Something I noticed is that it is always assumed that the overall happiness of a city is the same as their support of the government, i.e. if there are lots of unhappy people they are revolting, but if they are all happy they are loyal. In real life I don't think that is always true; the Vietnam War protesters, overall, were probably fairly happy people while, say, the loyal citizens of the USSR were miserable most of the time. I don't know how to implement this, but happiness (perhaps tied more to productivity or culture) and loyalty could be tracked separately.

perhaps the loyalty to government factor would be primarily influenced by your development up until then, for example, if you had been a successful monarch (wars, living standards and development) and researched monarchy related techs/passed monarchy related policies then people would be loyal to that system of government and, if this was implemented in civ4, their opinions on government would affect your choices of government. this would enhance the preferred/shunned types of government for different civs. there would always be an underlying preference of your people for monarchy.
this would not directly tie in happiness which be affected by luxuries, wonders, city improvements, resources. however, if you were running a communist government and were doing badly the fact that your people preferred monarchy would exacerbate the problem meaning you were more likely to sink into anarchy and this would result in the return of the peoples beloved monarchy. :king:
ha! if you were a proper communist you would ensured they had all be shot when you took over :lol:

Except of course when your people come to you with the Magna Carta to limit the Monarchy's powers...

Dexter's comment just reminded me of one of the problems I have with communism in Civ 3. When you switch to fascism, your population drops, the theory is that dissenters, dissidents, etc. were killed when the government took power. Why is it that communism doesn't have a similar detriment. Perhaps a population drop when switching to communism would reflect the government purging those who are against the government. When you have a government who can build a secret police headquarters, it would seem to me that it would make sense that the secret police would be rounding up potential dissidents and dissenters and executing them.

That brings me to a point about fascism. I think that the secret police headquarters should have extended to fascism as well.

off with their heads!!

Arturus - agree with you fully that the SPHQ should extend to Fascist regimes as well.

Dexter's comment just reminded me of one of the problems I have with communism in Civ 3. When you switch to fascism, your population drops, the theory is that dissenters, dissidents, etc. were killed when the government took power. Why is it that communism doesn't have a similar detriment.

Rise and Rule mod has this feature for Communism. Population drops in all cities by 1-2 when switching to Commie.

Well, the Superpower games both had a measure of 'Popularity' for your government, partially irrespective of your social and economic development. How to measure it in Civ, though, I am not sure. Happiness SHOULD be a factor in Loyalty, and perhaps War Weariness-instead of contributing to unhappiness-might instead contribute to declining loyalty. The government you are in, and the ratio of your culture to those of neighbouring nations-as well as corruption and crime levels-should probably also play a role in Loyalty.
Essentially, Loyalty then could represent the chance that a civil war or rebellion occurs in your nation!
Just a thought!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Well, it's hard to imagine from our point of view, but lots of the people in the USSR actually liked Communism.

My mother knew someone who had come from Russia before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Government decided what job she would have, and all her life she knew what she would do when she grew up. From our point of view, this seems horrible. But to her, she was secure knowing that. When their Government changed, she lost that security, and the prospect of having to choose her own job was very frightening.

Of course, in the long run she was successful and happy, but this should give you some perspective of life in a Communist government. When I heard that, I was surprised - after all, I had thought that people were always miserable under Communism but forced to agree with what the gov't said. It's clear that Communism doesn't work, but I thought that that perspective was really interesting. :)

@ Aussie_Lurker: The concept of Loyalty is a most excellent! I'd like to see something like that in cIV! :goodjob:

@Darwin420. I think Loyalty should be reffered to as Nationalism. My country right or wrong, right?

Loyalty isn't the same thing as Nationalism.

Under an empire, you pledge allegiance to an Emperor, a King, a man.
Under a nation, you pledge allegiance to a flag, a constitution, and (sometimes) a set of principles.

In an empire, what's right is what the King says is right. What's wrong is what the King says is wrong. What's legal is what the King likes. What's illegal is what the King hates.

In a nation, what's right is what's good for the whole country, and that's often guided by the rules in the constitution. This is where patriotism and nationalism applies -- when you believe strongly in the essence of your country and countrymen.

A third way is religious fundamentalism, where you pledge allegiance to a God -- or really, an interpretation of a God -- and a set of scriptures -- or really, an interpretation of a set of Scriptures.

At any rate, loyalty would be a great thing to model, whether you're an empire or a nation. You'd need at least a 50% approval rating before your country starts acting a little funny here and there.

Since political ideologies come out (new tech or great people, or comunist manifest) the citizens become agroupate in factions, the future parties, wich represente this ideas and to implement them.
The factions could be related to division of society in rural owners, rural workers, businessmen, laborers, middle class, nobility.
Some ideas like nationalism could agroupate an entire population, e.g. an ethnicity who had part of our civ, even some are more radicals than others, some degree of autonomy or totally independent. Latelly, they become rebels or guerilla fallow the way the government treat them.
Some improvements (temples, col., cath., or stadiums, cinemas, theatre) and events (a foreign treath, olympic games, world championship soccer) should distract the citizens from the political issues and should act as balanced of public opinion.
This is a thing that could unlike some players due the minor control of our civ, a lowless god game, but the challenge given by that is something fun.

Well, mhIDA, this is very much the idea that is being put up in the 'Government types which means something' and 'Do your people need to be more like individuals' threads (both of which I think you are subscribed to ;)!)
I think the idea of 'factional loyalty' would work very well, and would tie in more to rebellions. For instance, if your military factions loyalty towards you became very low, then you may lose control of some or all of your military units, and face the prospect of a military coup!!! Of course, if your workers are still loyal under the current government, then changing to one which suits your military might cause the workers loyalty to drop and another rebellion to ensue!!! Ahhh, the difficulties of balancing off competing interests-that is what I actually feel this game still currently lacks!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.