Civics

[Smellycowsquid]

Best Civics in your opinions?

[rjmatsleepers]

Re: Civics

Originally posted by Smellycowsquid
Best Civics in your opinions?

That's a pretty broad question, so as Prof Joad would have said, "it all depends what you mean by best". However, if I'm given a free choice I'd go for:

Representation, Bureaucracy, Serfdom, Free Market, Free Religion.

Of course I might be forced into Emancipation. And Universal Suffrage can be useful for rush building. And Free Speech is a must for culture wins. And ...

RJM at Sleeper's

[couerdelion]

Varies a lot on circumstances.

Pacifism and Representation work quite well if you've got one or two GP garms working well. You could even add Mercantilism to these although I usually find the trade too significant to give up for just one extra specialist.

You need at least one rush option so either slavery or universal suffrage.

Early game slavery is v. important
Later bureaucracy gives a big return.

[LzPrst]

If i have a philosophical leader I go for pacifism representation and mercantilism. 1 free specialist, and 3 extra beakers are great. along with a national epic in the city with most specialist will give a +300% great people boost there. great leaders will pop up like crazy. and you will still have a decent tech rate. especially if the majority of your specialists are scientists.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

State property is my favorite and is just awesome in the right circumstances, it blows every other economic civic away. Police state and Universal Suffrage are pretty useful at the end of the game. Organized religion and slavery are pretty much mainstays in alot of my games.

[Hermann the Lombard]

YMMV

"Best" is utterly relative to the phase of the game and to your strategy. There's a pretty good discussion in the Bradygames guide, not that I necessarily agree with their conclusions.

The beauty is when you can switch without anarchy and have "civics du jour."

[Shaka II]

For the longest and most important part of the game, I would say,

Hereditary rule, Bureaucracy, Slavery, Mercantilism/Free Market, Organized Religion/Theocracy

late in the game,

Police State, Free Speech, Slavery/Emancipation, State Property, Free Religion

Hereditary rule is required for happiness to let your core cities get big. Representation is nice, but it comes late, unless you have the Pyramids.

Theocracy is better for wars (+2XP), as is police state for +25% military production, -50% WW. When at peace, organized religion is best for +25% building production.

Bureaucracy is great until your empire becomes large, then a switch to free speech is best.

Slavery is good for low cost and pop rushing buildings into captured cities. Emancipation is required if someone else is using it.

Free religion is better when most of your building is done, and the 10% science boost is more attractive, and the +1 happiness per non-state religion.

On edit: I added State Property to reduce distance maintenance.

[Blake]

As a fan of Organized, my favorite civics are Vassalage and Organized Religion. I'll run those literally all game with a leader like Tokugawa.

The best all-round civic is probably State Property, altough Pacifism can be very powerful too *under the right circumstances*.

[trev]

There are combinations of civics that are good together because they complement each other, ie Mercantilism/Representation are complementary and should be used together whereever possible. Others are highly dependent on circumstance, and also what religions are present in cities. For example in one multiplayer game I failed to gain an early religion, but was infected by multiple religions from other players and because cities were close together, I ran 'no state religion' and used misionaries to spread at least 3 religions to all cities. This way I got a culture boost for every city, and also only used paganism and free religion as there was no benefit in the other religious civics.
So the choice of civics is very much orientated to how each game pans out.

[fed1943]

I the end game I use:State Property (food and savings)Free Religion (science and hapiness)Free Speech(commerce)Emancipation(hapiness,cottages) and Universal Sufrage/Police State(building/warweariness).
Best regards,

[Son of David]

The 'caste system' is obviously the best labour civic, the only time you wouldn't want to be running it in the late game is if you were forced into becoming an egalitarian.

[Yksi]

Note: I am pretty much a pure builder and I kind of hate warfare unless I am already covering most of the world and I just want to crush my puny underling neighbours.

These are my fav civics.

government:

When I grab the pyramids I go straight to Univ Suff to speed up production. Otherwise it's representation as soon as I can and univ suff afterwards.

legal:

bureaucracy first, free speech when my capital is ok by itself.

labor:

slavery first (to save money), then serfdom and emancipation as soon as I get it.

Economy:

I usually went for Free market, then I found out that state property is really nifty, kind of makes me wonder where's the catch, it must be the first time in the history of Civ that something vaguely communist is profitable :-)
If Environmentalism gave more food instead of happiness I'd go for it. As it is I find it pretty useless, unless for some reason I cannot build hospitals/supermarkets. (i was a bit disappointed that environmentalism does not behave like tree farm in SMAC, if you get me).

religion:

I was a big fan of pacifism but when I started using financial leaders I found out that org rel is great, it kinds of converts money to hammers and by mass-spreading all the religions I have, I can build more temples/cathedrals and boost culture everywhere.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Blake
As a fan of Organized, my favorite civics are Vassalage and Organized Religion. I'll run those literally all game with a leader like Tokugawa.

The best all-round civic is probably State Property, altough Pacifism can be very powerful too *under the right circumstances*.

What about Bureaucracy? Do you switch to Vassalage just for military production, or do you bypass Bureaucracy alltogether? Early in the game, a switch only takes a turn, but a switch later on can take 3 or more turns on marathon.

[Yksi]

Originally posted by Shaka II
Early in the game, a switch only takes a turn, but a switch later on can take 3 or more turns on marathon.

I got a whopping 14 turns of anarchy when I switched to Emancipation and something else I can't recall. Marathon, yes. I have to say I had a large empire, but still...

[Shaka II]

The larger the empire and multiple civic changes. The most I got nailed with was around 8 or so, on a standard size marathon map. I'm almost tempted to play spiritual.