Revolutions Suggestions.

In most games with the Revolutions Mod, the early game is very hard. Revolutions are frequent and only a few empires rise to power. I don't mind this, in fact I enjoy it. However, once past ~1000AD the game becomes simplistic. Almost easy. The Problem is that in the late game the civics and buildings make it easy to earn lots of money and keep your people satisfied. Revolutions become a thing of the past.

My solution is to introduce "Corruption." The longer your empire has been satisfied and pacified, the more "corrupt" your government becomes. In the beginning and middle of the game, corruption would be rare. But as your empire stagnated, corruption would grow. The only way to avoid corruption would to be continually expanding your empire. Corruption would also affect your RevIndex. Governments less than 5% corrupt would have a RevIndex bonus, and governments more than 20% corrupt would begin having a negative revindex.

Corruption would have the following effects on your empire:
Your City-wide beaker production would be reduced by the percent corruption in the city. If the city is 4% corrupt, the science output is only 96% of normal. If it is 50% corrupt, the science output would only be 50% for the city.
City-wide commerce, culture and Espionage would be affected exactly the same way.
Also, the percent corruption would factor into enemy spies mission success rates. If your city is 35% corrupt, enemy spies would have a 35% better chance completing missions.


A corruption bar (right above the RevIndex Bar) would be in each city, showing the level of corruption. Certain buildings, like a courthouse would lower corruption. Civics could affect it too. Despotic Governments would have less corruption while bureaucratic governments would have more.

Anyways, I realize this is a big suggestion and would involve alot of changes, but it would make revolutions interesting past 1000AD.

Interesting idea that makes sense historically, but it doesn't seem fair to penalize the player for holding a stable/pacified empire.

BobTheTerrible said:

Interesting idea that makes sense historically, but it doesn't seem fair to penalize the player for holding a stable/pacified empire.

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But stable and calm empires foster a sense of complacency in people. Complacency often leads to a lack of initiative and creativity. This eventually leads to corrupt. Stable empires always fall. Look at Rome.

This idea does not sound fun to me. If revolutions need to be made more of a problem in the late game, it would make more sense to decrease stability with large cities.

phungus420 said:

This idea does not sound fun to me. If revolutions need to be made more of a problem in the late game, it would make more sense to decrease stability with large cities.

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That isn't realistic at all. NYC isn't more unstable just because it has more people than Anchorage, Alaska. In fact, Alaska probably is more rebellious than NYC.

Could you be more specific about what isn't "fun" about the idea? I just want to enjoy the late game as much as I do the early game.

Afforess said:

But stable and calm empires foster a sense of complacency in people. Complacency often leads to a lack of initiative and creativity. This eventually leads to corrupt. Stable empires always fall. Look at Rome.

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Which is why I said it makes sense historically. I just don't think it would be very fun. If this were implemented, the player has 2 options:

-Not care about the instability of his/her empire, and eventually a revolution will arise.

-Care about the stability of the empire, and create a very stable and pacified empire. Then a revolution will arise.

See? The player has no option to allow them to just play the game. There's nothing but frustration if no matter what you do, you'll get a revolution.

BobTheTerrible said:

See? The player has no option to allow them to just play the game. There's nothing but frustration if no matter what you do, you'll get a revolution.

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You could make it a game option, like barbarian civs, or techdiffusion.

If this were implemented, the player has 2 options:

-Not care about the instability of his/her empire, and eventually a revolution will arise.

-Care about the stability of the empire, and create a very stable and pacified empire. Then a revolution will arise.

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That isn't true. I outlined ways to avoid corruption:

to avoid corruption would to be continually expanding your empire

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Stagnate empires, ones that don't expand, or ones that become complacent with their status-quo will collapse. This just requires the player to keep founding new cities and keep conquering other empires. I suppose some techs like "Civil Service" could lower corruption levels too.

Afforess said:

But stable and calm empires foster a sense of complacency in people. Complacency often leads to a lack of initiative and creativity. This eventually leads to corrupt. Stable empires always fall. Look at Rome.

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You've referred to Rome in the wrong manner. Rome was anything but a stable Empire, and it did fall. However, it works as a prime example for your idea (which I think is pretty good). The Roman Empire reached a size where it could no longer support itself. As such the Roman military had to keep conquering new territory to and plundering it in order to fund itself. When they stopped conquering, they collapsed.

The Roman Empire reached a size where it could no longer support itself. As such the Roman military had to keep conquering new territory to and plundering it in order to fund itself. When they stopped conquering, they collapsed.

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I would agree that any empire that reaches "superpower" status eventually rests on its laurels of being given their luxuries instead of earning them. And when new territories are not "plundered" or otherwise taken advantage of - the empire has a hard time controlling its citizens who have gotten used to getting things on the cheap.

The late game in Revolutions would be much improved if it became more necessary to conquer more and more and more lands to satisfy your people's need for "laziness."

I mean - look at the USA. The USA is de-stabilizing because the East is starting to put a bit more pressure on its purchasing power. Once the East decides it has had enough of supplying America cheap - then it will be either get up and fight to maintain the "ease of life" Americans have become accustomed to, or it will cause a revolution in the country itself when people realize they have to produce on their own to satisfy their wants (not needs - although that would obviously come later on).

So - in short. Revolutions would be made more fun if it was harder to stay stable the longer your empire stayed stagnate after say, nationhood is discovered. Forcing empires to plunder new territories to satisfy their want to receive the products & luxuries of life cheap.

I think this could work providing there is a certain size of empire before this effect takes place because as I understand it you mean to replicate the need for large empires to continually get bigger to sustain themselves. Small and medium size civs should be more stable, the balance being something like less cities means more stable but less science, production, etc.

Er, this is already implemented - larger empires take a stability hit as things stand. You're probably suggesting that this hit should be larger, and easier to assuage via conquest than via domestic means.

Duneflower said:

Er, this is already implemented - larger empires take a stability hit as things stand. You're probably suggesting that this hit should be larger, and easier to assuage via conquest than via domestic means.

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Barely. Sure in the early game, the large empire modifier hurts, but once you have railroads and flight, and a well connected empire, well, things never go wrong. I've seen the AI with 3-4 religions in each city, in a large 12 city empire, but their revindex was at 0 the entire time, because as long as your empire is happy, on free religion, and well connected, nothing can go wrong.

As it stands now, Revolutions is an early game hurdle that I find very fun, but late game, it's basically a non-issue.

Hrrrrrm. Sounds like a good way to go, then, would be to invoke the Financial Difficulty penalty - perhaps, under certain common late-game circumstances, make the people's definition of "financial trouble" much more demanding? Or even scale it to civics and/or era?