So what Civic do you use?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by 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.

Game plan is everything and sometime you have to gamble a bit. Unless it is a small map I usually spam a few cities, chop like mad to rush some wonders, then attack one of my neighbors.

My last game I stabbed one of my neighbors in the back when he was off waging a foreign war only to have my other two neighbors gang up on me. I'm afraid you have to gamble a bit and sometimes it doesn't pay off. Of course if you win your gamble then you're in a position to win the game.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Ari


Pop rushing can be more important at war than at peace (when you need extra units and city walls *now*). But on marathon, when the enemy just declared war and the galleys are unloading next to your city, or worse, directly attacking it, this is a horrible time for 2 (or heaven help you, 3) turns of anarchy. Having slavery already active serves as "insurance." Generally, it's a cheap price to pay, especially since the slave revolt event is so rare. Besides, even for people like me, who don't generally pop rush, there's time's when it's appropriate (getting that first build in a commerce city, or gaining a dozen or so turns on a tight race for a wonder).

Slave revolt is so rare?

It seems to be the most common random event; every single game I've played, I've seen it happen to someone, and nearly every single game where i've run slavery for a long period of time, it's happened to me at least once, usually 2 or 3 times. I think it was specificially intended to help balance slavery by giving it a disadvantage; perhaps not a huge one, but losing your capital for a turn does hurt in the short term.

[Dinner]

Without fail I always rush to bronze working so I can chop trees and slave. Other then that it depends on what the settings are, who is near me, and what the game is looking like. I also rush to bureaucracy to get mace and the civic change.

[Ari]

It's probably totally in my mind, but random events sometimes appear to *really* cluster. I've had games with no slave revolts and games with revolt after revolt after revolt. Still, 3 revolts in a game is annoying as all hell, but still relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. Like those &%$^ mine explosions that seem to happen over and over and over (last game had one happen to me and 2 other opponents on the same freakin' turn!). For me, at least, it's worth the price of having some emergency rushing capacity. Though I agree with whoever wished that the revolt correlated with *actual* whipping rather than simply slavery as a civic, especially since "passive" slavery has NO benefits at all (shouldn't it give, say, a 5% production bonus?)

[Kloreep]

It can be annoying, but at least it won't always happen. Truly random patterns will lead to clustering every now and then; if things were always well-spaced, that would mean they weren't actually random.

I've noticed clustering now and then too. I once had a huge chunk of change taken from me in under 10 turns because my mines kept exploding.

[rah]

I had one MP game where I must have had 8 or 9 slave revolts.

[joncnunn]

I'm also voting for Slave Revolt is by far the most common event I get notified about the AIs getting. I once got notification that the same city was still in revolt (crackdown failing) two turns in a row for a total of three turns. I think it was the Aztec capital.

Originally posted by Yosho

Slave revolt is so rare?

It seems to be the most common random event; every single game I've played, I've seen it happen to someone, and nearly every single game where i've run slavery for a long period of time, it's happened to me at least once, usually 2 or 3 times. I think it was specificially intended to help balance slavery by giving it a disadvantage; perhaps not a huge one, but losing your capital for a turn does hurt in the short term.

[jdunson]

The event structure is pretty complex, those interested should have a look at the XML files in ..\Beyond the Sword\Assets\XML\Events.

iPercentGamesActive is pretty straightforward, and is 80 for the basic SLAVE_REVOLT; so 4 out of 5 games can have slave revolts, and 1 out of 5 will never have any.

iWeight is a little more complex; it looks like it tends to run between 100 and 800, with the basic SLAVE_REVOLT at 500. However, the chances of generating an event are based I believe on the currently possible events, which are based on a wide variety of factors but particularly nearby terrain, civics, and the buildings and units you have.

So, if you tend to play the same sorts of games a lot, you will tend to see generally the same sorts of events, particularly if you spend many turns in the same civics producing similar units with the same buildings.

[snoopy369]

Slave revolts particularly happen a lot because they're often one of a very small number of possible events (basically Slave Revolt, or else a terrain event, I think).

[gdijedi7]

Yet another reason to NOT use slavery.

[snoopy369]

That's the point mostly - slavery was way too powerful in Warlords, now it's somewhat less useful

[OneFootInTheGrave]

what a great review of civics

[realpolitic]

Hereditary Rule + Vassalage + Organised Religion are great in the early game.

When I started I'd race to build pyramids, I found Representation a waste, later it was tough to switch back, and after getting Printing Press, why bother. A few extra Great People aren't that big a deal.

Free Speech is lots of fun; I love squeezing my oponents into a corner with culure.

[KMadeleine]

Originally posted by Saurus
On higher levels, on pangeas, were the enemy in fact might come in from any direction, it is impossible to guard against every possible military threat .. so it becomes essential to early map out all A.I:s and decide who will be your friend, and then diligently move toward that direction. I always plan ahead ... and sometimes even reserach techs for the sole purpose of beeing able to switch to a civic in order to be able to please an A.I better (to reach friendly relations etc)

I also need to correct you statement regarding the diplo-bonus regarding using a civs favorite civic.
This is not a small bonus - this bonus is HUGE. In some cases even bigger than the one you get of sharing religion.

i agree 10,000%. i pick a friends list and an enemy list, and i monitor not only their feelings toward me, but how they feel about each other. if two friends are worst enemies, ick, i'll get a "stop trading" demand that's lose-lose. civics can help. i'm not good at warmongering, diplomacy and jedi mind-tricks are essential for me.

the civic bonus can be up to +6 ? i think. it grows over time, so you don't get a big boost at first. one "not everybody realizes this" thing: if you change civics and then return back, you don't start out at +1 if it hasn't been terribly long. you might not start out as high as you were, but they remember and give you credit for the past.

civics can pull out a diplo win at times. if somebody voting for your rival likes you both, but the somebody is giving your rival +wise civics that you're not getting, spy the rival into changing. same theory with religion. spiritual or CR is priceless for this, since you can't get them to change to anything you're not using atm.

[Yosho]

Representation can be very good, depending on what else you have. This has always been true, but it got a lot better as there's now 2 new ways to get free specilists; industrial parks, and national parks. It depends on the situation and everything, but in some games, I've had representation give me over +100 science/turn late game. Sometimes uni sufferage is better, it's very much dependent on what strat you're running and how much else you want to do in order to compliment Representation.