Is there an ideal set of civics for peace time?

[Blake]

Here's the basic idea behind not running Merchantalism:

Here's a decent trade city. It's actually Paris minus the undesirable French elements and I built the Great Lighthouse there. My capital is landlocked.



Check out those trade routes and that is what you should expect to see in a size 15 city with a harbor and WL 2.08 or later AI's, or 1.61 AI's later in the game.

Now here's the power. I have 3 such trade-monster cities, each is bringing in approximately 30 extra pure commerce in trade at this point in the game, for some perspective that's as much as working 5 mid-game Towns - except without needing the workers. It's as much as 5 rep scientists.
But the effect is actually greater than it appears. Because all the good trade is concentrated in a few cities I can place Academies in those cities. I thus get that 30 commerce being further multiplied by the academies - while only one or two rep specialists would be being multiplied.

Now the truly awesome trade-monster city is a coastal capital running Bureaucracy - because trade routes are pure commerce they get increased by 50%. So lets say you have a size 20 coastal capital and some good trade partners (large cities) and have Great Lighthouse and Free Market - this will bring in trade routes along the lines of 15/14/14/13/12 usually - about 60 more than you'd get under Merc and without heavy trade-focus. Now that 60 is then multiplied by +50% from BigB, it's 90. Now you multiply it again by an Library, University, Observatory, Academy and Oxfords University, +225%, becoming ~300 beakers.
The typical city has about +75% science multipliers (the computer labs are fairly late), so that means 6 beakers from a rep+merc free scientist becomes 11 beakers. To match the trade income from the *capital alone* you need ~27 cities with the free specialist and bear in mind that there will probably be that much beakers again coming in from "lesser" trade cities - around 500 beakers from trade, and you'd only need about 6 cities to pull in that income rather than a good 40 cities.

Trade can be hugely powerful if you have the right wonders and right allies, it can massively outstrip the benefits of Merc - MASSIVELY.
The saving grace of Merc is really that you don't need to bother with having friends, you can just be like Tokuagawa and say "Screw the world!". It works well when no-one likes you because you're killing everyone.

So merc works wonderfully for warmongers with large city counts and few friends, but for the true peacemonger giving up trade income will hurt far too much to even contemplate merc.

However for the warmonger State Property usually works better, because SP allows foreign trade routes it will still make a profit over Merc even if it doesn't reduce upkeep by as much as Merc increases income from specialists. Because that trade income counts. Unless of course you literally have no friends, but even then state property watermills and workshops can be great. State Property is actually usually better than Free Market too, unless truly embracing the "trade monster" concept, it may not be betterer enough to bother reseraching Communism or eating Anarchy though (but with any larger than average empire, SP is simply the best civic).

Representation can still be good, mainly because the peace monger doesn't bother with large garrisons, using diplomacy instead to stay safe, as such there is sometimes little benefit to running HRule.

Universal Suffrage is basically useful once Emancipation has driven out Slavery. It's also useful for getting maximum hammers for spaceship building. Combining Universal Suffrage with State Property can result in the best hammer yields in the game.

[Geronimo]

Thanks!

If my civ kept failing to generate nearly as many lightbulbs or even as much income whenever I abandoned either merc or rep or both is this likely something I was doing wrong or is it just that the vanilla 1.61 AI is so weak on Chieftain that it doesn't offer appreciably decent trade opportunities?

The game is finally basically over (just reloading to use each possible victory in turn) but I've yet to squeeze as much income out of any civic combination that doesn't have both merc and rep.

Could it also relate to the fact that my civ controls just over half of all of the cities?

When I move up to a challenging difficulty setting is the only way to judge when to leave merc+rep during peace time going to be to try it out and then re-load if the result is ugly?

[joncnunn]

I don't think there is a single best for all situations set of civics, even confining ourselves to peaceful ones.

In the Govt ones, The realitive number of towns in your empire for Democracy and Specialists for Republic determine which one is best. (And if your luxaries are really lacking while health is abundant, H.R. might be better than both)

In the legal one, if you have enough towns, you may be better off with Free Speach than Burachercy.

The Labor section are the weakest civics. Serfdom is a crutch for insufficent workers. Caste System is a crutch for insufficent buildings allowing specalists. Even Emmancipation's primary advantage is the happiness penalty it gives to civs without it.

In the Economic section, it comes down to are your borders mostly open or closed. With mostly open borders, Free Market is usually best while with mostly closed, Merchantism is.

And in the Religious section, this is perhaps the most powerful section. But it still depends: A state religion and wanting to build structures (and can afford the civic cost): Org Religion. A state religion and having a bunch of specalists and wonders and whose military isn't too big: Pacifism. Lots of multi-religion core cities: Free Religion

[popejubal]

I like Emancipation to keep my cities from collapsing when the rest of the world is running Emancipation.

I like Vassalage when I'm pumping out huge numbers of units. I will often manipulate my production stack to prevent units from being built by sticking another, different unit or a building in front of the unit when there's just one turn left, and then switch to Vassalage to pump out a couple of units per city for 5 turns and then switch back to something worthwhile.

I like Bureaucracy quite a bit when I have few cities (and have you noticed that Bureaucracy is just about the ONLY true multiplier in Civ IV? Everything else is an "additive" multiplier).

I like Free Speech when I want to make money or do research (i.e. always).

I like Universal Sufferage when I want to build stuff (i.e. always).

I like Representation when I want to research stuff (i.e. always).

I like slavery when I want to rush build stuff (especially under Vassalage).

I like Serfdom when I don't feel like using slavery or Emancipation (i.e. when I'm smoking crack).

I like Free Market when I haven't yet discovered Communism.

I like each and every one of the religious civics (including Paganism).

...in other words, I really like having a Spiritual leader. I switch civics every five turns or so in the late game, bouncing back and forth between different benefits that the civics provide. I especially like being able to pre-build a whole bunch of units, switch to Vassalage to finish the job and then jump back to Free Speech or Bureaucracy.