MOO2: How to use Democracy?

[rgp151]

I've never been able to come up with a good Democracy build for MOO2. I just don't get it. I can't figure out why Its got 7 points either.

It seems to me that if you take Democracy it also forces you to need Creative in order to cover the spying deficiency. But getting Democracy and Creative is not easy without taking Repulsive. But taking repulsive seems to undercut a major aspect of Democracy, which is trade. 

I like the concept, of a build that's high on research and income so that you rely on buying a lot of your production instead of working for it, but its just doesn't seem to work out well.

The best I've come up with is: 
- Defense (-2)
- Attack (-2)
- Combat (-2)
Democracy (7)
Creative (8)
Large Home World (1)

The thought being that Creative will make up for the other weaknesses. I've played it a couple of times, but both were bad games in general, bad setups, etc. 

Anyone else have success with Democracy?

[Dark Savant]

I've never been able to come up with a good Democracy build for MOO2. I just don't get it. I can't figure out why Its got 7 points either.

It seems to me that if you take Democracy it also forces you to need Creative in order to cover the spying deficiency. But getting Democracy and Creative is not easy without taking Repulsive. But taking repulsive seems to undercut a major aspect of Democracy, which is trade. 

I like the concept, of a build that's high on research and income so that you rely on buying a lot of your production instead of working for it, but its just doesn't seem to work out well.

The best I've come up with is: 
- Defense (-2)
- Attack (-2)
- Combat (-2)
Democracy (7)
Creative (8)
Large Home World (1)

The thought being that Creative will make up for the other weaknesses. I've played it a couple of times, but both were bad games in general, bad setups, etc. 

Anyone else have success with Democracy?

Creative is overpriced for what it's getting you here, I feel.

You should stack research or cash bonuses with Democracy.  Artifacts Homeworld, Lithovore, and +1 BC all work.

The first two together are a traditional combination, though I'm not as fond of it as others.

+1 BC is normally too expensive (8 is just a lot of picks), but the only time I feel it's worth taking is if you stack it with Democratic.  The idea is to make piles of cash and cash-rush all the things.

[rgp151]

Perhaps. My typical build approach is to try and make certain techs unnecessary with picks or otherwise take Creative if my picks don't make certain techs unnecessary. For example, taking Lithovore makes food techs unnecessary, which makes being non-Create less of an issue. Lithovore, Tolerant & Uncreative are fine because so many techs are eliminated that many trees are mostly single tech picks anyway.

I guess that one way to go is to just plan on going heavy into spying techs to both cover your weakness and also to fill in holes from being non-Creative, so I guess that works.

[Dark Savant]

It does matter whether you're playing SP or MP ... or mixed, as I often did back in the day.

But yeah, Democracy is a bit overpriced (by about a pick), and Unification is a bit underpriced (by 1-2 picks).  Democracy still is generally significantly stronger than the non-Unification governments though.

[rgp151]

I dunno. I see that based on what you're saying you have to take repulsive, which seems like it ruins the whole point of Democracy. I guess that's the issue. You can make other governments work without Repulsive, but Democracy seems almost unworkable without it. I've tried playing as Humans and that was a farce.

Dictatorship works fine for many situations, but yeah, Feudalism is painful. I've had some success with it, but its not worth it. The biggest issue with all of these things is the start. They can all work once you get going, but ironically, Democracy gives you a worse research start than Unification or Dictatorship. The other problem with democracy is relying so much on scientists means that your research really goes up and down a lot in the beginning as you have to produce things, taking away your research.

But by far I've had my best success with just straight up Silicoids or a variant where you swap out -Growth for -Income because Silicoids build few buildings anyway. But honestly the -Growth isn't even that bad because taking Cloning Centers is easy.

[rgp151]

So I just tried the following:
Democracy
Lithovore
+1 Science
- Growth
Repulsive

Works well sort of, but the problem is that all of my tech advantages were negated by the fact that everyone was stealing every tech I got. This is with me getting every Spying tech that came up. The problem was they would steal my Spying techs as soon as I got them, which negated them. And this is with me having like 4-6 Domestic spies at all times.

So that seemed pretty bad. I was able to get really good production along with fast research and enough money to rush buy a lot of things, but really the lack of defense against Spying was a major weakness.

[Dark Savant]

So I just tried the following:
Democracy
Lithovore
+1 Science
- Growth
Repulsive

Works well sort of, but the problem is that all of my tech advantages were negated by the fact that everyone was stealing every tech I got. This is with me getting every Spying tech that came up. The problem was they would steal my Spying techs as soon as I got them, which negated them. And this is with me having like 4-6 Domestic spies at all times.

So that seemed pretty bad. I was able to get really good production along with fast research and enough money to rush buy a lot of things, but really the lack of defense against Spying was a major weakness.

Yeah, that's a major problem with Democracy in single-player.

I think the way to overcome this is not so much to research every single spying tech quickly.  It's more to produce lots of spies.   Aim for dozens over time, it's not like they cost that much individually.

Another way to avoid the problem is to just not take Repulsive.  If you build good relations, which can be done even at Impossible (with some AIs; some AIs just won't be cooperative), the AIs don't spy on you nearly as often.

I don't think taking Low-G Homeworld is that bad an idea in single-player; I think modern strategy guides warn you against that too much.  Especially as Democratic; you don't care about the food, and the penalty doesn't affect taxes.