*A lot* more sharp Social Policies

[Naokaukodem]

By "more sharp" I mean they would determine basicaly the type of faction you play.

They might work like Civ1, 2 and 3 government, it is to say they would be a dozen and you could switch between them with revolutions occuring. the difference is that you would need to fulfil a pool of culture before being able to do so. So they are a mix between Civ1,2&3 govs, and Civ5 SPs.

The more you have cities, the higher culture score to reach in order to adopt or switch SP would be.

Forget about Puppet Cities. They exist, but you can't take benefit from them anymore. When you puppet a city/country, you are just assured to have a leader into them that goes into your direction, that's all. They will not declare war to you, unless you want to. They will still have an apparent autonomy, for example if you have a puppet civilization, it will still be the original civilization and leader. You can puppet civilizations or cities by going to war, or by other means. (espionnage which would become more important and sensitive) Puppet Cities may diverge at a point, like an old ally that turns out to be your enemy. So puppeting is never totally acquired.

Examples :

Pastoralism Social Policy for example can offer you not suffering unhappiness by conscripting people. It also can offer you a military prevalence (in fact, in unlocks a part of the technology tree) in the era around the conquest of China by the Mongols. (XIth?) Barbarism is another Social Policy that allows you to spread differently and having a military prevalence sooner than Pastoralism, around the Fall of Rome era. (Vth?) "Roman Empire" (find another name) is a Social Policy that gives you military prevalence earlier yet. You have different Social Policies that give you military prevalence (unlocks part of tech tree) at different eras. You have also Social Policies that give you a Research boost. Like you see, Social Policies work a little like Golden Ages, except that you choose when they happen, and their nature (in which domain they give you an incentive, military, gold, production, science, culture, food ? Most commonly a given social policy have several effects, maybe by unlocking them one by one just like in Civ5), and that they are more on the long run than just limited to some turns. you can't have several Social Policies domains activated in the same time.

Big empires would be slow to very slow to change policies. If you conquered a great part of the world under "barbarianism", you may have difficulties to switch you SPs.

A good mean in order to switch SP quickly would be to reduce your empire size. A little like Ottoman Empire that could "change" (not including judgement of valor here) by being reduced into Turkey only.

That would make possible Revolutions exploitable. "OK, I lost most of my cities xhich revolted, but at least I can change easily my SP for a more modern one".

 

[Naokaukodem]

Ideas ?

 

[mitsho]

I fear I need a better explanation by you of it. I don't really get what your proposed system is?

 

[DudewiththeFood]

I think this would involve a little more than shuffling how social policies work. How I see it, you'd need a whole new way of controlling these and a different system which ideologies could have been incorporated better than how they have.

Basically, social policies would split into cultural policies (CPs - which are as they are now and define what the civilization is like) and Government Policies (GPs).

For example, the Japanese have a traditional culture in comparison to Russia which has often been expansionist. This in reality would be reflected by stereotypes of countries historical or modern.

The GPs would be chosen based on technology, neighbours, policies and possibly other factors. Some of these would be mutually exclusive or unlock with different techs/policies.

In some circumstances, unhappiness would build up and these GP would either need to be changed early to divert, the masses appeased or it would blow into a full-scale revolution/civil war. Revolutions just happen and you can't do much other than hold onto what you have or change everything.

Civil Wars would require you to choose whether to join the loyalist side taking control of any happy cities and depending on military GPs, a small/average/sizeable proportion of the military forces. If not, you'd have to rechoose each GP (and possibly some CPs) then take control of the unhappy cities (made happy by new government) and the rest of the military. They become two separate civs but have +5% produciton/science/culture times until the other is wiped out.

So yeah. That's me done.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I fear I need a better explanation by you of it. I don't really get what your proposed system is?

It is a little like this http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=479211 , except that here, SP branches are not cumulative.

Initially, I wanted SPs to be sharp, to give approximatively the same power to small and big civilizations. But that's not the path Civ5 followed. The idea that more cities gives less bonuses has been kept however. But even here, the fact that you could profit from puppets "freely" (in regard of SPs) and the fact that you could build cultural buildings in a lot of cities in order to improve your culture, makes this very idea less sharp, so it does not work as intended. (with the fact that bonuses aren't sharp enough)

Of course, there's a way to perfectly balance big and small countries : introduce "corruption" on every aspect of the civilizations, and put it at [100/number of cities] on every city. That way, a civ with 1 city would have only one city put at 100% efficiency, a civ with 2 cities will have an efficiency of 50%, a civ with 3 cities will have an efficiency of 33% in each of its cities, etc... but, it kinda ruins the need to make several cities isn't it ? Every civilization in a game would be city states, particularly if it's to create weak cities at start dividing our key cities production by as much, not to mention that better 1 powerfull city than 2 semi-powerfull in some aspects, particularly hammers.

We could introduce either another more complex formula, which I fear I lack the competences for, or make territory acquisition a lot more important in some aspect of the game. (for some kind of victory ? Domination comes in mind, but Conquest seems prevalent, so... what about arbitriraly scrap Conquest and reintroducing Domination ? That could even be the ONLY way to win ! Or we could imagine every mere resource do be pretty powerfull, giving science bonuses and all, and/or surplus production of those resources -compared to flat land- not being affected by corruption) Among that centralizing hammers.

There's still the fact that 1 big city is much more powerfull than 1 big city and 1 small new created one. We could temper this by adding a counter-weight in the formula based on population, or we could leave it as is : creating cities would weaken us the time those cities grow. If Domination is the only way to win, creating new cities would make you weaker, but you wouldn't have a choice. Yeah, it could be a possibility, but I fear this system would make the game less varied and anyway be broken in many aspects. (first that comes in mind : if all civs are eliminated, it would be tedious to continue to expand alone, making Conquest a must have what would make it prevalent and every civs city states) That's why I tried to imagine some other system.

Basically, my system tries to give more power to small civs, in order to support the comparison with bigger ones. The kind of bonuses the policies would give are things like "hammers doubled in every city", "food surplus doubled in every city", "science doubled in every city", "gold doubled in every city" and such. The idea is to establish super-civs as long as their size remains modest. The smallest, the more super it may be. That way, city-States could have a range of bonuses that make them super-cities being able to catch up with bigger entities.

Those SPs would be facultative, the more you have the better, but it needs to be balanced by civ size. In other words : the bigger you are, the less you will have SPs. I think the idea of unlocking them with culture, by reaching an evoluting threshold according to number of cities, is a good basis idea. The thing being, you shouldn't be able to build culture buildings in order to improve your culture output, culture output should be more or less fix, while the threshold increase with number of cities. Number of SPs acquired should be directly tied to number of cities, with no exception like "puppet cities" or building culture improvements. It could as well be something totally different from culture for what I know.

I mixed this idea here with my obssession of allowing the player to choose dynamically a type of faction he wants to play. Here, the bonuses like "hammers doubled" may be replaced by the unlocking of a part of the tech tree, which is military. (or economic, or scientific, etc. ?) As you see, choosing a type of faction does not deter too much with having small civs more powerfull, because in the stack you have City-States, which are supposed to be playable by the human. You can as well imagine to rule a small country limited in some way by the number of its cities, like 8 cities or less, giving you advantages, smaller than City-States but bigger than bigger civs.

Here, the idea of having strong small entities is enlarged by having the possibility to rule different type of factions. The bonuses for being one faction or the other are not only directly tied to power this time, they can be structural and gameplay-oriented. For example, you can unlock agriculture with a SP (giving you the ability to build farms, and allowing your cities to grow past size 3), or the ability to build several cities with a SP. This way, you can act more like small barbarian villages, a city state or a mix of the two (nowadays civs).

Also, there is another thing that limits the power of big countries : the fact that it's more difficult to switch SPs with a lot of cities. For example, you took early the SP "Roman Empire", so you had an early part of the tech tree unlocked, giving you a military prevalence in this era. You conquered a lot of cities but now your super-units are, at last, obsolete. You are looking for another part of the tech tree, which you could research soon. But, with so many cities you are far from being able to, the threshold to buy another policy is too high. So you might be stuck on your secular way of life while smaller entities are much more dynamical and can rise soon or later.

 

[DudewiththeFood]

Yeah, that definitely needs something. Here's what I'll suggest now I've read that.

Each civ chooses government policies for different things like military, trade, rights like civics in Civ 4. Some civics will be mutually exclusive and others open at different times/with different policies. Also, in the late game, ideologies can affect what you can choose.

However, as your empire grows, it will encounter problems. For example a militaristic based civ will find it hard to keep puppets happy and will either have to become totalitarian or liberal. However, both of these would be extreme changes that core/self-founded cities would disagree with. Therefore, a smaller empire can change a things and adapt quicker while larger ones will find it hard to do that and make much less changes but are much bigger.

This would require a city-based happiness but can also incorporate civil wars and revolutions in unhappy populations.

 

[mitsho]

So, I still don't get it. To put it simple: You want to replace the science system with a social policies system?

Or you just want the government/social policy system to have downsides? That's a huge topic.

You basically change the game from a "god game" based on growing your empire to a "puzzle game" where the task is to keep the balance between the various system (i.e. empire size and progress in military units) to get the furthest.

It's a completely different game(play experience), I'd say.

I personally would like a game that poses you 'demands' of your citizens and you need to fulfill them to steer the whole ship (civ) to your intended destination. But I guess that's something else again as what you want. I'm really sorry again, but what do you intend to change (gameplaywise) with this, in one sentence or less.

 

[Naokaukodem]

So, I still don't get it. To put it simple: You want to replace the science system with a social policies system?

Or you just want the government/social policy system to have downsides? That's a huge topic.

It's not just "replacing something by something else" or "implement downsides to that", it's a totally new system. I've put the reasons : small civs to be able to compete with biggers, and dynamic faction choice.

No, tech tree would still be on with that, if you followed what I said a bit you can see that i mention parts of the tech tree that you can unlock ; it's well that there is a tech tree.

You basically change the game from a "god game" based on growing your empire to a "puzzle game" where the task is to keep the balance between the various system (i.e. empire size and progress in military units) to get the furthest.

It's a completely different game(play experience), I'd say.

Civ may be a god game from a gameplay perspective. My system wouldn't change that, it would not become a puzzle game. The puzzle thing is present however in the game design. And i'm talking about game design here. It's not because I rise questions that seem complex to you, like a puzzle game, for the game design, that the player will have the same concerns. The player will have a concern to choose his SPs, and to choose to expand or not. (does he want to be a city state ? a small country ? a huge one, looking for a victory condition ?) The result will be that he either can win early or later.

The whole story is about what we want to achieve. I want, from a gameplay perspective, achieve the fact that big civs are not always more powerfull than small civs. That's a huge change ! Of course, the player will have things to do in order to reach that, like choosing the SPs that fit his playstyle or the type of game he wants to play. It's a little like choosing the type of character in a hack & slash : do i want to play a barbarian, a shooter, or a magician ? The way you play will be greatly affected by this choice, and it would be a completely different game each time. Here, you can choose to play a civ with only one city, a civ with 3 pop max cities, a civ with infinite pop cities and infinite cities, a civ with max 8 cities for example, etc...

I personally would like a game that poses you 'demands' of your citizens and you need to fulfill them to steer the whole ship (civ) to your intended destination. But I guess that's something else again as what you want. I'm really sorry again, but what do you intend to change (gameplaywise) with this, in one sentence or less.

The bonuses you could get from SPs would differ from a faction to the other, and from a size to the other. The bigger you are, the less likely you will have bonuses. Is this clear ?

 

[mitsho]

So, basically: The "culture cost" of your next policy is dependent on the number of cities and population (already like that) and you lose the old effects when you change?

So, say, chosing Barbarian Tribalism gives me x free Horsemen which I can use to conquer the city state and a civ next door. Having done that, it takes me longer to switch to Monarchy and Hereditary Rule which I need for happiness and science since I have too many cities in my empire whereas the third civ I didn't conquer can get to it more quickly and upon reaching the Medieval Era adopt say Feudalism and waltz over me with the x free Knights it gets?

So, you want the effects of the "Government" things (Social Policy/Civics) to be stronger and civ to be more like a role-playing game.

I'd agree, but am not sure if a system like you describe it is the best way to achieve it. Doesn't the NIGHTS mod do something like that, maybe you should try it?

 

[Naokaukodem]

So I've bumped into the NIGHTS mod thread and the first thing i saw was an idea that i already saw : population adds happiness. This is ballsy and i like it. But I fail to see where you can choose your faction (settlers are availaible for everyone at start) or even adapt your SPs to your size.

What's cool with my system is that if you are landlocked by another civ, start on an island or simpley you feel you lack happiness too much for expansion, then you have an option to stay small and staying competitive. Also this would CHANGE the gameplay of Civ as now it's vital to conquer the others, triggering the snowball effect or the snowball effect triggering this. It would "peace up" things, as conquest is less vital and the games more sane if you want so.