there’s this epic reddit thread that’s been making its rounds. this guy played the same civ 2 game for 10 years. i’ve never been much of a gamer so civilization 2 has largely escaped my notice. this might actually be a game i could endorse for little dude but that’s actually a side point.
in scanning through the comments, there were a number of interesting strategies suggested for working through the morass in the future. one particularly interesting strategic option was the selection of a governance model. one of the commenters made a suggestion to switch to a fundamentalist government. since it slashed your science and research budget. WTF? but it turns out that the creators of civilization have given considerable algorithmic attention to the impacts of different government models.
these are wonderfully documented on strategywiki. particularly delicious is the definition of fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is a type of government based on religious zeal. Because of this, scientific research is cut in half. However, citizens will never be unhappy for any reason, and city improvements that makes citizens content instead produce gold equal to the number of contented citizens it would have made (needless to say that these improvements do not need maintenance). Fundamentalist governments can also make use of the Fanatics unit, which are always free. Because of the religious zeal, each city can support eight (non-Fanatic) units for free. The maximum rate for a fundamentalist government is 80%.
Because of its science penalty and free support, as well as the fact that civil disorders can never occur in a fundamentalist government, fundamentalism is an ideal government for warmongering.