What is your gov technique?

[Lord Emsworth]

Lord Emsworth, why do you always misspell "happiness"? Have you been watching too many movies or something?

I wouldn't normally mention it, but I noticed it in a post right after someone else spelled it correctly. That, plus seeing it every time you talk about happiness in the game, makes me curious.

Thanks for pointing that out. "Happyness" just never seemed wrong to me, I guess.

 

[creamcheese]

Of course, it's not only commerce per turn you lose during the anarchy, it's shields per turn too, and you'll start eating into your food reserves due to (a) losing the 3rd food on each tile as anarchy has the despot tile penalty and (b) being unable to use the lux slider, you have to take citizens off the land.
Once the democracy is inaugurated, you will "experience" an imperceptible decrease in corruption, but this will be vastly outweighed by the fact that in democracy you have no free unit support.

This actually a strange situation, I think Demo is actually better for a larger army than republic. You are only paying 1 per unit in Demo, and 2 in Republic. So at some point in Republic you get so large that you are paying more for upkeep than a Demo would. This plays to Demo's weakness as well, you need a large army to make sure you are safe and that any war is short and victorious.

Demo still is mostly worthless unless you are religious, and even then it is of dubious value.

 

[Aabraxan]

For most games, I just hop into Republic, and fight oscillating wars until I've killed everyone off. If the fighting is going to be particularly intense, or AW, or I'm particularly low on luxes, I'll go Monarchy, then kill everyone off. I don't see the need for a second anarchy.

creamcheese -- Demo has the potential to be better than Republic for a large army, but it has to outrun Republic's unit support before it is. I haven't crunched the numbers, so I don't know where that point is.

 

[PaperBeetle]

That breakpoint is simply twice the republican unit support, i.e. you have more than 2 units per town and 6 per city and 8 per metro. The main situation in which you might exceed that number is, as Lord Emsworth alluded to, if you were playing with an artificial restriction on your number of towns.

 

[BlackWizard]

In addition to having to researching two optional techs that don't give you anything else. You also lost productivity for those 6 turns. I can't believe I used to do it for slightly less corruption and extra worker speed.

I've never had much trouble with war weariness under Republic. You do need to go aggressively for luxuries - that's where most of my wars come from. But as long as you're winning and don't drag it out insanely War Weariness doesn't get too bad. WW is a bigger problem with Democracy.

You dont have to research two optional techs. You can trade them from other civs very easily even on deity level

 

[creamcheese]

You dont have to research two optional techs. You can trade them from other civs very easily even on deity level

Well yes, but you could have bought two better techs or used the money to rush some units to go out and conquer the world. It is a good government, but worthless since it comes so late.

 

[vmxa]

I am not so sure about the trade being easy. The AI does not like to trade techs that provide a form of government. To me you can only get those by giving them a more expensive tech and/or adding other goodies.

If you are far ahead of that civ, then the price is nothing, but it is coming so late that you probably cannot justify a switch. In all cases you gave them something that helps them for something you do not need and may even cost you to use (anarchy/support).

Becasue you surely will not be trading for it as soon as they learn it, unless they are far behind. In that situation, why do I want it?

 

[PaperBeetle]

It comes out late anyway, because it is blocked by Printing, which has a very low research priority for the AI.

 

[CommandoBob]

i like to be republic first than switch to communism, i like a lot of cities. i have noticed that other civs are even with me on science and start to get a lil ahead after i have switched to commy.

In an Always War game, Monarchy is the government of choice since it does not have war weariness. Playing AW, you never make peace after you meet someone. It always war all the time.

For almost everything else, Republic is the government. War weariness is a factor, but short, decisive wars can avoid that issue, along with plenty of luxuries and markets in the core, productive cities.

Both of these are available in the Ancient Age.

The issue with other forms of government is that normally you would not stay in despotism until you learned that needed tech. In turn, that means a period of anarchy to go from despotism to monarchy/republic and then a second round of anarchy to switch from monarchy/republic to feudalism/facism/communism/democracy. The second bout of anarchy is sure to be longer than the first since your empire is sure to have grown by then. That means 8 to 9 turns of anarchy for the second switch.

That might answer the government part of your question.

Switching from republic to communism also slows down your research, too, due to the second anarchy.

Communism affects corruption, but not learning. It will make your fringe cities appear more productive but I think it is a sham. I prefer to stay in Republic, have the core cities build the infrastructure and military that is needed and keep the outer, corrupt cities focused on building, wealth, artilllery, workers, settler and hiring geeks.

As a personal rule of thumb, if a city takes more than 10 turns to make a military unit and I am not in the Ancient Age, well, that is too long. Switch the build to something else; irrigate and rail the flat land around it, get to size 6 or 12 as quick as possible and hire geeks to help with research. If the city gets cranky, don't mess with the happiness slider. Hire a geek instead. It will grow slower; can't be helped.

In vanilla, each geek will add 1 beaker per turn towards the tech being researched. In conquests, that number is now 3. What was a marginal use of the geeks in vanilla is now a powerful tool in conquests.

 

[vmxa]

whoops wrong thread.

 

[Ataxerxes]

So, after all, you get some net increase in gold under Democracy as compared to Republic due to lesser corruption?

You get some net increase in gold under Democracy, but it isn't much. It doesn't make up for the anarchy, much less the research cost of getting two optional techs. And Democracy is EXPENSIVE. Even going for Space I wouldn't use Democracy. Also, given my in-your-face diplo skills I like having lower war weariness. That's another killier under Democracy. And I haven't mastered the skill of avoiding war (although I am declarer more than declaree).

And, as was said earlier, trading for Democracy isn't easy, I have to wait until later (making anarchy relatively more expensive) and I might want to trade for other techs. I'm all in favor of tech trading, but I don't want to give something for nothing if I don't have to.

 

[nbd]

It seems Democracy is just a matter of taste. I'm playing now on Emperor with 31 civs and got Dem around 1150 AD almost for nothing (exchanged it for a tech which already exchanged with other civ for just another tech). If to set Democracy that early then losses during anarchy time will easily recompense. One problem is WW. But I prefer short wars regardless of gov.

 

[CKS]

The issue with other forms of government is that normally you would not stay in despotism until you learned that needed tech.

If you are going into feudalism, perhaps for a 100K game, you might stay in despotism until then. It isn't much later, especially if you are scientific or missed the slingshot. Otherwise, get out of despotism ASAP. Even when I play a religious civ, I don't think I've ever had a second revolution, though I've considered it a few times and decided against it.

 

[vmxa]

It seems Democracy is just a matter of taste. I'm playing now on Emperor with 31 civs and got Dem around 1150 AD almost for nothing (exchanged it for a tech which already exchanged with other civ for just another tech). If to set Democracy that early then losses during anarchy time will easily recompense. One problem is WW. But I prefer short wars regardless of gov.

What size map and what was the tech cost set at? 31 is very crowded at anything less than 200x200.

 

[nbd]

What size map and what was the tech cost set at? 31 is very crowded at anything less than 200x200.

Teturkhan's 362x362 Earth map.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=29279

All rules are from that map.

 

[vmxa]

I made this chart for oversized maps.

Map tiles:
std = 100x100 = 10000; 5000 tiles in CAII; 240 CF (1.0); 1x
huge = 160x160 = 16960; 12800 tiles in CAII; 400 CF (1.66); 2.56x
sup200 = 200x200 = 40000; 20000 tiles in CAII; 530 CF (2.21); 4x
sup250 = 250x250 = 62500; 31250 tiles not tested; 650 CF (2.71); 6.25x
sup362 = 362x362 = 131044; 59006 tiles in CAII; 750 CF (3.125); 11.80x tiles of std.

On a std size map it would be 1632 beakers on Emper for Demo. On the corrected CF of 750, it would for a 362x362, be 6375.

I made a game with the TeT and it has 2040 for Demo. That is 300 CF, much too low. Lower than a large map of 2720. A default huge would get 3400. No one should be near Demo by 1100AD on a map that size.

I would say that map is not even playable without at least a bump of CF to 600. You need the scaling or all techs are going to be 4 turns tech at low beaker output.

 

[vmxa]

It seems Democracy is just a matter of taste. I'm playing now on Emperor with 31 civs and got Dem around 1150 AD almost for nothing (exchanged it for a tech which already exchanged with other civ for just another tech). If to set Democracy that early then losses during anarchy time will easily recompense. One problem is WW. But I prefer short wars regardless of gov.

Watch out for straight info that it is relevant. The cost factor of 300 for that map is just crazy low making techs way too cheap.

 

[nbd]

Actually I even didn't notice that because I haven't researched a single technology by myself (they all seem to me as having their usual price though - many at 50 turns with 10% gold for research). 4 or 5 civs are researching techs like crazy, others are more or less backward. It's possible to keep up for me only because I'm playing for China which has enormous quantity of lux. and strat. resources next to its starting point (I'm playing without preset cities).

I thought that such a quick rate of research is explainable by the large number of civs, when many civs are researching different techs and upon completing research sell the tech to other AI civs for a rather low price (not to me though, for me the price is like in other games).

But it seems that you of course right, because it is 1335 AD in the game now, and the only undiscovered tech remaining is Integrated Defense. On the globe still all civs except one are remaining and it probably will be interesting to play such a time span with Modern Armors etc. with such a number of participants.

 

[vmxa]

When the tech cost nearly the same on a 362 as it does in a std 100x100 and less than on a normal large map, you have major distortion.

 

[Desertsnow]

Democracy was my preference as a beginner. My government changes were Republic, then Democracy. I figured the economic bonuses sufficiently mitigated the necessity of acquiring two optional techs. This may be so at Chieftain or Warlord level but when I graduated to Regent I had to change my style. Nowadays as a Monarch-level player I'll build up my military strength in the early going until I feel confident, and then play in a nonoscillating war sort of mode until I have acquired at least most, and preferably all of my continent. The war-weariness of Democracy can stifle such a game, and even if I've expanded that far before Democracy is available I still stay in Monarchy until Communism is available.