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Lethargic
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does a republic government do anything besides give you all the disadavantages of a democracy with 0 advantages?
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East Street Trader
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London, United Kingdom
Jun 2000
time: 05:14
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The key feature of early Republic, for me, concerns caravans and trade.
You get an extra arrow fom each square worked which already produces an arrow in Republic but, when you make the change from Monarchy, this advantage can be pretty much totally outweighed by the fact that you suddenly have to support many units which required no support under Monarchy.
I agree with SG in pointing out that you can grow faster through WLTCDs but that is no panacea. Whether the growth will pay off can be a matter of which way quite a delicate balance falls.
Whether the balance is going to work positively or not depends, IMO, pretty much entirely on whether you can quickly develop an sustain fast and efficient foreign trade.
Because your cities have much bigger arrow counts in Republic both the up front bonus on delivering the caravan and the yield of the route are much much higher. If you were going to get a measly 60 or so gold and beakers under Monarchy and a route paying three arrows a turn, you're likely to get a 200 gold/beaker bonus and a 5 or 6 arrow a turn route under Republic. With a high value commodity and a good trade partner the payoff will be higher.
So I like to prepare for going Republic by having some caravans completed or nearly completed and a few ships built and located ready to get a ship chain going promptly. That way cash starts coming in and I can use that cash to push the production of more caravans along (recovering some of the slow down to production which comes with the loss of shields).
If you can deliver at least one good value caravan a turn, or two or three lower value ones, and combine that with WLTCDs then your research will hum and you can aim to exploit the early tech windows like the ironclads against antique/musketeer units. Or you can focus solely on research and lay the groundwork for an early landing.
If WLTCDs go well, in fact, it stops being needful to focus on foreign trade. Plenty of workers on ocean squares will make your own cities better trading partners than A1 cities. Railroads can be an important advance playing like this because it gives yet another boost to the value of domestic routes.
If a lot of cities are building caravans then they're not building settlers and it's a bit harder to sustain continued expansion. I rate early Republic a harder game to play than staying in Monarchy and continuing expansion. But both are viable and offer different sorts of satisfaction.
If you try the early Republic route I commend a very aggressive search for chances to obtain NONE units. It can pay intensionally to give up a city to barbs so as to set up a recruiting station but your exploration continues to give chances when your explorer finds barbs in a distant hut, or you may find an A1 city taken by the barbs or find some cheap A1 units wandering far from home.
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rah
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Apolyton Prince of Moderators, Master of Reason
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Lord of the Ferrets
Jan 1970
time: 23:14
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Yes War4, you are correct. I have said it all along, and markus and a few others have proved it also.
You did have a few things in your favor, one civ allowed you to deliver caravans over land with out destroying them. (you'll remember that I didn't allow that, even though it was funny that your caravans won a few combats) and you had sea access to deliver to a few of my high trade cities(but never my cap). My navy had 0 luck destoying incoming ships (i was working toward better ships to stop that crap). But you definitely proved that the stategy can help you maintain the pace. It's too bad that the other players weren't closer on the pg. It would have been fun to continue that one to see where the advantage would be. I had everything going for my SSC which might have made the difference. It was a very interesting game. The thousands that you made in trade bonuses really can help build the happiness improvements to offset the wonders.
It was worse than our typical dirt ball world, I had no gold/iron, only two wines, one silk, one gem, no spice and just a handful of whales. Which really pushed my towards a SSC strat. (one whale and rivers and oceans was my best bet.
But I guess this shouldn't have been any surprise. Enough people have posted about it. Well done.
RAH
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rah
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Apolyton Prince of Moderators, Master of Reason
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Lord of the Ferrets
Jan 1970
time: 23:14
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Yes, a very wierd game. I can't remember getting so many key techs second or third and still building the wonders. I kept thinking I was wasting my time building them, and sweating the whole turn, and then being surprised when i got them. Maybe one and rarely twice, but not the 4 times i did it. Every time I got a tech, barono would thank me, (GL at it's best) and I'd always scream damn knowing I wasn't first. But maybe if you had built a few I would have gotten extra trade routes. Demands to my cap were paying over 200 even after Invention. Once I got caravals, I would have tried a few foreign routes. My tirenes really sucked combat wise. Got one to a vet(only one to win one combat), and it died the next attack. It was one of those game where since I was getting a 2 techs every three turns, I'd crank up the gold once every 6 turns to make up for the caravans that were going to wonders instead of routes. Not quite markus money, but close.  I didn't have my cities lined up to take advantage of the road connect bonus. Too many rivers.
RAH
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23-06-2001 22:18
oh well thats the beauty of civ.....keeps you guessing
You do get some of the advantages of a Democracy, like trade. The other advantage was that you do not need to keep all your cities happy. So if your fighting near a city, you dont need to worry about it bringing downh the whole goverment.
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