Despotism vs. Tribal: How I choose.

Smallpox vs. largepox, gen2 vs gen5, early war vs. peaceful alliances. Which is your favourite gaming style?
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Sanguivorant
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Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2022 12:54 am

Despotism vs. Tribal: How I choose.

Post by Sanguivorant »

This is for the civ2civ3 ruleset, with a change to allow one gap between cities.

Despotism vs Tribalism: This is the first choice you make early in the game. in my opinion, it depends
on the free tech you started out with and the resources in your capital.

Despotism:
Use if your capital starts on a river tile and has at least one good trade tile
nearby (wine, whale, spices, gold, etc.). The 75% bonus to gold production will make you much richer
compared to tribal governments. Use that extra money to rush a worker and get some improvements.

If you start with bronze working, immediately go for currency and have a marketplace in your
capital. If you start with masonry, try going for the pyramids wonder and you will negate the
primitive government penalty.

Your goal under despotism is to have a strong capital. Build maximum two settlers, then have your
other cities build settlers.


Tribalism:
Only consider using tribalism if you intend to get aggressive early on and rapidly
expand. You should focus on building small, highly productive cities with a barracks, and they
should only be building settlers or military units.

I would only go for tribalism if I start with either warrior code or horseback riding, and my
capital has good production but low trade. It's a high risk, high reward government. If you are not
conquering cities with this government you will be at a heavy disadvantage.

Don't discount the promotion bonus. A hardened horseman is almost as strong as a legion. A hardened
chariot or legion is more powerful than a catapult. Use tribalism to kill off another nation, then
make an effort to switch to another government when you can.


In general, you should switch out of these two governments as soon as you can to remove the
primitive government penalty. The only exception is despotism, if you have a strong capital, and
have the Pyramids wonder.
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