To me, the government civics doesnt quite make sense since in each gov type the player has equal power in controlling the populace, especially for gov such as representation and universal suffrage. Also, this idea promotes how our gov works (at least for democractic governement anyway). So this is my idea, that the player should build a national congress under these gov.

How the National Congress work:
Every 20 turns, a group of represenatives are elected, that represent the citizens of the civilization. The turn afterward, the congress makes a set of proposals that the player as the head of state can either approve or veto. If a proposal is approved, the player must fulfill the request (kind of like a quest) by the time the next Congress is elected 20 turns later. If the quest is not fulfilled, then consequence varies, for example it can be 1:mad: in a city, or 1:mad: in every city depending on the quest. The reward of fulfilling the quest can vary as well. Also, the player can veto the proposal and the Congress may override the veto the next time the Congress is elected.

The proposals are random, but it ties directly to the civilization's development at any given time. Example can be link railroads to two major cities, build more health buildings, set up open borders, end a foreign war, train more defenders, acquire a resource, spread religions, etc.

The player as the head of state can influence what type of representative that can elect in the congress, such as conservatives, liberals, moderates, religious right, corporate representatives, enviromentalists and etc.

The national congress is a national wonder that can only be built in the capitol (if you have 2 already, relocate your palace!). It can only be built after Constitution has been researched, and has the benefit of holding Congress every 20 turns, gives 2 culture, gives a free specialist to the city, espionage defense, can never be flipped to a foreign nation and 1 happy citizen. In Represenation and Universal Suffrage gov, all cities suffer 1 :mad: if the National Congress is not built after tech Code of Laws, Constitution, Democracy, and 5 :mad: after tech Mass Media. The Congress's effect only holds in Hereditary Rule (like a constitutional monarchy), Represenatation and Universal Suffrage, and has no effect in Despotism and Police State.

Alright...

Heres is a couple of questions:

#1: What are the tech requirements for the National Congress? They would have to be before Code of Laws (to counter the 1 :mad: penalty), so it would be a VERY early building. Which means, for approximatly 9/10ths of your game (if you play a space race victory, or late conquest, or something that puts you to the modern era), you will be getting a "Congress has decided on a quest for your empire to follow in" EVERY 20 TURNS. People would often adopt despotism just to take out those messages, until the advent of Fascism (Assuming, of course, that the :mad: penalty doesn't apply when a civic that doesn't allow congress to work properly (despotism/Police State). If it does, then you have officially nerfed Police State, as the deduction of :mad: (and, of course, the extra milatery :hammers: ) is the entire point of Police State)

#2: I am almost certain (but not quite 100%) that this is beyond the scope of what fans can modify (as Civ IV is not open-source, so they can't modify a huge amount of programming). If it is beyond simple XML, or python coding, then you would have to wait until Civ V, in which civics, technologies, or multiple other things you have assumed will exist actually could be modified.

#3: The 5 :mad: penalty from Mass media would kill all civs whose capital gets killed, as the National Congress wouldn't immediatly rebuild like a palace, unless you make it do that. Add that to the already existing 3 :mad: penalty, and suddenly, by simply taking out the capital, you can make an empire almost destroy itself from the huge unhappyness.

#4: It seems alot more complex than it needs to be. You could just ask for more late-game quests, which I think CAN be modified by Civ fans... lots of minor quests with small rewards. Having the whole "state influencing the congress" interface is (almost definatly) too complex for the fans to modify, and also adding a new feature that seems really important, however extremely fiddily, and pure evil micro-management, doesn't go down well with me.

#5: Finally, I am not 100% sure about this, but isn't the Palace a national wonder (I know from vanilla civ IV it was). This means that, in order to fend of the 8 :mad: penalty, you need to use BOTH of the nat. wonder slots in your capital, so you couldn't build another nat. wonder in that city. Wouldn't it be better to make it just a regular building, except one that requires a palace as a prerequisite, and some event happens in the capital that destories (or even better, moves) the national congress as soon as you move the capital?

I have only been thinking about this for the same period I have been writing it, however in conclusion, I think that it would be too hard to add to Civ IV without modifying the base code of Civ IV (which is out of bounds to normal programmers).

Even though I don't like it all that much, there are a few good points in it, and it would be interesting to develop further, especially if someone with more knowledge of what fans can and can't modify, would post and correct me on the multiple errors I have said(no doubt).

You can also have quests that require a certain type of government as a prereq, so they will only pop up if you are democracy or something appropriate.

One point... the idea that the player controls the entire Senate/Congress/voting public is just as reasonable as the idea that the player controls every one in a succession of kings/queens and all those that assassinate+take the throne plus all the ministers etc. that change the law.

I DO like the idea of making them 'quests' ie raise health in this city and get temporary bonus happiness/ achieve a certain amount of excess happiness from buildings in a city and get a 'We Love the King' day.

I like the idea of having some tipe of congres under democracy and representation. But i don´t like much the idea of random quests every 20 turns. I would prefer a system more like in galciv, where the player has to control congress in order that he can use his partys abilities.
If the congress could vote on certain aspects like changing civics (no anarchy if aproved by congres, maybe?) or declarations of war would be good. This should be linked to the happy and unhappy faces and maybe make that unhappy citzens don´t go on strike under representaive goverments as a compensation. Because players will always try to have more happy faces than unhappy ones it wouldn´t be so anoying as the congress in Civ 1 and 2.

i always thought the senate idea in civ II was a cool one. Granted I many a time had differences with the doves and became infuriated that they wouldn't let me go to war. However, I still thought it was a good idea and more realistic.

i always thought the senate idea in civ II was a cool one. Granted I many a time had differences with the doves and became infuriated that they wouldn't let me go to war. However, I still thought it was a good idea and more realistic.

I think too many players hated the Senate signing treaties behind their backs, so the designers took that feature out of Civ.

Also, Civ4 can be extensively modified by XML, Python, and the SDK in C++, I think...whoever said it wasn't open source...well...you can still do more than enough modding with it to create this.

#5: Finally, I am not 100% sure about this, but isn't the Palace a national wonder (I know from vanilla civ IV it was). This means that, in order to fend of the 8 :mad: penalty, you need to use BOTH of the nat. wonder slots in your capital, so you couldn't build another nat. wonder in that city. Wouldn't it be better to make it just a regular building, except one that requires a palace as a prerequisite, and some event happens in the capital that destories (or even better, moves) the national congress as soon as you move the capital?

I'm pretty sure that, while it is a national wonder, it doesn't take up a slot

#1: What are the tech requirements for the National Congress? They would have to be before Code of Laws (to counter the 1 :mad: penalty), so it would be a VERY early building. Which means, for approximatly 9/10ths of your game (if you play a space race victory, or late conquest, or something that puts you to the modern era), you will be getting a "Congress has decided on a quest for your empire to follow in" EVERY 20 TURNS. People would often adopt despotism just to take out those messages, until the advent of Fascism (Assuming, of course, that the :mad: penalty doesn't apply when a civic that doesn't allow congress to work properly (despotism/Police State). If it does, then you have officially nerfed Police State, as the deduction of :mad: (and, of course, the extra milatery :hammers: ) is the entire point of Police State)


The tech requirement for National Congress is Constitution. That means ppl switching to representation or universal suffrage in ancient age after building the pyramid will suffer a minor penalty of 1:mad: in each city after researching Code of Laws, and they should build the NC right away after researching Constitution. No need to worry about fulfilling Congress's requests prior Constitution b/c you cant build it before this tech. The NC has no positive or negative effect for despotism and facism after it has been built (like adopting State Property when you have corporations, no effect)



#2: I am almost certain (but not quite 100%) that this is beyond the scope of what fans can modify (as Civ IV is not open-source, so they can't modify a huge amount of programming).

Nah, I'm pretty sure ppl can get around this. Civ 4 is open-source.


#3: The 5 :mad: penalty from Mass media would kill all civs whose capital gets killed


You are right...maybe NC automatically relocates with the Palace should the capitol is captured.


#4: It seems alot more complex than it needs to be. You could just ask for more late-game quests, which I think CAN be modified by Civ fans... lots of minor quests with small rewards. Having the whole "state influencing the congress" interface is (almost definatly) too complex for the fans to modify, and also adding a new feature that seems really important, however extremely fiddily, and pure evil micro-management, doesn't go down well with me.


But those quests are extremely random, and they dont always happen. The requests should reflect directly the player's progress as a civilization at any given time, like building national forest preserves in a modern world, give citizens their fundamental rights (adopt emancipation), lower taxes (culture slider goes up) and etc. I think by fulfulling these requests, you gain a higher final score than otherwise entitled.


#5: Finally, I am not 100% sure about this, but isn't the Palace a national wonder (I know from vanilla civ IV it was). This means that, in order to fend of the 8 :mad: penalty, you need to use BOTH of the nat. wonder slots in your capital


Palace does not count against the national wonder limit. Maybe this NC should too, to make this more playable.