XML - Lowenar's Sensible Civics for RevolutionDCM 2.61

Well, I finally got around to starting my own Civ4 mod. The goal for this mod is to
change the way various systems in Civ4 work to make them more coherent with how I
feel Civ4's brand of alternate history would unfold. Essentially, I want to fix some of
the more "gamey" conventions of civ4 to something more in line with how history and
nations actually work(ed), while not only preserving good game play, but improving it.

Rather than do everything at once, I'm dividing my fixes/changes into phases and
working on one system at a time. This is the thread for my first and so far only
modcomp "Sensible Civics". After this is more or less finished, I'll probably start
working on the tech tree.

(Download attached, You'll need to grab revolutionDCM separately and install that, then
make a copy of your revolutionDCM directory so that my changes don't overwrite anything
you want to keep. Unzip my mod with the directory structure intact to the revolutionDCM directory in ../mods/. )

Sensible Civics Project Motivation:

I've found that a lot of things in the vanilla civ4 civics system don't make any sense.
-You need universal suffrage in order to rush build with gold, what? Surely that ability
would depend on your economic system, not who gets to vote?
-What kind of legal system is "vassalage" "nationhood" or "bureaucracy" or "free
speech" anyway? What do any of these things have to do with legality or the legal
system, beyond naming a single thing that might *involve* one of many legal
processes?
-And just what is a "labor" civic anyway? What does it mean to have slavery as a
civic, when using it excludes having other civics that historically went with slavery,
like a caste system or the emancipation of a non slave majority?
-Would the economic system used after the discovery of currency really be the same
as when the first permanent settlements are built in 4000 bc?
-How is it possible that State Property, an economic system that demands every
economic detail be centrally planned and managed result in the complete elimination
of local corruption, other than wishful thinking?
-Also, why is a "green" economic system exclusive of all the other kinds? shouldn't a
green economy be something you have to create using technology, city
improvements, and limiting population growth?

After tolerating the weird civic system civ4 vanilla has setup and trying out the
equally weird civic system setup by RoM, I've tried to come up with general guidelines
for what each category (civicoptions) mean, and the kind of bonuses you would get
for each option. I also want to avoid having too many civics that do too many things.

GOVERNMENT
- Describes who is at the head of government, and how that government stays
stable. Monarchy, Republic, Theocracy, Democracy, etc. Primarily changes happiness
and war wariness. The only real difference with the old system is that Theocracy is
now considered a government civic, though a theocracy now just represents
government rule selected by the church, and is no longer inherently militant.

INCORPORATION
- Describes how/what your empire is composed of. Is it a single Nation, a Federation
of States, Fiefdoms and Demesnes, or a multi-national Empire? Primarily changes
maintenance costs based on number of cities or distance to palace. Vassalage (now
fiefdom) and nationhood (now nation) are the only holdovers from the old legal civic
option.

LEGAL
- How does your legal system work; mainly, what rights do your citizens have, how do
they get those rights, and who doesn't have any rights at all? The civics are fairly
close to what labor civics used to do.

ECONOMY
-Additions include the new starting civic "agrarian" economy, barter, which you get
with currency. Now free market (and maybe other economic civics) grant hurrying
with gold, and there is no longer a green econ civic as I believe "green" economics
can be better described as practices and regulations that are applied to other civics,
rather than a civic in itself. Instead there is a new world trade civic, which functions
similar to free market.

RELIGION
- the starting religion is renamed to "Folk", because "Pagan" is really just a word
Christians used to negatively describe certain non-christian religions.
-Orthodox now represents something similar to what theocracy used to, a very closed
minded an exclusive approach to what is "correct" religious belief.
-Tolerant the idea here is a state religion that tolerates other state religions. This
concept needs some work, I think it overlaps with folk.
- Pantheist is an early kind of free religion to represent the wave of pantheist thought
during the 1700ish period or anywhere else it may have been. The concept definitely
needs some work, currently it overlaps too much with Secular and Athiest.
-Secular - free religion with a new name and more sensible effects. I could rename it
back I guess.
-Atheist - bumps up science and industry, unhappy from religions, 1/5th less culture,
but religions don't spread. I'll probably have to mod a (non-inquisition) way of purging
religions from a city for this to truly make sense.

This is the first release, my goal for this release is to get feedback on the names and
categorizations of the civics, as well as ideas for balancing civics.

Keep in mind, less is more. I think it's a much better idea to take away or change
bonuses and entire civics to get this balanced than I am to add new things.

Also I'm a brand new civ4 modder so if I could be doing something better with
modding or forum posting, let me know.

civics are sort of trends proceed in your empire. of course there was no 100% pure free market or slavery or etc. just when you pic slavery it means that it plays major role in your economy.

vanilla legal civics are ok to me. "Legal" civic option specifies what powers determine relations between your citizens. vassalage, bureaucracy etc have a good scense IMO, just dont take it literally.

for me i settled on this:


Though Nationhood does not fit well here, i think.

I like the idea of Incorporation civics, though I don't like the name.

One thing that annoys me is that most of your religion civics forbid having a religion...

killmeplease said:

civics are sort of trends proceed in your empire. of course there was no 100% pure free market or slavery or etc. just when you pic slavery it means that it plays major role in your economy.

vanilla legal civics are ok to me. "Legal" civic option specifies what powers determine relations between your citizens. vassalage, bureaucracy etc have a good scense IMO, just dont take it literally.
Though Nationhood does not fit well here, i think.

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First, thanks for replying! I was worried people were just going to ignore this. I'm still working on modding everything, so feedback and ideas are nice.

I know when doing this sort of thing people are going to come up with reasons why the vanilla civics system or just single elements of it are ok, I can do this as well, but still, the civics system in vanilla bothers me. There is just too much weirdness with it to explain away.

For example, say I pick the slavery civic and then I don't whip. What does having the slavery civic mean then? Nothing. It can't mean slavery has a large role in my economy, because nothing changed purely as a consequence of adopting it. Yes, it did give me additional capabilities that I could have used, and civics should do this, but they should always have appropriate passive effects as well, otherwise the civics system just feels like an empty game mechanic without flavor.

None of that means I wouldn't put a slavery civic in my mod, it's just that it would have to work in a more sensible way. Hence the reason for me finally getting around to making the mod.

Also, I think the Reformation religious civic is an excellent idea! I'll probably replace pantheism with it.

One problem I do have with your civics (just related to naming) is Police state in the government column, and then Totalitarian in the legal column. You could probably just swap the names of the two things and it would make a lot more sense. As you observed, nationhood doesn't really fit in with any of the other legal civics, and I'm not sure what federalism is as a distinct form of government apart from republic, democracy, etc.

So yeah, you can probably see why I didn't just lift someone elses civic system, apparently it's a deeply personal thing

Opera said:

I like the idea of Incorporation civics, though I don't like the name.

One thing that annoys me is that most of your religion civics forbid having a religion...

Click to expand...

It's the best I could come up with. Other possibilities: Sovereignty, Realm, Centralization, Divisions, Composition, Country, etc.

And yeah the religious civics are the weakest part of this, there should only be two religious civics that don't allow a state religion. In general though, at this time what any of my civics do is just a starting point.

I don't quite know what to call it, but in the Ottoman Empire (and in Cyrus' Empire actually too, among others) there were often members of court and officials who were not Muslim (and thus non-aligned with ruling Ottoman families) and because of this other religions were tolerated (although for the most part they were taxed and had to serve in the military etc.) and allowed to practice their faiths, although I wouldn't necessarily call it free religion (I don't think they could flaunt it against Islam and things like that), but I think this is sort of a midway between Organized Religion and Free Religion. Maybe you could call it Tolerance or something like that.

Not sure what the benefits would be though. Maybe some type of espionage bonus or something like that.

the key to civics issue is the fact that one will not be satisfied with someone else's system as there always will be a disagreement in details, in effects certain civics should give and even in interpretation of their names

in my system slavery means that there are a class of people that can be forsed to do hard work and even if you dont whip you still have a benefit from it as you do not suffer (for tribalism) and (for civil works) penalties.

Totalitarian and PS are very close... by police state i mean a rule of secret services or military under which society is controlled (to suppress political opposition) but not absolutely determined by state, whereas in a totalitarian society all aspects of human life are determined by some ideology. calvinist state of geneva could be given as an example of religious totalitarian democracy. and i think in usa and europe there's a tendency towards a some strange form of totalitarianism (tolerantism lol) while these countries are not police states.

on difference between democracy, republic and federalism:
under democracy i mean a direct democracy. republic is a representative one and federalism is an aggregate state consisted of subjects which political systems can vary to some extent.

p.s. i take a look at your system and liked it in general. what i want to say imo you better should to use "free units" not "free military units" as free military units is a number of military untis you do not pay extra upkeep (i.e. under world trade) for.

i have a question: why atheism gives more and less ?
for mercantile, with -20 in all cities and +50 in capital, you'll get +30 in capital. not that great!

in my system i've set reformation to require printing press, i think it will be more suitable than aesthetics to your pantheism as well dont you think so?

The Capo said:

I don't quite know what to call it, but in the Ottoman Empire (and in Cyrus' Empire actually too, among others) there were often members of court and officials who were not Muslim (and thus non-aligned with ruling Ottoman families) and because of this other religions were tolerated (although for the most part they were taxed and had to serve in the military etc.) and allowed to practice their faiths.....

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I have in mind with the tolerant/tolerance civic.

killmeplease said:

i have a question: why atheism gives more :Hammers: and less :Culture:?

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It's basically because I think an atheist state implies a degree of philosophical materialism, which means more and (materialistic), and less culture.

That and turning your back, so to speak, on millenia of an important part of your countries cultural development can't be good for culture creation. It would also have a dramatic effect in reducing the appeal of your nation to citizens of other non-atheist cultures, which is exactly what it does in the game.

killmeplease said:

for mercantile, with -20 in all cities and +50 in capital, you'll get +30 in capital. not that great!

Click to expand...

It's up in the air exactly what any of these civics do. The general idea with the specific bonuses and penalties mentioned is that a mercantile economy concentrates most production in the capital. I don't know if I should reduce the -20% , or increase the 50% , or something else. I'll figure it out sometime.

And yes, reformation does make a lot more sense, and I agree the obvious prerequisite tech is printing press.

Lowenar said:

Yeah, that's what I have in mind with the tolerant/tolerance civic.



It's basically because I think an atheist state implies a degree of philosophical materialism, which means more and (materialistic), and less culture.

Click to expand...

"Materialism" doesn't mean that. Philosophical materialism means "only the physical world exists", not "WE'VE GOT TO HAVE MONEY!"