New Civics Screen

To do List

• add Tech Requirements
• add Anarchy Times
• add Civic Buttons
• add Buttons for new Units
• review Tech, Trade Perk, and Civic bonuses and play test
• add New Unit Pedia Help Text
• add Help Text for Allow Immigration code
  [*]add GameSpeed modifiers etc.

All the new art can be found HERE.

What we are wanting to do is port in the Civics screen of Civ4 BTS. This should be simpler than porting in the tech tree which we have already done. We are looking for suggestions and going over the options. I know Civ5 has a unique approach to this so we will be testing out all the current types, styles and ideas to determine which route we want to take here at M:C.

Here is the github link that keeps up with the current development https://github.com/Nightinggale/Medieval_Tech/issues?state=open
Issues mark as Needs Play Tested are hmmm.. ready for play testing and feed back. You are allowed to freely change between Civics at the moment for play testing purposes.


Here is the list of current suggestions. We need feedback and ideas on Bonuses:

Commerce

• Minimum
• Manorial - Manors receive a bonus (the current center plot bonus)
• Market
• Guilds - growth units have a chance to be Master or Experts
• Centralized

Piety

• Apathy - don't care
• Ritualistic - aka Catholicism
• Divine Revelation - aka Islam
• Patriarch - a king that is also the high priest
• Religious Tolerance

Government

• Localism
• Monarchy
• Feudalism
• Theocracy
• Parliament

Labor

• Tribalism
• Slavery - Slaves require no food
• Serfdom - Serfs require only one food
• Wage Labor
• Bureaucracy

Legal

• Anarchist - Vendetta (you kill my bro, I kill yours, your sister, and yo moma!)
• Local Customs - Common Law, Trial by Ordeal
• Ecclesiastical
• Codex - written laws, similar to old Roman Law
• Charter Law -Magna Carta is a famous one

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Original post:

To start us off orlanth, in reply to the religion thread, has posted some suggestions...

orlanth said:

Maybe Religion is a good opportunity to put the Civics system to use (ie reactivating the Civics system from base Civ4Bts, and let Religion be one category). IIRC it's possible to have some Civics cause relative like/dislike of certain others, and to have leaders get a propensity for certain Civics. I think it's also possible to coerce defeated foreigners to convert to one of your Civics using a diplomacy demand. That would allow for historicity in starting conditions and religious propensities, while also allowing for the possibility of conversion and a variety of intriguing religious/diplomatic circumstances.

Other possible Civics categories:

Government:
Tribalism
Despotism
Feudalism
Absolute Monarchy
Constitutional Monarchy

Philosophy:
Superstition
Dogmatism
Scholasticism
Enlightenment

Royal Favour:
Favour Nobility
Favour Clergy
Favour Peasantry

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Monarchy in the early Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian cultures wasn't usually hereditary, it was what you could term "merit based". The social rank gap between a thane and a king was very small. After they fell under the influence of Roman ideas of kingship (divine right of kings) they picked up hereditary succession, and the gap between thane and king grew ever larger. In a way, they abandoned democracy for monarchy, but it was a form of democracy that bears little resemblance to what we now think of as democracy.

Also, since M:C starts well after the beginning of the iron age, I would suggest that the most primitive stages of government used in Civ4 were already obsolete. So I'd think things went something like this:

Government:

• Elected Monarchy
• Hereditary Monarchy
• Feudalism
• Autocratic Monarchy
• Constitutional Monarchy

Since the period covered in M:C should end before the Renaissance takes hold in most of Europe, Enlightenment (which comes after the Renaissance) is something of an anachronism, so maybe something like:

Philosophy:

• Superstition
• Dogmatism
• Scholasticism
• Neo-Classicism
• Cynicism (not sure what else to call it, but that stage where scholar begin to question the authority of the church to determine what is true)

Royal Favour:

• Favour No One - most kings kept everyone beat down, the French kings are a clear example of this civic
• Favour Nobility - as King John of England discovered, the Pope was very much not in favour of this civic
• Favour Clergy - after Thomas Becket was martyred, Henry II of England was all about this one
• Favour Merchants - Venice and Genoa for instance
• Favour Peasantry - no examples come to mind of this one, the closest thing I can come up with is Cnut the Great while King of England.

Ok, folks, time to get serious about the Civics screen. Wanted to see what all I could get done really quick and so far I have come up with the below screen shot. Of course we need to redue the current Civics and do away with the end game options to choose civics, I may have done that already can't remember.

This Screen mainly just displays information at the moment, all the DLL code to actually interact with the screen isn't added yet.

This looks great. The Civ4 type civics have great potential with Col. There's so many possibilities you can do with them.

Niice! just like good ol Civ4BtS

I'm guessing the "Constitution" ones are combined into this same screen, and have another bool like <bMustbeinrevolutiontotakeeffect> ? I think that's good, there no need for a separate screen just for a few post-rev ones.

I've been thinking about how to further enhance moddability for Censures as well as Civics (since they and Techs use the same system in M:C). If you add a tag to CIV4EventInfos.xml that can add or remove a Civic, then add tags to CIV4EventTriggerInfos.xml that can check if relationship with your King is over/under a min or max threshold, then it becomes possible to flexibly XML-mod the triggers and effects for any Censures or Boons you want.

There is already a tag <Civic> in CIV4EventTriggerInfos.xml that checks if you have a civic. So using this it could be possible to mod events that only trigger if you have a certain Civic or Tech (or Censure)! So if the Pope assigns you a Penance or other quest, you get a negative Censure Civic that later gets removed whenever you fulfill the criteria that you set up for the quest in TriggerInfos.xml.

orlanth said:

I'm guessing the "Constitution" ones are combined into this same screen, and have another bool like <bMustbeinrevolutiontotakeeffect> ? I think that's good, there no need for a separate screen just for a few post-rev ones.

Click to expand...

The Constitution ones are just there for testing sense they already use the same code as Civ4.

My plan is to add tags to CivicOptionsInfos for "Techs", "PostRev", and "Civics". The post revs really don't fit in with M:C so I feel like they should be done away with in this Mod. And for the new Civics screen I am thinking maybe instead of calling them "Civics", call them "Decrees" instead, Like the King Makes a Decree, hows that sound?

orlanth said:

I've been thinking about how to further enhance moddability for Censures as well as Civics (since they and Techs use the same system in M:C). If you add a tag to CIV4EventInfos.xml that can add or remove a Civic, then add tags to CIV4EventTriggerInfos.xml that can check if relationship with your King is over/under a min or max threshold, then it becomes possible to flexibly XML-mod the triggers and effects for any Censures or Boons you want.

Click to expand...

Those are good ideas, I'll put that on the to do list.

orlanth said:

There is already a tag <Civic> in CIV4EventTriggerInfos.xml that checks if you have a civic. So using this it could be possible to mod events that only trigger if you have a certain Civic or Tech (or Censure)! So if the Pope assigns you a Penance or other quest, you get a negative Censure Civic that later gets removed whenever you fulfill the criteria that you set up for the quest in TriggerInfos.xml.

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Yeah, I added that tag And yet anther good idea. I was thinking on the "Royal Favors" civic idea, if you chose Clergy, then it will decrease the Negative Censure times.

for the new Civics screen I am thinking maybe instead of calling them "Civics", call them "Decrees" instead, Like the King Makes a Decree, hows that sound?

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Ok, I Hereby Decree that sounds good!

My plan is to add tags to CivicOptionsInfos for "Techs", "PostRev", and "Civics"

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good. you don't necessarily need a separate system for PostRev if you don't want; if its any easier it would prolly be fine to have these be regular civics system of the others, with just the option to mod a few civics that you can only adopt post-rev. But one for Censures might be good too, since these use the system but are also distinct from Civics in that they're involuntary temporary statuses and not in that screen. Maybe the Perks could be an OptionsInfo as well, meaning basically any Tech-like item that you don't get by researching & can't swap with diplomacy.

I'm glad if getting a single civicoptionsinfo for Techs means the odd requirement for everything to get <InventionCategory>MEDIEVAL_TECH is no longer needed. Do you think you could bring back the use of invention categories like in the old Inventor mod, where you can actually use <InventionCategory> to assign several categories of techs? I think it would be awesome if you could make a Trait give you a slight boost to research in one tech category but not in others (e.g. like categories of Religious or Commerce or Military techs in M:C). That could make the game really play differently depending on what leader you select. For mods with a lot of techs, this could also be cool to eventually let different categories be "tabs" on the tech screen, like FF categories do in the FF screen interface

In looking through the M:C XMLs I've realized that when thinking about where new XML-moddable features might be located, Civ4TraitInfos is also often a really good place to consider. This is because in addition to the possibility for using the tags of TraitInfos to mod leader traits; you already made it so Civics can apply an effect based on Trait XML if you want by using <AllowsTrait>; and Fathers can also be made to apply a Trait effect like they sometimes use in vanilla. So, if you add a single tag for a Category Tech Bonus to Traits; this could let you mod things like a FF or a Leader Trait Devout giving a bonus to religious advancements, or mod a Civic like Favour Clergy which gives a bonus there only while you pursue that civic, or mod a Censure where the pope clamps down on a research category, or mod a tech discovery Scholasticism which enhances your future research in the Religious category! Just like PromotionsInfos, TraitInfos is a hidden nexus of total XML modding versatility!

orlanth said:

Ok, I Hereby Decree that sounds good!

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Ok, I'll see if anyone else has some feed back.

orlanth said:

good. you don't necessarily need a separate system for PostRev if you don't want;

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Well, at the moment it is a must if we want to preserve the PostRev Civics. Like I said, I don't really care to have them for M:C. I really should find another way to do Techs and break them away from CivicsOptions because with having a Civics Screen the code builds an array of all CivicOptions and the Civic you have chosen for that option. So, I have been adding code for an hour to make it skip Inventions CivicOptions.

orlanth said:

But one for Censures might be good too, since these use the system but are also distinct from Civics in that they're involuntary temporary statuses and not in that screen. Maybe the Perks could be an OptionsInfo as well, meaning basically any Tech-like item that you don't get by researching & can't swap with diplomacy.

Click to expand...

I want to keep the Tech/Cencures/Perks all under the Inventions Options at the moment. Like I just said, the InventionsOption adds one more option to the list that is not really a Civic, so if we add more Options I would have to go back and change all those lines of code again Maybe Nightinggale can advice me on a better solution. It's ok to add more options that are trully Civics, so if we keep the PostRev civics I may put them under InventionOptions as well. Is PostRev civics something you want to keep in 2071? They want be of any use in the World History Mod I don't think.

orlanth said:

I'm glad if getting a single civicoptionsinfo for Techs means the odd requirement for everything to get <InventionCategory>MEDIEVAL_TECH is no longer needed.

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Still needed This is were we separate all the different types PostRev/Techs/Censures/Perks etc at the moment.

orlanth said:

Do you think you could bring back the use of invention categories like in the old Inventor mod, where you can actually use <InventionCategory> to assign several categories of techs? I think it would be awesome if you could make a Trait give you a slight boost to research in one tech category but not in others (e.g. like categories of Religious or Commerce or Military techs in M:C). That could make the game really play differently depending on what leader you select. For mods with a lot of techs, this could also be cool to eventually let different categories be "tabs" on the tech screen, like FF categories do in the FF screen interface

Click to expand...

This would be great as well. I will have to think on how to set this all up. So, much borrowing of code and trying to do to many things with one set of XMLs.

orlanth said:

So, if you add a single tag for a Category Tech Bonus to Traits; this could let you mod things like a FF or a Leader Trait Devout giving a bonus to religious advancements, or mod a Civic like Favour Clergy which gives a bonus there only while you pursue that civic, or mod a Censure where the pope clamps down on a research category, or mod a tech discovery Scholasticism which enhances your future research in the Religious category! Just like PromotionsInfos, TraitInfos is a hidden nexus of total XML modding versatility!

Click to expand...

Again, all great ideas.

I have been porting the CIV4 Civics code into M:C, there is actually lots more going on than I realized and a couple of questions have come to mind...

When a player changed civics he had several turns of Anarchy to get through. I can't remember what all happened during Anarchy but what should happen to the player when he changes Civics? Remember how each Civic had turns of Anarchy and depending on how many Civics you changed determined on how long Anarchy lasted. So, whats happens during Anarchy? Remember too that some Traits and Techs reduced Anarchy so that gives us more options.

Also, each Civic had an Upkeep in gold the player had to pay. Some where Low, Med, or High. I had the Idea and I have started programming it so that you can select any Yield as an Upkeep cost in the XML, including player gold. The Starting Civics should have no UpKeep cost of course, but the Advanced one's can. So, we could say the UpKeep cost of Favor Clergy could be 3 Crosses and 3 Wine for Sacraments. If the player spends more than one turn with out these requirements his Kingdom would automatically enter Anarchy and the Favor Clergy civic would revert to the default. Hows does that grab you?

I am able to change Civics now through the screen and wait for Anarchy to pass before I can change again. So far that's the only effect of Anarchy. What I am doing is getting all the Major features and additions that is going to effect the Economy, like this new Civics screen, together and working. Then we can start filling in all the XML tags like Demands and stuff as certain civics could effect demands.

We need to decided on the Civics we will be able to choose from. I think sense we are only dealing with a short period of time we could just use 4 Civics in each Category. There has been some suggestions already and I'll add to the list, some of these came from CIV4. We need to decided on the categories as well. Some of them, like Manorialism would make sense in multiple categories.

Philosophy

• Superstition
• Dogmatism
• Scholasticism
• Neo-Classicism
• Cynicism

Government

• Manorialism
• Monarchy
• Feudalism
• Constitutional Manarchy
• Elected Monarchy
• Hereditary Monarchy
• Autocratic Monarchy

Royal Favor

• Self
• Nobility
• Clergy
• Merchants
• Peasantry

Legal

• Trial by Ordeal
• Manorialism
• Trail by Jury
• Vassalage

Labor

• Tribalism
• Manorialism
• Slavery
• Serfdom
• Caste

Economics

• Decentralized
• Mercantilism

Religion

• Paganism
• Organized
• Theocracy
• Pacifism
• Free Relgion

Kailric said:

So, whats happens during Anarchy?

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I think all kind of all production should be halted during revolution, even food production. Or at least halved. Some revolutions occur, in my non documented opinion, because of scarcity; others because of a majority of common opinion different to the establishment one. In both cases, especially the former, it may be difficult to insist on the previous production models.
If I am a medieval peasant and my colleagues peasants and I are revolting against our lord, I would let his wheat rot on the fields except the part I took for my family. And his soldiers could chase me given my lord had well supplied safes. So money would rely on reserves.

Kailric said:

So, we could say the UpKeep cost of Favor Clergy could be 3 Crosses and 3 Wine for Sacraments. If the player spends more than one turn with out these requirements his Kingdom would automatically enter Anarchy and the Favor Clergy civic would revert to the default. Hows does that grab you?

Click to expand...

This is ok for me. This revolution is more authentic as it is a result of poor state management, not a capricious decision. Besides, it makes resources more meaningful.

Wow Nice work Kailric! I am liking what I see so far!

As to the World History Version, one Idea I was toying with in conjunction with the Multinvasion Modcomp Fullerene is working on, was that civics changes would have two condition/effects.

These were linked in with the current 'Independence' mechanic.

So In World History my plan is to have the 'King/Pope' be the 'Opposition/People'.

The way I was thinking of Civics was to have them linked to 'Independence/Revolution'

So you need to have 50% 'fealty' minimum, in order to call a civic change, and this would trigger the rebel army (expedition force) to attack, so changing civics causes a very literal anarchy as you have to fight off the opposition to the change and if you don't have at least X% Fealty in a town it could 'flip' to the rebels aaaah!.

So the more 'fealty' and good relations with the King/Pope/Opposition, the easier it will be to make a change, more loyalty strength in towns, smaller REF size etc.

This might be fun for you in M:C, or it might not. But it would use the very unique Independence mechanic in a very fun way for stability and anarchy and the 'tension' of change.

Also I like 'Trial by Ordeal' I want to start weighing surfs against ducks now!

Lib.Spi't said:

So you need to have 50% 'fealty' minimum, in order to call a civic change, and this would trigger the rebel army (expedition force) to attack, so changing civics causes a very literal anarchy as you have to fight off the opposition to the change and if you don't have at least X% Fealty in a town it could 'flip' to the rebels aaaah!.

So the more 'fealty' and good relations with the King/Pope/Opposition, the easier it will be to make a change, more loyalty strength in towns, smaller REF size etc.

This might be fun for you in M:C, or it might not. But it would use the very unique Independence mechanic in a very fun way for stability and anarchy and the 'tension' of change.

Also I like 'Trial by Ordeal' I want to start weighing surfs against ducks now!

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This sounds like an interesting concept here. The K/P/O could demand certain Civics, that are not necessarily beneficial to your Realm as you would like. You may even play along for a time, such like agreeing to a tax hike in Vanilla, but when you decided to change civics that's when the K/P/O get's all weird faced and comes at you one way or another, depending on certain factors. I can see this working for vanilla in conjunction with my Acts idea I mentioned in the other thread.

When a player changed civics he had several turns of Anarchy to get through. I can't remember what all happened during Anarchy but what should happen to the player when he changes Civics? Remember how each Civic had turns of Anarchy and depending on how many Civics you changed determined on how long Anarchy lasted. So, whats happens during Anarchy? Remember too that some Traits and Techs reduced Anarchy so that gives us more options.

Click to expand...

That's true.. hmm.. in addition to Anarchy, and Traits etc that reduce Anarchy; there were also the Golden Ages, and things that prolong/reduce Golden Ages - sounds like a similar/compatible system to what you have implemented for having several Censures and Traits/Civics etc that can reduce them! How about if you can implement any "status" like Anarchy or Golden Age by using the system for Civics/Censures? (ie, Anarchy is in effect a type of Censure). Then their effects can be XML-moddable, you can make Traits/Civics and other things affect them how you like, and it's easy to rebalance/adjust!

Also, each Civic had an Upkeep in gold the player had to pay. Some where Low, Med, or High. I had the Idea and I have started programming it so that you can select any Yield as an Upkeep cost in the XML, including player gold. The Starting Civics should have no UpKeep cost of course, but the Advanced one's can. So, we could say the UpKeep cost of Favor Clergy could be 3 Crosses and 3 Wine for Sacraments. If the player spends more than one turn with out these requirements his Kingdom would automatically enter Anarchy and the Favor Clergy civic would revert to the default. Hows does that grab you?

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Yeah, some form of Upkeep sounds good too. IIRC there could be a maintenance per-number-of-cities as well as a different value with a fixed maintenance per turn. So a lot of the differences between Civics were that there are some that are good for small focused empires starting out (eg giving a boost in the capital city but high maintenance for many cities across a large area), while other ones become a better idea once you have a large empire that you need to govern efficiently. The possibility of additional yields besides Gold as maintenance sounds good as well; but how does it check where to consume them from? Also maybe be careful about not triggering Anarchy involuntarily too easily; people could find it frustrating getting Anarchy without warning or needing to constantly keep tabs on Wine supplies cause of that boozy Pope

Also, I think in Civ4 certain Civs could "like" or "dislike" certain Civics, affecting your diplomatic relationships depending on which ones you chose. You could also demand someone adopt your favorite civic if you beat them in war. This could be used for something like a forced conversion of rivals or barbarians.

I'm not sure how well anarchy fits the colonization engine. We should really consider that option carefully before implementing it.

As for sideeffects for changing civics:
How about we add "friend" civics. If we change from civic A to B, then if A and B are friends (similar), then the nasty sideeffect wouldn't appear or would be less. B and C could then be friends meaning you could switch to C easily as well, but you are hit hard for switching directly from A to C as they are too different. I order not to just do A->B->C we should make a counter for how long you had a civic and only apply the friend status if you had a civic for say 20 turns.

Another issue with civics is that the player cache is recalculated whenever a civic is added or removed. This mean if we switch from A to B, we remove A, update cache, enable B, update cache. As the cache update is somewhat slow I need to add the ability to change civics without cache updates and then update the cache once batch changing is done. This isn't critical, but still something I would prefer to implement.

Nightinggale said:

I'm not sure how well anarchy fits the colonization engine. We should really consider that option carefully before implementing it.

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Like orlanth says, we can just make it a type of Censure and no problems there.

Nightinggale said:

As for sideeffects for changing civics:
How about we add "friend" civics. If we change from civic A to B, then if A and B are friends (similar), then the nasty sideeffect wouldn't appear or would be less. B and C could then be friends meaning you could switch to C easily as well, but you are hit hard for switching directly from A to C as they are too different. I order not to just do A->B->C we should make a counter for how long you had a civic and only apply the friend status if you had a civic for say 20 turns.

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I was having the same thoughts. Some Civics would work better together. I have been playing around with Civ5 and their Social Policies and I like some of the concepts there. Some Social Polices can not be in effect while others are. We don't have to have a straight forward, equal number civic per civic option ether. I've modded a timer between civic changes already. I think default is 5 turns.

Nightinggale said:

Another issue with civics is that the player cache is recalculated whenever a civic is added or removed. This mean if we switch from A to B, we remove A, update cache, enable B, update cache. As the cache update is somewhat slow I need to add the ability to change civics without cache updates and then update the cache once batch changing is done. This isn't critical, but still something I would prefer to implement.

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You and your speed issues

Kailric said:

Like orlanth says, we can just make it a type of Censure and no problems there.

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That's not what I meant, though that wouldn't be a bad approach to solve it. What I meant was if it makes sense to make anarchy in a game where you assign units in cities like in the colo engine. Having some sort of transition time to a new civic isn't bad on it's own, but we need to figure out how it would affect gameplay to make sense in our settings. Just having all cities rioting might not be the best option.

Kailric said:

You and your speed issues

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I have to pay attention to this as nobody else does
Besides I might be affected somewhat by the fact that I have been using computers since the 80's. It has quite a number of good memories, but performance isn't one of them

Actually the last isn't true. Apple's System 7.1 (mid 90's) had a great user interface. The responstime was stunning. In fact it was better on a 16 MHz CPU than a modern OS on a high end computer today. Modern OSes seems like bloatware in comparison with all their non essential features like window shadows, coloured windows etc (7.1 had monochrome windows).

Either way col2071 1.42 is gamebreakingly slow and I will not allow the M:C DLL to become even near that. In fact I want the DLL to be lightning fast, stable and with multiplayer support as it is now meant as a platform for XML modder for multiple mods.

Nightinggale said:

In fact I want the DLL to be lightning fast, stable and with multiplayer support as it is now meant as a platform for XML modder for multiple mods.

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I am all for that too!

On the idea of Civics again, I have been doing some extensive brain storming, watching videos, reading articles. I am thinking of presenting something along the lines of Civics being more a substantial factor in how your empire is run rather than just changing a few numbers here and there. I am thinking we can set it up so that a player can decide if he wants to be a King of Medieval Feudal society, or the Sultan of an Islamic empire, or something in between. By picking and choosing his "Civics" a player can play under any of these circumstances. They can set what default unit they produce with Food and or Luxury Food, as well as what Professions they can choose from. Knights would only be allowed under Feudalism so to speak.

Religion could also play a big part. If your current religion is Orthodox Christianity and your Fealty is high enough you may decide you'd kind like to see what it's like to be Muslim, thus you can change your state religion. The Pope of course would not be to happy with this and send his armies against you, if victorious your state religion would change to Islamic and you'd then be answering to the Caliph. The different Religions could be "unlocked" at certain Eras allowing you new religious options. These options would work best under a new kind of victory condition of Religion where you attempt to spread you religion all over the known world. Anyway, just thinking out loud

Some interesting thoughts there

Those sound like cool ideas Kailric. You can let certain civics apply a relationship bonus with other civs which share that same civic; this could be used so that Catholic civs like other Catholic civs more, Muslim civs like other Muslim civs, etc. Also, I think asking/forcing other civs to change to one of your civics was a diplomacy option in Civ4 (or was that Alpha Centauri), this could be useful as well.

Yeah Anarchy should not be made as totally crippling as in Civ4BtS, and its effects & duration should be carefully balanced/adjusted; but if its possible to make it a Censure with moddable effects this would be good for adjusting it with playtesting, possibly making it more minor and not doing something irreversible we might end up not liking. As a starter I might lean toward something like a -50% penalty to production of all yields except Food (and -50% to worker build rate) lasting average 2-3 turns, and maybe see how things go from there - what do you guys think?

orlanth said:

As a starter I might lean toward something like a -50% penalty to production of all yields except Food.

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I would also apply the penalty on food.