Discussion : Monarchy or Republic ?

[Spiffor]

OK, should this poll pass, we will beeline to a government tech. The previous debate was very abstract because we didn't know our starting position at that time.
Now that we know our starting position, what we should do should be much clearer.

Here's a comparison between the 2 techs :

Monarchy
Republic
Required Techs
Ceremonial Burial
Warrior Code
Mysticism
Polytheism
Monarchy
Total 5 techs, including 2 very early techs
Alphabet (free)
Writing
Philosophy
Code of Laws
Republic
Total 4 Techs, but no very early ones

Max happiness without lux.
7 people with Temple
No War weariness
4 people with Temple
Low war weariness

Bonuses / maluses
No production malus
Corruption : Problematic
No production malus
Commercial Bonus
Corruption : nuisance

Military upkeep
2 free units per town

4 free units per city

1 gold per unit otherwise
No free unit
1 gold per unit

Rushing buildings
Pay for rush
Pay for rush

Here's a pic of our starting position :

[Spiffor]

My opinion :
I don't know. In abstraction, I was in favor of monarchy, because it would allow us to wage war in a more efficient way (and we'll wage war, it's a sure thing), but we might want to milk all that we can from our tiles, i.e go to Republic (+commerce = better productivity per tile). Since jungle and desert are nearby, it is very possible that we have enough luxuries to afford Republic. Moreover, it is possible the others are less inclined to rush than we thought, since they now understood the other teams aren't the AI.

However, monarchy will fight discontentment on a sure basis (3 more content citizens per city), and will allow us to wage war as we need to. Plus, warrior code is on the path to monarchy, and having it early can help to discourage / get revenge of an archer rush by the GoW.
So it may be too early to decide on this, but I think we should really start the discussion on the issue : if we are too slow, we won't have the decision handy when we'll have to decide.

[redstar1]

I think once we have Bronze Working we should head for Monarchy. We are gonna need the boost to science and trade that brings, as well as the flexibility it has over republic for war and happiness.

[Tiberius]

The difficulty of the game is Regent, so we won't have serious happiness problems, unless we won't find any luxuries.

[Kloreep]

Regent definitely tips the balance in favor of Republic, IMO. But if we're next to GoW (or GS) - heck, if we're smack next to anyone except the RPers - we'll need Warrior Code ASAP.

[Sharpe]

Until we know that we are relatively safe, I would suggest going for monarchy instead of republic.

We will need the Ceremonial Burial tech early anyway and the Warrior Code tech would be useful if we do run into any hostile nations.

However, writing might also be needed early on to make treaties with any civ that we encounter. As well, we will need several techs like Iron Working and The Wheel early on to discover where the Iron and Horse resources will be. Pottery or Masonry might also be useful early on.

The path to Monarchy would give us archers and temples, while the path to Republic would give us the right to make treaties through writing only. (Although we would also be close to getting literature for the library as well.)

If we do find that we are alone (which I doubt), republic would be much more useful to us than monarchy.

It might be an idea to create a list of the beaker values needed for all of the ancient techs to aid our decision making on this (and the beeline government thread decision as well).

[lmtoops]

I had not thought of it being Regent level. That definitely sways the thinking towards Republic. I'm still wary because I have had minimal success going straight to Republic.

I'm not ready to decided. We can target our first few techs and then decide on the what govt. to target. There will be alot more information to base a decision on.

[Tiberius]

I think the next tech should be Ceremonial Burial, regardless of what are we going to choose, Monarchy or Republic. We need early temples for happiness and culture. By the time we'll discover CB we'll know much more about the surroundings, neighbors, etc, and will be able to make a wiser decision. In order to decide this issue we need more information. Let's wait and see.

[Tiberius]

Btw, how come that we can post attachments? Was this problem solved?

[Spiffor]

No, I didn't post attachments, I posted a link using the [img] feature

[Tiberius]

Right-click - properties - voilà !