What is your gov technique?

[nbd]

I would sum it up, that if playing for rel. civ. and having very small or very big army - there is no reason not to set Dem in the peacetime.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I would sum it up, that if playing for rel. civ. and having very small or very big army - there is no reason not to set Dem in the peacetime.

Yes, there are. Lost shieds, lost commerce, and lost food. Switching to Dem and back again to something else costs you 2-4 turns of lost commerce, and 4 turns of lost shields and food in Conquests. In Vanilla and PTW it is lighter (0-2 for commerce and 2 for shields and food).

 

[nbd]

Yes, there are. Lost shieds, lost commerce, and lost food. Switching to Dem and back again to something else costs you 2-4 turns of lost commerce, and 4 turns of lost shields and food in Conquests. In Vanilla and PTW it is lighter (0-2 for commerce and 2 for shields and food).

Yes. These are expenses. The net profit is: [additional] income minus expenses. With many corrupted cities, very big military, much work for workers and not planinng to go to war in the nearest 30-40 turns - it seems it always worth to change to Dem with rel. civs.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Yes. These are expenses. The net profit is: [additional] income minus expenses. With many corrupted cities, very big military, much work for workers and not planinng to go to war in the nearest 30-40 turns - it seems it always worth to change to Dem with rel. civs.

The corrupt cities are still going to be corrupt. Democracy does nothing about those. It'll only affect the slightly corrupt and semi-corrupt cities. And of those there are just so many.

In addition to that, with many corrupt cities you'll have a handsome unit support as a Republic already. And remember you need to exceed the support limit by twice of what you are allowed before Dem begins to come out better wrt unit support. If for example your Republican support limit is 100, then the two governments will pay an equal amount of money for 200 units, i.e. 200 gold per turn. With the 201st unit Dem is better by one gold per unit per turn. But one gold does not make a significant difference - for that you'd need more than just one unit, maybe 20-30.

And a large number of units, but not enough workers and no intention for war ... It does not look like any plausible situation to me.

 

[Lanzelot]

Yes, I guess we must face it: Democracy is completely useless in this game...
It does not add any substantial benefit over Republic and therefore the extreme costs to get it plus the extra anarchy period is just not worth it.

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

So sorry to disagree, maybe in C3C the benefits are too slim to out way the extra tech. But if you have a religious civ (1 turn of anarchy) and can trade cheaply for Democracy, why not put it to use. The selling point for me is worker efficiency, in C3C I guess its only 50%, the vanilla(I believe) and definitely PTW the improvement is 100%.

 

[creamcheese]

So sorry to disagree, maybe in C3C the benefits are too slim to out way the extra tech. But if you have a religious civ (1 turn of anarchy) and can trade cheaply for Democracy, why not put it to use. The selling point for me is worker efficiency, in C3C I guess its only 50%, the vanilla(I believe) and definitely PTW the improvement is 100%.

It is effectively 2 turns anarchy for religious on C3C, and only a 150% worker speed (50% bonus). That combined with High war weariness and no unit support makes it not as attractive. The only advantages are worker speed (dwarfed by the Rep Parts bonus), propaganda immunity (never seen the AI use this), and very slightly less corruption (not much of an impact for several turns of lost production, you probably lose more production in a turn than you gain for the rest of the game from this).

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

Another middlin difference between C3C and PTW, Republic does not provide any unit support from the town/city/metros in PTW. Replaceable Parts is additive, in PTW with Industrious/Democracy/RepParts I can railroad a tile with 1 worker in 1 turn. War Weariness is not an issue because you switch to Monarchy wihen or before it becomes an issue. I only loose one turn of production when switching, if I initiate the switch after all moves in a turn I get the 'Select Government' dialog before I can move units the next turn along with returned city production.

It's been a while since I played an industrious/religious civ but it might have been mine a tile with one worker in one turn, I remember it being almost rediculous.

So for C3C yes, its not worth it, for PTW its an obvious useful tactic.

 

[creamcheese]

Another middlin difference between C3C and PTW, Republic does not provide any unit support from the town/city/metros in PTW. Replaceable Parts is additive, in PTW with Industrious/Democracy/RepParts I can railroad a tile with 1 worker in 1 turn. War Weariness is not an issue because you switch to Monarchy wihen or before it becomes an issue. I only loose one turn of production when switching, if I initiate the switch after all moves in a turn I get the 'Select Government' dialog before I can move units the next turn along with returned city production.

It's been a while since I played an industrious/religious civ but it might have been mine a tile with one worker in one turn, I remember it being almost rediculous.

So for C3C yes, its not worth it, for PTW its an obvious useful tactic.

You switch again??? If you just keep switching back an forth from peace to war you are loosing so much production! I'd rather stick in demo and stay there than keep switching. If you need more workers you can just build more, even PTW demo is only marginally more worth it, and only for religious. Even then I'd rather not buy the tech and use the money to rush some cavs and go take some cities.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

So sorry to disagree, maybe in C3C the benefits are too slim to out way the extra tech. But if you have a religious civ (1 turn of anarchy) and can trade cheaply for Democracy, why not put it to use. The selling point for me is worker efficiency, in C3C I guess its only 50%, the vanilla(I believe) and definitely PTW the improvement is 100%.

You are mistaken about the worker speed. The dem bonus is 'only' +50% in any version of Civ3.

Maybe you are mixing this up with the industrious trait? With that there really is the difference between +100% in C3/PTW and +50% in Conquests.

Or you may be mislead by the observation (which is correct!), that as an non-democratic industrious civ with RP it takes 2 native workers to build a mine or railroad a flat tile, whereas as a democratic industrious civ with RP it only takes one worker. But that is just a case of bad rounding which is inevitable with such strong workers. You'll see that if you mix slaves and natives (which is a good thing to do!); with a non-democratic government a team of a native worker and a slave will build a railroad or mine on a flat tile just as well as two native workers.


(And as an aside, in C3/PTW there are so many wonderful corruption techniques - or exploits depending on your POV - that the decrease that you'd see from switching to Dem would look infinitesimally small. OTOH, the reduction in corruption with a remote palace would come through totally unadulterated by rank corruption as there is none. But the same is true for courts or waste reducers such as WLTKDs.)

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

Yes, I've noticed the rounding effect of worker actions, and your probably right about the democracy bonus. The thing I can't resolve is the C3C descriptions of worker effectiveness with Democracy as neglible and my experience with PTW where I find them significant. I seem to be in a minority here and in how I approach the game, I find no enjoyment in calculating the percentages, I tend to go with my gut instincts and I enjoy the benefits that Democracy brings.

Yes Creamcheese, I switch back and forth with each war, if timed right I never have to mess with the specialists, which I find irritating even with the minimal warweariness that Republic has.

 

[vmxa]

Don't forget there is a cost to being Rel, rather than some other trait. Someone stated you could just trade for Demo as if it is like falling out of bed. You are not likely to be able to trade for it till long after it was learned.

You do not just need Demo, you need the optional techs that are prereq's as well. In C3C they are not wanting to trade gov techs at the drop of a hat. So you are left with paying a great deal in techs/lux/gold, IF they will trade it at all.

If you are playing below emp, you may win the game before they learn it. If you are playing above emp you may not be able to trade for it at all.

So where does that put me? I have to take Rel to even consider switching and I am loathed to use such poor trait. I have to deal with all the things I mentioned to hope to get demo and why do I even want it in the first place?

Small bump in workers, not of any value as I will have plenty of workers and slave by the time I could get Dem. It may give me some sort of other boost that I do not need. I mean is this a HoF run?

I do not recall ever using demo in C3C and only a few times in PTW/C3, which I droped after C3C came out.

 

[dhokarena56]

I used to stay in Monarchy for much of the game, maybe switching to Communism or Fascism in the Industrial Era. What a fool I was.

The problem with the Republic, of course, is that it's ludicrously expensive, has mediocre unit support, and will cost you 2 gold per turn. I didn't, at the time, know about the commerce bonus, so this kept me playing Warlord. I've been able to play Regent, now, because I switched to Republic. I also like Persia, whose early game quick wars minimise the war weariness. And the commerce bonus covers up a lot of those unit costs.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

It depends on what type of victory or game I am playing.

If I play a game with no military (only units built is workers and settlers) then Republic to Democracy is what I do.

If I'm going for a Conquest victory then I switch to Monarchy and stay that way for the entire game. Monarchy is easiest for me because you can pay citizens to rush build and it has the 2nd highest support per town city and metropolis. Fascism has the highest, but you have to sacrifice the population in order to complete something and that causes unhappiness.

I never go for domination victory and always have that option turned off. For me domination is not really the end of the game as you still have more territory to conquer.

Diplomatic victory or Space Ship victory I would go with Republic and stay there. I'd only war if someone attacked me first, an AI is getting dogpiled, an early war as part of my expansion phase, or if an AI had access to a strategic resource and can't trade (due to it being the only one or not knowing the tech) or won't trade.

 

[Everkane]

Let me tell you something about Govs in Civ 3: Republic is pretty much bugged.

It comes much early in the game (which means less anarchy turns and faster increased production) and you barely will find a match even in the end-game.

It should be nerfed in some patch that never came out.

Of course most of the people will disagree with me and say cool things about Commies or even Monarchy, but I'm sorry, this is my opinion, Republic is a way too OP.

Just go for it and don't worry about the other kind of govs unless for having other experiences.

 

[Lanzelot]

Yes, Republic is pretty powerful at a very early time. And it never pays off to switch to a different form of government later in the game.

Instead of "tuning down" Republic, a different idea would perhaps be to give Democracy some significant advantage over Republic? But as it is, Democacy has no real benefit over Republic (increased worker speed doesn't really matter that late in the game, and the reduced corruption is not that much - at least it doesn't counter-balance what you lose in the anarchy period...), and therefore it doesn't really make sense to research several optinional techs and go through another anarchy period, just to end up with pretty much the equivalent of what you had before...

In my eyes Republic is not the problem. The problem is rather that Democracy is so under-powered. It should have been moved to a non-optional tech and it should offer some real bonus that makes achieving a Space-, UN- or cultural victory easier. (Because these are usually the victory conditions, where you research that far up the tech tree. For the military VCs you usually stop research pretty early, e.g. after Chivalry or Military Tradition.)


PS: by the way, did anybody notice what I realize just now: the unit upkeep of Democracy doesn't make any sense either! Remember: the war weariness of Democracy is much much higher than that of Republic. So this seems to indicate, that Democracy should rather be meant as a government for peaceful development, right? But the unit upkeep system of Democracy favors huge armies! For small and medium armies, the unit upkeep of Republic is much better, because of the free units. Only with large numbers of units the unit upkeep of Democracy becomes better...
For reference, here is a table of what you have to pay in unit upkeep, assuming an empire of 20 cities (size 7 -12):

[TABLE="Unit Upkeep"]Number of units | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 | 100 | 110 | 120 | 130 | 140 | 150
Upkeep in Republic | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 40 | 60 | 80 | 100 | 120 | 140 | 160 | 180
Upkeep in Democracy | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 | 100 | 110 | 120 | 130 | 140 | 150
[/TABLE]

So the "break even point" comes at 120 units, which is quite a lot for a small empire of 20 cities. With 50 cities the break even point would be even later at 300 units.

 

[Theov]

Let me tell you something about Govs in Civ 3: Republic is pretty much bugged.

It comes much early in the game (which means less anarchy turns and faster increased production) and you barely will find a match even in the end-game.

It should be nerfed in some patch that never came out.

Of course most of the people will disagree with me and say cool things about Commies or even Monarchy, but I'm sorry, this is my opinion, Republic is a way too OP.

Just go for it and don't worry about the other kind of govs unless for having other experiences.

I have switched to commie late in the game when I was mopping up the AIs and got tired of the War Weariness. I did a comparison and my economy suffered from it, production went up where I made the Police HQ.
All in all, commie is fine late in the game when it's war all over, but Republic I must say is the go to government.

 

[Desertsnow]

I still have yet to play the Fascist government (maybe one of these time) but I usually go to Commie if I'm still playing at that point, when I usually have a honkin' huge empire and almost always am at war.

 

[Theov]

I still have yet to play the Fascist government (maybe one of these time) but I usually go to Commie if I'm still playing at that point, when I usually have a honkin' huge empire and almost always am at war.

I've written the Government part at the Civ3 info center and tried to think of a use for Fascism. (see my sig)
All I could come up with was "For reichs that are expanding through war, are under developed and won't see peace any time soon..."

Monarchy vs Fascism:

Worker Efficiency: 100% vs 200%
Hurry Method: Pay citizens vs Forced Labor
Corruption: Problematic vs Nuisance
War Weariness: none vs none
Draft Rate: 2 vs 2
Military Police Limit: 3 vs 4
Unit Support Town/City/Metro: 2/4/8 vs 4/7/10

Notes for Fascism:
- Pop declines when you change over.
- Culture is not produced until you have a popular majority.
+ Higher chance of espionage mission success

 

[Desertsnow]

I've written the Government part at the Civ3 info center and tried to think of a use for Fascism. (see my sig)
All I could come up with was "For reichs that are expanding through war, are under developed and won't see peace any time soon..."

Monarchy vs Fascism:

Worker Efficiency: 100% vs 200%
Hurry Method: Pay citizens vs Forced Labor
Corruption: Problematic vs Nuisance
War Weariness: none vs none
Draft Rate: 2 vs 2
Military Police Limit: 3 vs 4
Unit Support Town/City/Metro: 2/4/8 vs 4/7/10

Notes for Fascism:
- Pop declines when you change over.
- Culture is not produced until you have a popular majority.
+ Higher chance of espionage mission success

I'm looking at the options now. It looks like I might as well stick with Communism.

As a side note, it has been so long since I played Democracy that I'd forgotten the numbers. I gave up on it in the game mainly due to the high level of war-weariness.