Governments

[The_Draf]

Hello

Is it just me or does these governments seem much weaker then the others:
Despotism, Feudalism, Monarchy, Military Dictatorship, Republic

I just cant bring myself to pick them over the others. Especially with a pre warp start when growth and expansion is most important. Is there any mod out there that has tried to balance these out?

[Nanaki]

I always figured Republic was better than Democracy as it has the equivilant value of the most important perk, Research, while having far fewer weaknesses in troop recruitment and war weariness.

However, I do think that the differences between governments is... odd. It seems like it is divided between peacetime governments and wartime governments.

[Ralzakark]

Some have hidden advantages - Monarchies for example don't switch leaders as Democracies do, and so your ruler has time to build up their skills.

[Cauldyth]

And in general, much like the races, the governments aren't necessarily intended to be balanced. They can provide an additional way of tweaking the difficulty of your game. For example, Quameno + Technocracy is incredibly powerful, but you can play Quameno + SomethingElse to make the game a little more challenging yet still play as that race.

[Kilravock]

Yeah some governments are rather weak. The special governments (not the corp one) are hands down the best ones. Outside of those, democracy is the best for everything except long wars, but has the highest leader turnover. Republic is slightly better if you want to fight long wars. The rest are either weak 'war time governments' who have leaders that stay around longer, or are just plain bad like Feudalism.

There is also very little difference between them. Republic and democracy are the basically the same. Despot and military dictatorship also very much alike. Monarchy has neutral stats that are slightly similar to the war governments, but likes the peace time governments.

Another thing to keep in mind is the governments have a major influence on your empire relationships. Peace time governments like other peace time ones, and vice versa for the war governments.

Sadly, to use anything but the best available choice is basically for role playing or if you want to do a self impose challenge.

[Cauldyth]

Yeah, good point. In my current game, the Haakonish have adopted Way of Darkness. As a result, they've now "fallen in with a bad crowd" and become chummy with some pretty despicable races. [:D]

[Kilravock]

ORIGINAL: Cauldyth

Yeah, good point. In my current game, the Haakonish have adopted Way of Darkness. As a result, they've now "fallen in with a bad crowd" and become chummy with some pretty despicable races. [:D]

Yeah, I had one game where the Quameno found the Way of Darkness. It was funny because it actually hurt the AI compared to Technocracy. They no long outpaced the other AI in the tech race as much, plus all the 'good' races hated them and they hated me.

It's not a good idea to upset the Human/Kiadian/Securan Alliance or your own race family.

[Ceorl]

Ya "peaceful" governments tend to better at 4x games than "aggressive" governments since three of the letters do stand for: explore, expand, exploit and exterminate.

Aggressive bonuses don't work out well in practice. Troop recruitment only speeds up production and doesn't affect the all important maintenance factor. While war weariness in theory could very powerful as you can force other empires to the negotiating table (think Vietnam against America) however the player usually don't want a protracted war since his AI can't handle them and the AI war calculations usually dog pile on the faction at war with a lot of people. Reduce ship maintenance is by far the best bonus and ties in well with the fact that the AI functions best with huge fleets, since it can't prioritize well with limited resources, but the cons don't make up for it.

[Evrett]

I use Monarchy almost exclusively..the other are too bogged down by maint and war weariness. I've had my monarch change a few times...usually I dismiss them because of poor starting stats.

[Cauldyth]

I'm playing the Visareen from the Extended Mod. I'm a Monarchy, but one of the Visareen's victory conditions is to keep the leader alive, and there's a -100% chance of spawning a new one (i.e. never). So I'm stuck with who I started with! [:D]

[t1it]

Military Dictatorship has a nice little niche in the end game when you've researched all the significant techs and have a huge empire and is just farting out ships left and right. The -15% maintenance isn't something to scoff at when your fleet is larger than all other empires combined. Yeah I know, the game is over at that point anyway but just has to mention this :p

Feudalism and Despotism...just...no.......

[The_Draf]

I have been looking into doing some modding. Is there any way to change other attributes for a government then those in the governments.txt file?