Firaxis announces "Civics"

Firaxis did, in fact, mention that they were planning on introducing religion into Civ 4… which has gotten much attention. But the other concept that people haven’t talked about is “civics”

What the heck does civics mean? Some people don’t know.

civ`ics
n. (used with a sing. verb)
The branch of political science that deals with civic affairs and the rights and duties of citizens.

OR

n : the social science of municipal affairs


This could mean a lot of different things. But, to me, I’d like to see it have more to do with individual laws. Outlawing or legalizing slavery. Marijuana. Same-sex marriage. Women being allowed to vote. Many of these choices becoming available after technological discoveries. Of course, these laws would actually need to DO something.

I see the effects almost being treated like a card game – you play a card with a list of effects. E.g.: saying yes will improve your economy, but take away from civil liberties, and affect your overall productivity.

It would be intresting to be able to make laws! I think I would welcome that aspect to the game, as long as there was alot of options.

dh_epic said:

[...]
This could mean a lot of different things. [...] Women being allowed to vote. [...]

Click to expand...

Ah, come on, the game should stay realistic to at least a certain degree....

Hehe... at least not until Women's Suffrage is researched.

It would make each nation even more unique. You would see what a great place a country with a liberal government is

It could be a reference to them using a system like they did in SMAC.

See here

I think these "civics" would have to deal with a lot of unpleasant past laws and practices in our history.

Law allows only one religion in country; the Church controls social values
Law allows only wealthy nobility to own property, slaves, and vote
Legal deportation of minorities, etc. (America, Australia, Siberia)
Slavery (racial)
Law prohibits Blacks (Zulus? or other culture groups?) from voting, etc.
Segregation: Law prohibits Jews from living among Christians, or owning property, etc.
Etc. ..

Beloyar said:

I think these "civics" would have to deal with a lot of unpleasant past laws and practices in our history.

Law allows only one religion in country; the Church controls social values
Law allows only wealthy nobility to own property, slaves, and vote
Legal deportation of minorities, etc. (America, Australia, Siberia)
Slavery (racial)
Law prohibits Blacks (Zulus? or other culture groups?) from voting, etc.
Segregation: Law prohibits Jews from living among Christians, or owning property, etc.
Etc. ..

Click to expand...

It is just a game man, who cares if you deport a minority? They are not real people they are just little packets of 1's and 0's.

Why would the Zulu not let blacks vote when they are all black? That wouldn't make much sense.

Dr. Broom said:

It is just a game man, who cares if you deport a minority? They are not real people they are just little packets of 1's and 0's.

Why would the Zulu not let blacks vote when they are all black? That wouldn't make much sense.

Click to expand...

Oh, I know it's just a game. And I don't care to do those things in the game, either. It's just like killing enemy units for no reason.
I just want to know what exactly civics is supposed to do in the game.

I see, thanks for clearing that up.

I don't understand people who are really afraid of contraversial game concepts. Obviously some really specific tragedies should be averted, and shouldn't be referred to in detail.

But all kinds of nations have prohibited certain groups from voting.

I don't see how you can be against this kind of portrayal, but see absolutely no problem with violence being portrayed in a game itself. Come on, man, history is ugly.

I think passing laws with benefits and consequences would be really great! You could give them the facade of deep role playing:

"The band 'Satanica' has recently published a song that attacks your regime, sire! How shall we handle this?

A: Outlaw any criticism of our regime, this filth cannot be tolerated!
B: We ought to manufacture a band who will promote the greatness of our regime.
C: Have our agents pay Satanica a visit. Let's keep this discrete.
D: Freedom of speech of this sort should be encouraged.
E: Dismiss"



This merely gives a name and a face to an attitude towards emerging free speech, say, after a modern social technology is discovered. The words and situations suggest that there are individual citizens who care about individual issues. In actuality, Civ just draws up a random set of words to describe a simple dilemma:

A: squash civil unrest, but effects of civil unrest are more devestating due to lack of freedom
B: spend money and squash civil unrest, but lower culture value of your entertainment
C: spend money and squash civil unrest, with various likelihoods of incident (like spies)
D: allow civil unrest to happen naturally

This is inspired by a great game I'm a fan of right now called Nation States.

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/target=display_nation/nation=former_colonies


A civic law would be like a great wonder, except with more tradeoffs than pure benefits. You can get great things from a law, but usually at a price.

Aha... right.

Nice idea epic, the only thing I would say is that it shouldn't be any sort of wonder and choices like that should arise every once in a while and choosing different options would have different positive and/or negative effects.

dh_epic said:

I don't understand people who are really afraid of contraversial game concepts. Obviously some really specific tragedies should be averted, and shouldn't be referred to in detail.

But all kinds of nations have prohibited certain groups from voting.

I don't see how you can be against this kind of portrayal, but see absolutely no problem with violence being portrayed in a game itself. Come on, man, history is ugly.

I think passing laws with benefits and consequences would be really great! You could give them the facade of deep role playing:...

Click to expand...

I don't mind that, as long as it doesn't get too complicated. Also, I think all civs can commit what we call atrocities today, as long as we know that their rulers will be replaced later by more enlightened ppl. I really hate it when after trashing some civ for bullying me, it's ruler will remain "Furious" in attitude toward me and will never agree to anything. The problem here is that it's the same person who rules each civ for 5,000 years!! This is ridiculous.

So, instead of laws to change your civ's attitude, we should be able to experience new rulers. For AI, every 100 years or so, a new ruler takes the throne, and you can renegociate deals. For the human player, same thing: you shoud just change your name and keep on playing.

IMHO, Civics should comprise of several factors-each of which can be given different settings according to your government type and tech levels. The levels which could be set might be 0-100, or 0-10, or 0-20, or even
-10 to +10.
The possible factors which could comprise civics could be:

1) Nationalism: This controls the extent of 'national pride' you instill in your people. Setting this high will reduce War Weariness, increase happiness, and decrease both the chance of 'culture flipping' and the assimilation rate of your citizens in other civs cities. This is DOUBLY as effective in relation to civs from another culture group. On the flip side, however, high nationalism increases unhappiness amongst foreign nationals and increases the chance of crime and revolt in cities with a significant foreign population. It also reduces the chance of assimilation of foreign nationals and immigration of foreign population into your civ. Again, this is doubly true when the foreign nationals belong to a different culture group.

2) Libertarianism: How much freedom your people enjoy OUTSIDE of voting rights. Covers the ability to speak and assemble in public, organise Trade Unions or an independant press, or form alternate political parties. Increasing libertarianism can increase happiness, wealth and productivity, but can increase the negative effects of crime/corruption, unhappiness and war weariness.

3) Sufferage: How much outside input you allow in the political process, and foreign/domestic decision making. Low Sufferage refers to rule by one or a few people, with almost no input from the community. High Sufferage most likely represents a parliamentary democracy, with all those older than 16 eligable to vote-or even Athenian Style democracy for some, or all, of the population! Increased sufferage increases happiness and productivity, but also increases the chances of your will being opposed when deciding the future of your civ!

4) Legalism: How much 'Rule of Law' you impose on the population. Low Legalism is almost anarchy, where people regularly take the law into their own hands, wheras high Legalism represents a virtual police state, where even minor crimes might result in imprisonment or death! Increased Legalism reduces the amount of Crime/Corruption in your cities, but at a cost of decreased happiness. It also effects how badly imported contraband effects your cities, and how many contraband resources you can trade to other nations!

5) Secularism: How much dominance religion has in your society. High Secularism decreases the effectiveness of religious improvements, and also increases the chance of 'religious conversion'. The flip side is that it also increases your maximum research rates and reduces the chance of 'Religious Schisms'. It also makes it easier for you to change your civs Religion.

6) Privatism: The degree of influence the private sector has in your economy. Increasing privatism boosts wealth and can help reduce maintainance costs of your improvements. However, it also increases the chance of your economic plans being thwarted, or of the private sector buying up your improvements and/or getting the jump on you in resource and technology acquisitions.
Anyway, those are my ideas. Also note that their would be a strong inter-relationship between these settings, with a setting in one ensuring, or preventing, a high rating in another!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Some good ideas Aussie, this is much like in EU2 which is a great system allowing for much diversity between the way nation's rulers run their nations. A few suggestions I have:
Nationalism: there should be an option of ethnic cleansing in case the foreign population gets too irritating. Of course this would be expensive and the more foreign population in a city the harder it is to clean but you could say clean out Chinese first then Indian then Persian to make it easier but then it would take longer.

Libertarianism: I think less libertarianism should have a positive effect on production because harsh rulers who allowed little freedom or oppostion to their rule often got more done through slave labor or just by unifying efforts. Some historical examples could include Ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, Nazi Germany and the USSR under Stalin.

The rest sounds good to me, I am glad you brought this up Aussie.

What I was thinking was that there should be a 'median' point for each stat, and that as you increase or decrease the stat from this mid-point, there would be certain 'thresholds' along the way.
For example, lets say you have legalism in a -10 to +10 system. At 0, everything is pretty well stock standard. As you increase Legalism towards +3 or +4, your crime-rates drop. Then, between +5 and +7, your crime rates continue to drop BUT people become unhappy. Lastly, as you increase from +8 to +10, not only do people become MORE unhappy but, as your crime rate drops, your corruption rate increases.
On the flip-side, as you decrease Legalism from 0, people become happy, with only a mild increase in crime rates. From -4 to -7, people start to become unhappy AND crime rates increase much more. Then, from -8 to -10, not only does unhappiness and crime increase, but so does corruption. On the upside, though, you would be able to trade many more 'contraband' resources to other civs! (In my system, the more legalistic your society is, the more resources you can ban, but the fewer you can convert to contraband-and vice versa!)
As for Libertarianism, perhaps their is a point, say from -1 to -5 and +1 to +5, where work rates will actually increase-as you suggest. However, as you increase above/below these levels, work rates drop off, for different reasons. Of course, if your libertarianism is at +8, work rates might be lower but your people will be VERY happy. By contrast, at -8 your people will work less AND be miserable !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I think you have good points, but as usual, I think you make them too complicated for the game. Three points for each would be good feature enough for me, -1, 0, +1.

For example:
1) nationalism: +1: steadily deport all foreign born pop (and their offspring later on) by order of newness to your country, -1: take in immigrants, 0: stable immigration/emmigration. And obviously, less war weariness with +1, and more with -1.

Some really good ideas, Aussie!

May I add that those settings could very well have an influence on the governmental system you are going to choose. In other words, if your settings determine a very strict "police state" system, it would be very unlikely that you may choose Democracy. Or, the assumed positive effects of Democracy would be lowered, with a higher tendency towards unrest....

I agree that +10 to -10 might be over the top but, by the same token, I feel that 3 points does not give enough of a 'nuance', and won't allow you to properly set your government apart from other governments of the same name. Perhaps a +3 to -3 or even a +5 to -5 might work. As I said, I just don't feel that -1 to +1 gives us enough CHOICE!!!

EDIT: I was pretty much thinking along those lines myself, Commander Bello. It suggests that, though you can manipulate the people into thinking the way you want them to, it can also limit your own choices down the road AND have unexpected consequences-as I've mentioned in another thread!
In addition, I believe in the idea of having your people be able to bring down a government they don't like, and install it with one they do or, failing that, start a civil war. So, if you had adopted a 'Police State', and tried to change to a Full Democracy, your civilization (or certain elements of it) might start a revolt and/or civil war to reinstate the former government!
Another unforseen consequence of Social Engineering might be the loss, or gain, of civilization characteristics. But I'll chat about that more tomorrow !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.


Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.