Public Relations through Demographics

There should be Demographics of each Civ that represent how the population feels towards every other Civ, including their own. There would be five different levels, each level divided into different percentages of the population (NB "CivA" is the civ under which the people live; "CivB" is the civ that they have said attidude towards):

Level 1- These guys are the people who want CivB's head. They should only appear if the two civs have incompatible government types (eg CivA is Fascist and CivB is Communist), if CivB commits some horrendously dastardly act (like sneak attack with nukes or bio-warfare), or if CivB deals serious damage to their fatherland (for foreign nationals; would require severe damage or such evil things as nukes and concentration camps). If this demographic gets big enough, it should cause "Peace Weariness." (The only ways it could possibly get that significant would be if you repeatedly make concessions to an incredibly evil Civ or through Propaganda).

Level 2- These guys just don't like CivB. If CivB commits evil actions, this Demographic would grow. Signing treaties with CivB would make these guys potentially unhappy. Also, incompatible governments and attacks against popular civs would knock a few L3's here.

Level 3- These guys are completely apathetic towards CivB. Most of your citizens would be here.

Level 4- These guys like CivB. Doing nice things like trading goods and signing pacts would make these guys happy. If CivB commits atrocities, these guys could fall to L2. These guys would grow from Luxury trades (with your Civ as the recipient) and culture. And, of course, a little positive Propaganda.

Level 5- The smallest demographic. This only appears if CivB has severe immigration restrictions against CivA (or if CivA has emigration restrictions). Foreign Nationals would be here automatically if they were at L3 or L4 with CivB when CivA captured them. This demographic is also very fragile: if CivB does anything bad, like having a revolution or committing atrocities, this demographic drops to L4.

The idea here is for the player's foreign policy to be affected by more than just military and mood managment considerations. This also makes for much more realistic foreign policy. The AI should be just like a human player, as I've stated often before. No human player would have their foreign policy affected in the least by another Civ's government change under the current model, but the AI does. This would make a human player react differently depending on factors that (s)he'd never consider otherwise. This would also allow for much better Propaganda. Rather than just converting cities, you could sway some L3's over to L4 towards you, or you could make the enemy's population despise their overlords (naturally, all this could be diverted with a counter-propaganda program as good as or better than yours). You could even goad the AI into attacking one of your allies so you can rush to the rescue (or possibly into attacking you yourself, although enemy War Happiness might be a problem). (Propanga would be relatively simple, just devoting money to various projects).

Anyone?

Hi there,
I would like to say something about this, as your idea sounds very similar to one I have had!
In my model, your society is comprised of broad 'factions', with the most dominant factions dependant on your civs characteristics, the units and improvements you build, your Social Engineering Settings, and the specialization of your cities. So, for example, a commercial civ with lots of commercial improvements and with many specialised 'financial centre' cities will have a very dominant middle-class/mercantile faction. These factions determine your societies 'overall' responses to your domestic policy and, given a sufficient degree of 'suffrage', powerful factions could even BLOCK your domestic policy actions (a la 'The Senate' in Civ2, but much smarter)! In addition, though, which faction dominates will also have an effect on your relations with other nations! On average, your society as a whole will relate better to a civ from the same culture group as your own. Another factor that effects relations would be sharing a common religion/government-though which is most important would depend on your 'Religiosity'/'Nationalism' settings. After this would come 'factional effects', where your most dominant faction would respond most favourably to a civ who possesses traits they identify with! So, a dominant mercantile faction would respond favourably to a civ with the Commercial trait! The final factors involved would be a combination of past behaviour by the other civ, its economic/cultural and military strength, what resources and techs it possesses (and you WANT), and its relative 'atrocity' rating-as compared to your current threshold. These factors could combine to create interesting situations. For example, your civ has a dominant religious and mercantile faction. You meet a civ who is commercial, but is of a different culture and religion to yours! The mercantile faction likes them, and wants you to sign a trade agreement with them, but your religious action opposes this because it wants no dealings with the 'Heathen devils'!!! No matter WHAT you decide, you are going to end up offending one of the factions, the decision you need to make is 'which one can you least afford to offend'! Offending your merhcantile faction, for instance, could hurt your income stream, wheras offending your religious faction could harm the 'happiness' effects of your religious improvements!!!

Lastly, your dominant faction will also influence what TYPE of agreements they will push you to make with other civs. For instance, merchants will push for trade agreements and gpt agreements, labourers and farmers will push for luxury/strategic resource or commodity trades. Clerics will push for gpt, cultural or luxury trades-or anything that involves a chance for increasing the influence of their religion in other societies! The military will push for RofP's, MPP's, gpt and war declarations, and scientists will push for science pacts and tech trades!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I like the idea of factions and would like to see them available in four formats, and a warning when one area is so offended or angry they will break up a civ over it.

For all they would be in the form of the percentage of people in each faction. It would also be nice if all this information was on the same form.

Domestic:
1. National level (The cum percentages of all city and what faction they fall into.)
2. Provincial (The cum for all cities in that province)
3. City level (percent in that city

Internation:
4. Nearby civs that have factions that are exploitable in the same format.

Oh yes, Searcheagle, I definitely think that should a factional system be implemented, then it goes without saying that there should be ways for foreign powers to exploit unhappiness in the factions of other nations. Urge the discontented workers of France to force a change in government from Monarchy to Modern Republic-with a little cash inducement and well placed anti-government propaganda! Of course, the chance of this succeeding will depend on many of the same factors I mentioned in my previous post, as well as how happy/unhappy that faction actually is! So, for instance, if the French workers are very happy and well treated, then you will very little chance of getting them to revolt against their government!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Very nice ideas!!
only one remark, Mewtarthio: Fascism and Communism are NOT incompatible. Let you think the fate of Poland in 1939.

I fully agree with Mewtarthio. But I'd like to add that, in order to make the feature more important than just a flavor, the citizens' moods would change according to how the player's actions in foreign policy reflect the will of the people. For example, if the people hated Civ X but the player decided to make friends with them regardless, perhaps even at the expense of relations with Civ Y, deeply liked by the masses, the people would become gradually unhappier and might even start a revolt.

You see, that is what I am trying to suggest, Exel! I go further, though, and say that your domestic policies should also influence the mood of your varrious factions-and the population as a whole! The amount to which these mood changes should effect the game would be based on the factions influence, as well as your current levels of sufferage and libertarianism! In addition, if these Social Engineering settings are high enough, then there should also be a chance of your more influential factions blocking your domestic/foreign policy agenda! Of course, you can 'overrule' them, but this could be a trigger for a civil war or, at the very least, government collapse!! The plus side to having high levels of libertarianism, though, is that they increase your happiness and reduce your war weariness-so its all swings and roundabouts!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Your idea is good, Aussie Lurker (and somewhat reminds me of the game Tropico). I don't think that your idea really fits as an expansion of mine, however. Your idea relates to people and their government. My idea is foreign affairs. Naturally, both should ideally be included, assuming it can be done without complicating things too much (a simple system like Tropico's should suffice, where you can appease the Religious faction by building Churches and Cathedrals, the Intellectuals by building Schools, etc. would probably suffice.) Now, if enough people became unhappy with you, there would be a chance of revolt, and you could probably effect this by using anti-government propaganda, but I had not considered the ability to directly attemp to incite a revolution. That sounds like a good idea, though.
All this still depends on the inclusion of a better propaganda system in CivIV, one where you can spend a certain amount of money to influence citizen's attitudes towards another civ. There would be two ways to counteract this: a little propaganda of your own to slow down or reverse the effects (a number of factors would affect the effectiveness of propaganda, but if you could generate more "propaganda points" than your enemy, it would reverse it), or a strict control of the media (not entirely effective, of course, as there would still be plenty of dissidents willing to spread a few incenditory pamphlets around, but it would severely slow the spread of propaganda. Naturally, a few domestic people would get pretty ticked off depending on your government type and any national tradition of a free press).

@ searcheagle: Yes, of course. This would also allow your propaganda to focus on certain areas, so you could channel all your money to that weak border city next to all that Iron in hopes of flipping it.

@ K. F. Huzar: Hitler never liked Russia. He had always been planning "Operation Barbarossa." However, the time was not yet right for military action against Russia. He divvied up Poland because he pretty much had to at that point.

It sound good, but may be too hard to control or even program.

Mewtarthio said:

Your idea is good, Aussie Lurker (and somewhat reminds me of the game Tropico).

Click to expand...

It also reminds me of Tropico, there could be the Intellectual Faction, the Religous Faction, the Environmental Faction, etc..