Bureaucracy

[BigWilly1974]

Esteemed colleagues...

When do you typically dump Bureaucracy for a different civic? Or do you?

[Jaybe]

I'll go to Free Speech in 1/3-1/4 of my games.
When?? When I get around to it after I get democracy. Since I usually don't when I adopt free religion, I might never get around to it.

If I have plenty of trade & cottages elsewhere (which isn't hard if I've got 20-30+ cities), I SHOULD as soon as I get an available golden age in BtS.

[enderw]

It depends.

Almost invariably as the empire gets larger and space fills up you will need the decreased maintenence of Nationhood or the culture/commerce of free speech.

I usually don't find the difference pressing enough to go through anarchy. I'll change during a taj golden age or tack it onto a republic/Emancipation/Free Market revolution that I am going through anyway or that a force a golden age for.

[vilemerchant]

Best time for me is right after researching Assembly line and I want to draft up a lovely army of Infantry for a war. Hopefully I'll have enough great people to start a golden age at this time and can change to Republic/Nationalism/Emancipation/Theocracy all at once with no anarchy.

Have to make sure you have Globe Theatre built so you can draft away merrily in 1 city with no unhappiness probs, drafting occasionally in other large cities and building units everywhere.

[Palpster]

....messed up....sry

[Arrian]

I often just stick with it. It depends on how great my capital is versus the overall size and development of my empire.

-Arrian

[wodan11]

Generally about 15-20 turns after I switch to Emancipation.

Wodan

[Blaupanzer]

As soon as I get Crist Redentor, unless I'm playing a SPI civ. Switch to Free Speech, free religion, and emancipation at that time. Switch to war civs when appropriate, and it often is.

[Blake]

I think that Free Speech tends to be an upgrade over BigB.

It pays to note how the multipliers work.

The commerce multiplier is unique - it's completely multiplicative with other commerce multipliers. You basically always get 50% more science for your commerce.

For hammers it's only additive. Once you have IronWorks and a Forge and a Factory, it's only +20%. Once you have Power too it's only +16%.

Okay, we've established that the Hammers effect tends to fade as the game progresses, to the point where it becomes insignificant.

However the commerce component does remain significant particularly if you build Oxfords in your capital.

But basically what you do, is you look at how much raw commerce your capital is generating, and halve it. That's how much BigB adds. If you have Oxfords then say increase it by 50%.

Now go count (yeah) the number of towns in your empire (+50% in Oxfords city), and double that.

If the second number if bigger, then you'll get more income from Free Speech, end of story.

Now Free Speech also makes life MISERABLE for your neighbors, it culturally oppresses them and they lose tiles. The AI, pre-BTS, didn't use Free Speech a whole lot so players may not realize just how much pain it can cause. I feel that the suffering which Free Speech inflicts more than makes up for the slight loss of hammers, at least once you have Ironworks on hand for your wonder-cranking needs.
Of course if you have some cities which are actually losing tiles to another civs culture, then Free Speech is all the sweeter . Also the fact that you often end up with a 4 tile deep cultural borders makes it really hard to invade you, and really easy for you to invade your neighbors. It's a great civic.

[Blake]

Okay as for Vassalage.

Vassalage owns for Warmongering. This is especially true for Organized leaders with a large empire. The benefit of Vassalage increases with empire size, because you get more free units. But normally the increase in civic upkeep negates most of that. But if you're organized the bigger you are, the nicer Vassalage is. In some cases you get so many free units that it's almost justified to use it just for the economic benefit. Of course the security of having high exp units is the main reason you use it.