Those civics seem reasonable: nothing that makes me scream at any rate.
1) Me too.
2) What about revolutions? Do you want to cut their effect completely or are they not listed only because there is no change? I always play with rev on and it is an important issue for me
Forgive me for my poor english. On my last 'teen' years, my vocabulary in my mother language got a lot better, while I stopped practicing my english. It turned out now my mind creates several ideas that are hard for me to put in english because of that.
Actually I'm against the small bonuses. What I'm in favor of is the multitude of civics, for the reasons I gave above.
I mistype civs instead of civics in here:
So trying to tie my ideas here: I think many details should be removed. But the number of civics is good and should remain more or less the same. Having several options of civics bring flavor to the game. Having several small bonuses on each civic brings confusion.
I'm kind of unsure about Federal - sure, it gives you -25% to all maintenance, but that's about it gives. Perhaps lower the -% to production/mil. production?
Society doesn't make sense as a civic category - why is a government dictating its societal structure to the population - that would only occur in a totalitarianistic government. That civic category should be axed.
There are a number of major ministries/departments not represented well by the civic categories that could be added as well. Foreign Affairs seems a really interesting idea - a civilization might have a Isolationist foreign affair civic, or a civic that pays tributes to all civilizations at peace with them (to encourage them not to attack), or a civic that gives "foreign aid" to the weakest civilizations, etc. These would all effect diplomacy greatly - who wants to attack a civilization giving you 25gp/turn for free, when war means no more tributes? There seems like a lot of interesting possibilities.
Another interesting civic category might be Immigration. Does your government permit any internal movement between cities (maybe unhappy populations will move from one of your cities with lots of unhappiness to one with food and happiness). Or maybe you permit foreign emmigration too, and some citizens might leave and settle elsewhere (bringing the neighbor civilization your culture and population). You could use immigration to export your culture, or to lock down the borders and let no one leave. I know interest in immigration mechanics has been expressed before.
So to summarize:
Remove Society Category
Add Justice, Foreign Affairs, and (maybe) Immigration.
Thoughts? Other missing categories?
I had some broad ideas beyond the currently proposed government-category civic changes. I can't help but think the civic categories should more closely reflect the real organization of governments. The changes I am proposing would be rather sweeping and so I would like feedback before I do more than just theorize. I am not promising any of the below changes, I just want thoughts on the matter.
Basically there are 3 major branches to any government (this may be a bit US-centric, but I think it's fairly true): Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.
Right now the "Government" category represents the Executive Branch. The Rule (formerly Power) branch represents the Legislative Branch. The judicial branch is missing and I think we should add a new civic category for justice.
I think the remaining civic categories should loosely be based on departments/ministries most governments have. Military, Welfare, Economy, Religion all line up fairly well with real world analogues. Society doesn't make sense as a civic category - why is a government dictating its societal structure to the population - that would only occur in a totalitarianistic government. That civic category should be axed.
There are a number of major ministries/departments not represented well by the civic categories that could be added as well. Foreign Affairs seems a really interesting idea - a civilization might have a Isolationist foreign affair civic, or a civic that pays tributes to all civilizations at peace with them (to encourage them not to attack), or a civic that gives "foreign aid" to the weakest civilizations, etc. These would all effect diplomacy greatly - who wants to attack a civilization giving you 25gp/turn for free, when war means no more tributes? There seems like a lot of interesting possibilities.
Another interesting civic category might be Immigration. Does your government permit any internal movement between cities (maybe unhappy populations will move from one of your cities with lots of unhappiness to one with food and happiness). Or maybe you permit foreign emmigration too, and some citizens might leave and settle elsewhere (bringing the neighbor civilization your culture and population). You could use immigration to export your culture, or to lock down the borders and let no one leave. I know interest in immigration mechanics has been expressed before.
So to summarize:
Remove Society Category
Add Justice, Foreign Affairs, and (maybe) Immigration.
Thoughts? Other missing categories?
I dont agree on this. Who said that civics are (always) representation of goverment choises? Who said that everithing in the game are always govermental choises? E.g. tech reseach. You as a player choose what to research, but how would had the Pharaos decide to research Ceremonila Burrial?
So it should not be removed only because of this one reason.
I am not all against of removing it, but...
Education maybe? It one category I liked in C2C.
There is a category I have in my mind for a long time, but I think most people will find it unnecessarry. However I put it down here:
Values
Things that your society value the most and what the goverment tries to affect according their goals.
These should be small bonuses only, but changig them should not couse anarchy at all (just time to change between them).
Some values I think of:
Just an idea.
- Family: Cities need less food to grow but higher war
- War pride: Lower war
- Hedonism: +
- Faith: + with state , penalty for non state
- Information: some bonus for scientists and spies (unsure what)
- etc.
I quite like the idea of education as a civic, but what would you put in a potential judicial category? Immigration I'm more dubious about, especially if one of the civic categories ends up being called "Open Borders", which is just silly, given that's a time-honoured diplomatic treaty in Civ IV.
Foreign Affairs need more elaboration because the Advanced Diplomacy do good job to start satiate peaceful players. I don't want that category to confuse the game. Also immigration is tightly intertwined with foreign affairs so I think immigration should suffice. Other categories look good to me.
Immigration and Foreign Affairs are sufficiently different to be separate civic categories. Mixing them would be more confusing than not.
I like the ideas of adding justice and foreign affairs. I think one we should add would be Territory Governance (probably with a better name) to represent how far flung/ non-capitol cities and territory is governed. This would be a good area to add small civilization vs large civics. These could be either decentralized or centralized with each benefitting a small or large empire. Possible options could be:
Tribal Villages - starting civic, move 3 city limit here
City State- Ancient loosely united cities exert control over immediate surroundings(think ancient Greece)
Provincial- strong central government with out laying territory ruled by loyal governors (Rome)
Manorial/Fiefs- power held largely by local lords / land owners who swear allegiance to ruler (Medieval Europe)
Some kind of centralized medieval system
Centralized (modern unified nation states)
Federal/Confederation (moved from government category)
This to me would be a better system than using current government civics to balance small vs large. Hope I explained this well, I may expand on if needed when I'm not on mobile.