Theocracy vs Organized Religion vs Pacifism

[Vynd]

Theocracy is OK but has a pretty specific application. I think that Pacifism and Organized Religion are useful in a broader array of situations.

In my opinion Pacifism is good because it is fairly powerful but, just as importantly, easy to make use of. Pick a city to specialize in making GP, get your state religion into it, and you're good to go. The only catch is the higher military upkeep. But if you have a strong economy or friendly, reliable, neighbors, then that's not too big of an issue.

Organized Religion is harder to use but it's potential benefits are, I think, even greater. That 25% off of buildings really adds up! It's also a good civic to spread your religion with since you can build missionaries without monasteries.

On the other hand, you're going to need those missonaries more than ever, since the civic gives you an especially strong incentive to spread your religion to all of your cities. And it's expensive to run, especially in comparison to Pacifism. And it prevents the spread of non-state religion in your empire. This last bit means you pretty much can't use Organized Religion if you're trying for a culture win. You'll also be missing out on bonus research and happiness from multiple temples.

Still, if you can get around the cost and restrictions then Organized Religion seems like the way to go to me. I mean Pacifism is going to get you a handful of extra GP, which is good. But not nearly as good, I think, as getting dozens and dozens, even hundreds, of buildings at a discount. After all, most of the GP become Super Specialists anyway, and something like half their value comes from having multipliers from banks, universities, etc.

[Brizey]

Originally posted by Blake
It's still very clever, because you can store up nearly complete units then pop them out. For example you could prebuild a maceman and catapult in every city, so yuo actually get 2 units built from every city during the high-exp civics. This would be especially good on the slower game speeds.

I have also tried to do it with three units: a maceman, a war elephant and a catapult. It is tough to get them all built and get the timing right, but not impossible.

[ike7]

Originally posted by Blake
Free Speech + Slavery = You can whine about it all you want, but we're still going to beat you.

LOL.

Sadly, this is basically the modern US relationship w/ the Native Americans, so it definitely happens IRL.

[JackRudd]

Originally posted by Vynd
Organized Religion is harder to use but it's potential benefits are, I think, even greater. That 25% off of buildings really adds up! It's also a good civic to spread your religion with since you can build missionaries without monasteries.

On the other hand, you're going to need those missonaries more than ever, since the civic gives you an especially strong incentive to spread your religion to all of your cities. And it's expensive to run, especially in comparison to Pacifism. And it prevents the spread of non-state religion in your empire.

It does what? Is that a change with the latest patch?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Vynd
And it prevents the spread of non-state religion in your empire.

That's Theocracy, not Organised Religion.

Originally posted by Vynd
Still, if you can get around the cost and restrictions then Organized Religion seems like the way to go to me. I mean Pacifism is going to get you a handful of extra GP, which is good. But not nearly as good, I think, as getting dozens and dozens, even hundreds, of buildings at a discount. After all, most of the GP become Super Specialists anyway, and something like half their value comes from having multipliers from banks, universities, etc.

It's really hard to compare costs. +100% GPP production rate is nothing to sneeze at. Now if you are philosophical and also has the Parthenon, that's +250% GPP

[PaganPaulwhisky]

Im surprised to see so much support for pacifism. Generally, I only run this civic in short bursts to produce great people when I need them. I almost always have a large enough military to make this civic unprofitable. This civic gets progressively less useful as the game goes on. It can be quite powerfull for philosophical specialist driven games with representation, but that is not my style. This would be the only reason to always run this civic IMO (maybe cultural victory also). It seems to me if you run this civic alot early then you get alot out of it otherwise you are much better off sticking to organized religion. After a certain point in the game, though this civic is pretty useless.

[Brizey]

I just played a game as Lizzie and ran Pacifism until I build my Cavalry wrecking machine. I had a LOT of GPs. So many I had engineer's waiting around for a wonder to build.

[couerdelion]

There’s something slightly awry with the logic being used here. Several of you are confusing pacifist and philosophical and there seems to be the implication that the trait complements the civic. It does not help us that the tech providing the civic is called Philosophy

The trait and the civic provide the same benefit but combining them does not produce double the output. Even at the GPP level the combination of pacifism with the trait only provides and extra +50% because the civs one base is already twice that of non-philosophical traits.

In fact, to look at the real output we have to compare the number of GPs we get. Let’s suppose we have a standard base civ which generates 10 GPs without pacifism and has no GPP multipliers. Under different situation, those base GPP would produce the following number of GPs

Non philo-civ w/o pacifism: 10 GPs
Non philo-civ with pacifism: 13.7 GPs
Philo-civ w/o pacifism: 13.7 GPs
Philo-civ with pacifism: 16.3 GPs

The effect of pacifism is to increase GPs by around 40% for non-philo civs but only 20% for philo-civs. Therefore the arguments for running pacifism are weaker for a philosophical civilisation.

[Brizey]

I did the same math a while back. However, I disagree that the arguments are weaker. They are not weaker if your core strategy is based on GP generation. While the percentage is lower, it is still a significant increase and it further heightens your capability to use GP generation as a strategy.

In my game, I built the Oracle, the Pyramids and the Great Library in my GP city with gobs and gobs of chopping and lucky access to stone and marble both. With caste system and a forge I could slightly skew the odds for getting a particular GP. I generated five or six scientists, one for the Academy and several to settle to get 9 base beakers each (6 base plus three for Representation courtesy of the Pyramids). Pretty soon the city was cranking over 200 beakers a turn. It topped out at something over 500 beakers a turn, engough to generate even advanced techs by itself in ten turns. Basically a classic slingshot strat. So I would say the additional few scientists I got from Pacifism made this strategy very powerful instead of medicore. Since this strategy is quite unlikely to work with a non-philosophical leader, Pacifism would be less valuable.

So basically I am saying that the value of Pacifism is circumstantial. Adding it on top of the Philo trait to make a GP machine is a core game strategy that is not really as effective with a non-Philo leader.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Brizey
I did the same math a while back. However, I disagree that the arguments are weaker. They are not weaker if your core strategy is based on GP generation.

If your strategy uses a fair amount of GP generation then the benefits of pacifism to a philosophical leader are less than they are to a non-philo leader.

Ergo, the arguments in favour are weaker for a philo-civ.

This does not mean that they are still not strong enough to select Pacifism over Organised. It's just that the arguments would need to be stronger than they would for a non-philo civ.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

I kind of disagree with that analysis. I think pacifism is much more valuable to philo civs because you are much more likely to use a specialist driven strategy than say if you are organized or aggresive. In fact, the only time I really concentrate on specialists is if I am on my own island or draw a philo civ and then I will run pacifism to churn out those great people as fast as possible. The earlier you get them the better so even though the benefit is less for philo, you will get the GP that much faster providing greater benefit in the long run.

If am not philo, then I use pacifism only to generate a few key GP early for academy and shrine and maybe a slingshot. Of course if you want to generate huge cash and research cities with financial or go for cultural victory than pacifism is prob a good choice regardless if you are philo or not. This is just a matter of style though. If you are always a builder than you will obviously go with pacifism. Otherwise, I think you are wasting your traits if you go with this civic for very long.

[Brizey]

Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky
I kind of disagree with that analysis. I think pacifism is much more valuable to philo civs because you are much more likely to use a specialist driven strategy than say if you are organized or aggresive. In fact, the only time I really concentrate on specialists is if I am on my own island or draw a philo civ and then I will run pacifism to churn out those great people as fast as possible. The earlier you get them the better so even though the benefit is less for philo, you will get the GP that much faster providing greater benefit in the long run.

If am not philo, then I use pacifism only to generate a few key GP early for academy and shrine and maybe a slingshot. Of course if you want to generate huge cash and research cities with financial or go for cultural victory than pacifism is prob a good choice regardless if you are philo or not. This is just a matter of style though. If you are always a builder than you will obviously go with pacifism. Otherwise, I think you are wasting your traits if you go with this civic for very long.

Thanks. You said it better than me. Basically, the GP core strategy really only works well with a philo leader and with Pacifism on for most of the game. Since Pacisfism enables a core strategy for a philo leader, but does not for a non-philo leader, it is a very important civic for philo leaders.

Or here is another way. Give me a formula one car and I can go a lot faster than my WRX, but probably couldn't win a NASCAR race. Give a NASCAR driver a formula one car and he would win EVERY NASCAR race. The percentage increase is smaller for the NASCAR driver, but it enables a positve win for him, but not for me.

[couerdelion]

Well I’m not really sure what you mean by a GP core strategy but can guess you simply drive your tech/economy with GPs. But if your feeling is that philo+pacifism simply beats the rest hands down the figures I gave earlier would work against your argument.

First of all, you have to have a core economy to drive your tech and GPs can only supplement this. Occasionally you might lightbulb a key tech to make a leap forward but unless your core “tile-driven” economy is working, you won’t keep it. Whichever way you look at it, GPs are never going to be “core” to the technological advancement apart from the few occasions where used opportunistically to produce things that generate some serious beakers or money (academy, shrine, popping key techs, building key wonders)

The question is simply whether or not the jump from philo to philo+pacifism is as strong as that from non-philo to non-philo+pacifism. The numbers show that the non-philo civ gets a boost of around 40% compared to the philo civs gain of just 20%. So while pacifism may be the right choice for a philo civ at a certain time, it will be MORE right for a non-philo civ at the same time.

To use the analogy provided, I wonder if a F1 car would win Le Mans.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

The question is simply whether or not the jump from philo to philo+pacifism is as strong as that from non-philo to non-philo+pacifism.

I don't think this is the correct question at all. Yes, I totally agree that non-philo civs get the greater benefit percentage wise, but this kind of analysis really does not get at the heart of the issue. Your analysis is based on the assumption that both civs will run pacifism the entire game to get that 13.5 or 16 GP. This is totally unrealistic for a non philo civ, and pretty unrealistic for a philo civ though much more likely in the latter case.

For instance if I am spiritual, I am going to switch civics at least 30 times during the game. I will switch to Org. Rel when in building mode and I will switch to theocracy when pumping units, or free religion to avoid large diplo hits.

If you ask 100 players using philo civs vrs another 100 using non-philo civs, I guartantee the philo players will say they run pacifism for much longer amounts of time than non-philo players thus they will get greater benefit. It is obvious that pacifism gels with the philo trait as those players are much more likely to focus on great people and will do whatever they can to increase their output. If I am organized or aggresive I will most likely go for a domination victory, then I could care less about my GP output and it would be dumb to run pacifism.

Both cases are not equal.

[Arrian]

It's not really about how many total GP's you get, IMO. It's about how fast you get 'em. Civ's about turn advantage.

Pacifism dovetails with a GP-pump strat not only because it increases GP points, but also because of a) no-upkeep; and b) its downside - expensive military - is not as much of a concern for a player pursuing such a strat.

I've played as Lizzy, thrown down the Parthenon and run Pacifism. Wowza.

-Arrian