I am starting to bugger around with the U.N., so let's get all our ideas about improvements we want to make to it in this thread.

a) First of all, diplomatic victories. Since we are using the Mastery victory condition only, I believe it disables them by default. Does the UN work with that mod, with simply the victory vote removed, or what? Hopefully someone who has used the Mastery victory condition mod can enlighten me.

b) I think the civic votes should stay close to normal, we will just have to wait until our civics are all fixed up before deciding which specific civics should get the votes. Maybe we should have two sets of votes for each civic category, so, the vote will change depending on who is UN secretary general. If it's the USA, they will propose capitalist/democracy related civic votes; if it's China, they will propose votes on Communism related civics. I definitely think that we should increase the vote % required for these to pass. Any one major civ voting against it should work as a veto.

c) Should we add votes that would force everyone to trade embargo a specific nation? Myself and Steve (doesn't have an account here yet or username, what a loser) will look into how this can be done. I think this is something we can archive reasonably easily. If the secretary general has terrible relations with a country, and (possibly) already has unilateral (traditional civ) trade embargoes against it, there would be a % chance that they would propose this vote. I suppose we will have to improve the interface as well, to allow not only the selection of the vote, but after that, which country (from a list of eligible ones), it is against. Shouldn't be hard, and we'll need that for the next part as well...

d) Peacekeeping missions; I know this has been discussed on this forum before, but I forget specifics ATM. Ekmek made a comment today in a thread outside our forum that drew me to this topic:

are you going to add python and sdk modding to it too? I really wanted a UN peacekeeper unit that could go into rival territory and prevent units from moving into its square.


This kind of thing will be the most difficult to modify, but worth it, and quite important if you ask me. Let's get specific ideas finalized, and then we will see if we can get them working. Ekmek's idea is one; traditional peace keeping. If we have trouble creating peacekeeping votes against specific nations, we could have a vote that would allow a specific nation to build peacekeeper units, that they could use anywhere. We have to discuss how exactly we want this to work.

It would be unreal to have units that could get mandates from UN votes. They could allow countries who have built the units (and/or who are on the UN security council, a modification we have discussed adding to the w2k9 mod), to do certain tasks, like the peacekeeping one you mentioned above. Entering a hostile country's territory without open borders or declaring war to clear out barbarians is another thing I had in mind.


This would be called something else. Maybe someone can google and post specific U.N. info; exactly what they call resolutions etc. This would be closer to the U.N. mandating the mission in Afghanistan, while the above, more like present day Kosovo.

Example: Egypt is getting attacked by Barbarians that have bases/cities in Sudan, but do not have good enough relations with Sudan to get open borders. The USA (sec. general) has bad relations with Sudan, plus recognizes that there are a lot of barbarians inside their borders, so that makes them call for the vote. If it passes, Egypt and every other nation gets to move units into Sudan's borders, and kill the barbarians, and possibly take their cities. (some countries will have full barbarian cities and forts inside their cultural borders)

For this, all we will really have to do, is figure out how to make a civ having a lot of barbarians inside their borders become a consideration for the sec. general proposing a UN vote against them. If we can't, we will have to find some other factor to influence the vote to happen. Once we've played around with these files we'll have a better idea of what we can and can't do with the U.N., and we'll post what we know.

BTW: Steve B. is a friend of mine from school; he's a programmer (comp. science student, knows Python and C++) and is going to be helping with several things. I have been bugging him to sign up here, he will soon I'm sure. I'm hoping he will be able to help us tune up a few things here and there, including the U.N., and also build one new custom feature before our first release. No pressure buddy. :D


So guys (and gals), if you have ever seen a MOD that makes changes to the U.N. that might help us in any way, or good discussions/guides about this topic, or if you know any specifics that may help us, please share.

Otherwise, please share ideas about missions we can include, and improvements on the ideas above.

I recall some talk about representing the security council; perhaps we can do this by simply having the largest nations have a veto equivalent amount of votes. This way it is dynamic, as nations gain and loose power, the veto vote follows. Plus we really don't have to change anything (for a change).

Edit...

Spoke before I read.

Here you go dude: Mastery victory condition mod. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=189388)


Ahh, you beat me. Anyway, I'll keep the link there for anyone else who may be looking for it.

Well, don't want to overload you with work or make the UN more complicated than it needs to be but here are some ideas (concerning the Security Council)

-We could make it so that a separate goes out every X-amount of turns that puts the 10 Civs highest in score up to vote to get on the security council, every country belonging to the UN can vote for 2 civs it wants to be on the security council, of course the 5 civs with the highest amount of votes will make it onto the council

-The council could serve the purpose of choosing what proposition it will put up every X-turns that the world votes on, first the UN secretary General will choose 3 propositions that he believes should be put up to vote, then the Security council countries will vote on which proposition they believe the entire world should vote on, of course the proposition with the most votes will go one for the world to vote on, this will make it so that the Security Council will have more influence over the UN besides just an extra amount of votes

Hopefully those aren't too complicated, just trying to make it as realistic and new as possible

Very interesting ideas. We should have a better understanding of what can and can't be done soon.

If we end up having the security council, which I think we should if possible, we could have it so 5 veto power seats are permanent, but when a civ reaches X power/score, the existing members get to vote whether or not to include them as a permanent member. If they vote no, the vote comes up again every X turns.

And then, I think it will be too much to have votes for 10 non-permanent members (like there are in reality), so we should have a couple randomly rotating seats, with possible restrictions like; having at least cautions relations with all permanent seats (or the majority, if no one has all). These non-permanent members won't have veto power, but they will have a chance to propose security council resolutions.


Another thing; what about term limits for SG? Say, a civilization can only be elected secretary general twice in a row, and then they are not eligible for the next 4 votes or something?

And, we may want to avoid giving the host nation an automatic seat in the elections (we'll have to if we have term limits).

Yeah! A UN-thread! :)

OK, I'll just copy my post about this from the features thread here, to keep things clean.

Something for V.2:

UN Security Council

We should change the way the UN works. In reality not the UN General Assembly passes UN resolution. The UN Security Council does that. This means not every civ can vote on them, only those present in the Security Council.
The UN Security Council has 5 permanent members:
- USA
- China
- Russia
- France (here: EU)
- UK
and 10 non-permanent members (elected by the General Assembly for 2 years)
If one of the 5 permanent members votes "no" on a resolution this counts as a veto.

So I think we should make the UN work like this:

Additionally to the Secretary General every civ can vote every 12 turns to appoint half of the non-permanent members of the Security Council. Every civ has one vote. The 5 civs that get the most votes will be holding a Security Council Chair for 24 turns.

Only the Security Council can vote on UN resolutions. Every civ has one vote but permanent members have veto right.

Actually it would be cool if it wasn't the UN Secretary General who can propose resolutions but every member of the Security Council. But for this IMO it would be necessary to get rid of that automatic resolution proposing every few turns. You'd have to have a button in the diplomacy menu like "appeal to the Security Council" that would allow you and the AI to propose resolutions whenever you want to.

This would add some realism not only concerning how the real UN works but also in the diplomatic weight of the 5 permanent members.

Great idea about the changing veto seats!
Concerning the non-permanent members I think it isn't necessary to restrict them depending on good relations towards the veto members. In reality they can't reject a candidate for a non-permanent seat, can they?

I also love the UN missions idea. I had thought about something like that, too. My first thought was to have a system similarly to the mercenary-system: Civs can supply units they don't currently need to UN missions. When a resolution is passed all units that currently are in this pool are deployed on that mission. But that might be too complicated.

I remember to have seen graphics for UN soldiers and UN vehicles. I'll look for them!

Here: UN peacekeeper graphics (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9266)

The corresponding UN peacekeeping mod isn't very interesting since you can use the UN units to augment your own forces...

Great ianinsane, thanks for posting that here. Great find on the unit as well.

You're right about the non-permanent seats, they should just be random.


From another thread:

are you going to add python and sdk modding to it too? I really wanted a UN peacekeeper unit that could go into rival territory and prevent units from moving into its square.


My thoughts on what this could be used for:


Preventing the civ from:
-moving units to its borders.
-crossing a line of U.N. troops to move units out of their own borders.
-developing the square, including routes.
-utilizing forts located on the square.

-preventing the civ from attacking foreign forts that are inside its territory.


However the problem with having a unit, is the question about whether the AI will use it properly. We will have to try it and see.

The votes I think are something we can adjust for sure in a way that works.

Great ianinsane, thanks for posting that here. Great find on the unit as well.

You're right about the non-permanent seats, they should just be random.


From another thread:


Quote:
Originally Posted by Ekmek
are you going to add python and sdk modding to it too? I really wanted a UN peacekeeper unit that could go into rival territory and prevent units from moving into its square.


My thoughts on what this could be used for:


Quote:
Originally Posted by DVS
Preventing the civ from:
-moving units to its borders.
-crossing a line of U.N. troops to move units out of their own borders.
-developing the square, including routes.
-utilizing forts located on the square.

-preventing the civ from attacking foreign forts that are inside its territory.


However the problem with having a unit, is the question about whether the AI will use it properly. We will have to try it and see.

The votes I think are something we can adjust for sure in a way that works.






my first thought would be to make it a unit that can go into rival territory (like caravels)

the second is to have it, through python or what ever, make the terrain impassable. Like mountains do now. so the code is somewhere

getting the AI to use it would be the hardest part. But also preventing the human from leaving itin cities so no one can attack them etc.

maybe this can be could combined with an event. you have to send x number of peace keeping units to a certain square. once that part of the quest is achieve the event would change the terrain to an impassable one (say peracekeeper base). the hard part there is having the event find the borders to save.

my first thought would be to make it a unit that can go into rival territory (like caravels)

the second is to have it, through python or what ever, make the terrain impassable. Like mountains do now. so the code is somewhere

getting the AI to use it would be the hardest part. But also preventing the human from leaving itin cities so no one can attack them etc.

maybe this can be could combined with an event. you have to send x number of peace keeping units to a certain square. once that part of the quest is achieve the event would change the terrain to an impassable one (say peracekeeper base). the hard part there is having the event find the borders to save.


Yes, getting the AI to use it is the main problem. Making the unit able to enter rival territory, and make its tile impassable only when outside its borders is easy enough. We could also make the unit almost defenseless inside its own territory, or in any situation where it can be attacked.

It would be nice if these units would only be able to enter another civ's borders after that civ loses a UN vote.

I have not looked in to anything having to do with quests, so I have no idea what the capabilities are there unfortunately.

Maybe just have a UN peacekeeper spawn(through event or something) in the city in question which needs protecting. Stopping the aggressor from taking it. After a while, the unit can vanish again when it is no longer necessary.

It isn't quite controlling borders, but it does help the actual cities.

What if you want to "Defy" the UN-Peacekeeping mission anyway?

If you vote to "Defy-Resolution," no unit should appear, and each country voting "Yes" should Declare War on the aggressor.

No?

What fun is it to want to world dominate...and then you can't, and you have no choice but to accept? You should be able to Defy the Resolution, and have to deal with a world at war with you!

And if you can't have a unit appear...just have a 10-turn peace treaty and a re-vote at the end of 10-turns (but still, you need to be allowed to Defy-Resolution this).

israel defies numerous resolutions, and yet she is not fighting the world.

Perhaps, -5 relations with all who voted for the resolution?

How about a % chance of a war declaration from Members who have a certain + attitude from leaders that you are aggressing?

Russia attacks Country X (country X does not have a defensive pact with with the EU)...attempting to reclaim the old Soviet Bloc...and the Resolution is passed and Russia refuses...and they have a % chance of having the EU declare war bc the EU and Country X have a +3 relations (or something along those lines).

Thats all I meant...

I have been looking through the files that come with the world 2009 mod, and it should be easy enough to make changes to the united nations.

I have a few questions, can some of you who have played the game more than I have, or who know about the modifications that have already been made for the world 2009, fill me in?

a) Is there any place on this forum or elsewhere that has an exact explanation of how the united nations works in the game? (i) What influences the secretary general to pick the resolutions it does, and (ii) what influences countries to vote the way they do are of particular interest.

Other information like (iii) how often votes happen, (iv) how badly defying resolutions hurts relationships with other civilizations, and (v) can resolutions that have already been passed get put up again and lose (and hence have their effects/limitations removed), would also be helpful.

The best information I have found so far is on this page: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/ , but in the world 2009 mod there already appears to be a lot more possible resolutions, such as "un peacekeeping", "trade embargo", and "un war resolution". These sound like they are related to what is being discussed here. Are these standard civ4 resolutions? If so, can someone explain to me how they work? The current build of the mod crashes when I try to run a turn so I'm having a hard time testing things.

b) What is the apostolic palace? Do these votes keep happening after the united nations has been built?

I'll help you as much as I can when I get home this afternoon.

A) i and ii, I don't know. Does anyone else have any info about this?

iii) Easy enough to find out, I'll dig around now.
iv) Defined by the DEFY_RESOLUTION_POP_ANGER tag in the GlobalDefinesAlt.xml file.
v) I think so, but I have never seen it done. As the SG, I have put already passed resolutions up for votes again, but they have always passed again. Has anyone else seen this work?

B) Apostolic palace is what comes before the U.N. I'm pretty sure that it stops working after the U.N. is built. Maybe someone can confirm this? I was thinking we should mod the Apostolic palace into the Security Council.

I think it expires by a tech. well speaking of aposoltic palace I know its based on the un but requires religion. I wonder if yo can modify the sdk to to have a apolostolic palace like building but requires a resource, like oil (I'm thinking OPEC)

Interesting, yes I suspect that could be done. So then only members of OPEC would vote?

Now you've gone and given us much more complicated ideas to consider! :D

I was hoping to find a way to represent all major trade organizations (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=302824), OPEC included. We have so much in front of us though, I had put this on the back burner until after version 1.0 comes out. And apolostolic palace-like building that allows all members to vote on resolutions... is a perfect expansion to this idea.

I'll play around with this and see what happens.

I had a similar idea connecting ideologies with organizations using apostolic palace wonders. In BTS, the Apostoloc Palace works with religions. So we wouldn't need to change anything if we connect it with ideologies, our replacements for religions. Each ideology would have its own Apostolic Palace-like wonder. These could be:

Mercosur for Amerindian
African Union for African
One still to build for Eastern
One still to build for Hindu
One still to build for Jewish
Organization of the Islamic Conference for Muslim
Commonwealth of Independent States for Slavic
One still to build for Western

Of course only those with that ideology could be member.

Maybe someone knows better alternatives...

But ianinsane, do those voting organizations exist in reality? Not really. I say we wait on that idea until we have our trade orgs developed. African Union and Mercosur are part. Others here. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=302824)

These are slightly different groups from ideologies, but some cut close.

Alright. :)

In regards to civics, I think the U.N. should not vote for one civic to become the global civic but ban civics one at the time until only a few remain.

In regards to civics, I think the U.N. should not vote for one civic to become the global civic but ban civics one at the time until only a few remain.


Brilliant! Thats a way better way than firaxis did it.

Brilliant! Thats a way better way than firaxis did it.

I'm wondering, are you planning on representing the WTO in any way? This might be done via the U.N in terms of exacting a penalty for certain civics, perhaps through trade reductions e.g. -25% per trade route, -1 trade route if not free market etc. (of course the WTO is very North America-EU centric with a prevailing free market ideology, references available on request)

All i'd say about banning civics is that instead of 'banning' them, a penalty would be more realistic, whether financial, diplomatic or whatever.

That's even more brilliant! :) Maybe this could also be connected with a trade embargo.
For example an option like "Trade embargo against all Darwinism civs"...

For example an option like "Trade embargo against all Darwinism civs"...

Yeah, that sort of thing, exactly.

----

Having said that, the push for free markets has been rather unrelenting (even if it may be argued the current economic climate may change this somewhat, especially many of the elements of deregulation).

Along the lines of WTO I was specifically thinking: Proposal= 'Create World Trade Organisation?'

'Gives all free market civs a trade bonus and penalty to protectionist civs (I use the terms 'free market' and 'protectionist' as I'm still thinking about how to represent given the new civics, but you get the idea)...

I was thinking the WTO could be representative of a sort of 'global civic/ideology' in the way that the emancipation and free speech civics can be in the game proper, but with the option to opt out and receive a penalty. I think this represents reality with the growing hegemony of the influence of free trade (see China joining the WTO and Russia lobbying the EU to sponsor their application). Broadly I agree with the idea of not choosing favoured civics, but I would argue that the free market ideology is really very strong and such is its nature of delivering competitive economic advantage that the penalty function is more than apt (perhaps moreso than the original civ4 penalty for non emancipation)

Of course the civics are all changed so there is nothing as simple as a 'free market' civic, I guess the closest is 'deregulation', so maybe my specific point is less applicable, but I figured I'd share my thoughts.

I love all the ideas Adhesive, really great stuff, just a few comments though. I really like the idea of taking away the whole "banning of civics" and replacing it with just bonuses and penalties. But I think when all the civs, for example, vote to create a WTO, that the ones who don't except it don't get penalties, but instead just get negative diplo points with people that voted for the proposal and are in the organization. It seems more realistic that way. For another example, if today we were to create a new WTO (in the real world I'm talking about), lets say that every country except Mexico joins. All the other countries would get benefits like larger economy, more trade, etc. But Mexico wouldn't really suffer any penalties, its just missing out on an opportunity to better its economy and trade more. Its only real penalty will be that other leaders who want Mexico to join it will just get angry with the country... not much else in Mexico other than angry foreign leaders would really happen to the country. Same would go with civics, Mexico wouldn't change a bit while the rest of the world (who adopted the civic) would just get pissy at Mexico for it. The only other penalty realistically I can see happening to Mexico if it were to defy U.N proposals is angry citizens that want the civic change... other than that I think it would be more realistic not for the Civ to suffer penalties, just negative diplo points and the possibility of angry citizens.

I love all the ideas Adhesive, really great stuff, just a few comments though. I really like the idea of taking away the whole "banning of civics" and replacing it with just bonuses and penalties. But I think when all the civs, for example, vote to create a WTO, that the ones who don't except it don't get penalties, but instead just get negative diplo points with people that voted for the proposal and are in the organization. It seems more realistic that way. For another example, if today we were to create a new WTO (in the real world I'm talking about), lets say that every country except Mexico joins. All the other countries would get benefits like larger economy, more trade, etc. But Mexico wouldn't really suffer any penalties, its just missing out on an opportunity to better its economy and trade more. Its only real penalty will be that other leaders who want Mexico to join it will just get angry with the country... not much else in Mexico other than angry foreign leaders would really happen to the country. Same would go with civics, Mexico wouldn't change a bit while the rest of the world (who adopted the civic) would just get pissy at Mexico for it. The only other penalty realistically I can see happening to Mexico if it were to defy U.N proposals is angry citizens that want the civic change... other than that I think it would be more realistic not for the Civ to suffer penalties, just negative diplo points and the possibility of angry citizens.

Joecoolyo,

I agree about the diplo thing, infact I actually consider this a penalty, so I guess it's just a difference of terminology there. As I said in the initial post, non adherence to a successful proposal could attract financial/trade/diplo penalties.

I would have to slightly disagree with your point about there being no financial hit from pulling out of international trade agreements or indeed being the last one left when everyone else is trading. You acknowedge the loss of opportunity from new trade, but consider that in reality your existing trade is liable to be substituted if a new trade organisation is set up and you don't join. Why would someone continue to pay your tariffs if they can now get it cheaper from somewhere else? Such is the globalized economy that any financial penalty would just be simulating the role of the competitive marketplace.

Also, for instance, think about all those firms investing in Mexico. They only have limited resource (and demand for their products) so maybe they'll pack up and go to Brazil where it's cheaper? And not just manufacturing industry- the WTO protects intellectual property so make sure you don't invent anything or have any sort of industry secrets in Russia- NOT in the WTO- because they think nothing of just stealing it... companies will leave in droves (admittedly maybe not straight away as they have sunk investments).

I guess this depends on the extent to which the economy was geared towards receiving Foreign investment and also the extent of imports/exports. The vast majority of nations ie free market liberal would take a hit- so if Canada did that then it'd be disastrous, whereas North Korea can't really get much worse and Myanmar, Cuba etc has an economy which is planned to be less exposed and reliant on international trade.

So I guess I'm suggesting something like:

Penalty= -x diplo points with WTO nations
-1 trade route per city OR/AND -x% per trade route for civs with 'Deregulated' or 'Corporatist' economic civic

This represents that if you operate a free market economy, so characterised by a reliance on trade then if you begin to lose your competitive edge then you will lose some of your existing commerce.

---

Also, the WTO vote can also be used to screw developing nations as free trade (not fair trade) is heavily biased towards the interests of corporate US/EU and other developed nations.

How this could be done I'm not sure as I'm not as clear on the entire make up of this Mod, but some sort of bonus for corporations would make sense.