I think in the next civ, to the things get more harder, it will be some kind of civil war in your own country, when you are screwed the things and the people are not very content with your goverment. Then it appears various factions, each one with its own possible goverments (the ones that have been discovered), and the player have to "liberate" all the cities. This would occur even if you are at war with other countries, and that wars continue normally.
If in some time, nothing resolves, then the factions can go to a deal, forming then new countries....

Please give your comments....

That´s a great idea. Just look at real life and how civil wars formed nations. This idea should be evolved to colonys - Independence wars!

Yeah, that's a great ideia too.
You can have small cities in a certain continent or land, that formed your colonies.

I agree. There should be more nations being formed throughout the game in general. No modern nation was around in the ancient age, so why should it be that way in Civ? If in area of your nation is unhappy and sufficiently far away from your capital, it should form its own nation and rebel. These new nations might even defeat their mother country and become a major world power.

That's right, and this should happens not only with you, but with the pc as well. Then you have the possibility to take one side of the civil war and support that faction, gaining then a reward.

Civil War is very much necessary!

There should also be a life-time renegotiation option to rejoin the two civs, or negotiate a truce... Also, the new civ's capital could maybe be placed in the Civ3 second capital if it is built...

I definately like this idea, and Jake5555's point as well.

The distribuition of units when the country go to a civil war will be very hard to deal.....Maybe the quantity of units themselves split into two and be distributed to the factions.
Another thing that would be interesting is when you go to the civil war and if you don't have much military units to control, your own citizens turn into conscripts and fight for you, without having the disanvantage of having people unhappy, like happens when you do this with draft.
You take as many citizens as you want until contues the civil war. When it's over you have to return them to their homes.

I had a similar idea, but it was for Resistors, I think I'll start afresh for this one, and maybe start a new thread for Resistors (its burried somewhere).

I think Civil Wars should really have a lot to do with culture, unrest, and disorder. I think when a city is going to flip due to culture, it will first riot (attacking and killing the military units in the city before fully forming military units). Then the city will get a white (Barbarian) border and any units produced will take the name of the city. Of course, since this a cultural flip, they will probably pledge allegiance to a new nation in a turn or two, if you don't stop the rebellion sooner. Than the new owners can bring units to the city, and the city will join that nation.

Civil Wars can also be caused by unrest (say pop-rush, or just unhappiness). They happen more frequently than culture, because unhappiness is more common. But they aren't necessarily going to flip to another nation. They will probably just attack you, trying to capture new cities.

BTW, if there are a lot of cities in unrest at the same time that riot and rebel, you have a much bigger problem. They take the name of the first city to rebel and, although some cities might peacefully submit again, the rebellion might spread as well. Although content cities will usually stay loyal if they feel safe. But they will launch organized war against you, and might have a chance to defeat you (if you are destroyed they take your civ color, and your civ, as the new government). If they take your capital, there is a chance many cities will defect (assuming you don't have lots of units to stop them).

There are ways to stop them. When they are rioting and in armed resistance, military police can stop them (sort of like stopping resistors), but, in democracy, this can cause more unhappiness. Police Station work much more effectively. If the units in the city are killed, you can use any force necessary to bring the city back under your control. Aside from that, just keep them happy (or under control).

Another good thing that maybe would be fun is the terrorism.
In modern times, it will like barbarians, but with other weapons and with some specific objectives, like the ones on ETA and Al-Quaeda.

Civil war should be implimented. Absolutely.

Loved them in Civ II. Missed them in Civ III. A must have in Civ IV.

The new concept I hope Civ4 will incorporate is the city-states concept.

Usually in history, a civilization does not build cities on its own. The growth of an empire is usually through the conquest of neighboring city states.

I want Civ4 to have several hundred different city states. The player has to either conquer the state or acquire it through marriage (through popular vote in democracy, and through senate resolution in republic only when nationalism is available).

When the culture in a city is really low, the city can become independent if the citizens are not happy. The city will become a city state in which the player cannot control. All of the units produced by this city will rebel against the player. This will create a mini civil war. This concept will force the player to be more careful about his culture and the sad citizens.

The potential for your cities to rebel should absolutely replace corruption and waste as the main "brake" applied to keep the larger civs from running away with the game. And the concept of "culture flipping" should definitely be re-worked and tied into the idea of rebellions and civil wars. No one has any fun when a city they have a dozen units in suddenly pledges allegiance to some other civ and all those units dissapear. To sum up:

Bad: cities flipping instantly to another civ and your military units disappear.
Good: cities want to join another civ so they rebel and your military units get attacked.
Even better: cities occasionally want to rebel and start a new civ (or re-start a defeated civ, if the city has people from that civ) instead of joining an existing rival.

That is also a good idea, but i think this will only apply to the ancient times and end almost in the medieval times. I'm saying this, because if we see the facts of history, we realized that this happens only in this period.

Originally posted by RegentMan
Loved them in Civ II. Missed them in Civ III. A must have in Civ IV.

Exactly.

This is somewhat relevant to the whole civil war / rebellion / culture flip discussion: why are new people who are born in your cities automatically your nationality, even if you just conquered the city the previous turn? Surely their parents (who are the ones chanting "Stop the agression against our mother country!") would try to raise them to dislike you. The problem with the way it works now is that it encourages you to starve a newly conquered city way down to low population, then let it grow back up full of your own people who won't try to instigate a culture flip.

A simple solution, since the computer keeps track of how much culture the previous owner of the city had built up there as well as how much you build up, is for the new citizens of a city to be whatever nationality has the most culture in that city. Thus, you wouldn't get new citizens of your own nationality until you had built a few improvements in the city and owned it for several turns. You could still starve the natives off and repopulate with your own people, but you'd have to do that by bringing in workers and joining them to the city, instead of just letting it grow back on its own. It would make the starve/repopulate strategy a little bit less attractive.

A more complicated solution would be for the nationality of new citizens to be determined by a combination of culture in the city, current population (what percentage are foreign citizens), and possibly overall culture. The more foreign citizens a city has, the more likely new citizens will consider themselves foreign, unless they see your culture as being dominant, in which case they scorn the culture of their parents and assimilate themselves into your nationality. The point is, you should have to either invest some energy in building cultural improvement and/or re-settle some people from elsewhere in your empire into a newly conquered city before the new citizens born there have any chance of being your nationality.

But the fact of the new citizens born in that cities were ours it's totally legit: It can be explained with the migration of people to that city. The citizens with diferent cultures have too it's own grow, but while the young citizens arise, the old citizens die......

"That is also a good idea, but i think this will only apply to the ancient times and end almost in the medieval times. I'm saying this, because if we see the facts of history, we realized that this happens only in this period."

Yea, because the english diden't have a civil war in the medieval times, America diden't rebell from the English, Brazil is still a Portugeese colony, and the Southern US diden't try to form it's own country.

-Sem

Semulin, i was refering to the idea of the cities-states.....
I must say that i've do that comment out of time, because that comment was refered to Headline's post...

Yes on Civil War! Moreover, if an opposing Civ conquers your capitol, the government should split in two: a vichy state and a free state. You would still control the rebellion side and maybe if you got your original capitol back, you would gain the vichy cities back, too.

If your Civ conquers another's capitol, you would get to control the vichy side or it could function as a locked alliance.

Vichy state? Is this has any relation with the WW2? (Vichy Government in France)
But i get what you mean...
In the next civ, if it will exist these civil wars, then you can choose too begin a game as being a rebel faction of a civil war created as you create a new game (of course the pc would create the age and the cities of all the civilizations)

Originally posted by Comrade Pedro
That is also a good idea, but i think this will only apply to the ancient times and end almost in the medieval times. I'm saying this, because if we see the facts of history, we realized that this happens only in this period.

Yeah, exactly. All major civilizations will somehow conquer or acquire these city states until the border of one civilization is right next to the other civilizations. This process will usually finish before the modern time. There are examples of such city states that was not assimilated until today. e.g. Swiss, Loxembourg, Ireland, Yugoslavia.

Notice that as time progress, player has more time to build cultures within his cities, so it is harder to have the civil war I described in the modern time.

Yeah, that will be a great idea.

Originally posted by Comrade Pedro
In the next civ, if it will exist these civil wars, then you can choose too begin a game as being a rebel faction of a civil war created as you create a new game (of course the pc would create the age and the cities of all the civilizations)
After reading that, I must be at McDonalds because I'm lovin' it! ;) Seriously though that would be a great way to start a game. You could even specify the map size, shape, and era you begin in. It'd be a truly unique way to play.

Originally posted by Comrade Pedro
Vichy state? Is this has any relation with the WW2? (Vichy Government in France)
But i get what you mean...
In the next civ, if it will exist these civil wars, then you can choose too begin a game as being a rebel faction of a civil war created as you create a new game (of course the pc would create the age and the cities of all the civilizations)

Yep, you can have Vichy Babylon and Vichy Rome! :)

Originally posted by JazzToucan
Yep, you can have Vichy Babylon and Vichy Rome! :)
Maybe the new state should be named after its new capital, like Vichy France. Then we'd have some unusual civilization names like Ur Babylon, Caesarea Byzantine, Nottingham England. :crazyeye:

I still say my province idea would be perfect for civil wars... and would add just as big a new addition to the game as culture did [probably even more!]

Boy do I feel like an Idiot! Sorry Comrade Pedro!

/humble apology

There are a lot of good suggestions here, but not all can be combined IMHO. I want to address some things that have come up here, so the following will include ideas by many.

I agree wholeheartedly with Judgement in that corruption should be remodeled and civil wars be implemented as the main brake. The corruption model is by far the single most annoying feature in Civ3, as it renders your furthest away cities completely useless. I can understand that corruption represents simply that your nation as a whole cannot benefit from the city (the money is lost somewhere along the way), but the waste-system is horrid. Why wouldn't the people of this faraway city want to build walls, temples, marketplaces? Just because you are not whipping them to action?

I think that culture should be made more decisive than it is now. My idea is a combination of earlier ideas. Let's say that I build a city in a faraway tundra up north where there are no other civs - so no actual cultural flipping. Now the people living there here only distant echoes of the main bulk of my civ and probably don't feel as comfortable with being part of my distant nation as the people living in my capital. So they should begin to think that their interests would be better handled if they handled them themselves. Even more so if they are kept unhappy. On the other hand, their thoughts about the goodness of their ruler might "magically" be better if there were a lot of units garrisoned there.

Now the main idea is that there should be a certain possibility each turn of a city defecting and forming its own nation, and this probability would be tied up with combined culture, happiness and military strength resident in the city - perhaps even distance. Now the point about the culture is that it is more dependant on the main bulk of your empire. The culture that would affect the defection probability should NOT be the culture of the city in question, but the culture of other cities near it. Take the culture of the another city and divide it by distance. Being in the trade-network would decrease the possibility of defection significantly. There is no point in the idea that a distant and lone city with 1000 culture points should not break away of your nation - on the contrary: they would be very aware of their own identity.

This would cause a large nation to rip apart from the edges - as I believe is historically correct. Perhaps the possibility of breakaways would be increased in nearby cities in one broke away - they would use the situation to their advantage and join the fledgling nation.

What would this mean in reality? The city would defect while there were three of your military units inside it. Instead of being destroyed or grabbed away by the breakaway city, they would be tossed out of the city with one hp each (representing the fight they were engaged in when the people rioted). The city in question would then draft a few units (without the unhappiness penalty). You could retake the city by allowing the tossed-out units to heal or by bringing more units. If other cities broke away simultaneously, it might be hard to get them back, even impossible. (Or it might not be worth the trouble, as they would probably defect again).

The new civ would have all the techs you have and would be a wholly new civ (a city-state, if you wish) and would in time gradually expand (and even one day be a real threat to you - or a real ally). This should happen often enough for the player to really think about expanding anymore. Also, the expansion is comparable to your culture, which makes sense.

This way we would have many civs born throughout the game. Your colonies across the seas would revolt and create a new civ (like America...) There could also be some city-states born randomly (much like the barbarian villages now, but more civlike) as Headline suggested.

If your edge-cities are near another civ, they might also be caught by it, as they do now. The size of your nation would increase along with your culture - this would bring a whole new aspect to the expansion-phase: if you expanded too quickly compared to your culture, you would only in effect create new civs around you.

Most needed IMO is the re-thinking of culture. The possibility of flipping should not be based on the city's own cultural value, but on the overall cultural value (and not at all in the actual city's cultural value). The actual city's cultural value would determine if the city would flip to another civ or if it would form a civ of its own. I know that the overall culture does affect in Civ3 as it is now (and it affects a lot), but what I am saying is that the cultural value of the specific city has no effect whatsoever on the the flipping probability. And your capital cannot flip (to prevent your first city, namely capital, revolt on its own at the very beginning, which would of course be stupid).

What do you guys think? Much of this is already said, I only endeavoured to make a coherent presentation of this admittedly great idea. :)

Shyrramar, I like the way you think :thumbsup:

Here's my take on the matter:

1) Any unhappy citizen in your cities has a small chance each turn to become a resistor (just like the ones that appear when you conquer a rival city). The chance would get higher the farther from your capital/forbidden palace/secret police HQ/etc, higher if closer to a rival capital/etc., and would be higher for citizens of foreign nationality. Note that even cities with mostly happy citizens often have a few unhappy ones, so this could theoretically happen anywhere, and would lead to two slightly different happiness related goals: trying to get happy citizens to outnumber unhappy ones, so you don't have civil disorder, and trying to turn unhappy citizens into content ones, to minimize the appearance of resistors. And of course, some improvments/wonders make unhappy people content while others make content people happy, and it would matter in some cases which was which.

2) Now, once a resistor appears, the city is in resistance, just like a freshly conquered city, and you need military units to suppress the resistor and turn him back into an ordinary citizen. The more units in the city, the faster this happens. But each turn the city is in resistance, the remaining people get less happy, so you better quell the resistance quickly or more resistors will start showing up.

3) Each turn a city is in resistance (whether as described above, or simply when you conquer an enemy city) there is some chance that a resistor will spontaneously draft themself into a military unit, which would be a foreign unit if it was a foreign citizen but be a barbarian (or brand-new-civ) unit if it had been a citizen of your nationality. If that unit attacked your units defending the city, maybe they would not get the defensive bonus for the city. If it was a foreign unit, the AI might instead choose to move the unit somewhere else rather than simply attacking the units in the city (it would depend on the overall situation of the game).

4) The only way to actually lose a city, either to another civ, or to a brand new civ born in the rebellion, would be if the city was actually conquered. Keep in mind that if the unit created by a resistor was successful in its first attack, there would be fewer of your units left in the city, thus fewer units suppressing the resistance, thus a greater chance that other resistors would appear and maybe draft themselves into hostile units.

To sum it all up...
Most of the time, all that would happen is that the occasional far-off city would go into resistance and you'd move in some extra military units to get things under control. Less frequently, the city would create actual hostile units, but you'd be able to defeat them and keep the city in your empire. However, if you had far away cities without adequete military garrisons, and you let the people there get too unhappy, it might happen that a rebellion would snowball out of control, all your units in that city might get defeated by the rebels, and the city would either pledge allegiance to a foreign power or declare itself the capital of a brand-new civ. If the latter happened, your other nearby cities would now be very close to a rival capital, so they'd have an increased chance of rebelling as well, and if successful, they'd likely join that new civ.

An Example...
You could then imagine that the American Revolution happened something like this: the English cities of Boston, Philadelphia, etc. were quite far from the English capital, and England maybe didn't have as many troops there as it would like because it needed them back in Europe for the war with France. And then maybe access to a luxury (like Tea) gets disrupted, or maybe the dwindling treasury of England prompts it to lower the luxury slider in order to increase the tax slider. In any case, the people's happiness drops, some of the cities go into resistance, a few pop out rebel units, and some of the English troops start getting defeated. By the time England can ship significant reinforcements across the Atlantic, a few cities have fallen to the rebels, and American has declared itself a brand-new civ. The American capital is now much closer to the cities on that continent that remain British, which increases the likelihood that they'll go into resistance as well, and to make matters worse, the new American civ makes diplomatic contact with France and signs an Alliance against England. England fights for a while, maybe occasionally taking back certain American cities, but the Americans capture other English cities in America, and eventually, England has to give up and agree to peace with the new American civ, leaving it with most of the North American cities (not all, the cities in Canada would remain English, for now).

It would be really cool, not to mention more historical, if this sort of thing could happen in the game. Sure, it'd be frustrating if you were England, but think about if you were France: you see some of the an AI rival's cities start rebelling, and think, "cool, let's help the rebels!"

And most importantly, this scheme would get rid of the culture-flips where you suddenly lose a huge stack of units in a defecting city. It'd be much more understandable (from the English perspective) if you actually saw your units fighting and losing, rather than simply dissappearing. Not to mention that the closest Civ 3 could get to the American Revolution would be to have some English cities culture-flip to the Iroquois :crazyeye: .

Shyrramar, I like the way you think

It's the only way I know, but thanks anyway :lol:

By the way: your summation is as long as the first "non-summative" part :rolleyes: But that's the way it goes sometimes...

Anyway, I like your ideas. One thing I would like to add, however, is that some system of co-ordination is needed. It would be too easy to quell the (stinking) resistance if the resistors and/or revolter-units came one at a time. I think it should build up, so that when it happened, it would be harder to stop. Apart from the cities being across seas, I find it hard to believe that single conscript units could overthrow your city - atleast if you have more than one unit there.

I think the exact system should be either of these:
(1) When one resistor goes on revolt, all the resistors in the city go revolutionary. So if you have managed to get four resisters in the city, a check would be made each turn for each of them if they will revolt. If one succeeds, the three others would follow. Now four conscripts would be a formidable power considering that you couldn't have many troops in the city if there were that many resisters. The resistors should also have a chance of appearing in numbers. Perhaps following your ingenious idea all the unhappy citizens would become resistors at once? This would make it more prudent to act swiftly or the situation would get out of hand. Otherwise one military unit could always quell the resulting resister.
(2) A resistor would remain hidden until it got enough friends (which could be arbitrary, or a fixed number, or depending on something - the number of overall citizens or military units). Then they would all at once become resistors (first they are an underground "organization", then an open one). Then the same idea would be applied to resistors becoming revolutionaries.

I think the first is better. The second is essentially the same, but would be more complicated. If the probabilities are formulated correctly, the first one is superior by far. I think this is necessary, as most revolutions are lead by some revolutionaries who organize the battles. The revolution will rarely succeed if not led by anyone - and we must remember that they aspire to be a civilization, so they must have a leader and must be organized. This would also make it a real threat - even more in war times, when you may not have enough military units to quell the resistance. Let us not forget, that many nations have revolted while their mother country was engaged in war. WWII especially affected in this way. And Finland broke away from Russia while it was waging the WWI and was in inner turmoil by its own revolution. This is also why I think one revolting city should increase the chances of other revolting too - perhaps the one revolting resister (the leader of the revolution, if you will) would actually trigger ALL your resisters in the nearby cities.

The probability of appearing resisters should lessen to zero (or virtually zero) quite quickly so as to prevent any resisters in empire core. They could turn into resisters, though, if there was a civil disorder. An empire-wide disorder could really become a tough situation, if half of your cities would get resisters. Then if only one of them became a revolutionary, all hell would break loose...Best end those democratic wars in time!

One more thing concerning a possible exploit. A city with resisters should NOT be possible to abandon (that trick would save a lot of trouble, as it would not result in a renegade state). Actually, I think that whenever a city is to be abandoned, a check would be made to see if it would gain independence (this is only rational: would the citizens really just leave?). The probability should be very high if it was a far-away city. This way rampaging a city and destroying it would make more sense - now I mostly just take the city and sell all the improvements and then abandon it. If you would do this, chances are that they would become an independent nation.

This just crossed my mind: what should be done with victory conditions? If mostly abandoned cities became new civs, then acquiring a domination (not to mention elimination) victory would become tedious indeed! One solution would be to ignore the new civs from victory conditions. This would also make sense, as the game is always between the few civs. Nobody seriously thinks that if you have 66% of pop. that means that you really do have - e.g. all the nonpopulated tiles are indeed empty of people! This new system just integrates them into the game. By the way, GalCiv had something like this, minor races. You could do everything with them as with the major races, but they didn't count in the victory conditions.

Judgement. Your example of America and France reminded me that GalCiv-type "shadow-wars" are very much needed. It would be great if you could covertly aid the rebels of another nation with units so that they would conquer a part of the mother nation. When your city rebelled, you would just have to wonder why on earth there are five knights the next turn in there... "I wonder if the French have something to do with this!" :hmm: "Oh, but my friend Alexander, I would NEVER do such a thing, now would I?" :satan:
:lol:
This would not result in a full-scale war (actually no war at all), but would have some of the same effects. I personally fought quite a few wars in GalCiv by building units and donating them to my ally, who happened to be in a war with a civ I disliked. I just didn't want to ruin all my trade-agreements with that civ :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Shyrramar

By the way: your summation is as long as the first "non-summative" part :rolleyes: But that's the way it goes sometimes...

Longer, acually :lol: . Really, though, the summation was just the one paragraph. the example about England and America wasn't really part of the summation. Maybe I'll edit my post...

When one resistor goes on revolt, all the resistors in the city go revolutionary.

Yes, absolutely, I should have thought of that! That way, if you're short on spare troops, you could take a risk and ignore a city with only one resistor for a few turns, cause the worst that would happen is a single rebel unit would appear. But if 4 or 5 citizens are resistors, you'd better get control of things fast or else 4 or 5 units might suddenly appear and wreck your day. Essentially, the number of resistors would be a measure of how dangerous the situation was, not just because units would be more likely to appear from more resistors, but because more units would appear when they did.

One more thing concerning a possible exploit. A city with resisters should NOT be possible to abandon (that trick would save a lot of trouble, as it would not result in a renegade state). Actually, I think that whenever a city is to be abandoned, a check would be made to see if it would gain independence (this is only rational: would the citizens really just leave?). The probability should be very high if it was a far-away city. This way rampaging a city and destroying it would make more sense - now I mostly just take the city and sell all the improvements and then abandon it. If you would do this, chances are that they would become an independent nation.

Good thinking! Personally, I'd like to see it such that only size 1 cities can be abandoned. You should have to move the rest of the people manually by creating workers. Your idea about the citizens rebelling when you try to abandon the city is a good one, though.

Yes, absolutely, I should have thought of that!

Yes, you should have :nono:

Personally, I'd like to see it such that only size 1 cities can be abandoned.

Oh, please no! Sorry to say, but I must totally disagree with you on this. I absolutely HATED it in Civ2 where you had to build ridiculous amounts of settlers to get rid of a city. It may not be realistic, but it was pure horror. I still wake up in the middle of the night from a pool of cold sweat, screaming. :cry:

It would be unnecessary anyway, as you could abandon the city and perhaps form a new civ. If you are intent on really destroying the city, you should abandon it and then kill all the people in it. The abandoning concept is a bit odd as it is now, for I would think that the 150,000 people in the city would object their total annihilation...?

technology could also affect this.
When you discover Nationalism, beware of those newly captured cities, and those with a more foreign cititzens and normal cititzens because they could rebell.

I absolutely want the return of civil wars. They add a very interesting part to the game.

Maybe you should also give civilizations the ability to foment civil war in rival civilizations - this could be an additional option under the espionage menu. It shouldn't be easy though - it should cost a LOT of gold, and be available only when your spy there is a veteran or elite (if they can become elite - i've never had one). If you're unsuccessful, it should cause a MAJOR diplomatic incident with your prospective victim very likely to declare war on you.

Also, you should have the ability to supply weapons (in the form of units) to any of the factions you choose to support.

I love the idea of reinstating civil wars!

Originally posted by Shyrramar
Oh, please no! Sorry to say, but I must totally disagree with you on this. I absolutely HATED it in Civ2 where you had to build ridiculous amounts of settlers to get rid of a city. It may not be realistic, but it was pure horror. I still wake up in the middle of the night from a pool of cold sweat, screaming.
Okay, Okay, I must admit, I very rarely abandon a city in Civ 3, and I can't recall ever doing it in Civ 2, so I wasn't really thinking about the logistics, just the realism (what happens to all those people?). As long as we avoid the exploit of simply abandoning any city with resistors, abandoning cities that are big is fine. Maybe some refugees could appear or something (but that's a different topic).

Your suggestion that it be impossible to abandon any city with resistors in it is great, although we might still need something else as well, to stop people from abandoning cities that were likely to produce resistors but hadn't yet. I like your idea that when you click "abandon" the city has a chance to rebel instead.

@enigma2010: I think that the whole of the diplomacy should be re-thought. This is one part of diplomacy/espionage, and should not need any elite spies. You could just aid the revolutionaries with units and money. This would of course worsen your relations with the civ in question, but should not cause war immediately. They could demand you to stop aiding the revolutionaries, or face the consequences. Then they might or might not start a war if you didn't comply. The AI shouldn't start wars so eagerly: it is much more intelligent to lose one city to revolutionaries than to lose five in a hopeless war against someone bigger than yourself!

In the thread about evacuation there came up an idea of immigrants leaving your cities. I think it would be a great idea to combine this with the ideas presented here. Some resistors would try to overthrow you, others would simply leave to settle another place. This way a whole lot of minor civs would be created throughout the land. It would be really interesting! These small nations would mostly rise and fall, but they could also gather lands and become real powers in the world.

I think this is really something that should be implemented in cIV!
:goodjob:

That idea is crucial to a better Civ experience.

Shyrramar and judgement,

Good idea!! :goodjob:

I just want to add something
There are 2 possible scenarios for each civil war.

1. Coup - A takeover of leadership. There is internal but not military struggle. This is portrayed in Civ as the peaceful revolution (although in reality it is not). However, since the character we controlled is the most brilliant man of the nation, he/she always win in a coup. Plus, he/she is immortal. :king:

2. Military Coup (civil war) - the rebel cannot takeover internally, so he relies on violent methods, which result in a civil war.

The conclusion of a civil war is either
a. Peaceful coexistence ¡V the rebel gain independence. You signed a peace treaty
b. Overthrown your government ¡V Game over. You lost the entire empire to the rebel
c. You quelled the rebels ¡V you regain the cities you lost. However, beware of your culture and the citizen mood, because the unhappy citizens can turn into resistors.

The culture that would affect the defection probability should NOT be the culture of the city in question, but the culture of other cities near it. Take the culture of the another city and divide it by distance. Being in the trade-network would decrease the possibility of defection significantly. There is no point in the idea that a distant and lone city with 1000 culture points should not break away of your nation - on the contrary: they would be very aware of their own identity.

This is a nice idea. This is what I think should be the case. Defection probability is calculated from the sum of citizen happiness and the average of X% of culture points per distance from each city of the empire per city. (In this case, a city of more culture points can exert the effect of the culture in a longer range). Equation: (Y% of total unhappy citizen + (X% £U (Culture points / distance of each city in the empire) / (number of city)) = Z, where Y= a constant value and X= a constant value. Once Z lowers to a pre-determine value, an unhappy citizen becomes a resistor like what judgement said (also, as Shyrramar said, the Z value should be very low and hard to achieve, and X and Y should be adjusted accordingly). Once that happens, a resistor increases Y constant of the nearby city by some factor (everyone fears terrorists). This increases unhappiness of the nearby cities. Unhappiness + the lack of cultural influences from surrounding cities using the above equation further create more resistors. Each (or a determined turns) turn, one unhappy citizen is converted to a resistor (one happy citizen to a content citizen). When 10% (subject to determination) of total citizens become resistors, civil disobedience can occur (there is not enough people to work on the farm). However, Military presence can prevent or suppress the civil disobedience. However, as the number of resistors increase to 50% of total citizens (you must be ignoring the situation!!!), the amount of military presence you need in order to suppress the resistors become exponential. You won¡¦t have enough military units to prevent the overthrown of your government.

How does one lose the city? I like Shyrramar¡¦s #1, but I also modified it a little bit. When the number of resistor reachs 4 units (subject to determination), and there aren¡¦t enough military presence (like what I just said), all four resistors become rebel conscripts or regular defenders. All of your units that once occupied the city are then kicked out of the city with one or two (elite) Health Points. Your will lose the city. This will significantly decrease the Z value of the cities surrounding it. If the cities don¡¦t have enough points to overcome the minimum Z, these cities will convert more citizens to resistors each turn, and these resistors will eventually rebel and cause a flip. This chain reaction will spread until it is stopped by the boundary cities that have the Z value higher than the requirement. This chain reaction can be stopped if you sign a peace treaty with the rebel. Once you sign the treaty, the rebel states become one new nation.

If you choose to have a war, you can attack the rebel city with the troops that were kicked out. However, since they have low health points, you will be risking the life of these troops. If you want to send in the reinforcements, they will have to cross the border, which will cost at least one turn (more turns if the rebel destroys the roads). You must be fast enough to get back the city or that the cities surrounding the rebel city will be converted (if they are also unhappy and have low cultural influences).

Of course, the details need to be adjusted to fit the gaming.

Long time reader, first time writer!
I am always frustrated by this feature because of two main conflicts.

1)This feature would either require a completely redone leaderhead system, or an incredible amount of leaderheads,(can anyone name me a leaderhead for Sumerian seperatists?) and,

2)This feature would put a heavy load on the processor, unless there was some way to budget the total amount of Civs in the game, by, perhaps, limiting the total amount of Civs to 31 and only allowing a new seperatist Civ when an old Civ has been crushed.

Just my thoughts.

I agree. Although I'm not a programmer, I think some people's imaginations are surpassing technical reality in terms of gameplay.

I stick by my simple suggestion that is only a slight improvement over Civ 1.

If another Civ takes your capitol, your Civ splits to form a non-occupation faction (controlled by you) and an occupation faction (controlled by the conquering Civ).

Although it would be neat if that new faction became an independent Civ, given the potential limit on civs, leaderheads, etc., I think it is unreasonable. Thus, the "occupation" part of your former Civ empire would be controlled by the AI that conquered it and remain in a locked alliance.

You would still be alive as the non-occupation Civ, still being called Rome or Ottomans or whatever Civ you were playing as, but with half or so of your territory as the rest went to the conquering Civ. If you managed to take back your original capitol, you gain back control of the forces, cities, territories you lost.

Again, if you conquer another Civ's capitol, you gain control of half or so of their cities, forces, etc. which you can control.

What this does is puts a little more significance in your capitol and adds a little character to the game.

While the other ideas are creative and would be interesting, I wouldn't want to bog down the gameplay with forty or so city-states running around the map and negotiating deals.

Originally posted by Geuiwogbil
Long time reader, first time writer!
1)This feature would either require a completely redone leaderhead system, or an incredible amount of leaderheads,(can anyone name me a leaderhead for Sumerian seperatists?) and,

Not necessarily. Since Civ is about rewriting history, there's no reason the new civ created by Sumerian rebels has to be a civ that was actually, historically created by Sumerian rebels. Just make it any civ from the same culture group that isn't currently in the game. Everyone's familiar with England giving birth to America, but perhaps in the alternate history of your particular game, Egypt or Babylon could be founded by Sumerian rebels.

As long as the total number of civs exceeds the number in your game, there's no problem. Say there's 32 civs and you play a game with 16: there's 16 others just waiting to be born by revolution. If you play on a super-huge map with every single available civ in the game, then maybe rebellions that produced new civs would just be disabled until a few civs had been eliminated (rebellions that joined an existing civ would of course still be possible). It might make sense to have that be the case no matter how many civs you start with, so that the number you start with is the maximum number for your game. I don't think it would make much difference, since the chances are high that by the time a civ gets big enough to worry about rebellions on its edges, a least one or two civs have probably been eliminated anyway.


2)This feature would put a heavy load on the processor, unless there was some way to budget the total amount of Civs in the game, by, perhaps, limiting the total amount of Civs to 31 and only allowing a new seperatist Civ when an old Civ has been crushed.

Exactly what I'm suggesting- as I said, you could even limit the number of civs to however many you started with.

You could have situations like the following (I'll use a small map with only 5 opponents to keep it shorter). Say you play as Babylon and your rivals start off as, say, China, India, Egypt, Greece, and the Mayans, who are off on a large continent by themselves. Maybe you eliminate Egypt. Then you help support a rebellion in part of the Greek empire and a new Roman civ results, which you ally with and together you eliminate Greece. Meanwhile China eliminates India, but in doing so they overexpand, and on their far side, rebels create a new Japanese civ. And by the time you all make contact with the Mayans, rebels in their empire has created an Incan civ as well. The total is still 6 civs, but now half of them are different ones than at the start of the game: a much more "realistic" alternate history, given that in the real world, many of the ancient age civs are long gone and many of the major modern powers didn't exist in 3000 BC.

Originally posted by JazzToucan
Although I'm not a programmer, I think some people's imaginations are surpassing technical reality in terms of gameplay.

:lol: Sure, there are plenty of fertile imaginations here, but as long as the total number of civs in a game is limited, I don't see how this idea poses any significant programming challenge. In Civ 3, its possible for eliminated civs to "respawn" if there is unsettled territory somewhere... why not let them also respawn through revolutions in existing civs that have grown too big (they wouldn't necessarily have to be the same civ as had been eliminated, although they could be, if many citizens of that nationality were present in the rebellious city).

Originally posted by Geuiwogbil
Long time reader, first time writer!
I am always frustrated by this feature because of two main conflicts.

1)This feature would either require a completely redone leaderhead system, or an incredible amount of leaderheads,(can anyone name me a leaderhead for Sumerian seperatists?) and,

2)This feature would put a heavy load on the processor, unless there was some way to budget the total amount of Civs in the game, by, perhaps, limiting the total amount of Civs to 31 and only allowing a new seperatist Civ when an old Civ has been crushed.

Nice to see that this interests you enough for you to post comments - and very good ones may I add! :)

I think it should follow GalCiv's logic: the irrelevant little civs would not have leaderheads, just a sign to represent them. Because they are of a minor role, they needn't be as personal as the real civs - this would also represent the fact that they had nothing to do with winning conditions.

As far as the processor goes, you are probably right to some extent. First of all, this should be made optional. As are the animations (which might have had similar complaints posted back then) currently. Second, someone posted here that cIV should use the same tactic as GalCiv (multithreadding?): most of the AI calculations would be done when you have your turn. The player's turn doesn't eat much of processor-strength. Thirdly: the resulting minor civs would in effect be small. They could also be programmed to spread more slowly. Three cities of one rebel civ is in essence the same thing as three cities of a real civ. As the number of cities on the map would not be any greater (this system would actually result in unused lands, which would be good), the processor would not get under such a burden. Anyhow, this is a good point and should not be taken lightly.

Originally posted by JazzToucan
Although I'm not a programmer, I think some people's imaginations are surpassing technical reality in terms of gameplay.

This might well be the case, but I wouldn't worry. This forum is for ideas. There are thousands of fans out there with thousands of ideas, some wild, some not so wild. The game developers can pick the ideas that are unacceptable, or change them so that they fit into the game. A different money system would of course make many ideas here obsolete, as they depended on that system. That doesn't mean that the original ideas were unnecessary and should not have been posted! And as some ideas are followed to their conclusion, we may just as well make a favor to the game designers: they would see that the idea they were themselves pondering would actually not work. And THAT is even more important than having ideas implemented: it could save the game from a complete disaster.

Originally posted by judgement
Not necessarily. Since Civ is about rewriting history, there's no reason the new civ created by Sumerian rebels has to be a civ that was actually, historically created by Sumerian rebels. Just make it any civ from the same culture group that isn't currently in the game. Everyone's familiar with England giving birth to America, but perhaps in the alternate history of your particular game, Egypt or Babylon could be founded by Sumerian rebels.


I actually liked the earlier idea that the rebellion civs would get named after the city which started the rebellion. So if Tyre was the Persian sity to revolt, the new civ would be called Tyreans or something like that. This would in effect leave all the "real" civs untouched - which would be the best solution IMHO.

@Headline:
Great thinking there! :goodjob:
I would rather not see the three possibilities a-c implemented. The game over solution would be too harsh and a and c would be the same situation with you acting differently. I think the newborn civ should almost immediately seek peace (three independent cities against 20 of your would not be an intelligent struggle), it would be up to you to either grant it and lose the cities or try to retake them. They could also later cause culture flips is your remaining border cities.

I agree with your ideas in general. The calculations are well thought. Perhaps you should think of it even more and post an exact calculation (or few possibilities), so it could perhaps be evaluated better? :)

taking about civil wars, what if spain conquered the incas, later those incan cities could rebel wanting independace. they name themselvs Peru or Latin America.

This way if the US sufers a civil war, the rebels could name themselves the Confederates or the English(rewritting history) instead of the Virginians

This is exactly what I was looking for in my other thread. I love these ideas about more civs. As I suggested in the other thread, break-off countries could be more conducive to alliances against an outside (i.e. previous enemy) civilization. Suppose that you are the Romans. You have a civil war and your empire sort of collapses giving rise to the French, Spanish, and Greeks (as well as your own Roman Itallians). Now the evil Turks (i.e. Ottomans) come invading the Greeks. You don't want the Greeks to fall to the foreign invaders. Neither should the Spanish and French, so an alliance should be easy to get to repel the infidels.

After the war, things go back to everybody (i.e. the AI) doing their own thing. Spain may go to war with you or the French. France may take an established barbarian kingdom named England. Soon, France faces internal struggles and England and France are broken apart (gee, just what were those Itallian merchants doing, giving mounds of gold to the English?).

Now, which culture group you belong to becomes much more important. Incorporating the ideas you guys suggested above. As for the problem for the computers, just make the small places neutral barbarian groups. They would have similar (if not all) techs to the groups they split off from.

In addition, constantly beating up on your neighbors should get a bunch of the smaller (read barbarian or splinter-group) nations to gang up on you and beat you to a pulp so that you calm down your empire-building armies. Then, after the war, the victors demand that you set free some of your cities as new countries (remember the recreation of Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Estonia after WWI?) These places are now ripe for the picking, except that, again, nobody wants his rival too big, so picking on the little guys may give you headaches.

Finally, I think that reputation needs to be reevaluated under this type of scenario. If you have gone for a long time without a war, you should not be punished for your past sins. Warmongering should be a temporary hit to negotiations, not an until-the-end-of-the-game experience. This should also go for those nations you have attacked, but the lingering resentment should last longer than when you attack someone else (sort of like the way war weariness is done in Civ3 now).

Here are my ideas
-Civil War happens if thy no. of angry citizens is above 50%
-If a city is taken by an enemy (other than civil war) happy citizens become rebels, content citizens become workers and angry citizens stay put.
Not sure yet how military forces would be handled.

I would love to see the return of civil wars in civ. But I think that there has to be something to counter it. Possibilities include...


A major reason for rebellions in early reality was lack of communication/understanding of the people by the government. This lack of communication can maybe be "countered" by the advent of the printing press, and later radio/television. Now since these can and have been used by both the rebels and the rebelled-against, maybe have it so that printing and radio help to lower the chances of a rebellion, but if resistors do arise, they are able to spread their word and discontent faster. This will work to represent the good, bad and ugly about mass communication.

you forgot Nationalism, this tech could split your empire in half or preserve it together.

When it comes to questions of HOW many cities would rebel, etc., I really think provinces could solve that. Having provinces, or, to be a little more clear, smaller [3-5 cities] suborganization of nations, would allow more complex relationships with your cities, because those situated in provinces would be able to tell you what they want, etc. They would have their own culture from their cities, which while it is part of the whole, is also seperate from each others, they would possibly have relationships with other provinces [like rivalries, for instance] albeit it should be far simpler than the relationships of civs themselves. If the capital and a powerful, rich, culturally adept province of yours on the other side of the continent have any trouble, that influential [due to pop, military, and culture] may just say 'you know what, we don't like being ruled by them anymore. We're just as strong. We're ridding ourselves of you' and take at least several smaller provinces within their vicinity [those within their sphere of influence] with them. That's just part of the civil war aspect of it, which would also include the benefits/problems of changing government forms (if in feudalism, and changing to monarchy, for example, the provinces, which enjoyed greater power to rule their own peoples with feudalism, may resist the change, if they are far away from the capital, and could possibly rebel with the goal of, first, keeping the nation feudal, and if that fails, creating their own nation), and many other things.

civil wars, i liked them in CIV2
why are they abandoned?

OK, at the risk of reintroducing an idea I have presented in other threads. I think that the idea of civil war is a good one-and it DOESN'T have to be to complicated to be effective.
In my response to some ideas in the Religion thread, I have presented all of my thoughts on both revolts AND Civil Wars-and how they should work in cIV-see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84950&perpage=20&pagenumber=4

Anyway, I'll try and summarise it hear:

1) Each Civ is broken down into its Demographic Components, i.e. Workers, Military, Intelligentsia (scientists and Educators) etc.

2) Each component (or faction) has its own level of happiness and influence, based on several pre-determined and player-determined factors.

3) If a factions happiness falls below a certain, critical level, then it has a chance of starting a revolt-based on its current influence.

4) The nature of a revolt is dependant on which faction starts it-for instance, a workers revolt might result in a loss of production or even food! A religious revolt would prevent religious improvements from working, etc. There would still be general revolts, which result from a lack of average happiness, which would work much the same as Civ2 and Civ3!

5) Every turn that a revolt goes on, there is a chance for it to turn into civil war-in fact, revolts are one of the possible 'Trigger Events' for Civil War.

6) Other possible 'Trigger Events' are Government/Religion Change, High Crime/Corruption, low culture (compared to neighbouring civs), high war weariness, Capital Loss or low happiness.

7) If one of the trigger conditions are met, then each city must check for its breakaway chance- a chance based on several factors, such as: Distance from Capital; # of Foreign Nationals; # of military Units; Corruption; Happiness; Avg. Social Influence; Culture Ratio (city's culture compared to the civs avaerage); War Weariness level; presence of other breakaway cities-and a few others. If this city breaks away, then it and any other break away cities will form a new nation-possibly with a new government and even new civ characteristics.

8) This new civ can either be dealt with diplomatically or re-integrated through force-depending on the player's (or AI's) choice.

Anyway, that's my contribution to the CW debate :)!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

What about this as a suggestion. The game could optional start only with ancient civilisations, such as Egyptians, Babylonians etc. During a civil war the ancient state would break up into two or more new states. These states could be either city states or whole new civilisations.

For example, War of Independence - Americans start a new civilization from English

The English themselves came about from a norman invasion etc.

Maybe if each civilization could have a list of city states or civilizations that can break away from them, it may add more realism and fun to the game.

For the English

You could have the following breakaway civilisations

USA
Australia
Canada
etc

City States Gibraltar, Hong Kong..

Oh yeah!

@akhics: and for the Incas you could have the following breakway civilizations...? It would only work for some of the civs, not for all - and as has been said earlier a dozen times, civ should be about re-writing, not re-living history. This would also cause terrible problems in the civlist: you couldn't have USA as a civ then. You could only have all the "original" civs as the maincivs.

Peru could break out of the Incan thyrrany, and form an independent nation! ;)

Originally posted by Shyrramar
@akhics: and for the Incas you could have the following breakway civilizations...? It would only work for some of the civs, not for all - and as has been said earlier a dozen times, civ should be about re-writing, not re-living history. This would also cause terrible problems in the civlist: you couldn't have USA as a civ then. You could only have all the "original" civs as the maincivs.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, France could be a breakaway civ from the Incas. Or Japan. Or anyone. As you say, civ is about re-writing history, so it doesn't always have to be America formed out of England, in another version of history, it could be England formed out of America, or America formed out of Babylon, or whatever!

Personally, I'd limit it to civs within the same culture group, though.

Originally posted by judgement
As I've mentioned elsewhere, France could be a breakaway civ from the Incas. Or Japan. Or anyone. As you say, civ is about re-writing history, so it doesn't always have to be America formed out of England, in another version of history, it could be England formed out of America, or America formed out of Babylon, or whatever!

Personally, I'd limit it to civs within the same culture group, though.

Yes, well, I think that renaming the civ according to the city that began the revolution is much better idea IMO. This way we shouldn't have to add more civs to have more little civilizations. One should not forget that in a huge map there can be all civs in the play - and that would leave no names to breakaway-civs. Of course, there could be a list of those (as there are barbarians). Making them have the names of existing civs is problematic, but I can go with that. I am only against pre-determined breakaway civs.

Although I accept that we are not going according to history, it doesn't mean that we can't apply common sense to breakaway states!
Heres my suggestion. You have a fairly large database of Civ Names, their Culture Group, their Leader (male/female) and their Civ Characteristics. Then if a civil war breaks out, then the computer will scan through the appropriate culture group to find an unused civ to which the breakaway states can convert. So, for instance, a Civil War within the Incan nation might produce the Mayans, wheras a Russian Civil War might lead to the creation of Poland or Serbia! Its not 100% historically accurate, but it sounds a lot better to me than Japan forming from a German civil war or the like!
Oh and, BTW, this same database could be used to determine names and characteristics for Minor Nations as well!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Originally posted by Aussie_Lurker
Although I accept that we are not going according to history, it doesn't mean that we can't apply common sense to breakaway states!

Yes, as I said, I'd personally prefer if they kept the nex breakaway civ within the same culture group.

Originally posted by Shyrramar
Yes, well, I think that renaming the civ according to the city that began the revolution is much better idea IMO. This way we shouldn't have to add more civs to have more little civilizations.
We're at the intersection of two different ideas here: minor civs, and breakaway civs. They could be combined (and, in fact, I like both ideas), but I was not thinking of the combination, only about breakaway civs.

If the breakaway civ due to a rebellion is a full-fledged civ, with the same potential as any other in the game, then it should have its own leaderhead, traits, and UU: in other words, it needs to be one of the existing civs. It wouldn't be "more little civilizations" - it would be another real civ.

On the other hand, if I understand you correctly, you're saying it would be better if the breakaway civ was a minor civ, not a full fledged civ. That is also a good possibility, but in that case, I still disagree about naming it after the city that started the rebellion. After all, the USA isn't named after any particular city. I would go with having a list of minor civ names (maybe one list for each culture group). This would essentially be the same as the current list of names for barbarian tribes, but the names would get applied to minor civs (whether they existed at the beginning of the game or were formed through Civil Wars/rebellions).

Personally, I like the idea that the new civs would be real civs. After all, America is a pretty dominant civ in the modern world today, yet it was formed via rebellion. I understand your concern that calculating the final score might get complicated if new major civs could appear in the middle of the game, but on the other hand, it would certainly be more "realistic." Gameplay would be more limited if rebellions could only produce minor civs that didn't have their own leaderheads, UUs, etc. (although, conversely, the numbers and names of new civs would be less limited).

Well, letting the naming procedure be, the scoring system is a huge problem, not just "complicated". For instance, elimination victory would be practically impossible. If breakaway civs are introduced, so would be domination. That is the reason why I'd like the new civs to NOT count toward the victory conditions. I don't actually advocate that the breakaway civs shouldn't be full-fledged civs, I am for it.

And what comes to your comment about making the scoring system more complicated (and victory itself), but being certainly more realistic. Yes, it would be more realistic, but I believe we agree that realism should never go before playability - and I see the problems concerning victory conditions as a huge problem to playability. Instead of playing whack-a-mole with pollution and workers, we would be playing whack-a-mole with little civs and our army of tanks!

Originally posted by Shyrramar
Well, letting the naming procedure be, the scoring system is a huge problem, not just "complicated". For instance, elimination victory would be practically impossible. If breakaway civs are introduced, so would be domination. That is the reason why I'd like the new civs to NOT count toward the victory conditions. I don't actually advocate that the breakaway civs shouldn't be full-fledged civs, I am for it.
But of course, that all depends on the how likely breakaways are. I think we've agreed that one of the main reasons for rebellions/civil wars/breakaway civs is as a substitute for corruption & waste, i.e., to act as a "brake" to curb runaway success. Its also realistic, of course, but our main objective is a mechanism that gives better gameplay than the flawed corruption/waste model. So, the chances of breakaway civs needs to be carefully tuned: too unlikely, and there's no "brake" (success feeds upon itself and the largest always gets larger) but too likely, and elimination/domination victory becomes impossible (its too difficult to get large enough to win). I submit that there is a happy spot in between, where the possibility of rebellions makes growing very large difficult but not too difficult.

And what comes to your comment about making the scoring system more complicated (and victory itself), but being certainly more realistic. Yes, it would be more realistic, but I believe we agree that realism should never go before playability - and I see the problems concerning victory conditions as a huge problem to playability. Instead of playing whack-a-mole with pollution and workers, we would be playing whack-a-mole with little civs and our army of tanks!
Yes, by all means, gameplay before realism. But whack-a-mole with breakaway civs would only be a problem if it was something that happened all the time. If it only occurred a couple times per game, it wouldn't be so big a problem. If you were on your way to a domination victory, you might have to spend a couple extra turns suppressing a rebellion, but you wouldn't have lots of them to worry about. And if you wanted an elimination victory, you might have to destroy one or two extra civs that had appeared, but it should still be possible to get rid of them all.

I guess I just don't see how scoring would be so big a problem. What am I missing?

I think you are missing the combination of the two, judgement. Your comments make sense, but only separately. In the upper paragraph you (rightly so) argue for balance. In the lower paragraph you are already making suppositions about the number of breakaways. Two? That's not nearly enough to work as a brake. Considering that the civ must be big (to get elimination/domination victory), two pesky rebellions wouldn't stop me from expanding. If it is supposed to be a real brake, it should happen more often to a large nation, so that the player would understand to stop the pointless expanding as the new cities would only (with very high probability) revolt.

Yes, there wouldn't be no whack-a-mole with revolting civs if there were only two, but then there wouldn't be any brake. If there were a lot of revolts (thus a brake), then there would be whack-a-mole. What I am saying is that this whole problem (that you don't see as a problem, apparently) could be avoided by not making the resulting civs "count". They wouldn't probably ever win anyway, as they are born too late in the game to accumulate enough points. If they didn't count (as in GalCiv, by the way), then there could be as many of them as needed, so there could be both the brake and the avoided whack-a-mole.

What I am talking about a "break" here (that would replace corruption, mind you), is that outlying cities would almost certainly revolt if there was very little culture reaching it. Say, if your current "outer ring" (even though it wasn't a ring) of cities didn't produce culture of their own, it would be almost assured that within 20 turns a revolt would occur if you built cities beyond that ring. This way the player would be forced slow down until the outer ring is sufficiently cultured and then move forward. In the beginning of the game, you could build perhaps four cities around your capital until you had to take the culture into account. The exact numbers are of course vague still, but I am most certainly talking about more than two breakaways for an overextending civ (but most probably none, if you were careful, mind you). If there was only two, how could that ever function as any break for a civ that was aspiring domination (so it would already have enough army-power to easily crush those breakaway civs).

So what you are missing (IMO) is the combination of the two. Perhaps I am wrong. If so, correct me ;)

I think we should distinguish three types of break-up. One is of purely civil war nature, the another is dead-civ coming back from death, and the third being foreigners rebel against you to join their mother civ.

The first type would be like the American civil war, the new civ formed would have same trait and UU as the civ from which it broke out of. Of course, with a different leader and different name. (we should have several leaders to choose from for each civ, so that there are always leaders and names left for the breakaway civ)

In the case of the 2nd and 3rd types of rebellion, the new civ will have the trait and UU of its former civ. A new civ borned out of Chinese rebellion would be industrious/Militarilistic as the old Chinese civ was and would have rider as UU. If the rebellion is foreigners trying to rejoin their mother civ, the cities simply flip back to its former owner, like cultural flip.

For the division of military units, the unit stationed in the rebeling city would simply go over to the side of the rebels. Or, alternatively, we can have each rebelling city generate 2 defender units, the military units stationed in that city will be sent back to your capital with only half health, simulating the damage inflicted on them by the insurgents.

The chance for the flipping should depend on several factors, the most important being happiness and cultural difference. We need to re work the luxury system. In our current system, the bigger you are, the more luxury you have and hence the happier your people. If this system is not changed, you will never have rebellion.

Originally posted by Dida
I think we should distinguish three types of break-up.
Yes, I agree with this distinction, and clearly, the discussion over what to call the new civ and whether its a "real" civ or not (and whether is counts towards victory conditions) applies only to the first type.

Originally posted by Shyrramar
In the lower paragraph you are already making suppositions about the number of breakaways. Two? That's not nearly enough to work as a brake. Considering that the civ must be big (to get elimination/domination victory), two pesky rebellions wouldn't stop me from expanding. If it is supposed to be a real brake, it should happen more often to a large nation, so that the player would understand to stop the pointless expanding as the new cities would only (with very high probability) revolt.
Sorry, you're quite right, two was just an arbitrary, made up number. However...


What I am talking about a "break" here (that would replace corruption, mind you), is that outlying cities would almost certainly revolt if there was very little culture reaching it. Say, if your current "outer ring" (even though it wasn't a ring) of cities didn't produce culture of their own, it would be almost assured that within 20 turns a revolt would occur if you built cities beyond that ring. This way the player would be forced slow down until the outer ring is sufficiently cultured and then move forward. In the beginning of the game, you could build perhaps four cities around your capital until you had to take the culture into account. The exact numbers are of course vague still, but I am most certainly talking about more than two breakaways for an overextending civ (but most probably none, if you were careful, mind you). If there was only two, how could that ever function as any break for a civ that was aspiring domination (so it would already have enough army-power to easily crush those breakaway civs).
You say more than two breakaways are needed for an overextended civ, and I agree. But, as long as you are careful, building up your culture as you expand and keeping enough military units in your cities to quell potential uprisings, then you should be able to expand without too many breakaways. In other words, the "brake" slows you down, but it doesn't stop you completely. If you try to expand too fast, rebellions are a serious problem for you, but if you expand more carefully, only a few rebellions might happen. Rebellions keep you from "overextending", but not from"extending."

Currently, the corruption/waste brake doesn't really slow down expansion, it just makes expansion past a certain point not particularly useful unless you are trying for a domination or elimination victory. Once you reach OCN, every time you think about conquering or founding a new city, you must ask yourself "is it worth it, considering that the city will probably only have 1 useful shield, and not bring in any money, either?" With the breakaway civ idea, expansion is slowed, but you never reach a point where further expansion is useless. You instead ask yourself the question "is it worth conquering/founding this new city, considering the risk that it might rebel? Do I have enough units to keep control and enough luxuries to keep people happy until I can get enough cultural improvements built to consolidate my control?" To me, these are better questions: I hate it when new cities are simply useless. And the question is the same, no matter whether you already have 5 cities or 50. Unlike corruption, where you expand until you reach some optimal number, rebellions impose an optimal pace for expansion. All they would have to do in the way of "tuning" the numbers properly was to make sure that the optimal pace was fast enough that there was plenty of time in the course of the game to win by elimination/domination, but the optimal pace was not so fast that winning by these methods was too easy (presumably, they try to make all the different victory conditions equally challenging).

So, going back to my arbitrary choice of "two" as a number of rebellions you would face, this might be a typical number only if you were expanding at or near the optimal pace, letting your culture catch up as you expand. You could still win a domination or elimination victory by expanding at that pace, just not by 1000 BC! If you tried to expand faster, you'd face quite a few more rebellions, so winning quickly by domination or elimination would be very challenging: there would be the "brake" on rapid expansion. On the other hand, if you were a "builder" type, and wanted to win by Spaceship or UN Vote or Cultural Victory, then you might expand slower than the optimal rate dictated by how fast your culture catches up. In that case, you might never have to worry much about rebellions, not even having the two per game that I suggested. And of course, "two" was just a vague guess... playtesting would of course fine tune what the proper number was for a civ expanding at a typical rate, and it would also be needed to fine tune what the proper chances of rebellions were in order to dictate the optimal expansion rate.

And of course, unlike the OCN, the "optimal expansion rate" wouldn't be a hard-coded number. If you weren't willing to risk any rebellions, you'd have to expand at one (slow) rate. If you didn't mind risking having one or two occsionally (as long as you could successfully quell the uprising and/or reconquer the rebellious cities) then you could choose to expand at a different, faster rate. And if you were willing to risk frequent rebellions in many cities (and just hoped to grab a victory before they got too out of control, or had some other goal in mind like grabbing lots of resources) then you'd be free to expand even faster. With OCN, above a certain number of cities, there's a sudden change in how useful new ones are. With rebellions, its a gradual change: the faster you expand, and the less you build up culture in the new cities, the worse problem rebellions are.

I know you aren't arguing in support of corruption/OCN: we both agree that rebellions are the better way to have a brake on expansion. You're just arguing that making rebellions an effective brake would require them to be likely enough that domination/elimination victories would be impossible. I disagree, and am pointing out that, although the OCN brake gives a penalty for expanding too far, the rebellion brake only gives a penalty for expanding too fast. So, elimination and domination victories are quite possible as long as you take your time, and in fact, would be more enjoyable than they are currently, because you wouldn't have to have tons of useless cities in order to achieve them.

By the way, unless you turn off Domination victory, is it likely to ever get Elimination victory? I guess you'd have to leave much of the world unpopulated in order to eliminate all rivals but not get 2/3 of the map for yourself. Just curious, since personally, I've always achieved domination before elimination.

Originally posted by judgement
You say more than two breakaways are needed for an overextended civ, and I agree. But, as long as you are careful, building up your culture as you expand and keeping enough military units in your cities to quell potential uprisings, then you should be able to expand without too many breakaways. In other words, the "brake" slows you down, but it doesn't stop you completely. If you try to expand too fast, rebellions are a serious problem for you, but if you expand more carefully, only a few rebellions might happen. Rebellions keep you from "overextending", but not from"extending."

Currently, the corruption/waste brake doesn't really slow down expansion, it just makes expansion past a certain point not particularly useful unless you are trying for a domination or elimination victory. Once you reach OCN, every time you think about conquering or founding a new city, you must ask yourself "is it worth it, considering that the city will probably only have 1 useful shield, and not bring in any money, either?" With the breakaway civ idea, expansion is slowed, but you never reach a point where further expansion is useless. You instead ask yourself the question "is it worth conquering/founding this new city, considering the risk that it might rebel? Do I have enough units to keep control and enough luxuries to keep people happy until I can get enough cultural improvements built to consolidate my control?" To me, these are better questions: I hate it when new cities are simply useless. And the question is the same, no matter whether you already have 5 cities or 50. Unlike corruption, where you expand until you reach some optimal number, rebellions impose an optimal pace for expansion. All they would have to do in the way of "tuning" the numbers properly was to make sure that the optimal pace was fast enough that there was plenty of time in the course of the game to win by elimination/domination, but the optimal pace was not so fast that winning by these methods was too easy (presumably, they try to make all the different victory conditions equally challenging).

This is just what I was suggesting. By careful gameplay you should be able to avoid having any rebellions, with reckless style you would be fighting almost constant skirmishes in the peripheria.

One problem came to my mind, though. I don't really like the prospects that a civ can grow as large as it wants if it does so carefully and builds up its culture. I wonder if it could be made so that the mere distance from capital is always a factor - so your city that is 10 tiles away from your capital requires much lesser culture than the city 20 tiles away. This would cause rapid growth in the rebellion probability, as there is of course also lesser culture affecting the city 20 tiles away in addition to the higher requirement - and that would be good IMO.

All in all, I really think this is the single best idea there currently is. I think it would give whole new dimensions to the game and make the game much more interesting and fun - and it wouldn't be hard for players to comprehend. It actually seems much less arbitrary than the current corruption system! Instead of English colonies in America being totally unproductive, they would be productive - to the point they would actually revolt and form a new nation.

I know you aren't arguing in support of corruption/OCN
Sure as hell not! :lol:
You're just arguing that making rebellions an effective brake would require them to be likely enough that domination/elimination victories would be impossible. I disagree

So do I! I don't know what gave you such an impression, as it is completely wrong. Why on earth would I advocate for making domination/elimination victories impossible? Zheesh :cry:

I was saying that in order to make the rebellions an effective brake, they would happen often enough to have serious consequences for reckless civs. Now what the problem was is the resulting nations being part of the victory conditions. These two would be very hard to combine. I am trying to save elimination/domination, not throw them away! After doing all the other victories, those are the ones with most fun in the long run.

First of all, this new system would distinguish these two victories from each other more clearly. Because overexpanding your civ would not only be useless, it would cause trouble, it would be more common to win by elimination without first winning by domination. They would be very different victories actually. Elimination could be done with cast military and small nation, domination requires also high culture. It doesn't have to be 66% by the way, I think 50% is high enough!

Secondly, I was arguing that the only way (as far as I can see) to make those victories possible would be to exclude the minor civs from victory conditions. I can't imagine anything more frustrating than destroying the last city on Earth, but still not get a victory - as a minor civ has popped up somewhere on the other side of the world. After I had destroyed that, another would perhaps been born. This would be avoided by simply making elimination victory so that you must eliminate all original civs. Domination would be, say, 50% of landmass and 50% of population compared to the original civs. It wouldn't be impossible to only exclude the minor civs from the elimination victory, but include in the others, but I would go for the consistency.

This has been too long an explanation for such a minor correction: I am saying that making rebellions an effective brake would require them to be likely enough that domination/elimination victories would become impossible, if the resulting rebel-civs would be included in the victory conditions. So my point is not in the impossibility of those victory conditions, but in including those civs to victory conditions. I hope I have cleared my views on this, as I believe we agree wholeheartedly in everything else - I only feel that this one part of it is incompatible with the rest.

These are all great ideas, as I play as a builder type I really like the idea of being 'rewarded' for not expanding too fast. As far as the minor civs not counting towards the victory conditions, IMHO it shouldn't just be the original civs that count, but surely if a minor civ (eg America) arose from a revolution but expanded etc. it could become a pre-eminent power, surely then it would have to be counted in victory calculations.
I would suggest tweaking this to minor civs are just ones below a certain threshold of culture/cities etc. They aren't important to whether you rule the world or not, I mean several 2 or 3 city nations aren't going to matter in the grand scheme of things by the end. I would prefer this as it would allow even an original civ to sink into irrelevance by havings its power gradually eroded. (eg my once glorious homeland England)
In summary, minor civs are good, but they should be determined by their current size/culture not what their past was. Leaderheads is a moot point IMO as they could be handled differently and in a way that would facilitate creating lots of similar ones from a certain base (or something I know nothing about anything)

Yes, I believe I could go with that. The drawn line should be carefully pondered though. It shouldn't be too arbitrary either. Perhaps the game should calculate the points of the civs covertly, and when it surpasses a certain point, it would become a "major" civ.
This would also solve the problem of hunting down the remnants of the last civ (all the islands and tundra-cities) to achieve elimination victory. Below certain point the battered civ is considered as destroyed so that it doesn't count.

This wouldn't need almost any additional coding either. Simply, if the civs points (in a given turn, not on average) is below certain level, it will be irrelevant to victory conditions. These points would be calculated from population, land-area, military, tech-level.

It's simple, effective and intuitive. I like it! :goodjob:

Originally posted by judgement
You're just arguing that making rebellions an effective brake would require them to be likely enough that domination/elimination victories would be impossible. I disagree

Originally posted by Shyrramar

So do I! I don't know what gave you such an impression, as it is completely wrong. Why on earth would I advocate for making domination/elimination victories impossible? Zheesh :cry:
...
I am saying that making rebellions an effective brake would require them to be likely enough that domination/elimination victories would become impossible, if the resulting rebel-civs would be included in the victory conditions.

Yes, yes, I didn't misunderstand you, you misunderstood my reply. I never thought you meant those victories should be impossible, I knew you meant that making them impossible was a bad thing. I understand what you mean: if the rebel-civs are included, an effective brake would make domination/elimination impossible, and therefore, rebel-civs shouldn't be included. But that's what I disagree with- I think that (if rebel-civs are included) you could set the chances of rebellion at proper numbers so that the brake is effective but domination/elimination victories are still possible.

And my reasons are what I detailed in my previous post: rebel-civs don't place any limit on how much you can expand, just how fast you can expand. So, its quite possible to expand very large without having small new civs popping up everywhere, you just have to be careful and make sure your culture keeps up as you expand.


One problem came to my mind, though. I don't really like the prospects that a civ can grow as large as it wants if it does so carefully and builds up its culture. I wonder if it could be made so that the mere distance from capital is always a factor - so your city that is 10 tiles away from your capital requires much lesser culture than the city 20 tiles away. This would cause rapid growth in the rebellion probability, as there is of course also lesser culture affecting the city 20 tiles away in addition to the higher requirement - and that would be good IMO.

Well, if this was implemented, then I'd have to agree with you about the other issue. If rebellion odds were related to distance (and, perhaps, for "realism" they should be) then, no matter how carefully you expanded, expanding large enough to dominate the map would always result in lots of rebellions everywhere: domination would become impossible if rebel-civs were included in scoring.

Embitteredpoet's idea for not counting any civ below some threshold seemed good when I first read it, my only worry was that the threshold would not be intuitve for novice players. But then I thought some more, and realized that it doesn't really solve the problem, just shifts it. Let me illustrate... the complaint with having all civs count, no matter how small, is that you might think you were about to win, destroy the last of your enemies, and then not win because on the far side of the world, some other new civ with only 1 city rebelled itself into existence. And by the time you crushed that civ, another one might pop up somewhere else: whack-a-mole with baby civs. Well, using the threshold for small civs just shifts the problem to whack-a-mole with "toddler" civs instead of babies. Let's say you think you're about to win because you're about to crush your last major opponent, and you're not worried about the couple small civs that still exist elsewhere because you're pretty sure they're all under the threshold. But then you don't win because just as you destroy the last major opponent, one of the minor civs crosses the threshold and suddenly you need to destroy it as well in order to win. And by the time you do that, one of the other minor civs has crossed the threshold. And so on. So the problem of whack-a-mole is still there, and, in some ways, its worse, because its simpler to tell at a glance whether any other civs exist than it is to tell whether any other civs are big enough to pass the threshold.

Also, just because a civ is small shouldn't automatically mean it doesn't count. Granted, that's usually the case in civ: there's absolutely no way for a civ with 1-2 cities to catch up when another civ covers most of the rest of the world. But things are more fluid in reality. Think of England: in Roman times, half of England was Roman territory, the other half (North of Hadrian's wall) was ruled by Celts. England, as a civ, didn't even exist. Meanwhile, Rome controlled most of "the known world" (which of course wasn't the whole world, but still, they were pretty powerful). Fast forward a millenium and the Roman civ didn't even exist anymore, while England had been born and had grown into a major world power. Now, of course, I don't think that the civ games should be that fluid. It wouldn't be fun to play as the Romans: you're doing well, feeling pretty dominant, and then things go downhill and you wind up getting destroyed by upstarts... that wouldn't be fun at all. But maybe it should be theoretically possible, if you really mismanage your empire (especially on higher difficulty levels). And the converse should be possible: if you're down to 1or 2 cities, but you play brilliantly, it should be possible to come from behind and win. And that wouldn't be possible if some other civ had already won because they killed off everyone else while you were down to 1 or 2 cities (and thus below the threshold). This is, of course, only relevant if we're talking about elimination... if domination victory is enabled, that other civ should rightfully win even though you still exist, since they'd undoubtedly have over 66% of the world.

On the issue of domination, a simple fix would be to make it relative instead of absolute. IIRC, cultural victories already employ this technique: you need a certain base amount of culture in your empire or city, but you also need to have a certain amount more than any rival. So, instead of 66% of the territory, maybe domination could require 50% of the territory and 10 times as much as any rival. That way, minor rebel-civs wouldn't stop you, even if there were lots of them. Just an idea, I haven't thought it through completely. It doesn't really matter, though, since it seems to me that the real difficulty is elimination, not domination. So far I can't think of any simple solution to the potential whack-a-mole problem (other than the simple "civs that weren't there at the beginning don't count" method, which, as I've said, I don't find satisfying).

Originally posted by judgement

Also, just because a civ is small shouldn't automatically mean it doesn't count.

I disagree, I mean if it still has masses of culture but only 1-2 cities then it is still significant. What I actually envisaged when I thought about minor civs were ones with which you could have a limited but different interactions with (blatantly stolen from the minor civs thread) whereby you could 'offer' them a chance to be protecterates etc. But the game still treats them as normal civs just alters how you the player see them.
The elimination/domination thing is solved neatly in SMAC by when you are crushing your opponent then the completely capitulate and count as your territory for elimination. I don't think the whack a mole thing would be quite so bad as you predict, and obvisiouly elimination could be adapted/removed in the same way as you suggested domination should be along the lines of culture.
I think basically I am suggesting that Domination/Elimination victory conditions could be merged together as it would be nigh on impossible to eliminate all the other civs (as well as tedious and time consuming)
But maybe, Elimination there are no 'major' civs left? It is a moot point really does it really matter on the name it is still a military conquest win. I play as a builder-type (and a crappy Regent/Monarch at that) so the semantics of which military victory is attained don't really bother me.

Originally posted by embitteredpoet

I think basically I am suggesting that Domination/Elimination victory conditions could be merged together as it would be nigh on impossible to eliminate all the other civs (as well as tedious and time consuming)
But maybe, Elimination there are no 'major' civs left? It is a moot point really does it really matter on the name it is still a military conquest win. I play as a builder-type (and a crappy Regent/Monarch at that) so the semantics of which military victory is attained don't really bother me.
I was more of a builder in Civ 1/2, but Civ 3 rewards a military play style more, so I've kind of switched. I do admit, though, that I've never had an Elimination victory: a Domination win always occurs before i eliminate all the civs. I asked the question a few posts back: has anyone had an elimination victory without turning off domination?

I don't think they should be merged together, however, since I'm guessing some people enjoy turning off domination and going for a true elimination by crushing every other civ completely. Personally, I'm with you, they're both military-type victories, to me the difference is semantic. But I think there's people out there who might vehemently disagree.

What about if the chances of a rebellion occuring were also influenced by the chances it could succeed in a sustainable fashion. In other words, a rebellion against you would be more likely if there were other powerful civs in the world that the rebels might hope to ally themselves with. If you were at war with other powerful civs, rebellions would also be more likely, since the rebels could hope that your wouldn't have the resources to deal with them (after all England was at war with France when American rebelled). The point is, once you had eliminated all major rivals, the chance of rebellions would decrease, since what could they hope to accomplish? They'd be less likely to try to rebel if they knew for certain that you'd just crush them a couple turns later.

The idea, in terms of gameplay, would be this: as long as there were significant rivals present, the chances of rebellion would act as a brake, slowing you down to prevent you from dominating those other rivals too easily just because you happened to get a little bigger or a little ahead in tech. But once you've defeated all major rivals, its pretty obvious you're going to win, and it shouldn't be too tedious to do so, so the brake applied by rebellions should ease up.

In other words:

Your civ's situation .... Difficulty in expanding
Small, at the beginning ........... Easy to expand
Medium, w/medium-sized rivals ............. Medium
Small, w/medium or big rivals ... Hard (of course)
Big, w/medium rivals ........................ Hard
Really big, no major rivals ........... Easy again

Any kind of brake against expansion (not just rebellions) has the problem that, once you've reached the point where its obvious you're going to win, the brake still slows you down and makes winning more tedious. To me, the whole point of the brake is to delay the time when you're certain you're going to win. The game is interesting as long as the outcome is in doubt: if you lengthen that portion of the game, you improve things. But once the outcome isn't in doubt any more, the brake on expansion is no longer serving any real purpose, it just delays the inevitable.

Originally posted by Headline
The new concept I hope Civ4 will incorporate is the city-states concept.

Usually in history, a civilization does not build cities on its own. The growth of an empire is usually through the conquest of neighboring city states. ...



EXACTLY! this is what would make Civ more interesting and realistic. Another thing would be if a group of city states in an isolated location would begin to form a new civ (like the Angles, germanic tribes who left their homeland and crossed the english channel to settle in 'angle land' which of course became 'England.'
SEE my post at:Minor Nations (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1817897#post1817897)

In civ 1 I tried to achieve different things on the highest difficulty level (I think it was emperor) as fast as possible:
Conquering the world 500 BC was the most unsatisfying
Achieving:
Railroad before 1 AD
Alpha centauri before 1500 AD
Was more fun

I would like that, when world victory or domination is turned off, a limit is set up for the number of cities per nation and beyond that limit always a civil war should occur sooner or later and the AI should also be aware of that so that unpopulated regions could remain on the map.
One can’t be omnipresent and intern rivals or colonies striving for autonomy can cause trouble. Not the marginal cities should only separate, but the empire itself should be divided in two nations and the player can choose one side.

I can’t imagine that the whole earth could be ‘unified’ by conquering. Maybe by destroying. Therefore I would like sth like an alliance of decentralised regions unified in ‘peace’ in an council like in moo2 as one sort of end of the game.

It's more fun having equal opponents throughout all eras

Feactures for Civil wars should include too the other nations feacture: When you have diferent citizens of diferent countries in your cities, they would rebel against you, but they choose to be supported by their home country or to build a new country.

well, this is a rather long thread, so forgive me if this has been mentioned before. if there r actual revolutions, u can't decide to have one. nor can u decide what gov't to have afterwards. and after the revolution, u have to change ur name (ever wonder why its always abe lincoln who overthrows abe lincoln?)

How about when someone takes over your capital city, your civilization goes into civil war.... ;)

Well, if you win the war, you keep your goverment, if you loose the war, off with you!!! :)
About the idea of taking the capital over for a civil war, i think that fact is not enough for a country go to civil war...

but that was so much fun in Civ1! I would always go for an opponents capital as my primary target JUST for that to happen. I think that it could happen if the civ being taken had certain governments, such as despotism, feudal monarchy, or older republics. Because if you remove the central figure, each of the local cheifs is going to want power for themselves.

Anyway, most civil wars have happened in history mainly becuase of a difference in opinion around a single primamry subject matter, be it religion, economics, social upheval, ect. I think that the best way to represent that would be that if your civ is having a lot of civil disorder problems, then that is what should lead to a civil war.

ex. each consecutive turn that your civ has a any city in civil disorder, each the chance of a civil war goes up 1% per city, and each of those cities is remembered by the computer. EX: turn 1: City A is in disorder. At the end of the city report phase of the turn, there is a 1% chance that city A goes into disorder. Turn 2: City A is back in order but B,C,D,E,F go into disorder. Since these were consecutive turns, at the end of the city report phase of turn 2, there is a 6% chance that cities A-F go into rebellion. Turn 3: order restored in all cities but a goes back into disorder. 7% chance that A-F go into rebellion. Turn 4: all order restored. Turn 5: C,F are in disorder, w/ a 2% chance of rebellion since turn 4 saw civil peace.

This can be very difficult to manage if your cities are simply growing and disorder is happening simply because you dont have enough entertainers to workers or what not. So perhaps the culture minister also pays attention to mood and if a city grows during the city report phase to the point where it would go into disorder, then the culture minister promts you with a warning, allowing you to post an entertainer there or increase the luxury rate in that city (which would be nice if each city could have its own rates in relation to a national tax rate), w/o the city having to go into disorder to get your attention.

There should probably also be a maximum of like a 50-75% chance of civil war and a maximum percentage of cities that actually rebel. This would probably lead to much more subversion like there was in Civ2, which is just another name for propoganda.

Yeah, thats right, the percentage of civil disorders is a very concistent way of representing civil wars. Now about the capital capture, i think thats a diferent matter... I think not only if we take the capital out the country would go into a tragedy. I thnik the country would first prefer fighting the invadors back, instead of fighting each other...

Again, I agree with that for modern governments. But older ones, where various people were constantly rising to/jockeying for power, would be very susceptible to civil wars w/ the fall of a central figure or government.

The thing was that a civil war could only occur in Civ2 when you lost your capital and the civ that lost its capital was the largest civ, so its perhaps more realistic that it might split as both sides may not want to fight the same empire.

Some more ideas are in these threads: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=89876
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=88772
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=89344&page=2
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=89535

I think its best idea in the forum. I have thought about it half year ago. It would be great if it would be in CIVILIZATION IV. A

BTW I think completley conquered civilizations could have about 20% to reform their country in the game. Especaly if there is many riots.

---snip---
BTW I think completley conquered civilizations could have about 20% to reform their country in the game. Especaly if there is many riots.
----------

That's a really good idea. Maybe even if a third civ is supporting the riots through subversion, then when they do break off, they are automatically allied w/ that one.

Great idea. It could happen in Civ2 CTP. I think it should be possible in Civ4. Otherwise youo can just careless about a city in disorder as long as you want. With this, if you want to keep it, you'll have to do something.

GREAT !

With this idea the game will be more realistic indeed...
By the way, will these idea will be considered by anyone of civ team?

There are some firaxis people who are meant to read the forums occasionally so they might consider an idea that they read but then again they might miss the thread or value their own ideas far more highly especially if they already have idea of how the game will work...

There is a way of sending the ideas directly to civ team?

You could try emailing them but you have to remember we are not the only forum and they could potentially get a huge number of emails...

But this isn't hard to put in Civ I think as well this is very active thread so I think they could read it if they reads the forum.

Yeah hopefully they have read at least parts of it...

But lets talk about the topic....
For example, when civil war occur, will leaders of diferent factions have their own face if we contacted them? Or perhaps they have the symbol of the goverment they actually defend?
Give your opions please...

I guess that there would have to be a bunch of extra civ graphics that would be used for the new civ. So if a civ split in half then another civ that wasn't currently in the game would be chosen to represent the region although if the rebellion centred around a civ that had been destroyed (i.e their capital city was the centre of the rebellion then their identity would be returned to the game since new civilizations often take the names of empires that used to exist in the same area.

i dont agread with that rebel factions when turn into civilizations assume graphics of existing non in game civs. Because if the pc choose a civ leader at random, the final result could be a culture with a leader who haves another completely diferent culture.

That is a good idea for a conqured civ going into rebellion. And what you said about a non-existing civ being the new one was how civil wars worked in Civ1. I think that that original method could still work, especially since regional ethnicity is a part of Civ3. Just have the new one be of the same region.

But what about new leaders? Maybe if a Civ is conqured but then goes into rebellion and breaks off, they have a new leader, (maybe even w/ different passive/aggressive qualities). Maybe the list of great leaders from military victories and/or scientific accomplishments could also be the list of possible new leaders, perhaps depending on the era. If you think about it, when the original civ was conquered, the original leader was probably deposed rather harshly, especially in pre-industrial times.

i dont agread with that rebel factions when turn into civilizations assume graphics of existing non in game civs. Because if the pc choose a civ leader at random, the final result could be a culture with a leader who haves another completely diferent culture.

I see your point that in general it should be a new civ from the same culture group instead of completely random but there is a chance that the new civilization may have been established because of developing its own unique culture and once it breaks away this rapidly changes into a completely different culture.

I'm one of the biggest advocate of civil wars, revolutions and such... but not to add realism, but strategy.

To me there are two faces to strategy.

1) you take one position, and risk danger, but with great benefit
2) you take another position, which is safer, but you risk mediocrity

In other words... how does a nation prevent civil war, and what is it costing them?

Nations could prevent civil war by providing decent happiness to all of it cities. Consequences of a civil war are losing part of its country to another newly civ, if the factions wins the war.

In other words... how does a nation prevent civil war, and what is it costing them?

The cost will be to have a large empire with high corruption, and to have to fight the enemy within and the other civs at the same time...
or you go for a smaller and thus more flexible civ...

i think civil wars dont need to be started when a civ is already at war with another civ. Being at war with another civ is not the reason why civil war starts: the primary based reason is unhappyness...

i think civil wars dont need to be started when a civ is already at war with another civright. usually an outside enemy unites...

so, a deeply centralized empire contains the seed of its own destruction and change(split, fractions,civil war) should be unavoidable

But the civil war dont need those invasions and those aids from the foreign to start itself....(altough that aid was most usefull). The civil war should be unavoidable in situations of war did you said...I think not. If the citizens are very happy they dont need to rebel against the goverment, and they are more likely to destroy the invading country first than trying to make the civil war.

Linkage to poll-topic: Civilwar-inclined-civs http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=99170

Sounds complicated to program, would certainly give incentive make people happier

Why not hard program a list of new civs created by a break up:
Have a generic leaderhead so Canada, NZ, Australia have all same leaderhead.

UK-> Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa
USA-> CSA, Texas, Hawaii, California Republic
France-> Brittany, Bourbonaise, Corsica, Orleans?
Spain-> Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela
Portugal-> Brazil, Uruguay, Goa?, Hormuz?
Russia-> Ukraine, Belarus, Chechnya, Moldovia
Austria-Hungary-> Austria, Hungary, Bohemia/Czechoslovakia, Slovenia
India-> Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal
China -> Shinkiang?, Tibet?, Manchuria, ?
Greece-> Attica, Laconia, Aeolia, Krete
Germany-> Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Bremen?
Vikings-> Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland
Incans-> Tihuanco, Nazca, Chimu, Tupi?
Indonesia -> Timor Leste, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darsalaam

and the list goes on...

another good idea is to give the names of the governments the various factions choosed, like Comunist Republic of United Kingdom.....

I agree with the idea of civil wars. Your civilization usually spreads far away from the capital as time goes on, and some of it might be on another continent where it's much easier for those citizens to rebel. This would be a cool idea for cities you capture during war because the citizens might not approve your rule multiple turns after the city was captured. There are many circumstances in which a civil war might start, so I think it would be a good idea to have it in Civilization 4.

You should be able to grant states independence. Creating a new nation altogether.

And abandoning should not even be there. Hmm... the only real life example of abandoning, is if you kill all the citizens... but.. IMO it doesn't need to be represented.

So if you can't contol another continent, grant it independence. But another issue is what techs does it have?

You should be able to grant states independence. Creating a new nation altogether.

And abandoning should not even be there. Hmm... the only real life example of abandoning, is if you kill all the citizens... but.. IMO it doesn't need to be represented.

So if you can't contol another continent, grant it independence. But another issue is what techs does it have?

and what would be the advantages if you grant independence? maybe you gain comercial interests within the new country....

There would need to be reason that you'd rather have commercial interest in the nation than actually control the nation. Civil war does raise a lot of tricky questions, but they have answers if you think about it reasonably.

There would need to be reason that you'd rather have commercial interest in the nation than actually control the nation. Civil war does raise a lot of tricky questions, but they have answers if you think about it reasonably.
When i talked about comercial interest i was putting the possibility of freely grant independence to a region, not by means of war...

I'd love to see that, but everybody knows that conquering somebody is much more valuable than having them as an ally. Something would need to balance these two factors, so having an ally is equally as valuable as conquering them, maybe even more valuable in some cases.

i think this topic should be several involved with terrorism matters....

I think that economic interests, and the real risk of major, long-term insurgency harming your national interests would be sufficient inducement to grant seceeding cities their independance. Also, if you do it with little prodding, then you might just have a 'friend for life' that you can turn to for help when you need it (and who can be a REALLY good buffer between you and any future enemies you might have ;)!)
Additionally, though, granting independance should improve your international reputation, and put you well on the way to getting a 'diplomatic victory'.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

-Yes comrade, this topic should absolutely be tied in with the barbarian/guerilla/mercenary/proxy war/freedom fighter/terrorism-matters that are beeing discussed in other threads here.

OT: I'd also like to be able to mess with the affairs of others to a greater extent.
Like 4 example: 2 nations are at a war that might hurt my economical interests in the region, so i want them to stop... i would like to be able to ask them to do so... with different levels of firmness, where the lower level is begging or offering deals and the higher levels are serious threats of intervention on either side, that would force the AI to consider the power-meter before answering.
Maybe you could get (bribe) a few other nations to join you in forcing the two to the table.
Then in the modern era (maybe with the UN or together with a forth party?) you could actually intervene, and maybe even occupy a certain space (or city?) inbetween the combatants without declaring war on any of them... just keeping them apart.

I think that the potential for rebellions is a good idea, but that it greatly depends on your form of government, interaction with the people, and composition of your people.

Composition:
If you have conquered another civ or a large portion of another civ, then foreign residents are more likely to rebel. This would be a way to encourage conquering a another civ, but then setting up a friendly government in it. You lose the threat, gain an ally, but dont have the concern of keeping conquered citizens happy. This would also represent unfortunate rationale for ethnic cleansing that has dogged civilization since its beginnings.

Interaction:
(1) Between Cities-Keeping cities in social contact is crucial. If a city(cities) is disconnected from your national trade network for an extended period of time, this could represent these cities losing touch w/ the rest of your civ and developing their own nationality.
(2) W/ your people-Maybe make civil disorder more of a threat than it currently is. Somehow tie civil disorder into the chance of cities breaking off and forming another civ. Ex: If a certian group of cities keeps going into disorder simply from poor management, they may break off.

Government:
A chiefdom or feudal monarchy is more likely to have rebellions that try to break off than a more central government. Each is merely an alliance, with the leader usually assigned by military might or charisma, w/ frequent internal squabbles. Now, yes the US had a Civil war. But, that was brought about by ideological differences. Those differences happened because a different social and economic conditions between the north and south. Perhaps that can be reflected in the game by what improvements a city has. If a city has mostly scientific improvements, then it's citizens may have different philosopies and values than a city w/ mostly industrious improvements. This philisophical difference could promote a civil war, like it did for the US. This would encourage players to diversify their cities' improvements, rather than have cities that exists for specific tasks.

I loved the capture of a capitol creates civil war ploy in Civ1. But I think that should again depend on above conditions of the Civ whose capitol you just captured. If someone has a very unified civ, then the capture of its capitol wont break it up, rather the opposite: create a nationalistic fever, making the civ not rest until it retakes its capitol or other variables. But if you capture a capitol of a civ that is falling victim (or close to it) to the symptoms above, then the chances of civil war are much greater. But that doesnt always mean that one side will like you. They may still want their capitol back, creating a 3-way war!

OT: I'd also like to be able to mess with the affairs of others to a greater extent.
Like 4 example: 2 nations are at a war that might hurt my economical interests in the region, so i want them to stop... i would like to be able to ask them to do so... with different levels of firmness, where the lower level is begging or offering deals and the higher levels are serious threats of intervention on either side, that would force the AI to consider the power-meter before answering.
Maybe you could get (bribe) a few other nations to join you in forcing the two to the table.
Then in the modern era (maybe with the UN or together with a forth party?) you could actually intervene, and maybe even occupy a certain space (or city?) inbetween the combatants without declaring war on any of them... just keeping them apart.

I LOVE THIS IDEA! I have been wishing for a way to end wars between others so I dont get dragged in for a long time.

slc193, I think you've nailed it. But I think it's pretty contraversial for a lot of people. Maybe yours is not as extreme as what I once said, but I once put forth a model where it's essentially impossible to grow forever. After growing 10%, you might shrink 5% due to civil war, then grow another 12%, then shrink another 4%... all the way as you reach for that 50% mark guaranteeing you a domination victory. It would be similar to football, where there's a natural push forward, then an effort to minimize the push back when the advantage shifts.

This dynamic would be the result of what you just talked about. After conquering a nation, sure you can benefit from it for a while, but it inevitably comes around in the form of a civil war or rebellion. You know that after conquering a nation, it's only a matter of time before the chickens come home to roost. Thus, there are multiple strategies to minimize the damage and maximize your benefits.

1) Conquer slowly. If you conquer 3 enemy cities, then hold still a few generations, and assimilate them, you're unlikely to encounter a rebellion.

2) Conquer quickly, and grant independence to a nation at the peak of your power. Don't wait until the tide starts to turn against you. For example, Rome could grant a small independent state to Greece... instead of waiting for things to get really out of hand and then watching the entire Eastern Wing become represented by the Byzantines.

3) Conquer really damn fast and hope that for the number of civil wars you encounter, you can just as quickly reunite them under your powerful military. (This strategy would probably only be viable at the Regent level at best.)

Critics of this "ebb and flow" model, though, hated the idea that they would HAVE to give up some power every now and then. I tried to make the case that this is no different from American football, where you kick to your opponent because you know you can't score a touchdown on this fourth down. Giving up yards now in order to gain yards later. But nobody seemed to care.

Yeah but you know, DH, that many of these people were the very same kinds of people who so hated the idea of restricting or eliminating 'Infinite City Sleaze'! They just don't want the game to change too much because I THINK they are afraid of losing their 'tried and true' paths to victory! Yet I think that if these victory paths remain identical in each iteration, then you are going to be missing out on attracting more people to the fan base!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Thanks, Aussie, I can always count on you to take a cutting edge approach. Not to mention your practical optimism that looks at a tough idea and says "hey, let's make this work".

I dont think that one should have to give up any power or cities, if they manage their citizens appropriatley. Here are some potential ways to reduce a conquered city's desire to rebel:

1. Ratio of foreign to domestic citizens per city: If you take a city, have a large garrison to disuade a resistance until the number or your citizens in the city is greater than the number or their citizens. This would reflect the ease of assimilating smaller cities but not the larger ones. It would also reflect a greater nationalistic awareness later in the game. If you take a city w/ a population of 25, it will be difficult to get more of your people in there than the natives. One could also use a "relocation" method to reduce the number of foreigns in that city. Ex.: Build a settler in one of your cities and the one you just took, swap their locations, build them back into the cities, therefore reducing the number of foreigners in the city you just took.

2. Units present per foreign national: Have a set number of units needed per foreigner to convince them not to revolt.

3. Cultural value: If you take a city from a civ that has a weak cultural value compared to yours, then why wouldnt that city (or a good portion of it) want to join yours?

4. How happy are the citizens? Luxury resources, luxury tax rate.

5. Form of government: Again, monarchies are much more likely to experience rebellion than Democracies. Why would they believe you had a divine right if they just came form being ruled by someone else who said they had a divine right? If they have a say in how they are ruled (democracy, federal republic, etc.), why would they want to go back to a monarchy or feudal state? This factor would be dependent on what your form government is compared to their previous form.

With factors such as these, it is entirely possible to conquer the world, although it will take a much longer time, require a huge army, and you really would need to pick your enemies and when to attack them VERY carefully.

Point taken. If you take cities that are "willing" to be conquered, then rebellion should be unlikely, even further down the line. "Willing" simply is a question of cultural inferiority, unhappiness with their current empire, poor quality of life, and lack of freedom. This is assuming that you can offer an improvement.

All the stuff I said before still counts, though :) For those who conquer the happy, the free, and the prosperous.

5. Form of government: Again, monarchies are much more likely to experience rebellion than Democracies. Why would they believe you had a divine right if they just came form being ruled by someone else who said they had a divine right? If they have a say in how they are ruled (democracy, federal republic, etc.), why would they want to go back to a monarchy or feudal state? This factor would be dependent on what your form government is compared to their previous form.


Civil wars throughtout the history happens in almost every forms of government, including democratic republics.....

But Civil War, even in democratic republics, is usually the result of one group of people trying to earn their freedom in a society which is only "half free". But certainly it's common in dictatorships, where society has a large portion of people who are not powerful, so in essence, you already have two countries -- one for the rich and powerful, and one for the neglected.

I don't know how you'd model this. Certainly "we are different" isn't enough to justify civil war (although it would certainly be an improvement from what Civ 3 has now, or even what Civ 2 had).

In dictatorships civil wars is more dificult to make than liberalistic governments, because in dictatorships, the dictator conserve his power by military opression, and therefore he control the military itself. In a diferent way, a republic is much more easier to make a war or a revolution, because the power is divided....

Not to say which is easier, but it's a question of which is more likely. In a democratic country, more people are likely to form a party or to replace their leader through a vote. That how people generally settle their tensions in a democracy. Point to a civil war in a democracy and you're usually looking at a situation where voting rights were denied to a large portion of people, or there was voter fraud in the system, or where various political parties were outlawed.

Under a dictatorship, one of the few things you can do is try to break away and form your own state. Get support along racial, ethnic, language, or religious lines. Or convince a portion of the military to support your cause, or convince them that the man in power is a bad man. And so forth. Voting is not an option -- at least not a vote that you can believe in. That's why civil war is more likely in said circumstances.

But when in a democracy, the system has anomalies, then the country began to get instability (i think its the word....) and then someone have to get a "brake" in that problem, and the most easier way is to take the power troughtout force.

Any time you change your government type there should be a chance that a civil war erupts. If this happens your civ is split roughly 50/50 by population. You remain in command of the side that switches to the new government while the computer takes control of the other half which remains under the government type you are changing from.

The new 'civ' should be assigned a name and a leader and become an actual civ.

That's pretty much how great empires are formed anyway.

-E

Absolutely. But these anomalies need to be severe, like I said. Voter fraud, apartheid (racial oppression), outlawing political parties. In which case, these are not real democracies (yet).

I can give an example: Portugal (well, i wasn't supose to talk os bad things from my countries was i?????) Portugal, in 1910, change its government from monarchy to republic. Then the system wasn't a good one, because the parlament detained much power, and can demote the govern if it wanted. The governs were sucessfully demoted by the parlament and in some years, existed more than 45 governs!!! It was obvious that that crisis must be stoped. Then, in 1926, the Army take political control over the country for keeping the order......

I'm sorry for the boring history lesson, but this serve to show my point of view.....

I like the idea of having the possibility of civil war when changing governments. But I think that it will depend on what gov'ts you are changing from and to. I think that the odds of a civil war would be higher if one were to change from a democracy to a theocracy than if the transition were from a monarchy to a republic. Maybe a way to do this is to put the governments on a scale of some sort. have chiefdoms at one end and federal republics and social democracies at the other.

Ex:
1. cheifdom
2. Monarchy
3. republic (roman style)
3a. feudal monarchy
3b. Theocracy
4. democracy (ancient greek style)
4a. Absolute Monarchy
4b Communism
5. constitutional monarchy
5a. Facism
6. Federal Republic
6a. Social Democracy

If someone makes too big of a jump on that scale, then the risk of civil war goes up. But if one were to follow a steady progression along the scale (chiefdom to monarchy to feudal monarchy to absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy to social democracy), then the odds of civil war between each step are much less. This may encourage players and the AI to follow a more steady progression of governmental structures, to reflect the evolution of social thought that actually happened in history. This would also discourage civilizations from going from a Federal Republic back to a Theocracy, just to wage a long war. This also would reflect the changes in freedoms and along the scale and the interaction of the people with their government along this scale. Communism and facism may be difficult to place on the scale. Maybe each government is given a percentage score and whatever the difference between those values is, that is your chance of a civil war.

Hey Comrade Pedro, sorry to overfit my definition. I think what you described is very valid, but obviously only starts to occur if there are serious anomalies in the system, right? So I assume that civil war is probably a product of unhappiness, corruption, or waste (to use Civilization 3's limited concepts to describe what might happen). I think that threshold is much higher in a democracy, however. Then again, you're right, there's nothing to stop a military from taking control of the situation even in a basically democratic country -- maybe they do it because they can.

Either way, I wouldn't insist on any form of government having a greater or lesser likelihood of civil war. I think there's too many counter examples. So we'll just leave this one to the developers, if they so choose.

Thats pretty much what I had in mind too, DH!! A dictatorial regime might be more resistant to civil war or government change as it can keep sufferage and libertarianism low (meaning that people can't effect change or express their dissent), and might maintain a strong military presence in its cities. However, if corruption, waste and unhappiness gets too high, then even a dictatorship will be in danger-with the results being much more violent than if they had occured in a democracy!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

and then, what about of the civil war itself? what cities should be the rebel side, and what should be in our side?

and then, what about of the civil war itself? which cities should be of the rebel side, and which should be in our side?

and then, what about of the civil war itself? which cities should be of the rebel side, and which should be in our side?

When I think of Civil War, I don't just think of "a country divided exactly in half, fighting against one another". I also think of a small breakaway state of 3 cities. I also think of a breakaway state that might do so amicably. I also think of a country that was conquered hundreds of years ago claiming its independence. So there's a lot of different contexts.

I think a lot of it would be tied to where the seperatist sentiment starts. It would start in a city that is very unhappy. As soon as a civil war actually happened, that city would be the first to go.

The algorithm would then determine which neighbouring cities would follow. It would look at all the neighbouring cities, and for a certain set of factors, they would be more likely (but not guaranteed) to follow.

- Being seperated by a river or mountains would lower the probability that city would follow the first city into a new state.

- Being founded or conquered at very close times (e.g.: one in 1700, one in 1750) would increase the probability it follows the first city into a new state.

- Having more foreign nationals would increase the probability it follows the first city into a new state

- Having a lot of unhappiness would increase the probability it follows the first city into a new state

- If you add a culture spreading model (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=102134), then you could look for cultural differences too (e.g.: cultural similarity would cause a neighbouring city to follow)

Basically, the whole thing would be a chain reaction. Cities that are similar would follow the rebelling city. Cities that are seperated by a different culture, different history, different quality of life, or different geography would be less likely to follow.

This could also be a model for determining provincial/regional borders within a Civilization. Similar levels of foreign nationals, cultural similarity, being founded/conquered around the same time, and being delimited into a similar geographic region (by mountains, rivers, or islands) would cause a group of cities to be automatically grouped as a province. Thus, civil war would occur usually at a provincial/regional level, with one province/region trying to earn its independence.

I totally agree with you. Civil wars wasn't just one faction fighting agaisnt another. It could exist various ones, depending on how much government types is available, as well as cultural and the other elements that you refered.

i'm thinking that before, for example nationalism, even army-units could rebel for no real reason other then a leaders ambitions. (caesar?)

or that some strong cities could demand greater autonomy... if granted, they remain a loyal part of the empire, but you can only make a couple of general governor-overrides depending on their level of autonomy. if not granted they might try to take it and, if they win, form a new civ... and if they loose, they'll still be yours, but since you're forcing them, it'll take time for them to once again become full citizens... and if you're fully literate/modern this could, if wery bloody, the oppressed cities might cause other cities to become unhappier. ...this sort of mecanics could sometimes even be about forms of goverment... like you go to fascism in a not so favorable climat... and three of your five armies together with a couple of cities revolt... a war starts and the whole country's tossed into lets say communism after your fascist troops are killed or have given up their fight... or even changed sides.
This would have to have a lot of parameters or it would be to easy to manipulate your neighbors into civil war, and then move in.

At what point would a city or region demand greater autonomy? Well, I mentioned some stuff in an earlier post, in that just being *different* from your empire would be enough to make unhappiness have more sweeping effects.

But to take a step backwards in abstraction, Civil War is simply impossible unless you give greater autonomy to the cities. The cities need to have their own forces, their own impulses, and part of your job should be to satisfy and manipulate these impulses. I could really only see it coming from two places.

1) The citizens (what I talk about when I look at culture and such).

2) The leader of the city (haven't really focused on this, but in theory, a civil war is just a war within a nation. If a city has a leader who has certain impulses that are incompatible with what you're doing, they could just as well rise up.)

I think #1 is easier to model, though.

i'm thinking that before, for example nationalism, even army-units could rebel for no real reason other then a leaders ambitions. (caesar?)
That's because those military units was too much dependent on his military leader(caesar)....
Roman civil war happened because soldiers no longer served the Senate of Rome, but served their generals....

That's because those military units was too much dependent on his military leader(caesar)....
Roman civil war happened because soldiers no longer served the Senate of Rome, but served their generals....

Yes... and i understand that it's probably to complex to implement in the game... but still.

the same has been the case in all less centralized societies, like for example feudal europe... like i said, i'm not sure myself on how to put it in the game... but if possible, it could prove pretty cool.

...Possibly if the different types of government in the game weren't so static, but instead at certain points in the game you would arrive at "legal crossroads" where you can choose one out of several paths. Like: more or less central power, cut religious organisations off their monetary holdings or bend to them even more... wage laborers versus indetured serfs, feudal lords or state army... magna charta-type law or rule by decree... and so on...
Now, depending on how your empire's evolved so far, different decisions will have different ramafications. Like: the stronger the nobility's getting, the more dangerous it will be to try to lessen their grip, but thats when you want them gone the most... if you however feel that the people are with you for whatever reason, it might not be so dangerous after all.
Civ4 should put more emphasis on exactly WHY certain unhappiness occur, against what/whom, and what you can do with it.
And as the techs roll in and libraries are put up it would create a growing preassure for some amount of libertarian reforms... unless of course the country's allready cemented a greater religous aproach. Theese and more choices, all with pros and cons and so on... like the rest of Civilization it should make for a big complicated system thats easy to learn and funny to play.

i see your point and agreed with you, but that huge changes to the game would be very difficult to do.

Thats pretty much what I had in mind too, DH!! A dictatorial regime might be more resistant to civil war or government change as it can keep sufferage and libertarianism low (meaning that people can't effect change or express their dissent), and might maintain a strong military presence in its cities. However, if corruption, waste and unhappiness gets too high, then even a dictatorship will be in danger-with the results being much more violent than if they had occured in a democracy!

On the other hand, when the civil disorder does erupt, its effects on a totalitarian dictatorship should be more extreme than for a liberal democracy.

Another ideia is the distribution of the military units to each faction, when the civil war happens in Liberal and in Non-Liberal governments. If the country is an liberal one, the military units will get more dispersed between the factions. In a non-liberal one, the military units tend to stay loyal, because the fear and discipline methods used in dictatorship. The happiness in the cities is also ruled by this aspect, i think.....

Except cases where the civil war is caused by a military coup...

It's true, there's a lot of difficulty in the details of a civil war model. The key to a successful one is to not take away too much control from the player, while empowering players to shake their neighbours into civil war with propaganda and other mechanisms... and keeping it simple that you model the essence, but not necessarily the very letter of civil war.

Other new thing is to cause civil war in other civs, throughout propaganda. (sorry if anything said that before)

I definitely like that idea. Messing with another nation's happiness, maybe a culture group within that civilization... to me that's one of the most interesting ideas about civil war -- interference.

and the help of other civ to a faction of the civil war is also a matter of thinking....

OK, I agree with DH that player control must be maintained to a fairly high degree, but should NEVER be absolute! There should always be a certain 'Wildcard' element in whether or not a civil war or rebellion should occur. One possible wild card could be keeping actual happiness levels secret, and instead simply describing citizens' mood using a simply adjective-like content, happy, ecstatic or very angry, defiant, rebellious. Each of these moods would relate to a specific happiness range (like 0-10%, 45-55% etc), but you won't know EXACTLY where within that range your people currently are (unless you are a MM FREAK who checks ALL of his cities every single turn ;)!)
Another thing I would like to see is splitting the concept of 'civil disorder' into different types-namely 'revolt/rebellion', 'religious schism' and 'civil war'.

1) A revolt/rebellion occurs when a particular 'faction' of your society becomes especially unhappy. Whether a faction can and will revolt would depend on a combination of that factions happiness level AND current influence. If you enter the 'danger zone' for a revolt, your domestic advisor will warn you and even give you a hint at what the faction is demanding.
The nature of a revolt, when it occurs, would depend on the faction behind it. So a workers revolt might lead to a huge loss of shields, a mlitary revolt might cause you to lose control of many of your units and loss of military production and a religious revolt might lead to you losing much of the happiness and culture created from your religious buildings. Also, if a revolt continues unabated, cities containing a high % of the rebelling faction have a chance of units and buildings being damaged. Eventually, cities dominated by the faction might break away in a civil war (see (3) below). You can prevent or put down a revolt by either acquiescing to their demands (via government change, social engineering change or building of units and/or buildings etc) or by cracking down on them hard-via Military Police or social engineering adjustments. The latter course, if not done right, may have the opposite effect, however, or merely create a 'band-aid' solution. Lastly, a general rebellion can ensue if average happiness drops below a certain critical level. The effect of this would be much like the anarchy period which currently ensues when you change government in civ3.

2) Religious schisms occur when a city containing a large number of people from a foreign religion ecclesiastically break away from your nation. Though you retain some control over the city, any religious buildings you have there cease to produce happiness and/or religious culture for you. In addition, rival civs from the foreign religion may build their religious buildings in that city. Lastly, a religious schism increases the likelihood of that city 'breaking away' at a later date (again, see (3) below).

3) Civil War is when one or more cities break away from your empire. Certain critical events can act as 'POTENTIAL' triggers for a civil war, which are:
(a) happiness dropping below a critical level.
(b) Crime/corruption rising above a critical level.
(c) The ratio of Foreign:Native culture rising too high.
(d) Loss of your capital.
(e) A rebellion/revolt.
(f) A religious schism.
(g) foreign propaganda.
(h) changing government.

If a trigger event occurs, you will be warned by your domestic advisor of potential trouble. Any time after the trigger event, however, your city(s) can break away. The chance of this actually happening would be based on:

(a) the city's happiness levels.
(b) its corruption/crime levels.
(c) the city's distance from the capital.
(d) the # and strength of all units in that city.
(e) proximity to another secessionist city.
(f) # of foreign nationals in your city.
(g) ratio of foriegn:native culture.
(h) If the city is already in revolt and/or religious schism.

If a single city breaks away, it will usually join up with a neighbouring power (either minor or major), wheras if a collection of cities all break away at once, then they will usually band together as a new nation (again, either minor and major).

As you can see in all of the three examples I have cited, the chance of civil disorder is NEVER completely random-instead being based on 'pseudo' predictable algorithms. A small, well-run and content nation-state will almost certainly NEVER suffer from civil disorder, wheras large sprawling empires which rule through fear and conquest will almost CERTAINLY suffer a civil war at some point in their lifetime. Of course, there is a very small, random element in this, but the majority of it is decided by in-game player actions (either of the nation itself or one of its rivals). The thing is that these examples, along with other 'pseudo-random' events, would go a VERY long way to preventing the current 'snowballing' phenomenon which is endemic in the game!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Instead of "Nationality" each citizen could have a "Culture." Unhappy citizens have a chance of forming a new culture (one from a list), or joining one that already exists locally, other than the culture in political control. Also, cultural influence from other civs has a chance of changing a citizens culture, as would infiltration of citizenry (concealed nationality units that cost pop and come join your city rather than attacking, adding one new citizen of the infiltrating nationality). Culture specific buildings can influence culture (you would have to have a whole line of culture specific buildings, so that Chinese Temples influenced citizens to be Chinese, for example. When a majority of the citizens of a city have that culture, they have a chance to rebel, depending also on unhappiness, and the city may have a political revolution, each rebelling citizen becoming a unit of the draftable line and attacking the garrison. The success of a rebellion would have to have a large, one turn only, cultural influence on neighboring cities, perhaps causing them to flip also. To defend against culture flip, citizens coud be turned into "prisoner" specialists however (less productive laborers who always suffer from tile penalty) and then they don't count for revolution purposes.
There could also be lesser wonders perhaps that would allow you to absorb minority cultures. For a poor example, the New Age wonder could allow you to merge American culture with Buddhist culture, perhaps, so that all Buddhist citizens in American cities became Americans.

In reality, culture is multidimensional, consisting at a minimum of nationality and religion, so if you wanted to go into detail, you could have religious revolutions as well. Perhaps each citizen would have each, and players could play religions OR nationalities. This would work well with an "allied victory" victory condition like from a of e, where if any member of the alliance wins all members win. There would have to be some elegant way of limiting the number of such alliances a playing entity could enter, to prevent them from setting it up so they win no matter what (but why really?). I guess one way would be to require building of wonders to allow victory-alliances.

It would take some thought to do this tastefully, respecting our culturally closed societies while glorifying our culturally plural ones.

I think there's a lot of talk about Civil war -- the more that you model differences between individuals, the more factors you can incorporate into civil war. I'd definitely love to see a worker revolt VS. a military coup, but I'm not sure Civ has the depth to reflect this. If Civ had this level of depth for Civil war, then I would ask for no other features, because the game would be perfect ;)

Taking a step back, though, I think Aussie is on the right track with it being "semi unpredictable". Although I wouldn't use those words. Just that you'd normally have a 0% chance of civil war. And once you break a threshhold of serious unhappiness, suddenly there's a 10% chance of civil war, and as it persists, it becomes more and more likely (until it's like 90% chance). But it would not be preventable -- you would be able to stay at 0% pretty easily, and even at 10% chance you'd start to see some important warning signs that would allow you to take corrective action.

- Hit them with propaganda
- Stop a war that might be making them unhappy
- Build a certain building that might pacify them
- Start a war that might make them MORE unhappy, but at least keeps them from splintering off because they're so scared
- Give independence to a city or two or three (and invade them again when you have your empire working properly again)
- Change government to something more democratic that lets them be themselves
- Change government to something more autocratic, reducing the likelihood of civil war but increasing the scale should it actually happen

That is also a good idea, but i think this will only apply to the ancient times and end almost in the medieval times. I'm saying this, because if we see the facts of history, we realized that this happens only in this period.

This was on the first page, and I'm sorry if it's already been replied to, but I really didn't have time to read the whole thread.

Sorry Comrade, but that's a load of belloni. Rebellions and revolutions are something that has always, and will always, occur, no matter what the time period is. From the earliest empires of Sumeria and Babylon, to Egypt, Rome, the Franks, the Ottomans, Russia, Germany... they ALL had to deal with them. If you want a modern day example, take Chechnya. It will never end.

This is true. But it has a lot to do with citizen managment. If your people are happy, why would they rebel? If you are a dictator who rules with an iron fist, there will always be some people who want more freedom. But you do also have to have the other extreme. Having fanatics (like terrorists/revolutionaries/insert name) always has been and always will be a problem. But the question is: do they have the support of the people? If one is managing their citizens well enough, then these extremists are kept at bay w/n your civ by happy citizens and local law enforcement. Maybe these rebels could also be encouraged by neighboring civs.

Maybe a way to introduce this into the game is to have unhappy citizens create a possibility that a (or multiple) rouge military unit is created w/n your borders, near the city that was unhappy enough to create them. These wouldnt just be barbarians, but units perhaps equal to (or near) one's own arsenal. Or like Civ2, just be the partisans.

This was on the first page, and I'm sorry if it's already been replied to, but I really didn't have time to read the whole thread.

Sorry Comrade, but that's a load of belloni. Rebellions and revolutions are something that has always, and will always, occur, no matter what the time period is. From the earliest empires of Sumeria and Babylon, to Egypt, Rome, the Franks, the Ottomans, Russia, Germany... they ALL had to deal with them. If you want a modern day example, take Chechnya. It will never end.
Well, if you would read a little more further, you'll realiaze that i was talking about headline's post: the concept of cities states :) :)

Having fanatics (like terrorists/revolutionaries/insert name) always has been and always will be a problem.

Why do you say that? Revolution is necessary in some cases. If people had your thoughts there wasn't occur important revolutions like the French Revolution or the Declaration of the Independence of America......

This is true. But it has a lot to do with citizen managment. If your people are happy, why would they rebel? If you are a dictator who rules with an iron fist, there will always be some people who want more freedom. But you do also have to have the other extreme. Having fanatics (like terrorists/revolutionaries/insert name) always has been and always will be a problem. But the question is: do they have the support of the people? If one is managing their citizens well enough, then these extremists are kept at bay w/n your civ by happy citizens and local law enforcement. Maybe these rebels could also be encouraged by neighboring civs.

Maybe a way to introduce this into the game is to have unhappy citizens create a possibility that a (or multiple) rouge military unit is created w/n your borders, near the city that was unhappy enough to create them. These wouldnt just be barbarians, but units perhaps equal to (or near) one's own arsenal. Or like Civ2, just be the partisans.

It's not always that black & white. Nationalism is a HUGE encouragement for people to revolt and/or establish independence. I think that after nationalism, the chance of cities switching sides, establishing independence etc. should sky rocket if they contain other nationalities.

Well, if you would read a little more further, you'll realiaze that i was talking about headline's post: the concept of cities states

Ah, my apologies. But in that case, they ended a bit later. In fact, it wasn't until approx. 1876 that the city state died out once and for all. Until then you had all the Italian city states (i.e. Milan, Tuscany, Napoli etc.), and the German city states (they weren't named after the cities themselves, but their borders didn't extend beyond a large city radius). Both Italy and Germany were unified by 1876, ending the city states once and for all.

I think Italian cities-states were almost all conquered by Napoleon XVIII/XIX centuries, and then some passed to Austrian Empire.....

Italy was basically completely divided between the Roman Empire and recent history. There were a few city states, and a few strong leaders (like the Medicis) who controlled a significant part of Italy (but far from all of it) for a couple generations. But many times city states allied themselves with part of a larger empire, such as the Franks or Spaniards, or were occupied for a time by another empire, like the Ottomans.

I think Italian cities-states were almost all conquered by Napoleon XVIII/XIX centuries, and then some passed to Austrian Empire.....

Napoleon did conquer Italy, but it didn't last for long. Before this, Aragon and Spain held Napoli and Sicily, but these gained their independance eventually. Afterwards, Austria controlled Veneto (Venice), but no further south than the very most northern provinces. For a large period France also held Milan, but beyond this, as dh_epic said, they remained independent from the Roman Empire's collapse. Italy was, basically, a chaotic hotch potch of unceasing war, with not only the city states divided against each other, but France, Austria, Spain and the Ottomans all vying for control of it, and the poor Papal States caught between it all. :lol: It all ended in 1876 with a war between France and Austria. Austria wanted to subjugate the isle, and France wanted to prevent that at any cost. The French gave aid to Sardinia-Piedmont, and relinquishing control over Milan, Italy was unified, save Veneto, which remained in Austrian control until the partition of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

But this serves to explain how weak cities-states are. They have been conquered and liberated all the time, but they always use someone else aid for their liberation and they can't even protect themselves without help from others.

Agreed. I think this kind of fragmentation before Nationalism should be reflected in the game. Nationalism is HUGELY important -- it's not just "hey, we like our country more". One of the most world-changing social movements in history.

I think that would be a great idea

But nevertheless, These ideal movements were so developed that they actually caused the First World War and the Fascist governments.....

I think in the next civ, to the things get more harder, it will be some kind of civil war in your own country, when you are screwed the things and the people are not very content with your goverment. Then it appears various factions, each one with its own possible goverments (the ones that have been discovered), and the player have to "liberate" all the cities. This would occur even if you are at war with other countries, and that wars continue normally.
If in some time, nothing resolves, then the factions can go to a deal, forming then new countries....

Please give your comments....

Aahh, that´s what I was talking about, I like this, I was missing that from CIV2.

Hi :)
Does anybody know will this idea be added in Civ4? Any news?

No news. It's a popular suggestion. But just as common are some of the fears that a model of Civil War (rebellions, nationalism, seperatism, seccession, annexing, provinces, regions, wars of independence, breakaway states, balkanization -- and countless other synonymous suggestions) would make the game really annoying.

I don't think this is the way it has to be, though. I think there's an intelligent way to do civil wars in a way that's not annoying but empowering.

All good, all good. I really do like the suggestion about civil war, actually I made it myself before. Sorry, but I just had to renew my probably unpopular, but oh so necessary note about excluding all "new world" and ex-colonial civs such as brazil, canada, mexico, australia and, yes, america too. It's simply not realistic to include these nations as civs because they've only existed a few hundred years. After all, the game runs from 4000 BC to the near future right? Anyway of course the game will never be rid of these countries, because to many "patriotic" americans are playing. But my mission on this forum is to spread the notion that there should be an "america-less" alternative in CIV4, as there has been with CCQ and PTW. It's just far more realistic. :p

If you go by that arguement, Hemlige, then why would we be having England and France and Germany and those other states? They have only existed the last millenium or so, or even less. They didn't exist at the beginning of 4000 BC either. Of course, neither did Rome nor Greece nor the Byzantines.

If you go by that arguement, Hemlige, then why would we be having England and France and Germany and those other states? They have only existed the last millenium or so, or even less. They didn't exist at the beginning of 4000 BC either. Of course, neither did Rome nor Greece nor the Byzantines.

I'll refer you to the conversation I've been having on the vote for 19 civs thread... :)

I it seems like a civil war would completely screw a civ over because they have to deal with the civil war while all the other civs advance into the future.

Not necessarily. That assumes there's no easy way to recover from a civil war, and that assumes that you couldn't turn the tables and provoke a civil war in the new frontrunner's civ.

Not to mention that civil wars ought to be totally preventable.

I see civil war as largely a punishment for 'Expansion without Consolidation'. Under the current system, you are rewarded based on how fast you expand, which allows you to expand faster-etc, etc ad infinitum. This is what we have termed the 'snowballing effect'. By implementing Civil War, however, should you choose to remain small, or grow in fits and starts-marked by periods of consolidation-then you are rewarded with inherent stability. Thus, in one fell swoop, you have seriously pegged back the 'Snowball effect' WITHOUT removing expansion as a game option. Plus, it gives you a really cool new thing to do to mess up a bigger and more powerful neighbour-but only with a significant investment in your Intelligence budget!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

P.S: thats not to say that a poorly run small nation can't suffer a civil war, its just less likely to happen (they are more likely to get rebellions ;)!)

I see civil war as largely a punishment for 'Expansion without Consolidation'.


Why that? You mean Civil War only occur in situatons of bad organized expansion?

I think Aussie_Lurker means the the primary case for Civil
War would be when a civ expands so quickly that it becomes
over-extended (i.e. lacks sufficient military, cultural, and
economic infrastructure to adequately support a civ its
size.).

While the idea of civil war/revolution sounds nice, I have severe reservations about it, because I fear it would be a micromanagement headache; i.e. *very* annoying.

But i think civil war isn't about the idea of expanding, it's just about the idea of the conflict between two factions that are in the same country....

The civil wars would only occur if your organization weren't so good enough....

It's not so much organization as a sense of solidarity. Even poorly organized nations can stick together if there's a sense of social solidarity. Poorly organized nations will go through revolutions or regime changes, but not civil wars.

Your nation would experience a lack of solidarity if you never took the time to turn those Greeks and Spaniards and Germans into proud Romans. That's part of why Rome fell. Expansion without consolidation.

Poorly organized nations will go through revolutions or regime changes, but not civil wars.

And what about the african civil wars? Most of the countries shortly after they made independent they struggle each other for the right to rule...

off topic question : Is this one the first civil war / revolt etc. thread?

African Civil Wars... to speak very generally...

That had little to do with organization and EVERYTHING to do with the huge amounts of cultural contamination from colonization. A small ruling elite represented the culture of the colonizers long after they had left, while there was often a populous that represented a hopeful if vain hope for an African Rennaisance.

We're also talking about nations whose borders were made arbitrarily by the colonizers, with no respect for who was similar to who. Many of the countries that emerged in post colonial Africa actually contained two or three seperate peoples.

In other words, no solidarity. People who saw themselves as seperate from one another. That's what distinguishes civil war from the larger category of civil unrest.

(Mastertyguy, this isn't the first civil war thread and it won't be the last. But it's helpful to try to keep it all in one thread anyway.)

Sorry if this has already been mentioned; with ten pages of replies, it would take a while to read them all. Anyway, i agree with you. I really thought it was a great idea in Civ 2 when a country would 'rebel' and form two new ones. Only dissapointing thing was it never happened to my country!

That is also a good idea, but i think this will only apply to the ancient times and end almost in the medieval times. I'm saying this, because if we see the facts of history, we realized that this happens only in this period.

Uh... What about Vietnam? (French Colony), Korea? (Both are tail end Industrial/modern era) United States(Begining Industrial- of course by game play it could be argued that it was tail end med-evil...) United States Civil war? (Industrial) Or even look at whats going on in Russia right now... i.e Colapse of goverment, replaced with another, sattelite states splitting off...

But the civil war idea is a great one... :goodjob:

I agree. One of the strengths of the idea of civil war, seperation, seccession, wars of independence, and so on... is the fact that it's ALWAYS happened throughout history, and for many of the same reasons. It's just ripe to be easily implemented in a game, if you can just translate the reasons into something that are fun to play.

I agree. One of the strengths of the idea of civil war, seperation, seccession, wars of independence, and so on... is the fact that it's ALWAYS happened throughout history, and for many of the same reasons. It's just ripe to be easily implemented in a game, if you can just translate the reasons into something that are fun to play.

I love the idea, esp. when combined with the Minor nations concept (see the Barbarians thread).

lol. This was my idea too. I thought when you conquered the world....It gets boring so you can go to one of your advisors and click a button for a civil war. You can type in a reason for a civil war and you can choose to be you or the rebelling side. You can install new governments and other cool things if you win the War (If your the rebelling side). Or Maybe the War ends but you only gain control of one other continent. So this War can be a continious struggle.

I don't think CivIV is going have it implemented. If that is the case, I'll be really really sad.... :cry:

It lives on in the hearts of its fans :)

There are rays of hope. But the biggest hope lies with the mod community -- if they really think hard about gameplay and don't just implement it for the sake of it.

If that's still not enough, you can enslave any racial group of your choice, incite holy wars, and commit crimes against humanity without regret. And if a rebellion starts to overthrow your regime, there's always the reset switch.
Nothing else to say
I know, I sent it in "secession" thread ;)

Civil war...why not?
It'll give my bloated army something to do to pass the time.

It should have ben in civ2, I always had to fight only barbs at the end of the game!!

i think this is a great idea and should happen more the further from the capital they are and if they are on a different continent!
like the american civel war, austalian independence, spain giving mexeco, chilli, brazil, away etc..

Just an idea to implement civil wars using civics:

1) WITH ANNOUNCED RULES:
Changing civics like Religion or Slavery could lead to revolt in a country where there are more than 1 religion or where some cities use/have used lately slaves.
Changing from monarchy to republic would lead to royalist´ cities revolt.
In the same way, converting you country to a new religion could lead to the revolt of cities devoted of the former religion.
This revolt would spawn a new civilization automatically at war with you.

2) THE REBELLION OPTION:
Obviously that rule is hard that no one would like to change civics or convert their civ to other religion.
A better idea would be that the revolts could lead to divide your civ in 2 factions: "loyal" and "rebel". Loyals and rebels are allways at war, but foreign countries can´t attack rebel cities if there are not at war with you. Civil war would only happen if your country is at peace with everybody, and if other civ declare war to you during civil war it ceases and both loyal and rebels re-unifies to combar their common foes.
In exchange, when a civ is under civil war status, other civs would have a new diplomatic option: "support rebellion". That would mean that they are at war with the loyals and allied (free passage) with the revolts, and in case of capturing a city to the loyals, the city would be automatically owned by the revolts.
This way The participation in other country civil war would lead to no territorial gain. The benefits of giving support to the winner side would be just a better relationship with the country after the civil war´s end.
There could be also a "support loyal" option.
A peace teatry beetween loyals and rebels could lead to the creation of a new civilization with the rebel cities.

Example: AMERICAN HISTORY X. The english civ in the XVIII cent. has expanded and has cities in other continents.
After changing civics to "absolute monarchy", of after increasing taxation, some of the far cities revolt forming the "republican side".
The republican faction, after controling all the far cities, with a little help from the frenchs, offers peace, if the loyals accept that could lead to the creation of a new civ: "the americans", that would start at the XVIII Cent. as a republic and not at 4000 BC as despotism.
The new country would have the same civics of the older one, except that which has been their "cause" (republic in this case).
Later in time the american player decide to ban slavery. This causes a rebellion of a group of cities and a civil war.
By defeating the rebellion taking all the rebel cities the americans elude the creation of the CSA civilization.

Sorry for the lenght!

1. Sorry everyone for bumping this.
2. Sorry if someone has something similar; I didn't want to read 11 pages

IDEA 1: Colonial Wars

Lets say you settle a city of group of cities on a faraway Island of Continent, corruption is rampant but you NEED these cities. Maybe you can rightclick the city and select the option "Create Colony". You'd then choose a name for the colony and the first city in that colony would be the colonial capital. You can then select the option "Add to colony..."

Colonies would be semi-independant cities that would function as a sort-of puppet government. They would have a Forbidden Palace and the AI would micro-manage and build their own units. You are the mother country so you can change what they build and where the units go but mainly it is the Colonial government that does that. Too much management by you can generate unhappiness by the colonists.

The Colonies would be automatically in a Right of Passage and Mutual Protection Pact with you. They can't declare war but they have to if you do. But lets say that the people are very unhappy (want more improvements, more INDEPENDANCE, freedoms) and you try to quell that with soldiers. That makes them moe unhappy and they rebel and set up a new government with their Colonial name.

The rebels can convert their city faces into a Resistance unit (guerrilla, separitist etc) as well as build their own units. Now you've lost a Colony in a independance struggle and have to reclaim it or just let it be.

IDEA 2: Independance War

Lets take a nation, say Russia. Russia hass conquered Germany and Rome. Now you have the choice of ethier setting up a Protectorate (similar to a colony but you express less control on the people, just the military) or to keep full control and try to assimilate the people into Russia. Russia has chosen to assimilate them. The Germans don't like this. Once unhappiness and corruption has reached a certain limit the German citizens in German cities convert into resisting military units and fight it to the death with as many garrison units as possible. If they win they set up Germany again and the Russian army has to recapture the resisting cities.

IDEA 3: Revolution

Russia has just become a Theocratic Hereditary Police State and the Romans, Germans and some Russians don't like that. Together those nations start to separate into one large multi-ethnic country that is a Emancipated Communal Democracy. Now Russia is fighting a Civil war of freedoms and ideologies.

Well thats all. I'm sorry if I bumped this and its an annoyance or if someones already said the exact same thing.

Good! I like your your concept.
Btw, no problem bumping this old thread ;)

Thanks. I have some more ideas which I hope (one day) to organize and put in the main ideas thread. Civil War and revolution was the main one. I also has another idea which would intertwine with Corruption and Anarchy:

IDEA 4: Anarchy (it might be different in cIV due to gov changes)

The Anarchy in Civ III was.... different. It did cease all production but there was no action (unless adding some specialist is action to you). I was thinking a chart of favoured and least favoured gorvernment styles for every Civ and when you entered Anarchy it would add Civil War Points to the pile.

Civil War Points would be when a country hosts a Revolution for another government style. It would be the total amount of corruption for that turn, what government you're hosting a revolution for, and the unhappiness of ethnic and religous minorities in the country. If the Civil War Points reach a certain high then a Civil War insues. Something like this:

Russia is a government with Marxist ideologies. Lets say this is there favoured. They want a Revolution for a full-scale Capitalist ideology, their least favoured. This makes people in the Eastern Provinces (Vladivostok, Orenburg,Yakutsk,Irkutsk) very unhappy. Corruption this turn was 54 + 12 unhappy faces in the Eastern Provinces. In the far east the ethnic Germans and Romans fell threatened because of the transition to the most unlike government to the ethnic Russians. 20 unhappy faces from Germany and Rome because of that. Then they are Christian but the Russians had a successful transition to Judaism before the invasions of Germany and Rome. They fear that a Capitalist government would allow Judaist organization to spring up all over the country. This produces 10 more unhappy faces.

54+12+20+10=98 Depending on which government you are going to and which one to are going to determines how many civil war points you need. Instead of going to Anarchy in this case you will instead go to your selected government and the most corrupt and unhappy cities (in this case the East) will set up theirs. You will now contend with, instead of rioting, civil war.

The breakaway cities will ethier set up a country called, in this case:

East Russia
Rome
Germany
Germany and Rome
Marxist Russia

Wow.. Longer than I thought.

Oh, I forgot to mention that during any kind of Civil war an AI can join etheir your side or the rebels by:

Selling Units
Using Embargoes
Selling Resources
Joining a Military alliance

I think Civil wars would be great. This is just how I'd like to see them

I don't mind it being implemented. Personally, I think civil wars are a HUGE annoyance, so it should be a feature that can be deselected when creating a new game.

Bah! You can mod anything!

Civil wars are a musthave. It's one of the ways that the devolpers can balance out the overpowering "conquer all" strategy. I remember playing Civ 2, if I was particularly large and powerful, and my enemy managed to capture my capital, my cities would all switch to either the "loyalist" or "rebel" faction. I would then decide which to stay with!

I think a system similar to the one posted above would be excellent.

correct me if im wrong but... wasnt there a civil war system in civ2?


edit: wow this hasnt been posted on in a while...

yeah there was, and for me it completely sucked.
Ur civ is going fine, and then out of nowhere half ur civilization revolts, and u had no clue about it.

i think that they should implement civil war in the next Civ, but i think that they should be really really really careful how they implement it. cuz if they get it wrong, it can ruin the whole game

The Civil War system in Civilization 2 was way too game-breaking. It was better to not have one at all.

A good civil war system would be a little more complex. Less black and white.

Argh. Double post.

so hu after all this is somone going to make a mod that has revolutions in it? if there is i would like a link or somthing because this sounds way too cool

Well, have you tried Trip's Rebellion Mod? Not quite what is being asked for here, but along the same lines. Under certain conditions, there is a much higher chance of barbarian units springing up next to a city-such as when you have mixed ethnicites in a city, or multiple religions, or a high unhappy to happy/unhealthy to healthy ratio, or when the city is a long way from your capital, or under certain civics. Check it out, it might be right up your alley :)!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

thx i will

This is a very good idea!

love this idea, would be a nice touch if the anmes of the civil war faction leaders was a rebel from real history eg if you were England you would Oliver Cromwell,etc etc

Just an idea to implement civil wars using civics:

1) WITH ANNOUNCED RULES:
Changing civics like Religion or Slavery could lead to revolt in a country where there are more than 1 religion or where some cities use/have used lately slaves.
Changing from monarchy to republic would lead to royalist´ cities revolt.
In the same way, converting you country to a new religion could lead to the revolt of cities devoted of the former religion.
This revolt would spawn a new civilization automatically at war with you.

2) THE REBELLION OPTION:
Obviously that rule is hard that no one would like to change civics or convert their civ to other religion.
A better idea would be that the revolts could lead to divide your civ in 2 factions: "loyal" and "rebel". Loyals and rebels are allways at war, but foreign countries can´t attack rebel cities if there are not at war with you. Civil war would only happen if your country is at peace with everybody, and if other civ declare war to you during civil war it ceases and both loyal and rebels re-unifies to combar their common foes.
In exchange, when a civ is under civil war status, other civs would have a new diplomatic option: "support rebellion". That would mean that they are at war with the loyals and allied (free passage) with the revolts, and in case of capturing a city to the loyals, the city would be automatically owned by the revolts.
This way The participation in other country civil war would lead to no territorial gain. The benefits of giving support to the winner side would be just a better relationship with the country after the civil war´s end.
There could be also a "support loyal" option.
A peace teatry beetween loyals and rebels could lead to the creation of a new civilization with the rebel cities.

Example: AMERICAN HISTORY X. The english civ in the XVIII cent. has expanded and has cities in other continents.
After changing civics to "absolute monarchy", of after increasing taxation, some of the far cities revolt forming the "republican side".
The republican faction, after controling all the far cities, with a little help from the frenchs, offers peace, if the loyals accept that could lead to the creation of a new civ: "the americans", that would start at the XVIII Cent. as a republic and not at 4000 BC as despotism.
The new country would have the same civics of the older one, except that which has been their "cause" (republic in this case).
Later in time the american player decide to ban slavery. This causes a rebellion of a group of cities and a civil war.
By defeating the rebellion taking all the rebel cities the americans elude the creation of the CSA civilization.


Sorry for the huge quote.
Idea 2 is sheer brilliance, I personaly love it!! Maybe happiness distance to capitol, culture of revolting cities compared to capitol (ie. a cultaruly weak capitol would have a harder time holding on to its cities), total commerce of city compared to capitol (ie. a very rich city would be more likely to fall away). Of course all these things are factors affecting how likely it is that cities rebel, but can not trigger a rebellion itself. Only a change of civic/religion or prolonged unhappy people could do this. Also the factors above should determine how much of a cities culture becomes 'loyal' and 'rebel'. So in effect all of your cities would partly rebel but only those with over 50% 'rebel' culture would flip to a 'rebel' state (creating one in the process)

I hope this made sence.
btw: is it possible to use python to create a new civ ingame?

I think this makes sense. BUT....there needs to be a way to deal with it. Maybe the development of the printing press reduces this effect by some percentage, and then the same for radio or mass media, and/or fiber optics (to represent the internet).

The English themselves came about from a norman invasion etc.

Fusions between ancient civilisations such as the Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Celts and Vikings would also work. Does no one ever think about the idea of civilisations being created from fusing two or more earlier civilisations together instead of breaking the old ones apart?

More imports = less wealth for you, more for your neighbor. This makes your country poorer. The opposite is true for exports. Wealth for nations is the difference between imports and exports, just like wealth for people is the difference between earning money and spending it.

I'm just wondering - has anyone successfully made a "civil war" mod for Civ 3 (any expansion)?

Please let me know - itching to play with some civil war possibilities.