Dystopian civics discussion

Good evening !
I am trying to make new civics for my post-apocalyptic mod. The focus is on oppressive/manipulating kinds of governments of all sorts, and I hope every civic option can represent this dystopian flavour. Now the mod would also cover a large period of time from early survival societies to far futuristic post-scarcity societies. Civics should therefore also be able to represent social changes in the whole period.

So, in a dangerous, futuristic environment, what do you think would be the new civics ? Which ones would be considered for re-use ?

I have quite a few more categories than the vanilla civ, so don't shy at creativity.
The civic categories for the moment are : politic, economic, culture, labour, health, environment, science (as in the relation with technology), social control (social control replaces happiness in the game). If you see any, or think that some of those will be useless, please tell me as well.

Religions will be replaced with ideologies such as environmentalism, communism, transhumanism, and so on. Religions themselves will not exist so no need to devise civics for those. The closest thing to a god would be the founding fathers of each civilisation, so those can still be used. Civics such as communist would instead be replaced by a combination of state-planned economy, one-party rule politics and collectivist labour civic for example. Communism would be the whole ideology that implies this set of civics. Same thing, if you think some civics should be switched to ideologies than please tell me !

I have in my mod 2 columns, which could maybe also fit here: Control and science.

Control consists of:

• Data privacy
• [Beginning government]
• Video control
• Digital control
• Mind control
• Genetic control

The science column consists of:

• [Beginning government]
• Technophob
• Creative mind (everybody is free to think)
• Science above all (science like Frankenstein)
• Hippocratic oath (opposite from above)

Might maybe be to "strong" in the changes for you, but gives you maybe a direction to think of.

But in general, i'm not very good at creative things, so i can't really make any further suggestions .

Well, thanks for your suggestions then ! I'll have a look at your mod to check how you have implemented them.

As I see it your control civics would also be possible but in terms of buildings/technologies... video control would correspond to an invasive media technology, mind control by brain waves emitters buildings and such... I'll keep the ideas, but use them for buildings rather than civics I think, since they would be enabled by the technologies rather than being conscious civic choices.

As for the science ones, I could have "caution principle" instead of technophobia to balance it a bit, and "mass testing" instead of science above all that would lead to the possibility to sacrifice population for research. I also thought of "applied science" that would reduce the pace of science while giving starting promotions to new units.

I'll think a bit more about those, thanks !

Just curious, what is the equivalent of a space-race victory, in your mod, Laozu? Victory might be achieving simultaneous repression of rights of the masses. As per The J's list of control means, each might be a step towards victory, rather than a civic. Also wondering if there is some python/mod to make the components of a space race victory give civic-like benefits.

You might also just try for a flavor version of the Vanilla civic, just colored into negative/repressive ideals. E.g. Politics might be: facism, tolitarianism, elitism, and hegemony. The new "ideologies" category could have a negative (dystopian)-spin names. E.g. replace Environmentalism with Eco-Facism. Replace Transhumanism with Forced-Evolution. Replace Liberalism with Forced-Equalism (like that Vonnegaut short story) Etc.. Etc... Give them darkly humorous punishments for each (more negatives than positives, with exaggerated negatives).

Well the equivalent of space-race victory is to "sublime"; in Banks culture books, if you've read them, subliming means surpassing the limits of the material universe and go immaterial (immortal and nearly all-powerful). Subliming will require research on many different fronts, but I don't know how to put those in practice in a way similar to the spaceship parts.

Repression of the masses is a good idea but that would certainly happen anyway with the brain controllers and such niceties. The problem I have now is how can be people not be controlled ? So you have a city with an emitter that control the brain of the population, how can I avoid saying "no anger in this city" because that'll just be too much ? What I could do instead of repression of the masses is a project to control the whole world's population. It could necessitate to create a huge network of satellites with brain wave emitters or something similar... and give a "diplomatic" victory ^^

I like Eco-fascism. That's something I wanted but couldn't find a name for. Thanks ^^