What's your favorite government?

[Elephantium]

commie totalitarian is redundant.

Technically, you could have a democractic communism ... one is a system of government, and the other is a system of economics. We're conditioned to equate the two by Western propaganda, but as usual, the true situation is a bit more nuanced.

(of course, Western propaganda is generally miles more accurate than the propaganda of Communist states from my lifetime, but that's beside the point)

 

[GamezRule]

You obviously haven't crossed him in OT.

 

[Abegweit]

You obviously haven't crossed him in OT.

Indeed. On OT, you find people who actually believe that communism could be democratic, despite theory, common sense and the evidence of history.

BTW, I disagree rather strongly with the proposition that it is possible to separate the system of government from economics. Democracy is always associated with a mild combination of fascism and socialism, together with a fair amount of nanny statism. It reflects the natural human tendency to mind each others' business while still keeping up pretensions of necessity and civility.

Communism, in contrast, requires the putting the boot to the people. Hard. It invariably does exactly that.

But back to Civ. After all, this is not OT.

I am fascinated about the fact that the Civ series seems to reward nonsense economics with huge benefits. That is true in Civ3, 4, and 5. Not so much 1 & 2, where Democracy was King. According to the first two entries in the series, there is zero corruption under democracy and growth is rapid. Both wrong.

OTOH, maybe I read too much into this. Perhaps it's just about game-play. In this regard, Civ3 has been a complete failure. It utterly failed to balance the governments. Surely the objective should have been to provide interesting choices and to tempt players to switch from time to time. Instead Republic is best about 90% of the time and there is almost no reason to ever switch out of it. Monarchy, Feudalism and Communism (in roughly that order) are occasionally useful and the rest are worthless.

In Civ2, there was a natural progression. You went from Despotism to Monarchy to Republic to Democracy (maybe skipping a step depending on the map). In Civ3, you slingshot Republic and stick with it. Boring.

 

[scratchthepitch]

One of the advantages of Civ3 is you can customize how the governments work, so the limited usefulness (or excessive usefulness) of some of the game's stock government choices can be easily corrected to what you think they should be. Because it is very easy to modify the government settings, I think this is one of the areas that the developers of the game did a decent job programing the game.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

I am fascinated about the fact that the Civ series seems to reward nonsense economics with huge benefits. That is true in Civ3, 4, and 5. Not so much 1 & 2, where Democracy was King. According to the first two entries in the series, there is zero corruption under democracy and growth is rapid. Both wrong.
...
In Civ2, there was a natural progression. You went from Despotism to Monarchy to Republic to Democracy (maybe skipping a step depending on the map).

I find this post disturbing. Democracy may have been King in Civ 2, but Fundamentalism was God (pun not quite intended). Sure, your tech slowed down a bit, but when each city gives you ten *free* units, and you have the entirely free Fanatic unit (and, IIRC, Modern Warfare is in the neighborhood, so you can get a few more techs, start pumping out the Armor, and switch to Fundamentalism and kill *everything*).

My govts tended to go Despo -> Monarchy -> (Republic) -> Fundamentalism. Sometimes I'd skip Republic, and I don't think I ever picked Demo or Commie unless I was already winning and had the Statue of Liberty, but once Fundamentalism rolled around it was slaughtering time. And since your upkeep is lower, your Science rate can't go as high, and you're getting income from your Happiness buildings, your Income usually skyrockets as well. *sigh* Now I want to go play Civ2 again, with Fundamentalist Stalin in the WWII scenario ....

 

[marioh]

I prefer communism for war mongering (on huge maps with a huge empire), democracy for peace.

The communal corruption is great. I can actually have the far flung reaches of my empire producing, and my core cities still are producing items quickly (e.g., MA in 2 or 3 turns).
The pop rushing does suck, but the amount of gold that can be made with communism almost makes up for this deficiency.

Feudalism, despite the bad rap it gets, is also a relatively solid government depending on circumstances. My last game I got a really crappy start location (mostly deserts), and feudalism was perfect for my growing empire as almost all my cities were relatively small due to the poor starting position. Feudalism allowed me to field a relatively large military which kept my neighbors in check.

Those are my observations from playing this game, mostly on Regent, some Monarch level.

 

[Abegweit]

I find this post disturbing. Democracy may have been King in Civ 2, but Fundamentalism was God (pun not quite intended). Sure, your tech slowed down a bit, but when each city gives you ten *free* units, and you have the entirely free Fanatic unit (and, IIRC, Modern Warfare is in the neighborhood, so you can get a few more techs, start pumping out the Armor, and switch to Fundamentalism and kill *everything*).

My govts tended to go Despo -> Monarchy -> (Republic) -> Fundamentalism. Sometimes I'd skip Republic, and I don't think I ever picked Demo or Commie unless I was already winning and had the Statue of Liberty, but once Fundamentalism rolled around it was slaughtering time. And since your upkeep is lower, your Science rate can't go as high, and you're getting income from your Happiness buildings, your Income usually skyrockets as well. *sigh* Now I want to go play Civ2 again, with Fundamentalist Stalin in the WWII scenario ....

This is just wrong. wrong. wrong. Wrong. WRONG. Democracy was the Uber-government in Civ2. See The Essential Starlifter. I knew Democracy was the best government back when I played the game. Still... several years afterwards, I read this exposition and I realised that I only had understood a tenth of the reasons.

 

[GamezRule]

Guys, the Civ 2 forums is being revived, take it there.

 

[scratchthepitch]

This is just wrong. wrong. wrong. Wrong. WRONG. Democracy was the Uber-government in Civ2. See The Essential Starlifter. I knew Democracy was the best government back when I played the game. Still... several years afterwards, I read this exposition and I realised that I only had understood a tenth of the reasons.

I found communism much better than either democracy or republic in Civ2. One of my initial disappointments about Civ3 was that communism was weakened. I believe the first Civ3 modding of the game I did was to make communism like the way it was in Civ2. At that point, the game became fun...

 

[ChaosArbiter]

This is just wrong. wrong. wrong. Wrong. WRONG. Democracy was the Uber-government in Civ2. See The Essential Starlifter. I knew Democracy was the best government back when I played the game. Still... several years afterwards, I read this exposition and I realised that I only had understood a tenth of the reasons.

GamezRule has a point (that we could discuss Civ2 over there), so I probably won't post anything else regarding this, but what I got from that thread was essentially "How to break the game as a Democracy in Civ 2." Yes, it showed how powerful Demo *can* be, but anyone willing and able to do all that doesn't really need to be in a Demo in the first place - he could probably win in Despo if he felt like it, and most of it isn't exclusive to Democracy either. The only way that I got from the thread that Democracy is 'clearly superior' is that it doesn't spend food to produce Engineers/Freight (I don't remember that, but oh well), which seems to me that it mostly affects the rate of power-growth. Then again, it has been far too long since I've played 2, so there's probably all sorts of nifty game-breakers I don't know about.

 

[de Maistre]

Republic for peace, Monarchy for war.

 

[Hasdrubal Barca]

Feudalism for war, Communism for peace (pre-war), i never have much peace on my games, i´m a bit of a warmonger .

The whipping system after a few shields on the production box is just better then money for me, i always tend to over produce workers so the excess have always an use for me. Plus the wars and higher unit support and my CxxX and CxC city plating system works best on these governments.

Money i use for: spying, stealing, check weaker defenses on border towns pre-invasion, buy techs/lux/resources, bribe military alliances and must of all, and my favorites, unit upgrades and buy workers!, you can never have too much workers

Of course i have the greatest respect for Republic in the long tech race. And for teamplaying (if you have an allie) this one is superb of course.

But on my play style Republic is to military limiting for me, at an early stage at least, and Monarchy is just to corrupt and doens´t have whipping also, so i have to build my military from scratch or short rush for it?? why, if i can just whip 50 Chariots in level 2/3 cities in a single turn and upgrade them to Knights

 

[bigFRANK]

So far my tendency is towards monarchy (cash rush, no war weariness, good unit support) in the early stages of the game (little war) and communism (vast unit support and good production throughout a large empire) in the latter stages (big war), in the middle I may if I have a religious civ dabble with a bit of republic or democracy. Currently fighting my first war as a democracy (have had a couple of skirmishes before but nothing major) and have found you need settlers with your army if you wish to keep the people on your side as WW goes up very quickly if your in enemy territory.

 

[GamezRule]

Republic for peace, Republic for war, Monarchy for AW.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Republic for peace, Republic for war, Monarchy for AW.

That's what I always had the best luck with. My war games are usually intermittent wars so war weariness doesn't get terrible. Unit support isn't bad as long as you remember not to garrison your internal cities - all military is either guarding the frontier or invading. The extra gold and lower corruption are huge.

On small maps I can understand Monarchy. I often don't have enough cities to support my military. On larger maps I'm always in Republic (haven't tried AW).

 

[BuckyRea]

Monarchy for the wars. Then democracy for the close-out portion of the game. I know I go to war too much. But for pete's sake, it's a video game. You're supposed to kill, maim & torture! If you don't, it's too much like the real life that I'm trying to escape from.

Side Thought: where would "torture" come in the tech tree--after monotheism or just before chemistry?

 

[Abegweit]

Side Thought: where would "torture" come in the tech tree--after monotheism or just before chemistry?

Abegweit, you have risen to become King of the ABCDs. You have knowledge of Torture, Irrigation, Mining, and Roads.

 

[darski]

Abegweit, you have risen to become King of the ABCDs. You have knowledge of Torture, Irrigation, Mining, and Roads.

Huyep

 

[Gazmeister]

My favorite is Monarchy.
Communism is quite good too but the downside to it is no cash rushing and it turns up too late in the game.

And I think republic is overrated.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

Why do you think Republic is overrated? It's a very good economy government, it's available very early, it's possible to do almost every sort of playstyle using it .... It has few downsides, and they're pretty easy to reconcile. It's rated highly because it is a very good government.