Is there an ideal set of civics for peace time?

[Geronimo]

In my first civ4 game the best choice for civics in war time seemed fairly clear.

In peacetime however I found my prefered method of simply looking at total income and light bulb generation leading me to the unexpected result of spending almost the entire game in mercantilism and representation, even the pyramids had given me access to things like universal sufferage.

This was something of a surprise as I had assumed that removal of foreign trade routes should constitute a huge penalty for merc and I had thought universal sufferage would be obviously superior to representation.

However that particular combination with its free specialists in every last city even the crappy little flyspeck ones with the added bonus of each of those specialists and all other specialists getting 3 free extra beakers seemed to add up to a net bonus that no competing paid of civics in those civics categories could compete with.


Is there something I'm missing or is representation plus mercantilism as good a combo as it appears to be?

[rah]

Add caste system, if you're not whipping.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by rah
Add caste system, if you're not whipping.

but how often will I be better off turning worked land into specialists? I haven't really been able to see how caste system would be better than serfdom unless someone went overboard on workers early on and had no more improvements of the land to do. In any case it seems as if slavery remains a handy tool that one would not set aside lightly.

[rah]

When you get to the happiness or health cap and turn all those excess workers into specialists. If you've got a coastal city with multiple sea specials early, you have considerable food excess and probably not a lot of production. Caste lets you turn all those extra pop to priests. There are many ways to really make this work for you. If you've got pyramids early, you can cruise through the techs.

[Shr3dZ]

May aswell throw in Pacifism and get the 100% GP points then too... but OR and FR are fairly peaceful civics too, depends on how much military you have vs. how much building you have to do...


rah nailed it with his last post, in the game Im playing now, my capital city has 1 rice, 1 clams, 2 fish, 1 pigs - Ive capped it at 12 pop with 8 specialist prophets - gaining me 132 GP points/turn. (playing as ghandi)

[Geronimo]

Ah yes. I don't think I quite understand how the religious civics work.

The one that seemed overwhelmingly useful was organized religion since a 25% cut in building production sounded immensely powerful.

However it didn't seem to effect wonders at all. Are wonders considered units for production bonus considerations?

Pacifism sounds very attractive if indeed it doubles GP births but to GPS really end up contributing enough to compensate for paying 4/3s more hammers for every building? Obviously I'm assuming that every city will be of the state religion but even if a few arent the lax missionary training rules seem to insure that's easy to fix.

Free religion seemed quite dissappointing if your civ has enough luxeries buildings to keep nearly everybody happy. a 10% increase in science would mean the equivalent of a bonus tech every ten techs researched but by comparison the 25% reduction in building costs seems to be like getting a free building for every 4 constructed!

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Shr3dZ
May aswell throw in Pacifism and get the 100% GP points then too... but OR and FR are fairly peaceful civics too, depends on how much military you have vs. how much building you have to do...


rah nailed it with his last post, in the game Im playing now, my capital city has 1 rice, 1 clams, 2 fish, 1 pigs - Ive capped it at 12 pop with 8 specialist prophets - gaining me 132 GP points/turn. (playing as ghandi)

do you use mercantalism to add yet another specialist?

[Shr3dZ]

Only recently have I been using mercantalism, I always thought (just b/c it sounds better) that having my cities trading with all the AI (foreign trade routes) would be more powerful - but not being allow foreign trade routes seems to have little or no effect on the amount of money I make most times. I think a good rule of thumb is, if you havent made contact OR havent agreed to many open border agreements then you may aswell use mercantilism. (I think the maintanence for that civic is lower too)

Maybe a good idea would be to experiment, save yer game, take note of how much $ yer making, switch to the other civic, now see how much $ yer making - then decide.

OR is powerful in the early game especially, but its only good for regular buildings I believe, not wonders or military. In a more standard game (space race) OR is prolly the best bet.

FR is good if you dont want civs hating you (ie. -4 rep for religious tension). Plus the 10% science is pretty sweet.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Shr3dZ

FR is good if you dont want civs hating you (ie. -4 rep for religious tension). Plus the 10% science is pretty sweet.

does that hold in religious monoculture games where all of the AI's have the same state relgion as the player does?

[rah]

If I'm in one of my WW's the lack of foreign trade routes is not an issue
In the OCC conquest game I'm currently in, I find myself at war with all 7 ai's. And with no internal cities, it kind of kills trade. So i just take the extra specialist.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by rah
If I'm in one of my WW's the lack of foreign trade routes is not an issue
In the OCC conquest game I'm currently in, I find myself at war with all 7 ai's. And with no internal cities, it kind of kills trade. So i just take the extra specialist.

I'll have to lok for the civ4 jargon thread (I know there must be one). I still don't know what WW is (world war?) and I almost forgot about one city challenge.

A bit off topic but is there anything to gain from war in one city challenge?

Is there more than one effective way to play one city challenge?

Do people generally choose the smallest map size for one city challenge?

[rah]

Most people that play OCC play for a space ship win, so war is meaningless except for survival.

I prefer a conquest win so yes, it's a WW since I must eliminate everyone to win.

I usually play on a small pag map with 8 civs. You don't want to give the AI much room to expand or they'll definetely outproduce and out tech you. Since I plan to have them all pissed off at me, I disable tech trading.
It's nice to have them fight each other but in my current immortal run, I started on an island, founded one religion and the an AI on the main continent founded hinduism. I did also found confucionism and spread it to a couple of civs but by the midgame all of them had converted to hinduism and there by hated me. I was staying in pacism to crank the gps so I didn't even bother and declared war on all of them since the vasal states were forming and disolving every other turn. I didn't want to bother to keep track.

The emphasis in OCC is generating GP so your one city can outproduce outtech entire civs.

It is fun not being limited to two National Wonders so you can really create a megacity.

One city cranking 800 science 300 hammers and 100 gold at 100% science is fun.

You just have to make sure you have oil.

[binTravkin]

My peacetime choice:
Monarchy->Representation(when available)
Bureaucracy->Free Speech
Slavery(simply love it)
Free Market
Organised Religion->Pacifism

Organised religion is excellent for early building with the 25% bonus.

[MasterDave]

Different civics are useful in different situations. There is no one "perfect" answer. Mercantilism is not nearly as powerful if you do not also use representation. Also, if you have lots of open border agreements and trade routes(three or more), you will likely lose more commerce (research and cash) then you will gain by mercantilism, especially if you can go free market. Later on State Property can trump both of these for income if you have a large, spread-out empire (and some workshops) .

Universal suffrage has a majore advantage over representation in that you can rush buy buildings. It is the better choice for the late game when your ecomony is going strong and you are generating a gold surplus. representation is better for research, especially if you run mercantilism, have the statue of liberty, or both. Representation is also helpful in the early game with its considerable happiness bonus (in the late game you generally have more luxury resources available).

Most of the other civics also have their uses in certain game situations. The civics are an element that gives Civ4 "depth" in that there is no "best" choices for every game.

[rah]

Between the different civics and the different leaders, is what makes the game for me over II. MP games are different everytime, unlike II where they became kind of formula games. Yes there was some variety in II but not like now. The main reason we still play II is because of hardware limitations when we have a lot of people around. And that should be resolved soon.