The 10 social policies

Ahriman said:

If you have slaves in your society, then you aren't running an emancipation policy. An emancipation policy, BY DEFINITION, means there are no slaves.

It doesn't just mean "some slaves can sometimes become free". That's a slavery policy.

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Ahriman...
2 Very basic problems

1. You are assuming the player controls the government, but there is some 'rest of society' they do not control.

No the player controls ALL of 'Society' to the degree that those parts of society impact the game. (The player doesn't determine the exact doctrine of their religion in Civ 4, predestination, reincarnation, etc... but they Do determine the effect that the doctrine has on their society... so if believing in predestination makes people more willing to risk their lives in combat, then Theocratic Christianity is Calvinism... if beleiving in predestination makes people more willing to go with the flow and understand the universe better than Pacifist Chistianity is Calvinism)


2. You are insisting on black and white definitions... actually I'll use that as an example... a number can't be both even and odd... but an object can be both black and white..(black in some areas white in others... you can even make it whiter and blacker at the same time if it used to be grayish everywhere) This gets even more complicated when dealing with more abstract terms... hate and love.. both have a Wide variety of meanings, allowing someone to say they both hate someone and love them and both be truthful merely thinking about different circumstances.
Something like Freedom and Order... can SEEM like opposites, but that doesn't mean they are. (you could even argue they are the same thing if you wanted to get philosophical and psycholgical)

Democracy.. 'all power rests in the hands of the people' doesn't exist... Most of the power, maybe all the 'legal' power... but never ALL the power (maybe if you have mob rule and everyone is equally eloquent, rich, and well armed.. but that wouldn't be anything like democracy as we understand it)

Bejing controlled China, the US and France are all "Free Religion" societies (its in their constitutions).... but they all act Drastically differently in terms of religion

(Realistically, the US is "Religious Freedom" France is "Secular" and China is "Controlled Religion"... but each of those have degrees and could be argued about where they lie, etc.)
.........................................
Now Some of the examples we are using are probably bad because they are taken from the Civ 4 civics menu, and previous civ government types. Those were chosen specifically to be mutually exclusive sounding.

But even take Universal Suffrage... that doesn't imply pure democracy, it just means everyone has a vote... it doesn't say how much weight their votes have...
Universal Suffrage but you Only vote on certain types of laws, the rest are decrees of the King not subject to vote.
This is different from a society in which only Hindu male Brahmins can vote on those types of laws (the first has universal suffrage, the second doesn't.. both are only Partially 'democratic')

Is that partial democracy enough to get the desired bonuses? or not... I don't know it depends on the society?

Or say You have a King of the country, but the people elect the Mayors of their towns... and there is a limit to the king's power

What type of government was the UK from ~1215 to~1900 when did it change from a Monarchy to a Representative government? The king did not instantly become a figurehead.. what if the King still retained some of their power?

Amendment XIII
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

awesome said:

Amendment XIII
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

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You know how many slaves we would have in the US today if Slavery was the punishment for crimes instead of jail time.

You know how many slaves we Could have if we increased those sentences

DUI=5 years indentured servitude

Fraud=1 years +1 month/100$ of fraud value.. not to exceed 50 years

GTA=10 years Indentured Servitude

Negligent Homicide=Lifetime chattel slave

Agravated Assault=25 Years slavery

Possession of Illicit substance=50 Years

etc.

Crackdown on crime, And people can buy American from Wal-Mart again

noone would be Born a slave, but lots of people could become one...
Slavery+Emancipation

Slavery+Serfdom is Easy, those often coexisted... usually with a Caste system

do prisoners get paid for the work they do while in the joint? because, i mean, they definitely have jobs in there, it's not all lifting weights and getting their hair braided. because if not, that could be considered slavery. not that that's necessarily a bad thing, since it already costs taxpayers' money for keeping them in there in the first place and it's part of their rehabilitation.

That's a hilarious example kirkkatone, although it saddens me when even in an arbitrary example a DUI is 1/10th of simply possessing a substance the government has likely archaically deemed illicit. Makes me worried you might be from the great state of WI like I am, where a DUI is basically just a speeding ticket, and almost everyone I know, knows someone who has been killed by a drunk driver.

Ahriman said:

Because many policies are logically mutually exclusive.

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Could you give an example which ?
we don't know if any policies they put must be logically exclusive.

Ahriman said:

None of these are monarchies in the Civ sense

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What are monarchies in the civ sense?

Okay, a couple things. I don't see why people are trying to argue that two civ4 civics in the same category could both be in effect at the same time and still make sense. Of course they couldn't. The civ4 civics were specifically designed with concepts that were mutually exclusive, because that's how the game worked. So of course you couldn't have slavery and emancipation at the same time.

However, I doubt slavery and emancipation are going to be the names of social policies. Indeed, the designers seem to have tried to have come up with concepts that can coexist at the same time, even if sometimes the ideas may not align perfectly. Some of this may just require being open minded about the way these policies are implemented. For instance, Autocracy as it exists in Civ5 may just represent greater centralized authority in the hands of one person. If your civ gives it's citizens many individual rights but the government is run by a strong executive branch, that may represent a fusion of Autocracy and Liberty. Likewise with Piety and Rationalism. There may be tension between these ideas, but I don't think they are mutually incompatible.

Also keep in mind some of these policies when combined may represent competing powers. For instance your civ may have an oligarchy of goverment officials who control some aspects of the government, but also a powerful executive and a class of aristocrats who also have influence. Essentially, it helps to keep an open mind about these things. Try to think about how two ideas could work together, not why they couldn't.

awesome said:

do prisoners get paid for the work they do while in the joint? because, i mean, they definitely have jobs in there, it's not all lifting weights and getting their hair braided. because if not, that could be considered slavery. not that that's necessarily a bad thing, since it already costs taxpayers' money for keeping them in there in the first place and it's part of their rehabilitation.

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They get paid a pittance wage I think ($0.25 per hour or so)

And there is "community service" punishment


As for "Logically exclusive"... how about "Free Speech" and "Responsible Journalism" or "Free Market" and "Business patriotism"

You could also have emancipation/slavery limited by class/caste and/or by citizenship. As Krikkitone says, in practice, there are no absolutes.

See US policy on extraordinary extradition or whatever we are calling it these days: we won't torture you here, but we'll happily ship you somewhere that will :eyeroll:

Ok here is an example for you AHRIMAN from civ4:
So you can't have nationalism and bureaucracy?
So you can't have free speech and bureaucracy?
So you can't have slavery and caste system?

And some...
So you can't have a state religion and yet tolerating other religions?
So you can't be environmentally friendly and mercantile?
So you can't be environmentally friendly and have free market?
So you can't be environmentally friendly and have state property?

Of course there are (at least should be) mutually excluding (that was the word?) civics/policies. Like you can't be theocratic with inquisition and have free religion. But who said you'll be able to combine those in the first place?

BTW people, did anyone say that it will look like civ4 civics list?
What if it will look like that:

__________(TISSISM)___________
______________l_________________
______________l_________________
________(BLABLANISM)___________
__________/_______\_____________
_________/_________\____________
___(VITTUISM)____(PERKELISM)___
_______l_______________l________
_______l_______________l________
_(QWERTYISM)____(POHUJISM)___
________\___________/__________
________ \__________/__________
________(SAATANISM)___________
______________________________

Having to chose in specific places... I hope you normal people can understand what I'm trying to show here, I had to improvise...

Ahriman said:

Please explain to you how you can imagine having both mercantilism and free trade, or censorship and free press. These combinations are a failure of logic, not of imagination.

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Sure, how about free press that can't write anything offensive? something like "those dirty inferior immigrants" for example.

And and my dream (maybe someday ), free press that can't write bs (not allowed), only truth.

I think the simplest way to answer Ahriman's logical "problems" is this: Don't think of social policies as absolutes, think of them as degrees of said thing. For example, we know the Traditional tree has the policies "Oligarchy" and "Aristocracy" in it. While these technically contradict, a society can have both elements of an oligarchical and an aristocratic society. Any other conjecture over names is unfounded speculation. As previously mentioned, Autocracy can talk about executive power/control, while Liberty can talk about personal freedoms/open societies. There's no reason that you can't have both in a society. I just think a lot of people got latched onto absolutes. (BTW, we don't even know if "emancipation" and "slavery" and even policies, so debating about that seems kind of pointless.

I think a lot of people seem to be missing the point here in that they're using the Civ 4 examples into a system that no longer works the same way in Civ 5.

From what it sounds like being, regardless of how they will name it, its more like "Stage 1 grants 10% extra hammers, stage 2 grants 10% extra gold" etc. You're taking it at a Civ 4 level where the different options granted hugely different bonuses. It sounds more like now, as you go further down the tree, the bonuses stack - therefore option 1 is granting 10% extra hammers, moving along to option 2 is essentially granting +10% hammers AND +10% gold, rolling along all 10 of the branches. From a gameplay perspective, I think this sounds like a lot of fun - knowing that a little investment in one branch now will allow me to boost my war/wonder effort in the next era etc.

Right now the arguments seem to be over how they'll name them, but they're not going to be named in the same way that Civ 4 was. Its more like stage 1 is slavery, stage 10 is emancipation, and all the in between ones will be new and will represent various stages in advancement of rights, representing the developments of concepts in 10 different aspects of societal growth. For just now though this argument is focusing on the exact Civ 4 examples, claiming that Free Market and Environmentalism dont go together and dont work as opposite ends of a sliding scale - quite simply, they wont be! The whole system is different and will work differently, the point seems to be being entirely missed.

The options arent between Free Market and its benefits and Environmentalism and its benefits any more - its more a case of whether you would benefit more from, for example, the extra military bonuses you'd get from investing in your civilizations approach to war, or from the bonus happiness you'd get from expanding on your society's concept of rights.

OK, my problem with accumulating bonuses along the same Social Policy branch are largely game-play based than they are based on historical accuracy (though that exacerbates it for me). Lets see if I can show you by way of example:

Lets say you're at policy #3 on the autocracy branch, & now have sufficient culture to buy policy #4. However, you also have the choice between buying a policy on 1 or 2 other branches that you haven't yet progressed along as much. Now if bonuses simply accumulate, then the benefits of having 4 separate policies on a single track might well outweigh the total benefits of even 2 or 3 lower level policies on different branches. If, however, gaining policy #4 forces you to abandon the benefits of policies #1 to #3, then suddenly the decision becomes that much harder to make!

Now that said, I do believe that there should be some way to move *back* along the Social Policy tracks-either by abandoning later ones completely (for culture that can be spent elsewhere)-or by choosing which social policies are currently dominant in your society (which would be kind of like Civics-so I doubt they'll take this option). Either one of these, though, would require some kind of "Revolution" mechanic-a mechanic which is almost as much a part of the Civ franchise as the Turn-Based nature of the game!
So like I said this is about Game-play, because tough decisions are *also* a key part of Civ. Even the old government choices of Civ1 to Civ3 required at least *some* kind of decision making. Civ4 took this to a much greater level-& I'd be disappointed if they chose to effectively take a *backward step* on the strategic decision making path.

Aussie.

Lets say you're at policy #3 on the autocracy branch, & now have sufficient culture to buy policy #4. However, you also have the choice between buying a policy on 1 or 2 other branches that you haven't yet progressed along as much. Now if bonuses simply accumulate, then the benefits of having 4 separate policies on a single track might well outweigh the total benefits of even 2 or 3 lower level policies on different branches. If, however, gaining policy #4 forces you to abandon the benefits of policies #1 to #3, then suddenly the decision becomes that much harder to make!

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I guess this would make the choices more difficult in a way, as with each further policy you buy you have to worry about the new benefit not being worth it. For instance, if level 3 gives you +30% gold, but it replaces level 2's +20% hammers, level three might actually put you at a disadvantage if you need hammers a lot more than gold.

However, I don't think that really adds any strategic depth; I think it just makes things more complicated. It's also completely unnecessary because there's a scarce resource you have to buy these policies with. Benefits had to replace themselves in the civic system because there was no other opportunity cost; you weren't giving anything else up. However, with the policy system, any benefit you buy entails giving up all the other benefits you could buy with that amount of culture. There is no need to further limit what you get.

It's basically the same way that buildings work. Buildings don't replace previous buildings that you've built, and they don't give you any penalties or lock out other buildings (for the most part), but it's still a tough choice what to build because you are limited by the amount of hammers you can produce. Likewise, with social policies, you are limited by the amount of culture you can produce. You could try and place additional limits on these things, but there's really no need to, as they already force you to make hard choices.

Aussie_Lurker said:

Lets say you're at policy #3 on the autocracy branch, & now have sufficient culture to buy policy #4. However, you also have the choice between buying a policy on 1 or 2 other branches that you haven't yet progressed along as much. Now if bonuses simply accumulate, then the benefits of having 4 separate policies on a single track might well outweigh the total benefits of even 2 or 3 lower level policies on different branches. If, however, gaining policy #4 forces you to abandon the benefits of policies #1 to #3, then suddenly the decision becomes that much harder to make!

So like I said this is about Game-play, because tough decisions are *also* a key part of Civ.

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Ignoring the reasons behind the mechanic, lets suppose that it worked this way - moving up the ladder in a given tree caused you to forfeit the bonuses from previous rungs. In that case, all things being equal, it would always be better to start another tree, because that would increase the total number of bonuses you were getting: starting a second tree would always be twice as good as moving up the tree you already started. This could be mitigated by making it more expensive to open a new tree than to move up an old one, or by having higher tiers grant increasingly more powerful bonuses.

Or, they could make all tiers cost the same (probably scaling by total number of tiers acquired - standard civ mechanic) and make the bonuses cumulative. This ensures that each time you go to purchase a new tier, you are faced with the maximum number of equivalent choices, all things being equal. Mechanically speaking, that is the toughest decision the game can offer - the number of equivalent choices will always be equal to: 10 minus (the number of trees you have completed) minus (the number of trees that are still locked).

Thematically, think of moving up a tree as a process of growth and refinement: drawing on the lessons of the past, you develop a better way to implement that policy/ideal into your society. Why would a society lose benefits from being (Pious, Autocratic, Free, etc...) by becoming more (Pious, Autocratic, Free, etc...)?

I imagine there will be inherent synergies between the trees (Honor + Autocracy = Strong Military, maybe; Freedom + Commerce = Strong Economy; etc...). The tough choices are do you draw on these synergies to master one area of the game, or do you play jack-of-all-trades and try to keep pace across the board?

Changing gears in Civ V will probably be tougher. In Civ IV it was easier to transition from a cottage economy to a specialist economy than the other way around. It was easier to go from farms to workshops to farms (to produce units needed for a war) than it was to go from cottages to workshops to cottages. Changing Civics meant losing a few turns, but you could go from booming commercial empire to elite war machine in relatively short order.

Civ V seems like it will reward you more for your foresight: Suppose the honor tree grants xp and production bonuses to military units: the civ that invests heavily in the honor tree will have a decided, lasting advantage on the battlefield over civs that haven't. They will not be able to lose a few turns and suddenly match you unit for unit. All things being equal, your units will always be better unless and until they match your investment.

I can see this as the evolution of the Leader Traits from Civ IV, but able to evolve organically and differently over the course of each and every game. Want Gandhi to lead the raging Indian Hordes? pursue the martial trees. Want him to be Gandhi the Sunking? pursue the builder trees.

I think it sounds really promising.

(I will now go off and curb my enthusiasm until September... well, try to, anyway )

Aussie wait to see the balance and how the paths turn out. I am pretty sure that opportunity cost will create all the decisions necessary, I sincerely doubt it will be less complicated than Civ 4. Also the decisions you make throughout the game will have very long-lasting effects, something completely different than 1 turn anarchy to switch (or 0 in some cases).

SickFak said:

So you can't have a state religion and yet tolerating other religions?

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Again, think Norway. It's Christian by constitution, but have also got free religion.
They encourage the state religion, but don't force it on anyone.(although you could say that they brainwash the kids to be christian as 75% of religion class is about christianity)

Aussie_Lurker said:

OK, my problem with accumulating bonuses along the same Social Policy branch are largely game-play based than they are based on historical accuracy (though that exacerbates it for me). Lets see if I can show you by way of example:

Lets say you're at policy #3 on the autocracy branch, & now have sufficient culture to buy policy #4. However, you also have the choice between buying a policy on 1 or 2 other branches that you haven't yet progressed along as much. Now if bonuses simply accumulate, then the benefits of having 4 separate policies on a single track might well outweigh the total benefits of even 2 or 3 lower level policies on different branches. If, however, gaining policy #4 forces you to abandon the benefits of policies #1 to #3, then suddenly the decision becomes that much harder to make!

Now that said, I do believe that there should be some way to move *back* along the Social Policy tracks-either by abandoning later ones completely (for culture that can be spent elsewhere)-or by choosing which social policies are currently dominant in your society (which would be kind of like Civics-so I doubt they'll take this option). Either one of these, though, would require some kind of "Revolution" mechanic-a mechanic which is almost as much a part of the Civ franchise as the Turn-Based nature of the game!
So like I said this is about Game-play, because tough decisions are *also* a key part of Civ. Even the old government choices of Civ1 to Civ3 required at least *some* kind of decision making. Civ4 took this to a much greater level-& I'd be disappointed if they chose to effectively take a *backward step* on the strategic decision making path.

Aussie.

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And... again you think of it as civ4...

me said:

Again, think Norway. It's Christian by constitution, but have also got free religion.
They encourage the state religion, but don't force it on anyone.(although you could say that they brainwash the kids to be christian as 75% of religion class is about christianity)

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Isn't that what I meant?

Anyway folks look at my example policy tree (isn't that what they called it? tree?). In my understanding tree means that it can go in different directions not just 1>2>3>4>5...
So for example you have 10 branches/trees, in one you have 1>2a/2b>3a/3b>4>5 and you can get yourself 1>2b>3b>4>5 or 1>2a>3a>4>5 and similarly in other branches with 2a and 2b being incompatible.

Of course this is pure speculations, but why not, everyone seems to be doing it...

Krikkitone said:

1. You are assuming the player controls the government, but there is some 'rest of society' they do not control.

Not quite. The player controls a few key aspects of the government and society, but not the rest.
But the model we have of society is heavily abstracted.

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Krikkitone said:

You are insisting on black and white definition

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Yes, I am insisting on black and white definitions, because these are the only way things make sense.

We don't have sliders (like in Europa Universalis, where there is a sliding scale for say Centralization). We have policies that are On or Off.

It wouldn't make sense for a society that was only *a little* autocratic to get the same benefits from autocracy as a society that was heavily autocratic.
It wouldn't make sense for a society that had a virtually powerless constitutional monarch to get the same benefits from Monarchy as it would a society that had an absolute hereditary leader.
It wouldn't make sense that a society that had free religion/tolerance for everyone had the same benefits from free religion as a society that allowed free religion for only a select group of 5% of the population, and forced everyone else to be part of the State Church.
etc.

Democracy.. 'all power rests in the hands of the people' doesn't exist... Most of the power, maybe all the 'legal' power... but never ALL the power (maybe if you have mob rule and everyone is equally eloquent, rich, and well armed.. but that wouldn't be anything like democracy as we understand it)

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Democracy means that power rests in the hand of people and their elected officials, and that those elected officials can be removed at the will of the people.

Bejing controlled China, the US and France are all "Free Religion" societies (its in their constitutions).... but they all act Drastically differently in terms of religion

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No they're not. China does not have free religion.

But even take Universal Suffrage... that doesn't imply pure democracy, it just means everyone has a vote... it doesn't say how much weight their votes have...

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Universal suffrage implies that everyone's vote has equal weight. Its an implication of the policy. If everyone gets 1 votes that count 1 point and I get a vote that counts 50million, then we don't have universal suffrage in any way that it is normally understood.

What type of government was the UK from ~1215 to~1900 when did it change from a Monarchy to a Representative government? The king did not instantly become a figurehead.. what if the King still retained some of their power?

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I agree that Britain's transition from a monarchy to a democracy is blurred - probably the most blurred of any such transition historically. I'd call it a monarchy up until ~early 19th century. George III was a fairly powerful monarch, Victoria wasn't.

Krikkitone said:

Slavery+Emancipation

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If you have large numbers of slaves, then you're a slave state. The existence of a few people who are not slaves does not make an emancipated society.

I would argue that people doing labor while imprisoned for temporary crimes is not slavery, and would not be a large enough policy to grant the bonus of slavery. Those people also have significant rights, while slaves typically have very few rights (often masters can kill them at will).

In a slave state, a significant proportion of the population are usually slaves.

Slavery+Serfdom is Easy, those often coexisted... usually with a Caste system

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If the people get to keep a reasonable amount of the proceeds of their labor (eg their crops; they pay a levy to their landlord and keep the rest) then they're serfs. If they are owned by the landlord and all the product of their labor goes to the landlord, then they're slaves. Its a pretty significant difference.

The_J said:

Could you give an example which ?
we don't know if any policies they put must be logically exclusive.

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We don't know what policies will actually be in the game.
Its possible that they'll avoid putting in any that could be contradictory, but if so then I think their choices of policies will be boring. Many of the most interesting historic policies ARE those that are contradictory. Free press vs censored press. Universal suffrage democracy vs republic (land-owning males over 25 can vote) vs monarchy. Theocracy vs free religion.

What are monarchies in the civ sense?

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A monarchy in a civ sense is where you have a hereditary ruler who has most of the political power. The biggest advantage is in terms of stability; you might get some weak rulers, but you have a better method of determining succession (that rules out most people) than other heavily centralized dictatorships.

SickFak said:

Ok here is an example for you AHRIMAN from civ4:
So you can't have nationalism and bureaucracy?
So you can't have free speech and bureaucracy?
So you can't have slavery and caste system?
So you can't be environmentally friendly and mercantile?

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Sure you can. When did I ever say that every combination is contradictory?

So you can't have a state religion and yet tolerating other religions?

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Not really. State religion, in my conception of how it usually appears in Civ, is that there is an official required religion, and that there is persecution of non-members which strongly encourages people to convert. Thus, greater social unity over time.
It doesn't just mean that many people have the same religion. Most people in Italy are Catholic, but that doesn't mean it (still) has a State Religion.

Environmentalism doesn't necessarily contradict anything.

Of course there are (at least should be) mutually excluding (that was the word?) civics/policies. Like you can't be theocratic with inquisition and have free religion.

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This is precisely my point.

But who said you'll be able to combine those in the first place?

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We don't know for sure yet, but it seems to be implied by their statements.

BTW people, did anyone say that it will look like civ4 civics list?
What if it will look like that:

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I think I understand what you mean.

If this kind of system were done intelligently, where all of the main contradictory policies were mutually exclusive, then I would have no problem and would withdraw my objections.

, free press that can't write bs (not allowed), only truth.

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Sadly, impossible without severe censorship (who decides on truth?).

bjbrains said:

I think the simplest way to answer Ahriman's logical "problems" is this: Don't think of social policies as absolutes, think of them as degrees of said thing.

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See above. We have a game design system of absolutes (either you're running the policy, or you're not) not an incremental scale. Why should you get the full entire bonus of a policy from doing it only a little bit? If you're getting bonuses from being an oligarchy, you're doing it by embracing oligarchy.

While these technically contradict, a society can have both elements of an oligarchical and an aristocratic society.

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As I've said earlier, I don't see thee two as logically contradictory. Conflicting, but not a logical contradiction in the same way as some of the other possibilites.

(BTW, we don't even know if "emancipation" and "slavery" and even policies, so debating about that seems kind of pointless.

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Its a hypothetical example. But surely we can agree that if Slavery is missing from the social policy tree (one of the most important policy decisions in all of history) then something is very wrong with the tree.

Anyway, enough for now from me, I think people get the idea of my perspective. We'll have to wait and see what the details look like.

Ahriman said:

Democracy means that power rests in the hand of people and their elected officials, and that those elected officials can be removed at the will of the people.

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ALL power?

Ahriman said:

No they're not. China does not have free religion.

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Check their Constitution... they do. You can't Proseletize or provide religious instruction to minors or get political in your sermons, but you can be of whatever religion you want.
(I wouldn't call that Free Religion outside of civ, but then I wouldn't call France 'Free Religion' either, with its bans on religious symbols by students)

Ahriman said:

Universal suffrage implies that everyone's vote has equal weight. Its an implication of the policy. If everyone gets 1 votes that count 1 point and I get a vote that counts 50million, then we don't have universal suffrage in any way that it is normally understood.

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Um, the Senate in the US, Wyomingers get more power there than Californians do.

Ahriman said:

I agree that Britain's transition from a monarchy to a democracy is blurred - probably the most blurred of any such transition historically. I'd call it a monarchy up until ~early 19th century. George III was a fairly powerful monarch, Victoria wasn't.

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You mean it wasn't an Aristocracy at some point in there? and Victoria was just as much of a figurehead as Elizabeth II?

Ahriman said:

If you have large numbers of slaves, then you're a slave state. The existence of a few people who are not slaves does not make an emancipated society.

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What % needs to be slaves and what amount of rights do they need to have to qualify as not a slave (we could argue any communist state is a mass slave state, but that wouldn't quite apply

Ahriman said:

If the people get to keep a reasonable amount of the proceeds of their labor (eg their crops; they pay a levy to their landlord and keep the rest) then they're serfs. If they are owned by the landlord and all the product of their labor goes to the landlord, then they're slaves. Its a pretty significant difference.

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What % is reasonable... what if the amount they get is less than they need

What about ancient slaves that got paid.. did that make them serfs?

What if the landlord was required to provide healthcare for them, slave or serf? (in my mind that shifts it toward slave, generally you had to take care of slaves... masters generally had more responsibilities toward slaves than they had towards serfs.. serfs were on their own)

Ahriman said:

A monarchy in a civ sense is where you have a hereditary ruler who has most of the political power. The biggest advantage is in terms of stability; you might get some weak rulers, but you have a better method of determining succession (that rules out most people) than other heavily centralized dictatorships.

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So a Monarchy just gives you Stability.... So Monarchy=>"Stable succession"
Don't most Modern Democracies also have Stable Succession... also the USSR/Communist China (Modern Police States) had it (for the USSR the government changed)

Ahriman said:

Not really. State religion, in my conception of how it usually appears in Civ, is that there is an official required religion, and that there is persecution of non-members which strongly encourages people to convert. Thus, greater social unity over time.
It doesn't just mean that many people have the same religion. Most people in Italy are Catholic, but that doesn't mean it (still) has a State Religion.

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Doesn't that have some similar effect... are you seriously going to argue that the Social behavior of nations with high levels of active public participation in a 'common' religion are different from those without that

Ahriman said:

See above. We have a game design system of absolutes (either you're running the policy, or you're not) not an incremental scale. Why should you get the full entire bonus of a policy from doing it only a little bit? If you're getting bonuses from being an oligarchy, you're doing it by embracing oligarchy.

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Because your society is more advanced... A truly 'Culturally Advanced' Society can get bonuses that we think are impossible to run together... they run JUST enough oligarchy in JUST the right way so as to give bonuses....and not to conflict with JUST enough democracy in JUST the right way to get bonuses from it.
That's why the Cultural Victory is a Utopia Wonder

They have developed a society that we think is impossible

Ahriman said:

Its a hypothetical example. But surely we can agree that if Slavery is missing from the social policy tree (one of the most important policy decisions in all of history) then something is very wrong with the tree.

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And what Benefit from Slavery does our society NOT currently have... please let me know how the US would be better (in gameplay terms) by bringing Slavery back.

Change the name to Forced Labor... and we Still have it... If the government wanted something done... Conscription+ make the soldiers do it. (or inspire them to do it for the National good... they'll be even Better than slaves)

People still have bosses that tell them what to do, and they will suffer if they don't...That 'Aspect' of slavery is still with us (Organized Labor... or better yet "Human Capital"), we have advanced and added additional things on Top of that though.