MOD: Rise and Rule for Conquests

[justjake73]

Is there any benefit of Democracy here over Republic? You lose the military police, less unit support per city, but you get to build the Philos. School, and conscript units (which I have never done anyways) with Demo.....so it seems Republic is better, right?

[Kal-el]

Interesting, they are having the same discussion over at CFC right now.

I'll let Doc answer this one, cuz I know he prefers Dem over Rep.

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Re: Republic vs. Democracy

Objectively spoken, both have their place in the game.

Republic is meant to resemble the Roman Empire:
Good unit support, low WW (in other words, none as long as you win), slave labor, professional army, a happiness structure as Gov-specific improvement (which you will only build in your biggest cities ever, of course). But not very focused, thus a rate cap of 70%.

Democracy means the Greek city states.
Not the senate, but the people rule (ok, sort of). So, they're willing to fight for their country (conscription), and focus on whatever they really want (80% rate cap). However, they're not happy to support a big standing army, and don't like longer wars. And, legues of city states don't like it when some cities get dominant - that's why the support for metros drops.

Not surprisingly, exactly the historical Civs benefit the most from their respective Government.

The Philosopher's School is half-priced for SCI Civs; throw in the cash from Ports and the other SCI buildings, and you'll understand why Greece is the commerce/research monster in the first half of game. Hoplites are so strong you do need less defenders. But, lots of coastal tiles translate to lots of commerce, but few shields. And that's where cahsrushing is almost required. Now, since you'll have the tech lead most likely, you of course want a rate cape as high as possible.

Rome - You for sure will focus an grabbing a large empire. Being COM, you'll have more productive cities anyway. And the cheap councellors help even more. You need quite some troops. But, since you're likely to have more cities, rushing isn't as important anyway. And you won't research like mad as well.

For me, partial rushing is an integer part of Civ. Especially RAR; I usually part-rush several items every turn.
If you don't use that technique, a cash-rushing Gov is less important. But for me, Rome and Sioux are about the only Civs I'd consider using Republic.
For anyone else, Democracy gives me more - or even Feudal Monarchy. And with a REL Civ, I'd always pick Demo anyway; if war gets ugly, you can always switch (hopefully to AbsMon).

The whole thing boils down to something like unmodded Monarchy vs Republic.
Monarchy/RAR Rep is for sure easier to use and at first sight superior.
But, one you know how to use it properly, Republic/RarDemo yields by far better results.

And one more thing: You must revolt one more time anyway (unless you dominate by late MAs, of course). All ancient govs have horrible worker speed and some kind of rate cap - by all means, you want either FedRep or ConMon.
Which of them is another discussion. I for one prefer ConMon, since it is more versatile; and here, I don't want to switch again.
But FedRep offers indeed a commerce advantge.

[justjake73]

And one more thing: You must revolt one more time anyway (unless you dominate by late MAs, of course). All ancient govs have horrible worker speed and some kind of rate cap - by all means, you want either FedRep or ConMon.

I will soon (within 20 turns tops) be researching Federalism and switch. I had a HUGE cash reserve (10000+ gc) because I couldn't rush anything, but now it's down to ~600 b/c I am upgrading to "colonial /pre-Napoleonic" units. I thought I'd be vastly ahead of everyone, but the Celts and Siam are only a few steps / techs behind - which I LOVE (not ahead but not so far behind as to be boring!) This is a FANTASTIC mod - in the "vanilla" game, I usually am getting BORED by now, having built everything I could and would be switching between Wealth and unit building!