One thing I don't like about CIV is the fact that your civic choices are very limited in the early game. For most of the time you are stuck with Despotism and Heridetary Rule unless you have the Pyramids, but neither the Romans nor the Greek were known for their Pyramids but had Represantion long BC.
So I think Civics should come much earlier in a weaker form and improve over time with technological advances.
One example: Represantation should be available with Writing, but only give +1:) in your 5 largest cities and have high upkeep.
With Code of Law: +1:) in your largest citiy
With Philosophy: +1 :science: from specialists
With Nationalism: +1:) in 5 largest city
With Education: +1 :science: from specialists
(so with CoL, Philosophy, Education and Nationalism you'll have +3:) in your largest city, +2:) in 4 other large cities and +2:science: from specialists and high upkeep
And finally with Constitution: +3:) in 5 largest cities, +3:science: from specialists and medium upkeep.
In this case Constitution completes the civic and reduces upkeep.
The Pyramids would give you all tech boni for government civics.
Earlier Civics could evolve beyond their current effects. Theocracy could become available with Priesthood (+1 Exp, high upkeep) and provide a happiness bonus after Divine Right is researched, Slavery could give more hammers per citizen with Civil Service and Medicine, early Mercantilism would just give you one free specialist in your capital , Free Speech gives more culture with Printing Press and Mass Media, Bureaucracy has reduced upkeep with Computers...you get the idea.

good idea, but US must be kept locked till democracy

good idea, but US must be kept locked till democracy


Why ? I guess many tribal societies had universal suffrage in their history. Just make the gold rushing more expensive in it's early form and add the production bonus from towns only after Democracy is researched.

I would argue that the situation in Ancient Rome and Greece were more Oligarchies than genuinely Representitive governments. After all, participation in the process was limited to a very strict definition of "Citizen"-namely wealthy male landowners. At the risk of slavish self-promotion :mischief:. May I suggest you use one of my expanded civics mods, as this will at least give you a couple of government types to adopt between despotism and hereditary rule. As for your idea, adding a new tag to either techinfos or civicinfos would be fairly easy to achieve using the SDK.

Aussie_Lurker.

I would argue that having US available early and increasing its effectiveness via various techs (e.g. Liberalism, Constitution, and finally Democracy) would probably be effective. In each of its earlier forms, it would model forms of government where the citizens (whether or not they formed a majority of the population) hold final control of government (e.g. Athens), whereas Representation would represent systems in which the government is a republic in the sense that no government positions are inherited, and that the power of government is derived from law as opposed to raw force (e.g. Republican Rome, Great Britain from the Glorious Revolution to approximately Reform Act 1832.) Because these two systems finally merged in the 19th century, there could be some instance where their traits blend towards the end where they remain distinct but closely related--so that Representation and US would have slightly different areas of benefit.