Matrix Games Forums

This is just a thread to document my thoughts on the government type as I play a test game. Corporate Nationalism interests me because I like playing the game in different ways. CN is...quite different. Let me know what you think of the government type.

Anyway, to experiment with the government type I decided to play a game with the humans. The settings were:
Expensive research
10x10 sectors, 1000 stars
Normal amount of strong pirates.
Hard difficulty.
Normal starting system
Prewarp start,
Normal indies/potential colonies

I ran CN until my research was being punished too harshly, then switched the democracy for 3 years or so. Then back to CN.

Looking back I think the strategy I went for could be significantly improved. When I began the game I was only going to test the government type for a few years to see the effect on my economy. As a result I did things I would never normally do, such as automating my first explorers (the ones you use to uncover warp field precursors), and not redesigning the ships and bases at the start. I didn't even design my own small space port. I did add labs to the port they provided, though.

Starting with 0% tax for as long as possible, or until reaching a good leader, then switching to CN would allow for far better research timings and cash money.

Anyway in the second month of the eleventh year, I have researched these techs
Weapons: Epsilon torps, star fighters, torpedo bombers, armor plating.
Energy: Shields,Warp bubble, hyper drives, energy collection, ship size up to 400.
High Tech: enhanced resource exploration, med/recreation modules, transport systems, working my way to advanced medicomplex.

Not great, but not bad either. I forgot to add labs after switching to democracy, and so didn't take advantage of an essentially doubled research capacity for a while. I think I missed about a year.

Notes:
1. Corporate Nationalism lets you 100% tax your colonies, without:

a)Them dropping to low happiness (!). At game start I had was on +19 with 100% tax. By the fifth year I was at +21.
b)The private sector losing money from their cash on hand (?!?!?!)

2.With 100% tax, growth was at 4.8% at game start. 3.6% by the fifth year.

3.Your leader doesn't seem to change. I still have the guy below. You also don't lose your leader when you switch to democracy. In roughly the 8th year I switched to Democracy to escape the large penalty to pop growth, colony income, and research speed that increases constantly. It was at 30-something percent when I switched. It only took a few months for everything to return to normal. I have now switched back to corporate nationalism for more cash money. With this strategy you can likely shift regularly between a good growth/research rate (democracy) at 0% tax, and short periods of very large state profit. This is why I'm heading for the advanced medicomplex.

4.) 100% tax rate = quite a bit of crash research.

5.) Espionage bonus, extra agent, and good racial intelligence let me easily mitigate the research malus through theft. I used agent spam to net me good amounts of research points in both warp techs. This avoided the risk of a critical failure. One of my three scientists was creative, which always makes me nervous.

6.) Switching from CN to Democracy only resulted in a loss of about 50 million population, and happiness was fine. No loss of development.

Edit: My leader (San the Man) http://i.imgur.com/XpNsG6R.jpg

This amount of jumping back and forth between such disparate government types makes for a good space opera [:D]

The attributes of Corporate Nationalism seems a fit for many current terrestrial governments, except that resources would never be wasted on space or unproductive wars when there are so many more desirable ways on earth to divert funds to the worthy purposes of the great leader.

I've noticed that Humans and Ketaros swap back and forth between CM and Democracy. It doesn't happen constantly, but perhaps they are coded to sometimes make the government switch.

Nice work checking this, btw. I am off to make the Absolute Occasional Corporate Sometimes Collectivist Ketaros Republican Monarchy a force to be reckoned with.

It seems to happen when they run out of money, however, I noticed the AI is really not very good at capitalizing on the switch, and it tends to hemmorage colonies every time it switches. I actually saw a powerful human empire collapse in on itself due to this.

Never seen the AI change governments even once without the help of an agent.