Communism MANY people miss the point

[Beau]

Communism is a blessing is disguise. Not many people seem to understand how to operate under one. All the rules you used under democracy and republic are out of the picture. Communism works best when your cities are well estabilshed and you usually don't get communism until they are well established.

Under Communism you get a unit advantage 8 units per city for free. Now the average person has 20 or so cities on a X-large map which turns out to be 160 units for FREE. Now thats a fighting force. When your under Communism FORGET about science.

This is something people don't seem to understand. Democracy and Republic are for making money and science advancement thats why you get extra money from them to buy structures and research more.

Communism is for conquest. You rely on your military might to steal technology from your pitiful neighbor who gives you everything you want right before you burn his capital to the gound.

By the time your done terrorizing your first victim he will have sufficiently given you most of the tech advancements up to the point your at just out of fear. Next time you regroup and go for victim number 2.

Under Communism you do what its strength is. You pillage, conquer, and raze everything in site while producing an endless amount of military might.

Under Communism you can draft 2 citizens a turn per city. You have 4 troops as military police to calm to angry civilians. This comes out to on average 20 cities x2 citizens = 40 military units for the price of a few Po'ed citizens which are calmed by your 4 military police units in each city.

This is an extremely large military force that you can produce in a matter of 1 turn. If your in a stalement with Mr. Democracy next door you'll soon show him the power of forced draft.

Communism = Conquest
Democracy & Republic = passafist

[dexters]

160 units is not an overwhelming force in a large map.

I'm playing a large map as a Republic with 260 or so units and I'm just keeping up with my chief rivals.

[Skeeve]

Interesting theory there Beau, on the Communism = Conquest.
Has it worked for you?
I haven't tried out Communism yet. Also, I'm wondering one more thing: Is a Communist Gov't the only way to counter a Communist enemy who is at war with you?

I'm wondering if a balance of power can be reached between 2 superpowers, one Democratic and the other Communist.
That would be rather accurate historically, wouldn't it? On the other hand, the Cold war ended rather quickly in Civ3 terms.

[BLackraven42]

You've made one error, science. without it, you have no fighting force. you could have 160 horsemen while the other guy has maybe 50 tanks and he'd still wipe your ass.

[mharmless]

If you have communism, then you are already in the middle industrial age. Infantry and calvery are sufficent to conquer anything, with enough numbers. The first time you force a superior technology power to its knees, you will be brought up to date.

Edit:
Also, I noticed that Dexters did not mention how many cities he has. Under communist, you should be getting 8 free units per city, and the ability to force out huge massess of infantry in every city on demand.

[Fistleaf]

While playing in Democracy, I find that I always run out of money after rushbuilding and upgrading units. However, I actually have plenty of money unused while in Communism. All rushbuilding is by sacrificing population so money becomes quite useless. Science research is fast enough too if you have courthouses in every city. With courthouses, corruption is at acceptable levels everywhere. Also better spies for espionage is a bonus.

[David Murray]

Originally posted by BLackraven42
he'd still wipe your ass.

What is it with you Americans and your obsession with the buttocks?

Besides, I wouldn't mind having someone wipe my arse for me.

[conquistadore]

Originally posted by BLackraven42
You've made one error, science. without it, you have no fighting force. you could have 160 horsemen while the other guy has maybe 50 tanks and he'd still wipe your ass.

You dont get Beau's point there..i agree with him on this point: communism = conquest = free techs from desperate rivals. Besides, i like espionage, and it seems that spy-planting always fails under democracy.(What happened to the CIA?)

Originally posted by David Murray
Besides, I wouldn't mind having someone wipe my arse for me.

I'm not American, but i'm sure you wont want me to do it cos i'll use a sandpaper. Ouch.

[Sevorak]

Communism won't be just for conquest soon enough.

When MP rolls around, ALL you will see are communist governments, bar NONE. This is a result of the war-weariness concept, which is a poor fit for MP. War-weariness is based upon the AI's eventual willingness to sign peace with a big enough bribe.

In MP, anyone going Rep or Dem is going to find that some Communist on the other side of the planet just declared war on him and won't listen to him, simply waiting for his civ to implode. At that point, the ally of that Communist player, also Communist, will walk into the flaming cities of the formerly-representative-government-player. I think we can make a bigger distinction here - Rep and Dem are SP governments, while Monarchy and Communism are definitely MP governments.

Communism offers the best combination for MP players - reasonable corruption, unit support, and no vulnerable war weariness. War weariness essentially lets another civilization control your form of government and your revolutions - a weakness NOT in Civ2 Dem or Rep. Now, given enough time, your citizens will burn their own homes down even if you have no military just because some civ on the other side of the world is scowling at you and making threatening noises. Defensive war-weariness takes a while, but it happens - anyone in a representative form of government is just asking for six more turns of anarchy.

-Sev

[BiggN]

" Now, given enough time, your citizens will burn their own homes down even if you have no military just because some civ on the other side of the world is scowling at you and making threatening noises. "

If you are in Democracy *don't usually stay in Rebublic that long* they don't get mad at you if you are only defending yourself.

They only revolt if you are on offence, and even that stops once you take over a town and no longer have units in Enemy territory...

[Strollen]

While I agree with the essential point that communism is a good government for fighting a war especially if you are religious and can easily switch. I think you are missing a couple of points. Communism is only useful if you have a lot of small cities and/or are suffering from severe war weariness, for short/defensive wars staying in a democracy is better.

Lets say your 20 cities are size 9 (I am figure you researched communism early and are now researching sanitation to build hospital so a number of cities are stuck at 12).
20 size 9 cities means you get 200 more commerce. (True some will be lost to corruption but corruption is higher under communism so call it a wash).
Those 200 extra commerce are likely to be multiplied by 50%, cause every city has a marketplace and some have banks, most have libraries and a few have a University. So that extra 200 trade arrows means 300 more $ or beakers. More than making up for for the 160 free units you can support.

But what about War Weariness. Yes it is a problem but in my experience it is easy to run a democracy/republic with 0-10% luxuries in peace time. Even after a long war I find 20% and in rare cases 30% is needed to maintain happiness in my core cities. (At some point conquored cities are basically worthless so I don't care how many of them are entertainers.) I haven't fought a long war with Sufferage so I am guessing 20% would be needed if you have it.

Lets make a few other assumptions.
- Luxury rate is set 0 for communism cause of large garrisons.
- Total commerce for the communism is 250 (i.e. a few squares have 2 or 3 trade)
- Total commerce for republic/democracy is 450
- Commerce is multiplied by 50% (as explained above)

So the total productive output of the communism empire is
250* 1.5 = 375 + 160 for free units = 535

Democracy
0% luxury 450 * 1.5 = 675
10% luxury (450-45) * 1.5 = 608
20% luxury (450-90) * 1.5 = 540
30% luxury (450-135) *1.5 = 478

I am completely neglecting the additional shields you get in a democracy cause of lower corruption.
Anyway I think the rule of thumb should be if you are fighting a war and need 30% luxury to keep the people happy consider switching to communism.

Personally, I prefer being #1 in science and selling technologies to the AI to pay for my science addiction. That way when I fight I've got the better army. However, the cool thing about Civ3 is there are many paths to victory (and alas even more to defeat :-))

[Comrade Tribune]

I think only a metropolis (size 13+) gives you 8 free units.

20 size 9 cities only give you 20x4 = 80 free units; not that much.

They made Communism pretty weak.

[Enigma]

The "defensive war weariness" is going to be a major pain in the a s s in MP though, I think this will annoy people who like to run democracy.

I actually did well with monarchy at one point in time, I had the Great Library so didn't need to research anything and set my tech slider to 100%, but was still conquering with my immortals. I was able to conquer while rushing in all sorts of fancy infrastructure.

[Matthew]

A size 15 city under republic, if your empire is managed well enough, should give you around 13 more commerce than a similar city in communism. This is before improvement multipliers. So a small republic can probably afford to support a larger army than a communist regime of similar size. Also, war weariness actually goes down when the war is declared against the republic. If there is a real problem as time goes on, with the mere declaration of war against it causing real trouble for a republic in the long term, even with no fighting, this may well be modified in the first patch after multiplayer is introduced.

As far as the draft is concerned, they are all conscripts, which will for the most part be fighting against veteran units which will also often be more advanced, even if only slightly. These vet units will survive to become elite more often than the conscripts will live to become regulars. And the republic can also draft, although not as much. And reducing

One example in which communism will have a distinct advantage: for large empires. Since corruption is size independent in communism (or at least independent of distance from capital) it is probably more worth while for the communist to have more cities. And since these more cities can still each support 4 to 8 units for free, even with no city improvements.

I personally hope the two forms of government will be more or less balanced in M.P.

Notice I haven't wasted much effort in talking about democracy.

[smellymummy]

I've been using the communist route often now, and i'll share some ideas:

with a religious civ, changing between communist and democracy is easy and worthwile to do depending on the point in the game. So war weariness is not much a proplem, you simply need to know when to switch government style.

drafting IMO is useless. The units are weak. It can be a good deterent but it's basically cannon fodder, even mech inf. drafts. One population point is better reserved for a more usefull unit.

the great wonder, longevity, makes your population boom (2pop point growth rate). Rush buying under communism requires population. See the relation here? Picture a city amid wheat and flood plains, with lot's of hills + ironworks. One nuke per turn?

luxuries and resources need to be added to the game equation. Sometimes you will have no luxuries at all, making it much more expensive to keep people happy. trading of gold for luxuries, etc. However at other times you will be able to have all of them, and then it's the reverse, and this makes the game unpredictable.

for MP games, I'm not sure if communism will be the way to go. sometimes it might not work at all to go to war because of the resources/luxuries situation. and MP will probably include an AI to play other civs, and the AI can be very helpful at times (and it's much faster at moving 200-300 units that I am )