So what Civic do you use?

[larsenex]

Since I have pyramids I have been running representation and keeping some units in each city. But I know there is a better way. Do any of you have some advice on what gov civic to play and when/why? I also shot and got the all religions wonder so I can change gov and religion civic if needed. What combos do you run with?

I was going to gear up for war, but can stay where I am (peaceful and researching tech) if i want to. I just got code of laws and I am building courthouses at this time.

Thanks much!

[Adagio]

I never use Nationhood, Serfdom, Caste System and Environmentalism
Mercantilism I only use when I don't have contact with other civs (or only know civs that I hate)

When I know that I probably wont go to war for a long time I use Bureaucracy and Organized Religion, otherwise I'll probably switch to Theocracy and Vassalage for the extra experience

I'll adopt Free Speech as soon as possible when I'm going for a cultural victory, otherwise I'll wait depending on the world situation

I only adopt Free Religion, when there's a huge number of civs without my religion (to avoid too many civs getting mad at me)

Pacifism I'll only use when there's little chance of going to war (and I do have some wonders)

State Property is a difficult choice in BTS. If I have a useful corporation I'll stay away from it, but if I know there's only a small chance of me ever getting a useful one I'll adopt. The more widespread my cities are, the higher chance there is for me to pick State Property

I rarely use Police State, but if I have the instant civic switch (either through wonder or through leader powers) I'll switch to it during war

And the question whether to pick Hereditary Rule or Representation depends on the number of cities and whether I have Mercantilism or not. Mercantilism is good together with Representation, and Representation is also good with a higher number of cities IMHO

[Blake]

If you're financial, then Pyramids is a waste of hammers because Hereditary Rule (easily obtained by researching Monarchy) is almost as good as Representation, and it can be almost better - this is because for financial the extra income per cottage more than pays for the garrison to make the happiness to work the cottage... in other words until you run out of health you can keep producing more cheap garrisons and working more cottages. For non-financial this tends to be too expensive, and thus Representation is better, also specialists are relatively more attractive for non-financial and the representation boost for specialists is nice.

Throughout most of the game you want to be running either HRule or Representation, really, both work well.

Come end game you get some new sources of happiness, such as Free Religion and Broadway & co.

If you have ample happiness - meaning that your cities are more constrained by health or tile availability than happiness, then a switch makes sense.

Universal Suffrage gives a lot of extra hammers if you've spammed cottages, the extra hammer is a really useful thing. +15 raw hammers in a town-monster city is nothing to sneeze at. In fact in many cases the raw hammers from Universal Suffrage will surpass the unit-training bonus from Police State.
US furthermore allows you to cash rush, this should be used sparingly because you're typically better off using cash for research, and if you need more hammers, building workshops or the various mill improvements. Used sparingly is not the same as not used - do use it, but make the rush buys count (it's not a means of staple production).

Police State is very niche. It's for when your waging a large war and when war-weariness is killing you. Since war-weariness can easily cause like 20 unhappiness, Police State is effectively +10 happiness, and that blows other civics out the water. Your first resort during wars should be using the cultural slider under Universal Suffrage, but if you need to assign more than about 30% to culture to combat war-weariness, you need to seriously consider getting into Police State, at least if the war will be prolonged for much longer. I've only ever used Police State in a few games, so don't think you're doing something wrong if you find it less than useful, most the time.

With the economics civics, it's a simply matter of figuring out which gives the most economic benefit.
If you have terrible health, it's Environmentalism.
Generally State Property > Free Market, unless you're playing BTS and have Corporations.
Unless you have few Open Borders, then Free Market > Merchantalism.

It's often a case of switching from Merc->FM->SP as they become available, but sometimes you'll skip FM, or even Merc, because merc hurts you if you have lots of open borders. You need a very good reason to not run State Property.

The other civic categories tend to be more straightforward, like you use the military orientated ones during a war, and the economic ones while not at war... or you generally "have no choice" but to run a civic, like Slavery/Emancipation.

If you want to learn the civics, then playing Spiritual civs can be a good idea.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Blake
If you're financial, then Pyramids is a waste of hammers because Hereditary Rule (easily obtained by researching Monarchy) is almost as good as Representation, and it can be almost better

Hmmm. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that it is a waste. I would still tend to rank the science specialist over the cottage even for financial civs since the cottage takes a long time to grow. Maybe not riverside cottages though.

The religious civic choices are probably the ones which are situational and in the early stages of the game, there are essentially three choices: Organised for peaceful building and to spread the religion, Theocracy if you are preparing for war, Pacifism to support a specialist economy. Note that they only work in cities with the state religion so you might want to run Organised just to get the most important cities converted. Pacifism tends to be more effective earlier in the game where the bonus is more valuable (because GP are cheaper). It also gives a nice synergy with Representation.

My personal preference on the Govt Civic side is representation which can rapidly power up a fledgling specialist economy (consider also running Caste System so that even the most basic of cities can quickly generate 15 science if they have a good source of food.

H.Rule is perhaps a necessary civic if you are short of happiness and the +2 Rep bonus is not enough. Personally I would try to work with the Rep bonus if I could but only up to a point.

USuff really needs well developed cities. The rush build benefit is nice but needs a strong economy and has to be used selectively. Generally not something you'll want to run until later.

For the two groups of civics certain combinations are interesting

Police State + Theocracy
Representation + Pacifism (+ Caste System + Mercantilism)

[LzPrst]

depends a lot. i like to run specialist economies. so representation is good if I have pyramids. and caste system. and then I combine vassalage and pacifism, which allows me to have a military while getting more GP. and the extra XP is nice. then I get mercantilism for a little extra GP.

once I get to the modern times I go beaureaucracy (if my capital is really good) else i dont mind sticking with vassalage... and emancipation (doh), state property and depending on happiness, military, either pacifism or free religion.


mind. this is when I go for the specialist economy. normally I just run standard Hereditary Rule until Suffrage. Vassalage/Beaureau until Free speach. Slavery/Caste until Emanc, Free Trade (possibly Envo if health is bad) and Org.Rel until Free Rel.

but I find those games to be alittle boring so I try other tactics like the first I described. gonna try a hereditary rule + nationhood thing soon...

[Ming]

I try to get to beaureaucracy as soon as I can since in the early game, my cap is usually my best city.

The rest... it all depends on the game situation. Each civic has its own strength and most are useful as long as you use them in the right situation. The key is to have a game plan.

[Indalecio]

[SIZE=1] Or
For the two groups of civics certain combinations are interesting

Police State + Theocracy
Representation + Pacifism (+ Caste System + Mercantilism)

Not Police State + Vassalage + Theocracy?

[MontyMort]

I'm not a particularly good Civ4 player, having just started to play (I had a grand total of 2 games started with Civ4) with both expansions. Starting at Noble, going up to Prince and had my first Monarch game yesterday.

I managed to get a win by running Police State/Nationalism/Caste/Police State/Theocracy despite lagging in tech. I always use random for climate etc. and the map was very, very cold. (lots of tundra and ice, so: watermills!) Hemispheres. Large. Random civ: Tokugawa (groan).

I grasped control of my continent (only had Darius on it, Terminate On Sight) but my lack of specialist skills in the early ages were showing during the middle/late periods as I was behind in tech. Realizing this quite early (since optics) I geared up towards ultra-production and routing to the above civics. Not too many cottages, mostly workshops and watermills. You can always "produce" gold and science.

I managed to conquer the word with "one upgrade behind" troops simply due to massive production and no war wearniess. It was close though, so I will be switching down to Prince to master the early specialist game. But it convinced me that it can pay off to use the seemingly not-commercial civics (like police state) in certain situations. Without that increased troop production and decrease in war wearniess, I could not have conquered so fast and the tech lead the AI had and its alliances (damn that apostolic Palace, damn it!) would have destroyed me.

Caste system/state property is truly a workshop paradise.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Indalecio


Not Police State + Vassalage + Theocracy?

It's certainly an option although I have a fairly strong liking for Bureaucracy so prefer to keep that and use the religious civic for the XP bonus. With a big empire, you might feel that the extra XP from vassalage is more significant that a little bonus in just one city - although at this stage I doubt that a few extra XP for new units will make that much difference. More often I will switch into Free Speech if I ever leave B/C

[Arrian]

Bureacracy is the civic I always use and stay with. On a standard map, rarely is switching over to, say, Free Speech, terribly useful. This is especially true, most likely, because of the settings I use and the civs I often play (I'm often ORG, FIN or both - extra commerce from Villages and Towns is nice and all, but typically a BUR capital is more important to me). I've actually never once used Vassalage.

I run either Hed Rule or Rep (depends on whether I build or otherwise obtain the 'mids) for most of the game. Sometimes I switch over to Universal Suffrage toward the end (once I've got lots of towns), but sometimes not.

I use Merc quite a bit. I tend to play on standard size continents (hemispheres, actually) maps, and often beat the crap out of one or two neighboring civs, meanign that I don't have a lot of international trade routes available until Astronomy. Further, I often have the Colossus, and will defer Astro for a bit in that case. I like to try and shoot straight from Merc to State Property, because if there are, for instance, 3-4 available trading partners (say a total of 5 AIs remaining, 1-2 of which hate me), my gut feeling is that Free Trade doesn't do much for me with the extra trade route. I'd rather have the maintanence cut.

I often run Org Rel for the hammer bonus, but will also use Pacifism. Free Religion much later (once out of Rep/Merc/Pac). I've often timed this up with State Property, so Rep/Merc/Pac -> Rep or Univ Suff/SP/FR. I've only occasionally used Theo. I tend to ignore Theology/Divine Right while the AI researches it, helping my tech lead. I've found it's just not that hard to generate a GG and settle him in my HE city. That city can then pump 5XP units. On my typical settings, that city can produce enough crack troops to defend my empire or spearhead the conquest of another civ.

For much of the game, I'm running slavery. I tend to use serfdom for a little while, but not always. I'm not going to spend any (extra) turns in anarchy for it, that's for sure. I will typically switch into Emancipation as soon as I can and stay there.

-Arrian

[Blake]

Originally posted by couerdelion
Hmmm. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that it is a waste. I would still tend to rank the science specialist over the cottage even for financial civs since the cottage takes a long time to grow. Maybe not riverside cottages though.

Waste of HAMMERS. Maybe if you get it for free or something, but the pyramids is a big whack of hammers which would be better spent on expansion.

As for cottages vs Specialists:

a 0-0-6 tile does not compare with a 2-0-5 , it's equal with ~ 2-0-2.5 (the food means more cottages worked in the future). Specialists are nice to bootstrap your early research, but for financial especially you're hurting your long run by not taking advantage of cottages.
I mean you want some specialists for Academies and Academies and Academies and stuff, but to focus heavily on GP is just dumb.

[larsenex]

So I am warmongering along and must either do conquest or domination. My question is this. I conquer this city and the next and the next and than I have WAY too many cities. Do you guys ever raze em if you just dont want the headache of maintaining them? I dont want to loose them for fear of not getting the territory for domination.

Whats a George Bush..um...Warmonger to do?..

Keep em or raze em?

What I often wonder is say I raze all the cities on another continent. What happens is Barbies come in OR the other civs repop it like rabbits making my conquest of the next guy that much harder.

Suggestions?

[Asmodeous]

I raze cities that are close to my borders unless they're rather large, that way my culture usually just kinda fills everything in.

Really, I never looked at State Property before. Hmm.

Me.

[Ming]

I probably raze about half or more of the cities... keeping the good cities, and the ones that block access to other land, but leaving some space between cities.

I can always fill in later with new cities when I can afford it if I think it's needed.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Arrian
Bureacracy is the civic I always use and stay with. On a standard map, rarely is switching over to, say, Free Speech, terribly useful.

If you haven't fallen irrevocably in love with Bureaucracy yet, I suggest not doing so. All the legal civics are useful.

Vassalage is a very awesome civic since highly trained troops, ARE GOOD. For organized it's more optimal to run Vassalage + Organized Religion, than Bureaucracy + Theocracy.

In some cases it makes sense to run Vassalage + Theocracy, this is MAINLY as charismatic Civs, where the +4 exp lets you:
Build lvl3 ships, build lvl4 ships with a Drydock.
Train lvl4 mounted units (thx to stable)
Train lvl4 non-mounted units w/ only a single settled GG.

That's pretty sweet.

This is MAINLY useful for Brennus in Warlords (because he can go back into economic civics whenever there's a lull in military production), but in BTS the anarchy free GA should make this viable for other Cha leaders.

Final Civics.
Nationhood can be useful for survival, if you're going to lose cities, then draft those suckers. On the other hand, for an offensive war, it's USUALLY better to stick with vassalage, but there are some exceptions: Like an offensive redcoat draft .

Free Speech should NOT be underestimated. It does two things, firstly it boosts commerce from towns - if you have more than about 25 towns, it'll probably equal the commerce boost from Bureaucracy (although you may need to go up to about 40 towns if your capital is a Trade-based Oxfords city).
The SECOND effect is what I call Cultural Oppression - it pushes back the borders of your neighbors, denying them tiles and making it harder for them to invade because their units have to trudge through deep culture.

It is reasonable to make Bureaucracy your "default" civic, except maybe for Organized leaders who can benefit from Vassalage much. But keep in mind that the Hammer effect diminishes greatly later in the game (once you have Ironworks, factories and power), and Free Speech may well provide more commerce... so you're just hurting yourself sticking with it. It'll be comparatively more powerful on smaller maps, but I'd say on standard it's well balanced.