ModMod Theoretical Discussion: Governments

Inspired by the recent discussion in the " Policies" thread, expecially Txurce's post:

Txurce said:

I agree with GamerKG's solution to NPcomplete's wishes: a government modmod.

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I think that - for the sake of possibility, if nothing else - we should have some brainstorming of possible functionality / effects / implementation of different forms of government.

While any real diplomatic repercussions are far beyond the current posibilities, thanks to the AI effectively being off-limits due to the lack of SDK access, there are still possible ways to implement the feature of different styles of governments with effects in other areas.

One possibility, which I was considering due to the recent mention of specially tagged "Government" buildings in another thread:

Sneaks said:

We add a new tag to the Buildings.xml to the tune of IsGovernment. I will add a Government Buildings section to the CityView so these will display above the buildings and wonders. The one exception will be the Palace, which we can add the tag to as well, just for aesthetics. The Town Watch buildings can be given the BuildingAddition tag so it will be a subdivision of the Viceroy or whatever.

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Is the use of "additions" to the original palace. While the palace will, of course, have the default values, you could build additional 'governments' in the form of projects / buildings, which have both positive and negative effects, in addition to making the Capital unable to build anything else while it is constructing these additions. These could be unlocked by policy trees, so policies still have a direct link to a style of government, while not being directly responsible.

The governments would be exclusive: You can't have a fascist government at the same time as a purely democratic government. However, these would be replacable: As with in real life, you are not 'stuck' with one system of government, and this would be the primary difference between policies and governments.

One possible implementation is a temporary effect while building a new addition: The capital, or even the entire civilization, has some negative effects in either the form of happiness, gold or population growth, to be symbolic of a 'revolution'.

This thread was just purely made as a discussion for now, but, should we get enough ideas, I'd be happy to begin attempting to make this happen. I have limited modding experience with Civ V, but I did a lot of modding and tweaking in Civ IV, so I'm no stranger to the inner workings of Civ.

So: Ideas?

What I had suggested before for methods of government change seems to have been misunderstood.

First: what method do we want to be the most important in determining government? I think culture should be the most useful. So I think switching governments costing 1 policy adoption (without increasing costs) is a reasonable basis.

So what should come next? A highly centralized government (based in the capital) would be able to pass reforms from the top down, changing the government type. Constructing National Wonders should be the way to go for this. What about purchase costs? For flavor purposes, think of purchasing a government change as rich people from all over the country bribing/donating to reform the government. This should be much more expensive due to corruption (bribing) or bureaucracy (donations). From a gameplay perspective, gold can be taken from the entire empire, as opposed to hammers which must come from the capital itself. Purchase cost should be scaled up if allowed.

What next? Everybody agrees with the reform! At the start of a Golden Age you get to switch for free. This rewards tall (centralized) governments, good timing of policy picks (for GAs), and use of GP for GAs (lead a revolution). If you disagree with the flavor, consider that not all revolutions need to be violent uprisings. Magna Carta changed England from a Feudal Monarchy to a Constitutional Monarchy. China is converting from communism to democracy during a "Golden Age".

But of course violence is by far the most common. And should be the last resort for the player. What I suggested was that, during a revolution of this type, we SET the happiness value of the empire to -20. That is not a requirement of revolt, but instead a consequence of revolt. This keeps control in the hands of the player, penalizes him for his freedom (to revolt whenever), has flavor, and can help the AI take advantage of governments without proper planning.



So what types of bonuses should we provide? And what types of penalties? Well that depends on what we can do with the tools we have. Personally, I would LOVE to have a Democracy with some internal politics, or a Republic which votes on things, or a Theocracy that calls for crusades. Can we do this? I doubt it, for now.

So what bonuses/maluses can we provide? The normal, non-unique benefits. Bonuses to food, hammers, gold, culture, science, GPP, happiness, GA cost, unhappiness, worker speed, movement speed, combat modifiers, city defense, etc.


Government types:

Democracy- A government in which every citizen has a vote on every question. Needs to be very small nation (city-state) to do this.
Bonus: +30% GPP in capital city. -30% unhappiness from pop in capital
Malus: +20% unhappiness from pop in non-capital cities

Despotism (default)- Someone is in charge. Woooooo...

Socialism- A government in which the economy is run by the state, and each citizen gets an even share of the wealth. Poor are better off, but rich, educated, and hard-workers are worse off.
Bonus: +5 hammers/city, +5 gold/city
Malus: -75% GPP, -25% science

Monarchy- A government signified by its hereditary rules. Creates bonds with other monarchies through marriage. May support aristocracy (Feudal) or suppress it (Absolute)
Bonus: +4 happiness per DoF.
Malus: -4 happiness per Denunciation by or on you.

Theocracy- A government ruled by the religious caste.
Bonus: Temples and Monuments provide +2 happy each
Malus: -4 Happy per each other Theocracy in the world

Republic- A government where citizens appoint representatives, who vote for them. Puts all politicians in capital but puts strains on the capital
Bonus: +1 yield and +1 GPP per specialist in capital
Malus: -2 food, hammers, gold, culture, science in capital



Ok I've been writing for an hour now. Time to actually post this thing lol
I have more, but I'll save it for later.

I like the idea of having some kind of penalty while the new government building is under construction (revolution feeling).

I think a government should be much more powerful than each individual social policy (but not as powerful as a whole policy branch). Generally, government's bonuses and penalties should affect the entire empire rather than a city.

I loved the Civ4 and SMAC method to make combinations of choices (type of government, type of economics, relation between religion and state, etc). However, since we are speaking about a major Civ5 change with unpredictable AI consequences, perhaps it would be easier to follow a simpler approach and use goverment types that cannot be combined, as in Civ, Civ2, Civ3, CtP, CtP2. At least, in a first approach.

Here is a proposal of government types and possible benefits. If things get too complex, for each government we could pick just a few benefits for the sake of simplicity (in the most minimalistic extreme, just one clear "theme" bonus for each government).

- Despotism (default).
- Monarchy (e.g. ancient Egypt or imperial England): good for the capital, good for building wonders, good for war, good for keeping happiness without having a big buildings infrastructure in cities (e.g. "martial law": garrison units, or number of units everywhere in the empire, create happiness due to the fear of citizens).
- Republic (e.g. pre-Empire Rome): good for science and gold, bad for keeping happiness without appropriate buildings, bad for war.
- Communism (e.g. USSR): good for quickly constructing buildings and tile improvements, bad for maintaning such a big amount of new constructions in the long term (e.g. less gold than Democracy).
- Fascism/Fundamentalism (e.g. Nazi Germany or Taliban Afghanistan): good for war, good for happiness (inconditional support of citizens), bad for science (scientists flee to other countries).
- Democracy (e.g. today's USA): very good for great people, bad for war, bad for happiness without appropriate buildings.

I would like that old governments are still useful in modern times (e.g. Monarchy is not "Communism plus corruption", as in Civ2, but something you would still pick in modern times for some purposes).

Perhaps we could add a kind of "City-state league" government: good for relations with (foreign) city-states (finding a way to join them to your empire without war would be great!), bad for creating units and war (difficult coordination towards war), or even good for puppet states (?).

Btw, in Civ I always was a bit confused about the motivations behind the difference between Republic and Democracy. It was a proper way to represent both US main parties but, in other countries, words "Democracy" and "Republic" have nothing to do with that specific approach. In our approach, Republic could provide research and gold on the basis of population (the state is partially responsible of prosperity), while this improvement would be indirect in Democracy, due to specialists (businessmen in modern capitalism).

Should we avoid overlapping between governments and social policies? Or the "Monarchy" social policy would enable the "Monarchy" government?

Should some policies have some extra bonus effects if the government under rule is related to the policy?

Well, recall that this is just brainstorming. Eventually we could need to reduce complexity and take only the essential ideas.

Ooops, I wrote my long comment without updating the page, so I didn't see GamerKG last post about the same issues. I'll come back later to read it and comment it

just some thoughts on the topic

GamerKG said:

What I had suggested before for methods of government change seems to have been misunderstood.

First: what method do we want to be the most important in determining government? I think culture should be the most useful. So I think switching governments costing 1 policy adoption (without increasing costs) is a reasonable basis.

Click to expand...

i think this is a great start to the mechanics of choosing. spending a SP selection on a govt type WITHOUT increasing the cost of the subsequent policy
1. successfully emphasizes culture's role in the process
2. utilizes a mechanic (i'd guess) the AI could manage (or be "flavored" into),
3. links government type to a hierarchy system already well balanced in VEM.

for example, i can imagine a situation where each tree might have a distinct "government SP" added to it's opener or first tier (or allow the option after selecting the tree's opener). this would restrict govt types selection by eras (but that's not all that difficult to imagine historically). Perhaps a more precise way would be to create a separate "govt SP" tree that has no tech requirement, X # of independent govt SPs. Despotism could be the opener (available after founding first city and prompted to select just like initial research/production) and subsequent tiers representing distinct types.

This would allow for some interesting prerequisite options. For example:

tier 1: democracy; tier 2: republic (tier 3: socialism???)
tier 1: feudalism; tier 2: monarchy tier 2: theocracy (???)

This is just off the top of my head (i have thoughts on democracy and republic i'll mention below). so maybe it's better to have them all independent and this would all have to be gameplay vetted, but in short, i like the "govt SP" selection idea.

GamerKG said:

So what should come next? A highly centralized government (based in the capital) would be able to pass reforms from the top down, changing the government type. Constructing National Wonders should be the way to go for this. What about purchase costs? For flavor purposes, think of purchasing a government change as rich people from all over the country bribing/donating to reform the government. This should be much more expensive due to corruption (bribing) or bureaucracy (donations). From a gameplay perspective, gold can be taken from the entire empire, as opposed to hammers which must come from the capital itself. Purchase cost should be scaled up if allowed.

Click to expand...

i'm not sure what you mean here: are constructing national wonders now tied to government types? or the government selection process? I think the current mechanics in VEM are well balanced and it would make sense if they were somewhat separate (e.g. not every democracy has a heroic epic equivalent; despots can still have a national colosseum equivalent, right?; also, national treasuries are so useful/generic, it might seem a bit arbitrary). if you have any more thoughts on this, i'd be interested to know

GamerKG said:

What next? Everybody agrees with the reform! At the start of a Golden Age you get to switch for free. This rewards tall (centralized) governments, good timing of policy picks (for GAs), and use of GP for GAs (lead a revolution). If you disagree with the flavor, consider that not all revolutions need to be violent uprisings. Magna Carta changed England from a Feudal Monarchy to a Constitutional Monarchy. China is converting from communism to democracy during a "Golden Age".

But of course violence is by far the most common. And should be the last resort for the player. What I suggested was that, during a revolution of this type, we SET the happiness value of the empire to -20. That is not a requirement of revolt, but instead a consequence of revolt. This keeps control in the hands of the player, penalizes him for his freedom (to revolt whenever), has flavor, and can help the AI take advantage of governments without proper planning.

Click to expand...

agreed. great ideas. there is an issue of timing a selecting a new "govt SP" with a GA (if that's the mechanic, which i think is a good one) or are you saying that any GA opens the option to change for free (i.e. no culture cost to select a govt SP)? perhaps in this modmod GAs could work a little differently to provide additional culture yields (which might make balance sense since we'd be adding new SPs).

GamerKG said:

So what types of bonuses should we provide? And what types of penalties?

Click to expand...

this is why i actually started typing a response. while i know there are many out there with far more Civ experience (especially in previous editions where government type was actually mapped to gameplay), i thought i'd give my two cents on how the bonus/penalties would work out:

GamerKG said:

Despotism (default)- Someone is in charge. Woooooo...

Click to expand...

Easy, the opening govt type. could have some basic bonuses, like conscription, and penalties to growth or happiness. nothing debilitating, but enough to encourage eventual new govt adoption (either at first GA or once happiness levels are high enough, depending on mechanism).

Democracy- A government in which every citizen has a vote on every question. Needs to be very small nation (city-state) to do this.
Bonus: +30% GPP in capital city. -30% unhappiness from pop in capital
Malus: +20% unhappiness from pop in non-capital cities

Republic- A government where citizens appoint representatives, who vote for them. Puts all politicians in capital but puts strains on the capital
Bonus: +1 yield and +1 GPP per specialist in capital
Malus: -2 food, hammers, gold, culture, science in capital

Click to expand...

I would argue that republic conceptually requires democracy. as your description/benefits point out, the idea of both is representation but the distinction is the mechanic of voting. in pure democracies, there are clearly decision-making issues (majorities rule over minorities) that can be mapped to game concepts (happiness, growth, production).

alternatively, republics (where individuals elect representatives who then make decisions for them, establishing accountability) can tackle a greater number of more complex issues [insert: commentary on current US politics, yea yea I know]. I think the way you're delineating the bonus above for democracies/republics is to give the former a tall/capital-centric bonus, which i'd agree with. I think the republic bonus, however, should be less "anti-capital" and more pro non-capital city. Additional Great Person flavor is good and perhaps a bonus to all cities WITHOUT a Palace, to represent a buff with their stronger influence in central government.

In short, while the ancient Roman republic is an example, I would rather associate the game concept (and it's benefits) with more modern "democracies".

Socialism- A government in which the economy is run by the state, and each citizen gets an even share of the wealth. Poor are better off, but rich, educated, and hard-workers are worse off.
Bonus: +5 hammers/city, +5 gold/city
Malus: -75% GPP, -25% science

Click to expand...

I would argue that this sounds like it could just as easily be Communism and then have a more nuanced Socialism type, perhaps requiring communism first.

Monarchy- A government signified by its hereditary rules. Creates bonds with other monarchies through marriage. May support aristocracy (Feudal) or suppress it (Absolute)
Bonus: +4 happiness per DoF.
Malus: -4 happiness per Denunciation by or on you.

Click to expand...

I know where you're going with this, but i'd be leery of adopting any govt type whose benefits are reliant on an unreliable game mechanic like DoF and Denunciations. perhaps there are some ideas we can gleam from previous Civ govt type benefits?

Theocracy- A government ruled by the religious caste.
Bonus: Temples and Monuments provide +2 happy each
Malus: -4 Happy per each other Theocracy in the world

Click to expand...

I like where you're going with this idea (like the one above it) where the selections of other Civs would make a difference to you. This could be both tangibly to your benefits/costs, but also diplomatically to the relations (though this might be asking too much from the diplomacy system as designed)

[/QUOTE]

unfortunately, i have little modding skills to speak of to support any of this, so i hope to at least contributes to the discussion.

As a modder, I have been often wondering about how to enact some fancy system for Government or Religion. The issue that often stops me in my tracks is whether the proposed system is truly a system in its own right, or basically a miniature of an existing one. The above proposals essentially boil down to being superpolicies that may or may not require buildings. The means to achieve said govts would be identical to policies as well. What I have accepted as a relative fact is that the streamlining of yields and mechanics in Civ V has essentially handcuffed our ability to add new functions simply based on current ones. I think any implemented government system would need new yields to build mechanics around. Whether it be a Loyalty/Unrest system, Governance/Corruption etc, something would have to exist to stop the new system from just being an unnecessary buff and imbalancer to existing conditions.

Interesting ideas, GamerKG and bwoww78. GamerKG proposal is by far more defined than mine, and also more ambitious. Both things are good for the discussion. The idea of enabling revolutions in very different ways (construction, purchasing, unhappiness) is very interesting. Besides, the bonuses and maluses of GamerKG for government types sound reasonable to me.

I tried not to propose ambitious changes because I don't know what XML files allow us to do and what it does not, as well as how the AI would adapt itself to changes. I did some (modest) modding Civ2, SMAC, Civ3, CtP, and CtP2, but nothing since then. However, since we have some skilled Civ5 modders here, I could at least present a few crazy ideas (most of them are probably impossible or too hard to implement):

- In Democracy and Republic, the senate should have some control over the president (in Civ2, some of your war attempts were "overruled by the senate", do you remember?). Going one step further, left wing and right wing parties (or even other parties) could participate in periodic elections. If the winning party has the same ideology as the president (you), then less presidential decisions (not just wars; also e.g. constructions) are overruled by the senate. Election results would depend on happiness: if people is happy, they vote "your" party. You could also change your party at some (high) cost. Some of this exists in GalCivs and GalCiv2.

Regarding the Democracy vs Republic discussion: If the difference lies in whether people directly vote everything or they delegate on representatives, then only ancient Greece has been a Democracy (well, not completely: slaves didn't vote, as well as busy people who had no time to waste on going to vote). Everything else has been a kind of Republic.

- In a capitalist system, the private initiative could be simulated by making you lose the control of what is build in your cities. Companies decide, and you only decide in a few sectors (military, security, etc). A possible way to approach this is the following: your hammers (which are "for the goverment") are dramatically reduced, but new buildings randomly appear from time to time in your cities regardless of your hammers (it is the private sector). It could also depend on economic cycles: If there is a depression, private buildings could also disappear. Economic cycles of capitalism countries would synchronize together (so e.g. a fascism country could take advantage, you know!).

- Two countries with Monarchy could merge by means of a marriage. Enabling such marriage would require a huge friendship between both countries. Besides, if a king dies without a live descentant, a civil war could happen.

- There should be a reason why you should force other countries choose your own goverment: Some of your citizens are unhappy because they envy the government or your neighbour, or they are unhappy because they think the neighbour's goverment is devil (i.e. different to yours). So, you have less unhappiness if you are surrounded by countries with the same goverment as you. Otherwise, the additional unhappiness would be a good reason for going war against these countries ruled by "barbarian" goverments! (In SMAC, other factions pushed you to follow their agendas, but the goverment of your neighbours had no consequence on your domestic issues).

- I like the idea that, sometimes, a new government requires a violent revolution. In CtP, I made a mod for unleashing civil wars in anarchies, so you had to reconquer some of your cities.

- Like in capitalism, you could lose some control of production in cities if you have a highly decentralized government: the local government (province, state, region, etc) decides. It's like a puppet state, but it's part of your country and you lose control only because of the government kind.

Well, enough crazy and fantasy speculative thinking by now.

bwoww78 said:

just some thoughts on the topic



i think this is a great start to the mechanics of choosing. spending a SP selection on a govt type WITHOUT increasing the cost of the subsequent policy
1. successfully emphasizes culture's role in the process
2. utilizes a mechanic (i'd guess) the AI could manage (or be "flavored" into),
3. links government type to a hierarchy system already well balanced in VEM.

for example, i can imagine a situation where each tree might have a distinct "government SP" added to it's opener or first tier (or allow the option after selecting the tree's opener). this would restrict govt types selection by eras (but that's not all that difficult to imagine historically). Perhaps a more precise way would be to create a separate "govt SP" tree that has no tech requirement, X # of independent govt SPs. Despotism could be the opener (available after founding first city and prompted to select just like initial research/production) and subsequent tiers representing distinct types.

This would allow for some interesting prerequisite options. For example:

tier 1: democracy; tier 2: republic (tier 3: socialism???)
tier 1: feudalism; tier 2: monarchy tier 2: theocracy (???)

This is just off the top of my head (i have thoughts on democracy and republic i'll mention below). so maybe it's better to have them all independent and this would all have to be gameplay vetted, but in short, i like the "govt SP" selection idea.



i'm not sure what you mean here: are constructing national wonders now tied to government types? or the government selection process? I think the current mechanics in VEM are well balanced and it would make sense if they were somewhat separate (e.g. not every democracy has a heroic epic equivalent; despots can still have a national colosseum equivalent, right?; also, national treasuries are so useful/generic, it might seem a bit arbitrary). if you have any more thoughts on this, i'd be interested to know



agreed. great ideas. there is an issue of timing a selecting a new "govt SP" with a GA (if that's the mechanic, which i think is a good one) or are you saying that any GA opens the option to change for free (i.e. no culture cost to select a govt SP)? perhaps in this modmod GAs could work a little differently to provide additional culture yields (which might make balance sense since we'd be adding new SPs).




this is why i actually started typing a response. while i know there are many out there with far more Civ experience (especially in previous editions where government type was actually mapped to gameplay), i thought i'd give my two cents on how the bonus/penalties would work out:


Easy, the opening govt type. could have some basic bonuses, like conscription, and penalties to growth or happiness. nothing debilitating, but enough to encourage eventual new govt adoption (either at first GA or once happiness levels are high enough, depending on mechanism).



I would argue that republic conceptually requires democracy. as your description/benefits point out, the idea of both is representation but the distinction is the mechanic of voting. in pure democracies, there are clearly decision-making issues (majorities rule over minorities) that can be mapped to game concepts (happiness, growth, production).

alternatively, republics (where individuals elect representatives who then make decisions for them, establishing accountability) can tackle a greater number of more complex issues [insert: commentary on current US politics, yea yea I know]. I think the way you're delineating the bonus above for democracies/republics is to give the former a tall/capital-centric bonus, which i'd agree with. I think the republic bonus, however, should be less "anti-capital" and more pro non-capital city. Additional Great Person flavor is good and perhaps a bonus to all cities WITHOUT a Palace, to represent a buff with their stronger influence in central government.

In short, while the ancient Roman republic is an example, I would rather associate the game concept (and it's benefits) with more modern "democracies".



I would argue that this sounds like it could just as easily be Communism and then have a more nuanced Socialism type, perhaps requiring communism first.



I know where you're going with this, but i'd be leery of adopting any govt type whose benefits are reliant on an unreliable game mechanic like DoF and Denunciations. perhaps there are some ideas we can gleam from previous Civ govt type benefits?



I like where you're going with this idea (like the one above it) where the selections of other Civs would make a difference to you. This could be both tangibly to your benefits/costs, but also diplomatically to the relations (though this might be asking too much from the diplomacy system as designed)

Click to expand...

unfortunately, i have little modding skills to speak of to support any of this, so i hope to at least contributes to the discussion.[/QUOTE]

Thank you for reading that long block of text I posted. These are only brainstorming ideas, and I have others that I didn't mention in that post (it took me an hour to type that up, I kept deleting and replacing ideas).

I considered having Republics be a bonus to capital and a penalty to non-capital, but I decided that that would serve the same gameplay purpose as the Democracy government type. Instead, I think the Republic should be for a wide empire that wants some benefits of being tall.

Furthermore, with the Monarchy and Theocracy effects, I know it is a bad idea to make the benefits dependent on factors outside of the player's control, except here it isn't. Because the player has the choice of NOT taking this government type (Despotism is just fine, no maluses), they do actually have control over these bonuses/maluses. So I think its fine.

The difference between Communism and Socialism is the "violent revolution", so it is better to call the government type "Socialism" instead of Communism.

Other types:

Dictatorship: A type of government in which the leader has absolute rule, usually through force or nationalistic respect. Freedom is usually restricted to ensure the dictator stays in power.
Bonus: Conscription-can purchase 1 unit/turn at the cost of 1 happiness for 15 turns (standard speed), 25% less happiness required for GA
Malus: -10% GPP, -10% science

Fascism: Militaristic nationalistic socialism, usually. Let's just go with military for this.
Bonus: +20% combat bonus if has an adjacent unit.
Malus: -10% culture, -10% science

Empire: Not really a government type itself, but lets go with imperialism here.
Bonus: Courthouses provide +3 happiness. Puppets have +10% gold
Malus: All cities that are neither occupied nor puppets have -10% gold. This is because the home country has to support the colonies

@Sneaks: I totally agree, but we simply don't have the ability. I am trying to offer suggestions that we can work with for now.

The game is entirely abstract as is. Now we can certainly create an unrest, corruption, religion, and political system, but we haven't yet. If we do, I would be happy to speculate about potential modmods of that.

For now, I am trying to work with what we have. Having Democracies vote on laws (but not diplomacy), having Republics with political policies, etc, would be awesome. Sadly we cant right now.

GamerKG said:

@Sneaks: I totally agree, but we simply don't have the ability. I am trying to offer suggestions that we can work with for now.

The game is entirely abstract as is. Now we can certainly create an unrest, corruption, religion, and political system, but we haven't yet. If we do, I would be happy to speculate about potential modmods of that.

For now, I am trying to work with what we have. Having Democracies vote on laws (but not diplomacy), having Republics with political policies, etc, would be awesome. Sadly we cant right now.

Click to expand...

Creating a yield called "Governance" and making it produced by buildings and specialists, and even creating a new flavor tag for it would not be outside the realm of possibility.

Sneaks said:

Creating a yield called "Governance" and making it produced by buildings and specialists, and even creating a new flavor tag for it would not be outside the realm of possibility.

Click to expand...

Adding a new yield would be very easy since I reverse-engineered and merged the yield functions for YieldLibrary.lua. The framework is all there.

Thalassicus said:

Adding a new yield would be very easy since I reverse-engineered and merged the yield functions for YieldLibrary.lua. The framework is all there.

Click to expand...

Well then, this may be the way to go!

GamerKG said:

Thank you for reading that long block of text I posted. These are only brainstorming ideas, and I have others that I didn't mention in that post (it took me an hour to type that up, I kept deleting and replacing ideas).

Click to expand...

no problem! my reply was done in the same way.

GamerKG said:

I think the Republic should be for a wide empire that wants some benefits of being tall.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

GamerKG said:

Furthermore, with the Monarchy and Theocracy effects, I know it is a bad idea to make the benefits dependent on factors outside of the player's control, except here it isn't. Because the player has the choice of NOT taking this government type (Despotism is just fine, no maluses), they do actually have control over these bonuses/maluses. So I think its fine.

Click to expand...

Point taken. I guess I'm just hesitant as I'm not sure it'd be an appealing choice because of inconsistency in gameplay. I always try and think of "make it all feel overpowered". But I see where you're going with it, so don't let me stop the brainstorming.

GamerKG said:

The difference between Communism and Socialism is the "violent revolution", so it is better to call the government type "Socialism" instead of Communism.

Click to expand...

I guess you're right that socialism somewhat encompasses communism (and I didn't delve too deep in my proposed distinctions), but I'd consider setting these up as two types: one having more direct impacts on a per population while the other to do with planned economies. Didn't previous civ games have separate govt types for these two? I can't recall...

GamerKG said:

Other types:

Dictatorship: A type of government in which the leader has absolute rule, usually through force or nationalistic respect. Freedom is usually restricted to ensure the dictator stays in power.
Bonus: Conscription-can purchase 1 unit/turn at the cost of 1 happiness for 15 turns (standard speed), 25% less happiness required for GA
Malus: -10% GPP, -10% science

Fascism: Militaristic nationalistic socialism, usually. Let's just go with military for this.
Bonus: +20% combat bonus if has an adjacent unit.
Malus: -10% culture, -10% science

Empire: Not really a government type itself, but lets go with imperialism here.
Bonus: Courthouses provide +3 happiness. Puppets have +10% gold
Malus: All cities that are neither occupied nor puppets have -10% gold. This is because the home country has to support the colonies

Click to expand...

These make me think of creating blocks: can I have a fascist empire? or a fascist dictatorship? i know the policies thread has just moved towards the topic of "to have blocks on SP trees or not", perhaps it'd be interesting to create some layered options in government types as well. Just a thought.

In the process of creating the stepping stones to a possible mod now.

I'll update in a few hours when I have time with a detailed description, after I've done a few checks to see it all works.

EDIT:

Okay, so, here's how the system works:

Government buildings - which at first is only the palace - will generate a certain amount of Order, which is the yield used for government features.

There are eight Government types, which are all exclusive, and are signified by those who rule:

"The Strong", "The Chosen", "The Few", "The Church", "The Armed", "The Many", "The Rich", and "The Learned".

Each style has different positive and negative attributes, and each also has a distinct "Stability" and "Happiness" value. Less stability = Slower production of "Order", and less happiness = surprise surprise, less happiness.

Each Government type can be at first "picked" at the cost of sacrificing all current order, ant this has a small effect, similar to the "opener" of a policy - the difference being, the effects here are both positive and negative. There are then three extra picks, which will cost some amount of order, for each government type. This is to reward Civilizations who continue to use the same style of Government for an extended period of time, as well as to make "Switching" governments slightly less attractive.



These three extra picks have no prequesites, any one of them can be chosen at any time, as long as that style of Government is in use, and you have enough order points to purchase them. This is to make these styles of Government more flexible: While choosing "The Strong" will overall benefit your military and production at the cost of your city state diplomacy and culture, you can pick which of these positive and negative effects to go for first. (Notably, there is no pick which is 'purely' positive, all will have negative effects as well.) It should be noted that you do not HAVE to pick these extra styles, in fact, you can choose to remain without Government, and have no negative effects, but no positive effects as well. (I think for this Modmod, however, going without government should have a negative effect if left long enough.)

Each style of government has certain negative connotations and positive connotations attributed to it, as can be seen in this spreadsheet, which also has the names of their three 'picks' (These names, currently, may conflict with some policy names, I'm not sure what to do about that):



Note that just because a certain style of government has more "plusses" than "minuses" does not mean it is inherently better: The negatives will just be more pronounced, and the reverse applies. The negatives and positives will not just be boring "You get (more / less) of (production / wealth / food / etc.)", they will be implemented in such ways as, better or worse yields on certain improvements, slower or quicker construction of certain buildings and units, more or less experience gained, more or less culture from buildings, etc.

Does this make sense to anyone? I'm sorry if I'm being convoluted. I'm having difficulty expressing this in a way that is simple.

And, I have only just begun this, after confirming in the code that this is all doable. (Albeit with a fair few "dummy" buildings.) Whether it is doable and able to be fun and balanced, however, remains to be seen.

I do like the general Direction of a new "Governance Yield" in order to have a government system. Otherwise the overlap would be too big with the Social Policies. Albie_123's system however seems to be too complicated. If you have three subtypes, why not have three types. It makes an easier UI! Plus, you see in your later names that you can't really seem to find good names! But I like the nomenclature "the few" and so on...

The big systems missing from Civ5 in general are Religion, Espionage, Stability and maybe Corporations. If we can integrate these together, that'd be neat. Otherwise, the new system needs to be simple and offer new orientation. If we take Stability as the core of the government system, we better draw from previous experience, like in Rhye's and Fall (the civ4 mod and (not) soon to be civ5 mod).

Stability there hems expansion with a chance of breakup if you expand too fast, your economy is too bad, if you have conflicting Civics [in Civ5 this could replace the problems with Social Policies Tree Exclusivity] or if you lose wars. On the other hand, fast expansion [winning wars] also decreases stability.

On Civ5, Expansion is already sufficiently stopped by Happiness. At least, that's my experience in the last few games, the AI has either 1, 2 or 3 cities - or a large number, but they're really really slow to expand. Which is bad imho. Back to topic, for a modmod, would it make sense to make Happiness only pertain to Population, while Governance allows for cities. The question is if this is flavourful enough or if it needs other effects to not be interesting and then we are back to the first problem of the correlation with civics. But then the flexibility needs to be kept and not all choices should be predetermined. It's a vicious circle. You can tie it into another new system, but that'd be a total overhaul again...

mitsho said:

Albie_123's system however seems to be too complicated. If you have three subtypes, why not have three types. It makes an easier UI! Plus, you see in your later names that you can't really seem to find good names!

Click to expand...

I'm confused here. Having "three types" for each system of government would be far, far worse for the UI. Think of it in terms of the policy tree: What you're suggesting is that each individual policy is a whole section in itself, instead of being part of a bigger "whole".

mitsho said:

The big systems missing from Civ5 in general are Religion, Espionage, Stability and maybe Corporations. If we can integrate these together, that'd be neat.

Click to expand...

But that's what made these features so great - they WEREN'T together. They were distinctly seperate things. You could worry about Religion while ignoring Espionage and vice versa. I think that making them all work in the same way is effectively just doing exactly what Civ 5 did with policies: Restrict choice by the player.

I like your ideas Albie, and I think that making government its own system is certainly the way to go. A few things I want to mention before we continue:

Can the AI use it?
Is it elegant? (Simple rules, complicated dynamics)
Is it unique?
Is it flavorful?

I do not know if the AI can use it, I am no expert on such things. However, I do think it is too complicated for its own good, and it seems as though this current system is very much like social policies.

I think we should scrap the branching trees, personally. Just choose a few of these government types we have, but make them all unique and fun. I suggested boring bonuses and maluses before because I did not know if we had the capability to mod in new systems. If we can have Democracies vote on things, conscript units in a Fascist society, and have hereditary bonds in a Monarchy, then those should be our bases.

As for flavor, I like your names for categories but not for governments. Furthermore, many of these names conflict with names of policies. I don't know what to do about that.

Strong- Despot/Dictator
Chosen- Democracy/Republic
Few- Monarchy/Empire
Church- Theocracy
Armed- Fascism (which is a combination of militarism, nationalism, and socialism)
Many- Socialism/Communism
Rich- Plutocracy
Learned- Meritocracy

These seem to be the best ones to me. That's 12 government types. That's complicated enough without branches coming out of them.

I see many good revolutionary ideas. Yes, I really wish to see most of them working in the game. However, for a first version, we could temporaly focus on creating a very simple modification of the game mechanics.

I propose a minimalistic first approach to create a playable and testable version:

1.- Picking only a few governments which are clearly different from each other in terms of flavour.

2.- Assigning bonuses/maluses that are easy to implement (e.g. +X growth, -Y% gold, etc). They should be strong enough to feel that, under each choice, your strategy should definitely change. However, they should be simply defined and each one should have a clear theme (e.g. "this one is essentially for war, this one is for science, this one is for producing buildings, etc").

3.- Defining a very simple way to change your government. For instance, building/purchasing a government national wonder that excludes any other previous one (perhaps, with some unhappiness during the construction).

This looks easily doable, doesn't it? After it is implemented (no new art, just mechanics), we play it, we check if the AI does stupid things or not, and next we come back here to propose the next refinement, where we increase the complexity level of rules, mechanics, choices, etc.

Rich complex mechanics are fine, that they should be the result of an evolution from simpler (and tested!) mechanics.

NPcomplete is right. Starting small and working up from there is a good approach. Even VEM started this way last year, with a simple +1 to mines and lumbermills on Engineering. Keep the big picture in mind, but get something basic out the door.

I quite agree. I think the simplest route for government change would be the culture one I posted above.