9. Government

Government

There are several forms of government with which you can rule your civilization, but none offers complete control. Under autocratic regimes your citizens readily support the military, but reduce your trade income through corruption. When granted representative government they are efficient and productive, but demonstrate against the use of military force by becoming unhappy. The standard forms of government are:

• Despotism. Lacking written words or laws, you rule simply through the force of personality -- whose effect decreases rapidly with distance from your capital, leading to heavy corruption.
• Monarchy. Written laws and uniform religion offer the monarch power enough to support an active military while keeping corruption from overwhelming trade.
• Communism. With science and industry come the tools to impose military control over the workers and implement a planned economy, while suffering only a slight but uniform level of corruption.
• Republic. The people respond to freedom with increased trade under this ancient form of government, but disapprove of military action.
• Democracy. Modern participatory government and free enterprise eliminate corruption, allowing trade and science to thrive -- but free citizens agitate most strongly against warfare.

You begin your career as a despot, with your cities suffering heavy corruption by distance of your cities from the capital city until you gain the technology to impose more effective government. You may change governments as often as you like, once a new kind is made available by the discovery of its similarly named technology. This plunges your empire into anarchy for 12 hours, after which you may select any available form of government. Most players race to achieve the republic and democracy so they can expand their cities through rapture and boost their science output with expanded trade. Monarchy and communism are popular choices for players embarking on extended military campaigns.

The tribe which possesses the Statue of Liberty wonder can choose any government, including those that the tribe has not yet researched, and without the transition period of Anarchy. This is most useful if several revolutions are expected (i.e., the player prefers communism in war and democracy in peace). In order to build the Statue of Liberty, the Democracy technology must be researched. Democracy is significantly less expensive to research than Communism, so the Statue of Liberty is useful for gaining a communist government early.

The Capital

The city containing your palace is your capital. Should you build another palace elsewhere, its city becomes your capital and your old palace disappears. As the center of government, corruption is least in your capital and increases with distance from it. Under some government, the capital enjoys a 100% production bonus, others give you 50% bonus. Should an enemy capture your capital, you will be given a new one in another city.

Features of governments

Features	Despotism	Anarchy	Monarchy	Republic	Communism	Democracy
Limit for max rates	50	50	75	75	100	100
Production bonus in capital	50%	100%	50%	100%	50%	100%
Cost of unit's multiplier	25%	25%	50%	50%	100%	100%
Aggressive units each city supports for free	2	0	5	0	10	0
Non-aggressive units each city supports for free	0	2	0	5	0	10
Loot bonus for city pillage	50%	0%	100%	0%	200%	0%
Trade bonus for each square already producing trade	25%	50%	50%	100%	50%	200%
... and the trade bonus when the city is celebrating.	0%	0%	50%	50%	100%	100%
Luxury multiplier in the city.	50%	25%	100%	150%	100%	200%
Limit of cities that make an additional worker unhappy in each city.	10	5	20	10	40	20
Number of military units you can use to force your workers to act content.	no limit	-	no limit	-	no limit	-
... and how many workers per military unit this can affect.	1	no martial law	2	no martial law	5	no martial law
Workers made unhappy by each aggressive unit.	0	1	0	2	0	5
Corruption multiplier...	100%	50%	100%	50%	100%	50%
... and the increment per 10 tiles from the capital.	100%	50%	50%	25%	25%	10%
Probability of civil war if the capital falls	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%
Trade route duration.	120 hours	120 hours	72 hours	72 hours	48 hours	48 hours
Trade route limit per city.	2	2	5	5	10	10

Several properties should be noted in addition to those in the table:

• Under anarchy you lose control of the ratios that allocate trade, which cities spend entirely on luxuries for themselves.
• A democracy will revolt and plunge into anarchy if any city remains in disorder for two turns. This makes democracy dangerous for those not attentive to city happiness.
• Cities under democratic or communist rule produce partisans when taken from their original owner, if their owner knows communism and gunpowder and at least one player has discovered guerilla warfare.
• Diplomats and spies built by communist regimes get automatic veteran status.
• Diplomats and spies cannot subvert cities and units from democratic opponents.
• Despotism has a -1 penalty whenever a tile produces more than 2 units of food/production/trade, except while celebrating. So, for example, irrigated grassland will have +2 food instead of +3 food.
• Under republic or democracy, celebrating cities with at least +1 food will increase their population each turn as long as the conditions are met. This is know as 'rapturing' and a powerful way to grow cities quickly.

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