Representation or Universal Sufferage

[ben04]

I used to use Representation a lot in the game but recently I have fallen in love with Heritary Rule.

It depends on the situation but if you have a few cities with great food production or a some grassland titles that you can build farms on and a not extremly low hammer rate then Heritary Rule really kicks Representation's ass in money, science and happyness. Build a lot of cheap defenders, archers and warriors are good for this. You should have them finished in one or 2 turns. Build a 8 to 10 of them and keep them in the city. Now you have enough happiness to get your city up to 20 citizens early in the game. Build a lot of cottages around the city. Basicly every non farm and non hill square should be a cottage also don't chop forested hills for the health. If you now have a few cows and a bit of wheat and trade for fish health will neither be a problem. This way you can have cities (about 4 to 5 if you are lucky) with 8 or more towns already around 500 after Christ. Finishing building is also no problem with salvery.

This will certainly give you a tech lead so you can grab most of the late religions. Spread them in each of your cities and build the temples. Now I normally switch to a free religion US combo. The free religion makes up for the happiness provided by Heritary Rule and the extra hammer from towns is just goodly combined with the hammers you can now get by building sawmills on top of the few remaining forests.

This strategy works great in AI only games where the AI only judges you based on the size of your army which is very large so it wont go to war with you. This strategy works great for builders and late game warmongers. I just love to crush one axeman with 3 caverly. Just run them over, no need to bombard cities and the like.

It also works to some extend in multiplayer but here you will have to throw a few modern units into the defender heap. Other players will see the top modern unit of the stack and the size of the stack and decide to attack someone else. They just didn't bother to look at what the stack is composed of.

Best leader for this strategy is Musa Mansa. A stack of 8 to 10 units of his special unit in a city with a city defender promotion is for a very long time an extermly tough nut to crack for an attacker. Also his financial trait plays alone well.

[One_more_turn]

Representation is great if you are philosophical, have only a few cities, and follow a peaceful strategy of Cultural victory.

U.S. is suited for more aggressive strategies.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by One_more_turn
Representation is great if you are philosophical, have only a few cities, and follow a peaceful strategy of Cultural victory.

U.S. is suited for more aggressive strategies.

Now, why would you say that? Just for the extra hammers?

Remember that representation has a happiness bonus, which is more important if you're at war a lot. Also, if I'm using an agressive stratagy, I tend to have a lot less money sitting around, between upgrades and just the fact I'm building less economic buildings and sometimes have to run 10-20% culture from time to time as war weariness starts to get out of control.

I would say Universal Sufferage is good if you have a large empire from prior conquests but intend to stay at peace and build for a while, or something like that. The extra hammers aren't a big deal; the real key to US is the ability to buy stuff, and that only comes into play if you've got a strong economy, with a lot of spare money. Especally now that they've nerfed the Kremlin.

It depends on a lot of factors. In my past game, most of my cities were surrounded by plains (was playing in the ice age), so I had a lot of farms; so once I got biology, I tended to have 3-4 specilists per city. But even without that, I think that in most cases, the extra science and happiness from representation compared to universal sufferage is generally very strong; the hammers from universal suffereage aren't that big of a deal, especally as your hammer-heavy cities aren;t going to have many towns, so it'll be a few extra hammers in your commerce cities; very nice, to be sure, but not gamebreaking. The only time US is better is if you plan to do a lot of buying, and especally if you plan to do a lot of buing minor buildings in newly conquered cities.

[Blaupanzer]

US is useful, as noted by Yosho, for buying basic, cheap buildings in late-game conquered cities.

Otherwise, I use representation for the beakers as the AI really comes on in science in the mid and late games. Once I've gotten the basic unit techs, I often bee-line for democracy to get The SoL and combine representation with that for a big jump in science.

This process makes up for the need to lower the science rate in order to pay for the new, farther away cities (regular gold) and to beef up happiness (culture) to offset war weariness.

[Nugog]

Both have their own uses at different times in the game, and in different situations.

[couerdelion]

I went for Rep simply because I don’t often play far into games where Usuff can bring the huge benefits that rush-buying offers. It’s particularly effective if you have one or two super-food cities and you are still running through the first 10-15 GPs. Also a very strong play if you have a Philo civ.

Once you’re past the early GPs, they start to get quite expensive and their real value to the game diminishes (except for Golden Ages). At this stage, Usuff will then be the more beneficial.

I also tend to find that cottages are a much over-rated improvement in this game. I know we like to see improvements that improve themselves but pound for pound, they don’t seem to do as much as people think in many cities. Of course, it’s definitely worth having a large number of those cottages in some cities and towns are demons when you get a golden age, but that’s really for middle to late game where the towns really come into their own – early game, it’s safer to selectively build cottages in some cities and use the rest to build an army – which is where the really money is – and missionaries for a little extra pocket money.

[Autotropx Sox]

I consider both it & State Property and exploit for the player

An exploit...

The Police State only shines in the prologue and duration of a war while state property is only beneficial when you have a huge land-based empire. Neither of them are exploits, but rather, are simply civics to satisfy special needs which only occur sometimes in a game or play style.

If anything, Hereditary Rule is an exploit because it lets resource poor civs have 12, 13, and 14 population cities. But of course, this only happens in special cases as well.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Jaybe
I had the impression that you were so good at the game that you would consider Police State an exploit. I consider both it & State Property and exploit for the player, but I just play Noble (with some Monarch elements mixed in).

...

You consider using good civics at times they would help you an exploit? What about having a unit fortified on a hill against barbarians? Or skipping techs that won't help you like divine right in some games? After all, the AI never skips them, right?

It's a stratagy game. The whole point is to find out the best stratagy that'll let you win. I don't understand how using 2 options the game gives you for the civic choices are "exploits", when they're not even always the best options.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

I also don't like the talk of exploits in this game. I mean come on, look at what is stacked against you on emperor and above. If you find the game too easy with these "exploits" then move up in difficulty. I don't see how you can possibly consider police state to be an exploit. There are powerful commerce centric civics, the same should apply to military oriented civics.

State property is definitely unbalanced compared to other civics in that category (it is hands down the best economic civic and extremely useful even for empires of moderate size), but its not an exploit. I would consider clever strategies like CS slings or jacking early workers from the AI (stuff the computer cannot possibly pull off) to be more like exploits than good civics that are built into the game which the AI has free reign to use.

[snoopy369]

Representation: useful when combined with Caste System and Mercantilism for the uber-specialist-strat. Oh, and Statue of Liberty
U.S.: More useful for me usually, as I build a lot of cottages (=towns).

[Autotropx Sox]

it is hands down the best economic civic and extremely useful even for empires of moderate size),

If you are playing anything other then a total blood lust or domination win, Free market almost always can guarantee your more science with the extra trade route. Honestly, the premise of using State Property on a medium size empire of nine cities with two (or three) capitals is a total loss.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

All I know is that every single time I have switched to state property, I have seen significant increase in cash flow. The large increase here is definitely worth the relatively small science hit. And, yes, most of my games are in bloodlust domination style so my perspective on this is probably skewed. I obviously place a higher priority on cash at this point in the game. Also, My empire is almost always larger than nine cities when SP becomes available. Free market is decent, but is dominated by state property in the endgame unless you are purposefully staying small.

[MasterDave]

If I get the Pyramids (usually the case in single player, more difficult to achieve in multiplayer), then I will go to representation early in the game, and later on when I am running a well developed economy with a large income, I will switch to Universal suffrage. Science is more important to me early, and while growing in the early to mid game, there is just not enough surplus cash around to really take advantage of U.S. and no towns either.

So the answer is both, Representation from the completion of Pyramids until around the Industrial age where there are more towns and cash is flowing properly.

[gdijedi7]

I play with Universal Sufferage, though I like what I hear about Representation.

Doesn't Universal Sufferage double the growth of cottages/etc? I say use that one to speed the process along.

[Arrian]

No, that's Emancipation.

If you run a specialist-heavy economy (using a PHI civ, perhaps?), Rep can be quite powerful, especially once you can mix it with Mercantalism.

I typically do not run such an economy, though, and so I think U.S. is better.

-Arrian