A civic duty

[djpsychonaut]

Hey there,
Haven't seen many strings devoted to civics...

What are your favorite civics to use?

Obviously, every civic is situational, and this is skewed by whether or not you build the Pyramids. All things being equal, what are your favorite/least favorite civic options?

For Government, I'm a big fan of Representation because of its high happiness bonus and because of the nice boost to science. Universal Sufferage has it's obvious production advantages being able to gold rush buildings and +1 hammers from towns, although it comes later in the game if you don't have the Pyramids.

For Legal, I'm loving the Vassalage option... nice boost to the military, although it has a high upkeep cost. I think Nationhood is only good in an emergency when your military is weak.

Labor, in general, the weakest category... for my strategies, each has a few small benefits, but nothing overwhelming.

In the Economic sector, I like Free Market and usually never switch to anything else. I invite someone to debate the virtues of the others though!

Religion civics, IMHO, are very powerful. My favorite is Organized Religion because I like to build, so the production bonus is nice. I also like Theocracy for whipping up a nice military in pinch (esp with Vassalage!).

[vmxa1]

Well some nice Slavery action can be very strong. Whip troops, buildings, what ever. Trying to raise forces to hammer the nearest civ, use the whip.

[Drachasor]

Once I get Universal Suffrage, Free Market, Free Speech, and Emancipation I rarely switch from those. I almost always have organized religion.

All this despite the fact I am a warmonger, actually.

Oddly, in many games I find that Free Market+Universal Suffrage outdoes Representation+Mercantilism for science. Maybe this is because I tend to have a lot of well-developed towns.

Anyhow, I find the powerful of quickly building up new cities to be much better than producing better units. Occasionally I have had some War Weariness Issues, but usually short spans of peace combined with Mt. Rushmore and Police Stations (plus many happiness producing wonders and resources) takes care of such problem. Once or twice I have switched to Facism though.

Late game I could easily go with Facism and Theocracy. I'd probably want to keep Free Speech and Universal Suffrage for the buying power.

-Drachasor

[Artuero]

I find that there are dominant civics in my games that I only switch from for particular purposes and then go back to the regular one. I have been playing spiritual leaders so that isn't a very tough choice. I have been playing noble (epic, huge terran, 18 civs) so maybe different difficulties and game types would make for tougher choices.

For government, I am usually in representation, then switch to universal suffrage as soon as my economy is good enough to be rush-buying things. Despotism is useless, hereditary rule is next to useless. Police state can be used situationally but I am rarely in a position where I am better off producing military units instead of buying them.

Legal is another case where most of the civics are not very useful. Barbarism has nothing good about it, bureaucracy is powerful in the very early game when you have few cities, but otherwise not very useful. Nationhood is more or less a waste except for the rare occasion when I am caught by surprise and need to draft some units. Vassalage is great when your economy is building a lot of units, and with spiritual leaders I will switch to it for this purpose. But it is still not a long-term civic. No, free speech dominates over the other ones due to its culture effect and effect on commerce (and low upkeep).

Emancipation is clearly the best end-game labor civic, although if you love specialists and have the economy for it, caste system can be good. I also will switch to serfdom to get the boost to worker productivity at various points. I find slavery too costly in terms of pop and happiness to be worthwhile, but as an option it is better than nothing.

Economy is probably the easiest choice of all-- free market seems to dominate over the other choices. I can imagine situations where the specialists from mercantilism are useful but the money from trade routes is too good to pass up. I have never seen environmentalism to be very useful, even though I do keep a lot of forests around. I imagine there is a strategy for using state property but not my style.

I find religion as having the most interesting choices. I will run organized religion even in the late game to get the production bonus. Also, the ability to continue to pump out missionaries without monestaries is useful when trying to get new cities into the fold and spying on your friendly neighbors. OTOH, choosing free religion and getting the research boost is helpful, and not having a state religion means that diplomacy is easier (perhaps the main reason for free religion). Theocracy is situational with its +2 exps per unit. Pacifism seems like the only weak choice other than paganism; I think the GP rate boost should probably be a bit higher.

The civics system is great, but I think the designers have to do a bit more work to make the choices more interesting. Usually there are about two good choices in each category.

[Optimizer]

I find this discussion interesting because my first mod is mostly about civics.

I agree that the legal and labor categories don't make a lot of difference. Some of the options in the others are too weak, for instance Bureaucracy and Pacifism.

[Common Sensei]

Bureaucracy is underrated in my opinion, and is powerful with super-specialist strategies like the one I outline in the "Great Profits (Prophets)" thread, where the capital can single-handedly handle all of your cities' expenses (and even unit production) and then some. These days I play with a capital loaded up with super-specialists so I've been recently ending games with Representation, Bureaucracy, Emancipation, Free Market and Pacifism.

[Yosh]

Bureaucracy is one of the best civics for mid-game IMHO - the boost is enough to net you the occasional mid-game wonder, and to keep pumping out military units while still keeping up with building production.

Representation + Caste System + Mercantilism + Angor Wat/Statue of Liberty/[Insert specialist wonder here] = Awesome

You can substitute Free market for mercantilism though if you want.

Each civic has its' own strengths and weaknesses. For example, if you are planning on being an uber-warmonger, you might wanna think about building lots of workshops and adopting State Property, Theocracy, Police State, Vassalage as your civics - planned properly, you could have quite an impressive empire with the right civics!

[Arrian]

Representation, Caste System, Bureacracy, Free Market, Pacifism (early-mid game) or Free Religion (mid-to-late game).

I will eventually switch over to Emancipation and Universal Suffrage, but usually do that quite late. I don't think I've used Free Speech yet. I'd rather keep Bureacracy...

-Arrian

[MasterDave]

All of the civics have their uses, I think I have had reason to use almost every one so far but Police State and Theocracy. For example, in one empire I had while trying to win by domination I was spread all over the globe and the maintenance was killing me. I switched from Free Market to State property and saw an increase of gold/turn of over +300! Science took a small hit, but not more than 15%. Environmentalism came in handy one game when I had a bunch of booming cities in flood plains that I just could not make healthy otherwise.

However, in most games I run representation from the beginning (I usually get the Pyramids) until switching to universal suffrage. Free speech is a must most of the time (slavery until I get liberalism), I like emancipation for the town growth, free market for the cash, and free religion (organized religion until I get liberalism).

Two civics I use very rarely are mercanitilism (the more lucrative foreign trade routes from free market produce way more science than representation plus the free specialists UNLESS you are diplomatically isolated - no open borders) and theocracy. I dislike theocracy because having foreign religions is far more beneficial than not for the extra temples and monastaries they allow you to build. If you are going for a cultural victories, having many different religions in your empire is a must.

[djpsychonaut]

I think Bureaucracy can be a great civic in the mid-game if you're in a builder mode. Vassalage, despite it's high cost is still a very good way to support a larger military. Has anyone seen if the cost-savings of the free military units justifies the higher upkeep cost? I'm thinking that it most likely does, but wonder if anyone knows for sure.

When Slavery becomes available, I never switch to it... pop-rushing has never been my style. I see it as taking one step forward and two steps back. In the days of Civ 3, I'd only use it when I really, really had to. I would say though, in 95% of my games in Civ 3 I never used it.

I've heard of people making interesting use of Caste System, but I still think that you have to have a very big population to make it work.... I usually just select Serfdom and then switch right to Emancipation once it becomes available.

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by djpsychonaut
I've heard of people making interesting use of Caste System, but I still think that you have to have a very big population to make it work.... I usually just select Serfdom and then switch right to Emancipation once it becomes available.

Easiest use of Caste System is for newly founded cities. Force one artist for three rounds and the city expands to the fat cross. Caste System makes any civilization pseudo-Creative.

[Enigma_Nova]

I prefer to go Serfdom until every tile that is being worked has something improved on it, then I switch to Caste System if I have some high-pop cities.
Unlimited Merchant, Scientist, Artist
+ 50% Hammers in main city
+ 100% Great Person rate in main city
+ 1 free specialist in main city
+ 3 Science per specialist
= GG Great Person Factory.

I make a point to build Engineer wonders in my Capital - Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, Hagia Sofia, and Ironworks later on.
Combine this with an Engineer from the Forge, and you have a good chance to get a Great Engineer. Instant Wonders are fun, especially when you spam down the Sistine Chapel and Notre Dame in one of your border cities

[Blake]

State Property is INCREDIBLY powerful. However it's also extremely addictive, if you customize cities to maximize hammers under SP, you'll never be switching out. But damn, it's worth it for the hammer powerhouses. Watermills are simply insane, basically the best improvement in the game, compared with comparable improvements they give +1 food, this allows an extra mine worked for every 2 watermills. You can simply pave river cities with watermills and workshops, with a few farms to make up food. In no time they have reached your desired size (be that 20), and positively crank out wonders and SS parts.

What I've started to do is build up a strong cottage cheese interior, then invade (or settle, for Terra), and in the new bases build them up as State Property hammer powerhouses, in preperation for the late game SS construction and wonder grab. Incredibly powerful.

Communism is a great tech, you don't have to go out of your way at all to get it, and it comes with the Kremlin, get that wonder and the game is in the bag, especially if you have the Pyramids too. (you can get Commie much earlier than Democracy, assuming certain focused tech paths).

It's also nice that Communism comes along at the same time as Biology and Railroad, so you can really focus on building up those hammer powerhouses.

[djpsychonaut]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
+ 50% Hammers in main city
+ 100% Great Person rate in main city
+ 1 free specialist in main city
+ 3 Science per specialist
= GG Great Person Factory.

I'm assuming here that you mean that you also use Representation, Bureaucracy, and Pacifism? I'm surprised that you don't use Organized Religion seeing as how your strategy strongly supports production.

[cal_01]

Universal Sufferage + Free Speech + Emancipation + State Property + Pacifism.