Theocracy vs Organized Religion vs Pacifism

[Urban Ranger]

Which of these civics are better? Under what situations will you switch from one to another?

For example, when you are gearing up for war, which one will you use? It seems like a no-brainer comparing Burreaucracy and Vassalage - the former wins hands down for me. However, the religion civics are less clear cut. The +2 experience for new military units seems to be a fair trade off for either the +100% GP rate or the +25% construction rate for cities.

How will you decide?

[Alkis2]

The +25% is for construction of buildings, therefore when you are building units preparing for war you will want Theocracy. And Vassalage maybe be better than Bureaucracy in this particular situation.

About the other two, Organized religion, and Pacifism it depends. For example, there are situations where you need a specialist very badly.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Alkis2
About the other two, Organized religion, and Pacifism it depends. For example, there are situations where you need a specialist very badly.

Not a specialist a Great Person.

[Alkis2]

Yes

[couerdelion]

Not a great fan of either Organised or Theocracy

Even though they have their uses, the bonus for Pacifism is often too good to refuse.

There might seem to be a simple approach which equates

Building units – Theocracy + Vassalage
Building infrastructure – Organised

In many games I play, Monotheism and Theology are off the normal tech path so I will already have Pacifism. Since Pacifism tends to give better results over the long term, I would probably not take the anarchy hit twice (once to switch during a building phase and once to switch back when units are being produced. Of course, if you have no specialists or wonders, Pacifism will be rather ineffective but this would mean that you’re probably doing something wrong.

If, as often, I am running a military tech lead then I will tend to avoid Theocracy and rely on stronger units to win my battles. This gives Pacifism the edge since it will use GPs to drive forward your civilisation and the tech will allow you to maintain stronger units so keeping down the military costs of running that civics.

[Blake]

The religious civics (except free.rel) are some of the best for using adaptively, since they can all be picked up early in the game.

Pacifism is best used when got very early in the game (ie with Oracle or Great Scientist), before a large army is needed, it makes it possible to pump out GP's VERY quickly. And ofcourse for spiritual leaders.
Pacifism is fairly unique in that it can work with the state religion only in a couple of cities - the ones with the GPP output. The No Upkeep is also useful in this respect (ie Pacifism could be useful with no religion at all).


Organized religion is fine to run all game for an organized leader, also good for spiritual leaders for speeding up wonders and such.
Org.Rel is particullary powerful for warmongers, as it allows you to quickly move religion into new conquests, also providing a handy +25% to building the courthouse, granary, barracks, forges etc (the +25% works with slavery, which is nice). Now obviously a warmonger wants +2 exp, but Vassalage works just fine for that.

Theocracy is always good for waging war, especially so if you want to use Buereaucracy instead of Vassalage. It's especially good if you don't really have much infrastructure to build and just want to pump out units. Unfortunately(?) it's on the religious branch, but it can also be had very early in the game with a great prophet.

Religious civics are over all fairly weak but focused. Like Vassalage is much better than Theocracy, since Vassalage is in all cities (no need for state religion) and gives a very significant amount of unit upkeep relief, but vassalage has to compete with Bureaucracy. Overall they are the best to flip-flop between for Spiritual leaders.

[Swiss Pauli]

Some of the combos are a bit stupid. Free Speech and Theocracy/Police State? USuf and Vassalage? I think some of these should be barred. Although I'm enjoying using them in whilst they're allowed.

[JackRudd]

The stupid combos are usually not only conceptually stupid, but also strategically so. The Theocracy/Police State combo, for example, will work with Vassalage much better than it does with Free Speech. For Universal Suffrage, the reverse is true.

[Blake]

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

[uberfish]

Since in the style I most often play my capital does the lion's share of my empire's research by itself throughout the Medieval period, I prefer to stay in bureaucracy until I have enough fully developed towns across my empire to make it worth switching to Free Speech, and so do not use vassalage.

I might run pacifism for a while if I rushed to philosophy early, but otherwise the empire wide bonuses of Org Rel or Theocracy seem better to me. Pacifism gets fairly expensive once you're maintaining a sizable army, also.

[The keeper]

That is why I enjoy playing spiritual leaders. I can switch civics on a wilm. (spelling?)


In my present game, I am going for a culture victory, so I have been running pacifism since I got it. I am about to switch to theocracy because someone declared war on me.

All civics are situational.

[OzzyKP]

I rarely ever use pacifism.

I'll stick to organized religion and theocracy depending on whether I'm making more units or buildings, and then maybe switch to free religion for the end game when I want to beat the AI to some space ship techs and/or boost relations for a diplomatic victory.

[gus_smedstad]

If I'm not Spiritual, and I'm not staying away from a state religion for diplomatic reasons, I tend to prefer Organized Religion. It's useful for both peace and war.

Pacifism works best when your empire is small and focused. The bonus is huge and the cost low if you have just 3-4 cities. Once you start empire building, the unit cost just from garrisons climbs, and the GPP bonus is a much smaller part of your overall economy.

I generally only run Theocracy if I am Spiritual. If there's no cost to switching, I'll check what my top production cities are building, units or infrastructure, and I'll switch accordingly.

Free Religion can help dramatically with conquest of neighbors who have a different religion. The newly conquered cities generate culture right away and have extra happiness. At home, multiple religions help abate war weariness. Generally I'll go with Free Religion if it's available and my empire is getting large.

- Gus

[Cadarn]

Organised Religion all the way for me. I also spread my state religion aggressively.

If I need 6xp for new units I will switch to Vassalage whilst running unit builds in my big production cities to crank out and promote the elite cadre of my army. I find that, as another poster said, having cutting edge military tech is of greater benefit than having the extra promotion on building the unit. (one succesful fight and they have the xp for the promotion anyway)

I am more a land grabbing builder type than a vertcial growth warmonger, so the extra 25% for buildings and wonders makes a big difference. Whipping in infrastructure buildings with Slavery still happens, but I don't have to rely on it and, as a result, I can still grow my cities whilst building in them.

My strategy makes Pacifism expensive to run, even without building an offensive army, simply due to the strong garrisons needed to keep enemies at bay whilst expanding and building. (I tend to play as Lizzie a lot so I have the 100% GP bonus from the Philo trait. Granted, an extra 100% would be nice though!)

Just my 2p worth.

[couerdelion]

Don't underestimate Pacifism. Good for war

Originally posted by gus_smedstad
Pacifism works best when your empire is small and focused. The bonus is huge and the cost low if you have just 3-4 cities. Once you start empire building, the unit cost just from garrisons climbs, and the GPP bonus is a much smaller part of your overall economy.
- Gus

Isn’t is a “No upkeep” civic. If you just run with a garrison of one unit per city then I would be sure that the marginal cost of an extra unit were much lower than the marginal cost of an extra city on a more expensive civic.

GP points are still a huge value with 10+ cities. Since I tend to value my GPs are around 2000 gold in Mediaeval/Renaissance then even if you’re running with three specialists in your whole empire, the +100% bonus is going to be worth 9 GPP so of the order of between 9 and 45 gold/turn. This is usually bigger than the gains you’ll be making on other civics