depends on the way your game has been going.

And don't get me wrong; Oligarchy is great and essential in some cases, but do note that if you're not in combat with melee units, it doesn't do much, and completely useless if you're not in combat at all.
 
Used to go almost exclusively Classical Republic when I was new but now I often use all three. In many games I start with Autocracy since the +yields in the capital can be pretty decent early game and I need two red cards. Then I will switch to Autocracy right before war (I’m a big fan of levying City States 5 Warriors). I’m typically pretty late to Tier 2 government so if I have either almost conquered my own landmass already or switched to Horsemen / Knights I will sometimes swap in Classical Republic to enjoy the amenities and lock in that legacy card, which can be super helpful for the second half of the game. My main thing is delaying Classical Republic until I know I am done upgrading Knights or Swords since you want two red slots for that.
 
I'm lazy. I just stick with Oligarchy, unless I'm Poland or Germany.
 
When I was brand new I also exclusively went Classical Republic for the GPP. Now that I know how to play better and want to get some wonders ASAP, Autocracy starts have their merit. Kinda weird to do without the GPP boost but that’s what projects are for. :)
 
So far, mainly Oligarchy, sometimes Classical Republic. In some games switching between both, while in others staying on of them. I'm not sure if I have ever used Autocracy, maybe once. But after the lecture of this thread, I'm inclined to test out if Autocracy can work in my games as well.
 
Oligarchy is usually the safe option for me, and I've been using that in a slight majority of my games recently.
Good distribution of policy cards, and even if I don't plan on doing any early conquering, the +4 combat strength is a nice "insurance policy" in case I get DOWed early or face a sudden barbarian invasion (which seems to happen more frequently these days?).

Classical Republic is of course good if you are in a safe (isolated) location and plan on peacefully expanding your infrastructure, but losing out on a few GPP points and an amenity hardly influences my games as much as I used to think.
 
I've been playing Civ 6 for more than three years now, and I've chosen autocracy not a single time. After reading this thread, I think that is going to change, at least in some situations. Thank you!

I mostly take a militaristic path early on, so oligarchy is my choice in maybe 70% of the games, the other 30% classical republic. Well, actually it's hard to say, as I'm not keeping a record ...
 
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