Same Civics as AI

[Ollywood]

Hi all, I'm new to Apolyton and have been reading a lot of threads keenly and been playing civ 4 for a while as well as playing all past civs since the bigginning.

It seems that this topic hasn't been handled yet and that made me curious:

I noticed that in some cases AI opponents like or dislike you more for sharing the same civics or not doing so. At one point Gandhi asked me to adopt to universal suffrage.

Now that's where I became interested to find out why it was so important to him for me to do that? What diplomatic or economic or whichever other benefit does a civ get if an opponent has the same (lets say) government civics set up?

More interesting for the player, what benefits do I get if I get a rival civ to adopt my civs, say other than them liking me.

Okay, if a rival civ has set up his civics in a way that allow him to expand more millitarily and that would threaten me, I understand my interest in making life hard for him by getting him to adopt a different civic that doesn't allow his military to gain as many exp after being built. But why would Gandhi care whether I have universal suffrage or not? In fact, it was the step I was about to take anyway since that was exactly what benefited my civ at that time.

On a UN level as well I noticed that you can make certain civics permanent for everyone if the votes succeed. I see the benefit in some of them. For instance preventing a warring civ to build nukes when you can't or preventing others from building nukes when you do have them. I see the economic advantages in some of the resolutions but I don't understand the difference it makes if I get everyone to have certain civics ?

Maybe someone else studied these features more than me and has some better clue as how to implement these features effeciently in the game ?

cheers...

[Misterboy]

Good questions. I've been wondering about this very issue.

I think perhaps you answered your own question though??

I mean, using civics, you could limit a warring nation OR limit a peacful nation. Perhaps changing a civ from State Property would be really effective if that civ is really large and spread out (State Property being the civic that eliminates maintenence costs based on distance from the capital...I think).

So although I have never tried to convert a civ to a particular civic, maybe it's something that could be usefull for a civ which is becoming (or has become) a particular nuisance.

Just my two cents

[Xuenay]

Re: Same Civics as AI

Originally posted by Ollywood
But why would Gandhi care whether I have universal suffrage or not?

As far as I understand, there isn't any specific strategic in-game reason for it - Gandhi just likes it when people have that civic, and that's simply a part of his personality. Think about how in real life the United States (say they) do their best to make sure as many nations as possible become democratic - same thing here.

[Schlim]

Re: Same Civics as AI

Originally posted by Ollywood
But why would Gandhi care whether I have universal suffrage or not?

Remember the cold war? Why should the U.S. care if another country was communist?

I think the civics thing makes sense.

[QuestGAV]

Re: Same Civics as AI

[SIZE=1]
On a UN level as well I noticed that you can make certain civics permanent for everyone if the votes succeed. I see the benefit in some of them. For instance preventing a warring civ to build nukes when you can't or preventing others from building nukes when you do have them. I see the economic advantages in some of the resolutions but I don't understand the difference it makes if I get everyone to have certain civics ?

Maybe someone else studied these features more than me and has some better clue as how to implement these features effeciently in the game ?

cheers...

What you want to look for are civics that benefit you more than the AI civs. I'm also not sure about this, but I'd assume the other civs go into anarchy as they convert to the voted on civic. This can buy you an extra turn or two of chaos for them while you close out the space race.

[Ollywood]

What you want to look for are civics that benefit you more than the AI civs. I'm also not sure about this, but I'd assume the other civs go into anarchy as they convert to the voted on civic. This can buy you an extra turn or two of chaos for them while you close out the space race.

Well, after some more research I came to the conclusion that if adopting a civic or religion on request of another civ or if the UN votes passes a resolution, anarchy does not occur, but the change passes automatically without any revolt.

After I had a long war with india, I wanted to return to universal suffrage from police state and all I had to do was pass a resolution in the UN for all states to adopt universal suffrage and I skipped 1 turn of anarchy. This was effective in terms of not having anarchy and at the same time preventing other civs from having the ideal government civic to start a war. In effect, a good method of holding a powerful position after a war in which one would be vunerable in many areas for another civ to take advantage by attacking you where you have les defending units since you didn't expect a battle on the other side of the front.

On the other hand, having fought a long war and returning to universal suffrage would require to stay out of another war for a while as your population would not appreciate anything else otherwise. That way a warring civ could be put under pressure by its own people if you somehow manage to force that civ other through diplomacy or UN to adopt universal suffrage.

Interestingly enough, Gandhi was a very democratic leader in my last game and despite me having overrun him and taken all his big cities leaving him with no more than two small islands far away from any beneficial location, I had more positive points with him than negative ones since he gave me +6 for having the same civics. Of course he was forced to drop free religion in order to gain some bonuses out of his state religion and hence voted NO in UN when that resolution passed. However with 11 votes in total he was completely ignored and free religion became compulsary. After that the -3 for having a different religion disappeard and the +6 for same civics rose to +7 and he kept a friendly attitude to me even though I had defeated his capital cities just 10 rounds before. He was reluctant to talk at first despite a good attitude towards me, but not for long. Interesting that he kept a good attitude even though I oppressed his cities. I suppose I was a pleasant oppressor

In a similar way, Isabella and Alexander hated me throughout the entire first thousand years. In fact I rarely traded with them and never had open borders. The fact that I had -4 with both of them throughout the entire game for being majorily jewish as well as having the holy city for that religion and them being predominantly buddhist kept them and all other civs on distance to each other for the entire game since everyone else had mixed religions with judiasm as its state religion, only exception being India. Additional conflicts with borders and wars increased that hatred from the buddhists (funnily enough) and after conquering two buddhist cities, Isabella and Alexander were keen to get me to convert which I didn't which in return made them hate me more up to a point that they refused to talk with me and only avoided war because I had a more powerful military (just). After passing free religion in the UN the religious conflicts ended and all minus points with Isabella and Alexander disappeared and for the first time in 6,000 years I had an open borders agreement with one of the two. Immediately as free religion was all over the world, all religions randomly spread to each other. Orthodox jewish cities assumed some buddhist minorities, vice versa and for some peculiar reason even confucianism got adopted here and there even though that religion was barely represented in the world.