Civics redesign

Ahriman

Tyrant
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Designed to work in conjunction with the religion redesign.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=330907

Still a work in progress... suggestions very welcome!
Incomplete but I am out of time for now.

The goal of civics is to:
a) Provide a range of different strategic options. Every civic should be useful in some circumstances; there should be no no-brainer civics choices. The opportunity cost of one civic is not being able to get others.
b) Add to Dune universe immersion.

Since my religion redesign is something of an "ethos" system, I eliminate the Religion civics category.
I'm considering replacing it with a Values system, though I worry that there is too much overlap.

My intention is for most of these techs to be available in the early-midgame, and so have fairly low tech requirements.

Government civics
Despotism
Tech tier (/20): 0
Effect: -25% war weariness. +10% city maintenance from distance.
Upkeep cost: Low

Feudalism (or: Hereditary Rule)
Tech tier (/20): ~5
Effect: +1 happiness per military unit stationed in a city. +1 free unit per 10 population.
Upkeep cost: low

Meritocracy
Tech tier (/20): 8
Upkeep cost: high
Effect: +50% Great people generation. +1 beaker per specialist. +1 culture per specialist.

Imperium.
Tech tier (/20): 7
Upkeep cost: low
Effect:
-50% city maintenance from number of cities. -50% city maintenance from city distance. -25% culture.

Theocracy.
Tech tier (/20): 5
Upkeep cost: High
Effect: No non-state religions cannot be spread within borders. -25% war weariness. +25% production for buildings in all cities with state religion. +1xp point for units built in cities with your state religion.

Legal civics
Trial by Combat: +10% military production.
Tech tier (/20): 0

Desert Law: +1 free unit per 5 population. +1 free xp for newly created units.
Upkeep low.
Tech tier (/20): 4

Great Convention (or maybe Landsraad Council): +1 happy in all cities, +100% culture.
Upkeep medium.
Tech tier (/20): 9

Imperial Fealty. Can draft 3 units per turn. +3 happy in 5 largest cities. Low upkeep.
Tech tier (/20): 10

Kanly: -10% military production. +4 free xp points for newly created units. Upkeep medium.
[Formal feud or vendetta under the rules of the Great Convention carried on according to the strictest limitations.]
Tech tier (/20): 10

War of Assassins
Low upkeep.
+100% espionage points. +10% war weariness.
[the purpose of the war of assassins is to prevent collateral damage from wars]
[seems weak, probably needs something else?]
Tech tier (/20): 10


Labor civics

Subsistence. Low upkeep, -10% worker build speed.
Tech tier (/20): 0

Slavery.
Requires tech:
Upkeep: medium
Effect: Can sacrifice population for production. +1 unhealth in all cities. +1unhappy in all cities. +1 hammers from shallow mine, deep mine, core mine, spice refinery.
[overlords with whips make people work harder]
Tech tier (/20): 5

Serfdom
Requires tech:
Upkeep: low
Effect: +50% worker improvement construction rate. Can sacrifice population for production.
Tech tier (/20): 5

Private property:
Upkeep cost: Medium
+100% growth rate for cottages. +1 gold from village, town. Can spend gold for production. +25% war weariness.
Tech tier (/20): 7

Faufreluches ["The rigid rule of class distinction enforced by the Imperium. 'A place for every man and every man in his place.] ie a caste system variant
Tech tier (/20): 9
Upkeep cost: low
Effect: allows unlimited nobles, traders, engineers. +1 gold per specialist.




Economy civics

These need to come earlier in the tech tree than they currently do.

Decentralization.. Low upkeep. No tech requirement.
Tech tier (/20): 0

Free trade
Tech tier (/20): 7
+1 free trade route per city.
Low upkeep.

Mercantilism.
Tech tier (/20): 8
No foreign trade routes. +1 free specialist per city. +1 commerce from refinery improvement.

Water discipline. High upkeep. +1 water from dew collectors, windtraps.
Tech tier (/20): 9

Planned economy
High upkeep
+1 hammer from village, town.
Tech tier (/20): 10

Arrakis future civics
Spice Economy.
Tech tier (/20): 6
Upkeep: medium
Effect:
-6 diplomacy penalty to way of liet users.
+1 hammer, +1 commerce from spice harvester improvement.
50% lower chance of spice resource being removed [can you tie the spice mechanics to civics?]

Neutral. No effect. no upkeep. Tech tier (/20):0

Way of Liet.
Tech tier (/20): 6
Upkeep: high
-6 diplomacy penalty to Spice Economy users.
Spice blows cannot spawn within friendly your cultural borders.
Allows construction of the Catchbasin and Reservoir buildings that trigger terraforming.
 
Are Faufreluches, Feudalism and Serfdom not quite similar conceptually? Faufreluches divided things up into feudal fiefs under which the lower class are effectively serfs. They are effectively two different names for Feudalism.
 
My impression was that Faufreluches was like a caste system; you could easily have a serfdom of peasants without also having very rigid classes for artisans, traders and nobles.

And you could easily have a caste system where the children of workers were workers and the children of farmers were farmers the children of merchants were merchants and no-one would ever marry outside their caste, without also having serfdom where the farmers didn't own their own land and were tied to that piece of land forever.

Feudalism could be renamed hereditary rule; the idea here was about dynastic succession of houses. You could easily have caste systems and or serfdom without dynastic succession; eg by military junta or dictatorship or even oligarchy.

Oligarchy is probably a good alternative civic, but my idea was that meritocracy could incorporate testing/exam organizations like the Guild, schools like the BG, and potentially a very benign House, and that oligarchy might not be sufficiently different from this.

Maybe meritocracy shoudl be a labor policy and oligarchy a government system?
 
I like the idea of civics that boost solar panels or turbines economies (we probably only need one or the other in this mod), but I can't honesty think of anything that would qualify.

Currently they're Imperial civics, but logically why would that be the case?
 
Good start. I haven't checked very carefully yet. I like the idea of eliminating the religion column. Did you mean to have Theocracy and the reference to state religion? I think there are a lot of special effects available in the different vanilla civics; it may be possible to use some of those to add a little more differentiation to them.
 
Yes, in my conception of theocracy it would prevent non-state religion spread (there was a missing NOT typo however).

it may be possible to use some of those to add a little more differentiation to them

Not sure what the "them" refers to. Civics in general?
I'm aware I think of what can be easily changed through civics (it isn't possible for eg to give bonuses to only a particular type of specialist), the hardest thing is in thinking of logically distinct civics that make sense in the Dune setting. Its hard, because basically all of the Houses really all have the same economic and governmental structure.
 
I looked a little more carefully. There are a couple of things which are in vanilla, which aren't in your design; maybe we can work them in. I could find "+ happiness in 5 largest cities", drafting, and "emancipation pushes unhappiness in other civs". It seems thematic somehow to use the emancipation mechanism for the cult of Muad'Dib once it starts to expand, but that introduces a linkage back to religions.

It is hard to list a specific tech as the prereq with the tree in flux; but if we consider a 20 tier tree, are there some which you think should come earlier vs later? Maybe you could fill in an approximate position using numbers, range 0-20 (0 for default ones.)

At some point we need to fill in which are the favorite civics of leaders. We have the ability to select hated civics also, but only one of each. We are currently using hated civic for "future of arrakis".

I don't have any specific suggestions, but the economics choices need to be broadened a little. Is there one which would make sense for spacers guild, which would be their favorite civic? Maybe Water Discipline would make more sense as a civic than anything else?

In the existing DW civics, there seem to be a lot which give +hammer bonus to improvements. You had suggested buildings to make cottages more relevant later in the game, and I had suggested civics; do you think there are enough improvement bonuses yet?
 
I should explain; I don't see the first post here as being a completed set of civics. There definitely need to be more, particularly economics, I just can't think of what they shoudl be.

I'd see most of the civics as being clustered pretty early, probably tier4-9 or so. There isn't really a logical "development" as there is in human history.

I'd like to see a civic that gave +1 hammer to villages and towns as an economy or legal civic (high maintenance cost). Free speech doesn't quite make sense for Dune; even the Atreides are partly just good propapgandists.

I'm not sure there is a logical civic to give empancipation happiness penalties; while everyone really on earth history wants to be free, I don't think there is a single future possibility that would be shared by the citizens of all factions.

I guess I could see Water Discipline as a civic. Maybe an Economy civic? Maybe that could give +1 water income to dew collectors and windtraps? High maintenance upkeep?

In terms of Favored civics:
Corrino: imperium
Atreides: private property (or maybe Kanly)
Harkonnen: slavery
Ix:
Ecaz: Hereditary rule, or Great convention, or Faufreluches
Ordos: Hereditary rule, or Great convention, or FaufreluchesBene TL: theocracy
Bene G: Meritocracy
Fremen: desert law
Trade guild:

Am I missing any?

*edit*
Made some changes to 1st post.
I think its important to try to keep specialist economy bonuses and cottage economy bonuses in the same civics categories, so you can get one or the other, not both.
 
Looks good. I think Imperial Fealty may be a little strong (both drafting and +happiness), and we need a name for the 5th economic one. Otherwise, I think it can drop into a new patch.

EDIT: Ooh, 2000th post! I am a Deity now! Bow before Me! :)
 
I tend to think that drafting is pretty weak, but maybe thats my playstyle.
We can obviously tweak things later with some playtesting.

The one thing I think we're missing is something to encourage a turbine or solar farm economy, but I just can't think of anything particularly logical.

I guess the one thing with solar farms is that they have bad synergy with terraforming because of the -1 water; which is perhaps as it should be, terraforming means clouds means less output from solar cells.
So if you terraform, your solar farms reduce the value of this, or you go with more expensive turbines.

Welcome to the Deity club :)
 
Name = ??
High upkeep
+1 hammer from village, town.
Tech tier (/20): 10

Perhaps 'Planned Economy'? Reading this made me think of the Communist ideal for some reason.
 
I have entered this into the xml. It will be available in the 1.4.6 huge patch release, which I hope to put out in the next 1-2 days. There are two effects which are listed in the first post, which I do not see how to get with xml changes. In general, if there is no vanilla civic which has an effect, there is no xml hook to get it.

1. +/- happiness at all cities. We can trigger this on a building, such as a barracks, but not globally. Health yes, happiness no.

2. +hammers for a building. Improvements yes, buildings no. At least I cannot find a flag to do it.

I do not have any specific feedback, but in general the benefits of these civics seem small compared to vanilla. Several civics have only one effect, such as water discipline. Also, there are four available maintenance costs: none, low, medium, high. None of the costs in the design are "none" and hardly any are "medium". Perhaps they can be spread out more.
 
1. Ok, put the +1 happy for Great Convention onto the barracks.

2. The hammer boosts were intended to be for improvements.
Slavery gives boosts to the mines (all 3 versions) and the spice harvester crawler (improvement built on spice tiles).
Planned economy gives bonus to the village and town improvements.

Agree with your other feedback.

I'd be happy to put the default (ie no tech requirement) civics to None civic maintenance.
Planned economy could move to medium upkeep or have an extra effect.
Free trade could boost trade route yields 25% - is that possible for civics?
Or maybe add a second +1 trade route in your 5 largest cities?
Meritocracy could go to medium upkeep.

I'd like War of Assassins to do something else, but I can't think of anything obvious.
Maybe give some bonus like + happiness to some of the spy buildings, like prison camps?
 
Forgot to include some of the intended issues with the Spice economy. It needs to be a big boost to compete with terraformed super-cities.

It does help that most AIs adopt spice economy, so there tend to be at most 3 terraformers; Atreides, Fremen and the human player, and everyone else hates them.
 
Put the +1 happy for Great Convention onto the barracks ... Slavery gives boosts to the mines (all 3 versions) and the spice harvester crawler ... I'd be happy to put the default (ie no tech requirement) civics to None civic maintenance ... Planned economy could move to medium upkeep or have an extra effect ... Free trade could boost trade route yields 25% ... Meritocracy could go to medium upkeep ... War of Assassins to give some bonus like + happiness to some of the spy buildings, like prison camps

Above changes done locally. Will be part of "my next patch", 1.4.8 I guess. Also:
* AH49, moved Faufreluches to Caste System tech and Meritocracy to Social Mobility tech
* Figured out AH50, could not convert to any religion. I caused this when I deleted the religion civics column. It turns out you must have a civic with the "bStateReligion" flag to convert to a religion. I added it to another civics column.
* Moved the button graphics around so they kind of make sense and added a couple of new graphics
* Deleted Trial By Combat; there is no real need for six legal civics. Now Desert Law is the default, but I removed the +1 XP on units.

Forgot to include some of the intended issues with the Spice economy. It needs to be a big boost to compete with terraformed super-cities.

Right now it gives +1 hammer on harvester improvements. I agree it should be stronger; but how? Some possibilities, based on existing civic flags: More than +1 hammer on harvester, maybe also +1 commerce on harvester? Worker build rate +25%? Bonus on commerce yield in cities? Free engineer per city?
 
So there is no way you can easily tie civics into any of the python that handles spice blows? I feel pretty strongly that the civic needs to be about enhancing a spice-based economy, as opposed to a cottage of specialist economy from having large population.

Tile yields on spice harvesters don't really help much, because most of your spice tiles aren't in the BFC of any of your cities.

Thats why I prefer things like higher spawn rate of spice blows or slower decay rate of worked spcie, but I understand there may not be any hooks.

What about creating a National Wonder building that acts as a second spice corp, that requires the pro-spice civic, and gets destroyed if you don't have that civic (like catchbasins)?
Or a building that consumes spice in the same way as a corporation, and gives +2% commerce per spice resource consumed? Though these also fit the CHOAM religion pretty well, but its probably ok to have some overlap.

* * *
The Sayyadinas tech will be pretty empty without the desert law civic.
What is the harm in 6 civics? The free upkeep from desert law seems too strong to me for a default civic.
I also like Trial by Combat better as a default civic, feels more Dune-ish, whereas Desert Law is kindof amorphous.
 
Thats why I prefer things like higher spawn rate of spice blows or slower decay rate of worked spcie, but I understand there may not be any hooks.

After several feedbacks, I lowered the spice decay rate a lot back in 1.3.x something. Do you feel that making the decay rate zero inside cultural borders of a spice industry civic would be helpful? It is easy enough to do.

What is the harm in 6 civics? The free upkeep from desert law seems too strong to me for a default civic.
I also like Trial by Combat better as a default civic, feels more Dune-ish, whereas Desert Law is kindof amorphous.

I cannot see much theme difference between Desert Law and Trial By Combat. If there was some reason we could not do it in 5 choices, I could see six, but otherwise it just seems too many.
 
After several feedbacks, I lowered the spice decay rate a lot back in 1.3.x something. Do you feel that making the decay rate zero inside cultural borders of a spice industry civic would be helpful? It is easy enough to do.

I wouldnt' say zero, or their world will end up with spice everywhere, but halving the decay for the spice industry civic would be great.

I cannot see much theme difference between Desert Law and Trial By Combat.

A fair point. Can we drop Desert law then and keep Trial by Combat? and think of somthing else that might belong at the Sayyadinas tech (or eliminate the tech)?
 
Are are people feeling about civic balance atm. Is every civic potentially useful? It seems pretty decent to me, except that we need to do something with slavery (a passive slave capture chance seems good). And maybe we should reduce the GPP bonus for meritocracy?
 
As mentioned few times , Arrakis Spice should have more bonuses/ mechanics involved. Or , lets say different, Way of Liet need more penalties .

Also yes, slaves. Harks need some synergy to use with slves and slavery civics. May be it will allow them to sacrifice slave for 10 production at normal speed?
 
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