I tried searching if this topic was raised but couldn't find much (apparently "war" is too short to look up, and "civil" just results in everything), so excuse me if this has been brought up before.

But I was thinking - what if we play off stability-emerging civs-civ collapse into a new concept. If we look at history, most if not all civ's have faced periods of civil war where the nation was challenged to re-unite - China, America, England, Russia, Greece, etc.

So how about something where if the civ becomes instable, instead of a pure collapse into independents, the nation splits into two (with two different leaders). Starting off with the same techs, the goal is the reunite by X number of turns. During this time, peace can't be made between the two parties (although foreign civs can be allied with). From there, a few possibilities can result:

- If reunification does not occur and stability is poor, the civ(s) collapses into independents.
- If reunification does not occur and stability is good, the civ(s) continues to be a completely separate entity.
- If the nation reunites, bonuses are awarded (or a UHV is met)

If possible, unique Civ names can be created:
America -> United States of America/Confederate States of America
China -> People's Republic of China/Republic of China
India -> India/Pakistan

That is a good idea. How about:
1. Prussia/Austria for Germany (I know they didn't fight a civil war, but there was the Austro-Prussian War in 1866)
2. Red Roses/White Roses for England
3. Bolsheviks/Tzarists for Russia
4. Sparta/Athens for Greece
5. Western Roman Empire/Eastern Roman Empire OR The Second Triumvirate/Liberators OR Octavian/Marc Antony for Rome

The only problem I foresee in this, however, is that it may be hard to mod in.

It's kinda easy to cheat though if you know you're going to be in civil war the turn before. Just move all your troops to your capital. :lol:

It's an interesting idea, though we're going to have some pretty strange leader-civ combinations. (Asoka of the Pakistani or Qin Shi Huang of the Taiwanese, anyone?)

If doable this'd be nice, I'm not sure how workable it is though.

I'm not an expert on this but if that was possible to pull off, I have an itch it would slow the game down horribly. I know the current system needs fixing (currently you can just walk in and capture whatever civilization's lands if it's at civil war) and while that is a good and an interesting idea, I'm sure it's practicality would be an issue in terms of gameplay.

Not a bad idea but the way the AI wars I don't think you'd ever see reunification. But civs splitting into other civs rather than independents a la the Revolution mod would be interesting if it could be acheived.

Some ideas:

England: Commonwealth/Monarchist or Yorkist/Lancastrian
France: Huguenot/Catholic or Monarchist/Republican
Spain: Republican/Nationalist (or Francoist)
Portugal: Estado Novo/Republican
Rome: Senate/Empire or Western/Eastern
Greece: Pelopennesian/Delian
Turkey: Sultanate/Young Turks
Arabia: Fatamid/Abbasid or Shi'a/Sunni
Japan: Shogunate/Empire

This might be reaching (and not actually feasible), but in terms of how the civil war occurs, here's one idea.

So back to the original idea, here's a few more thoughts. So ideally as your stability drops, the likelihood of civil war increases. Once a civil war is triggered, the computer can break apart the nation in a few ways:

1. Location - if your civ is spread across large distances, especially if on separate continents
2. Religion - if your empire has cities of multiple religions, one group may try to break away
3. Cultural - if a certain portion of your empire is culturally different (perhaps from an earlier conquest)
4. Random - a random group of cities break away

And as the revolting civ breaks off, while tech remains the same, civics might change respectively.

This is a fine idea... However, it's just another one of those many that will never be done, for many reasons.... :(

Anyways...
I think it would indeed slow the game down alot, and also, for this to work the AI combat system would have to be made better.
Then there could be Civil-Wars based on stuff like slavery (America) and communism (USSR). And really, civil-wars brought on by things like: you built two cities to far away or a foreign Religion enters a city, should cause those cities to split only, and not have it bring down the whould empire for building a city to far away.

Anyways, it's a good idea, but maybe it should split into more then two civs some times or something. :D


3. Cultural - if a certain portion of your empire is culturally different (perhaps from an earlier conquest)
Maybe it would go something like this: Three of your cities near Russia have a lot of Russian culture, thus, a message pops up saying "The cities of X, X and X are demanding independents from our empire. If you let them go they will like it alot. If we don't, they are likely to call for Russia aid which may lead to a war with Russia."
It would be kind of like a newly born civ, but with none of your units fliping, just it would be like that if you don't let them go, 'Russia' will fight you and they might join 'Russia'


2. Religion - if your empire has cities of multiple religions, one group may try to break away
This can't work with Free Religion, but it could work (without free religion) like this: Three of your cities have fallen under a false religion and wish to leave your empire, if you let them go you get + with all leaders of that religion, if you don't, theres likely to be a holy war between all civs of the two religions....

So, you don't no matter what lose all your cities (which I don't think is like ANY civil-war IRL)... of course you still can under other things...

I thought the main reason for civil wars was to speed the game up by removing civs, not slowing it down by adding more. The idea sounds really cool, but the game runs slow enough as it is...

Maybe this could be accomplished by somehow enabling independent cities to fight each other? I actually doubt this would be possible as there's only two seperate independent city civs, but can you imagine how many civs there would be in the game if even a fraction of collapses led to not one less civ, but one extra.