One World Expansion suggestion - civil wars

[Chomes99]

I am sure it's too late to offer ideas to the Firaxis developers, but I am really hoping they will add a feature the enables large empires to split and cause civil wars, or even peaceful independence.

We had this in Civ II I believe, and it was great. If there was a Civ that had gotten way to big, I could snipe its capital and the empire would likely split in two, usually along the lines of original civ cities and conquered civ cities.

In the real world there seems to be much more pressure to separate nations than to unite them. the EU is one great exception.

In Civ V once you become the largest empire on the map, its very difficult to be stopped. there needs to be some counter balance to this, I often see players on this forum talking about how Domination is the easiest victory condition and that you can win Science, time, cultural or diplo victory with an incomplete domination victory.

I would like to hear others' thoughts on this topic!

 

[Heerlo]

Would probably be a cool feature, but for some reason I doubt it will be in the expansion if there is one coming. I could be wrong, though.

Maybe one day we'll have this feature in RFC for Civ5!

 

[Pouakai]

If they're adding colonies (Like it's been suggested) then you'd probably have wars of independence between you and the colony if they get too unhappy, which is kind of like a Civil War

 

[daviiadams]

So long as it's not strictly war as a result. The option to grant independence worked well in Civ 4 I thought.

Never really liked the idea of taking a capital meant an empire splitting, though it could depend on how that split is being based.

 

[Lira]

Never really liked the idea of taking a capital meant an empire splitting, though it could depend on how that split is being based.

Really? I loved when it happened on Civ 2!

This is the only thing that would make a domination victory fun for me on Civ 5, to be honest.

 

[daviiadams]

Really? I loved when it happened on Civ 2!

This is the only thing that would make a domination victory fun for me on Civ 5, to be honest.

I think it felt all very simplistic and a bit meaningless after a while, from what I can remember.

Civil wars, revolution and independence should be in the game, even if it's just a case of allowing modders a route to do it.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

This was actually in the first civilization game, where there were two pc versions - one for windows, one for dos. That's going back about 22 years! It was a nice idea at the time and would be a good thing to mod into a scenario rather than the epic game IMHO.

 

[azzaman333]

There are already more than enough roadblocks in place to hurt large empires, please, no more.

 

[Aaron90495]

There are already more than enough roadblocks in place to hurt large empires, please, no more.

I would disagree. Try playing a large empire with Order, Liberty, and Ceremonial Burial - on most difficulties, it's an insta-win.

 

[Chomes99]

I have an emporer game going where I have half the map under my control with about 50 excess hapiness. and I havent even used the Commerce civic (mercantilism?). But that is in big thanks to religion. so it makes its very easy to maintain the large puppet empire which floods you with culture, gold and science as well as luxury and strategic resources.

 

[aluelkdf]

I would like to see civil wars. Here's an idea, suppose you have an unhappiness of 20 or more for several turns. Every turn, there is a chance that part of your civ will secede and declare independence forming a new civ.

Once this happens, you have less population, so your happiness now increases. This makes it easier to fight a war to re-unite your empire. However, if happiness does not increase enough, additional cities may join the "rebel" civ.

Once the war gets going, if you are beating the "rebel" civ bad enough, then there is a chance they might capitulate, so you regain all your cities without having to actually capture all of them. However, if the "rebel" civ does a good job fighting you for independence, there may be some sort of peace treaty where they remain independent.


The diplomatic relationship that the "rebel" civ has with the other civs in the game would be interesting. (using real civs for an example, just to make the example easier to explain). Suppose America has good relations with Russia. Then Russia may hate the Confederate States. But if Russia hates America, then Russia may be very friendly with the Confederate States, and may even assist the Confederates States in many ways to help them fight the civil war.

 

[Chomes99]

the problem with how CIV V is now, is that on the harder difficulties, the AI has way too much happiness so the size of their empires is not contrained by happiness, but by crowding with rivals. which brings me back to my point, that the only way to stop a huge empire AI is to go for domination victory or cripple them to the point that you can win the other victory conditions

 

[blazingsprocket]

There is already a mechanic for when you reach a large amount of unhappiness that causes barbarian units to spawn around your cities- which simulates a physical resistance or uprising.

 

[azzaman333]

the problem with how CIV V is now, is that on the harder difficulties, the AI has way too much happiness so the size of their empires is not contrained by happiness, but by crowding with rivals. which brings me back to my point, that the only way to stop a huge empire AI is to go for domination victory or cripple them to the point that you can win the other victory conditions

That's a flaw with the handicap bonuses for the AI though.

 

[dashwinner]

I would like to see civil wars. Here's an idea, suppose you have an unhappiness of 20 or more for several turns. Every turn, there is a chance that part of your civ will secede and declare independence forming a new civ.

Once this happens, you have less population, so your happiness now increases. This makes it easier to fight a war to re-unite your empire. However, if happiness does not increase enough, additional cities may join the "rebel" civ.

Once the war gets going, if you are beating the "rebel" civ bad enough, then there is a chance they might capitulate, so you regain all your cities without having to actually capture all of them. However, if the "rebel" civ does a good job fighting you for independence, there may be some sort of peace treaty where they remain independent.


The diplomatic relationship that the "rebel" civ has with the other civs in the game would be interesting. (using real civs for an example, just to make the example easier to explain). Suppose America has good relations with Russia. Then Russia may hate the Confederate States. But if Russia hates America, then Russia may be very friendly with the Confederate States, and may even assist the Confederates States in many ways to help them fight the civil war.

As Chomes99 stated, it's almost impossible for the AI to go into negative happiness, so this would only affect the player. And, to be honest, I very very rarely (read: almost never) allow my happiness to drop that low. Even -10 or less is pretty rare...

Edit: I don't think happiness should be the main factor for these civil wars. Perhaps distance from capital city, or influence from neighbouring countries/an additional use for spies, religion, some new game mechanic, etc would make more sense

 

[aluelkdf]

Maybe there needs to be a new mechanic added to the game. How about each city has a loyalty rating. This loyalty rating determines how loyal the population of a city is to the capitol and the civilization as a whole.

I don't think distance should be a factor. I don't want to always see the outskirts of my empire breaking away, I want it to be more dynamic. (I guess distance can be a SMALL factor, and not the only factor). Look at Virginia, they are very close to washington dc and they broke away, while states thousands of miles away stayed with the union. Enemy spies can be a factor to loyalty and can influence it. Maybe the amount of culture/science/religion you have to other civs might be a factor. War weariness might be another factor. Maybe if a few cities are dominated by a religion that is not your state sanctioned religion, they might decide to break off and form their own empire.

And I think thar for every city that breaks away, it makes it easier for others to follow. Nobody wants to be the first one, but if a few start breaking away the other unloyal cities feel they now have a better chance and get more bold. It took decades for the first state to break away in the American civil war, but once the first one did many followed in just a few months.

 

[Chomes99]

I like the idea of a loyalty mechanic. newly conquered cities would have a lower loyalty rating naturally, but it could rise slowly over time. puppet cities would be stuck at a lower threshold until annexed, and then you couldnt get to the higher loyalty settings without a courthouse for example. With that train of thought, you'd have a trade off between having loyal cities or having a civic poor empire since annex cities make civics harder to acquire.

 

[sufficiency]

IMO we already sort of have this -- when your empire reaches -20 happiness....

 

[aluelkdf]

IMO we already sort of have this -- when your empire reaches -20 happiness....

It's not really a civ war, it's a small scale rebellion of a few untrained rebels. I want to see entire cities break away, and actually fight like a real civ.

 

[Cedbird]

Outpost beacons : Have you ever had a large border . Especially in multilplayer when you have so much to do in a short time . What if the game had a beacon like the Ai does to warn you when multiple troops are in a certain area .