AG Civics Mod Development

[Tyrion]

Has this been updated recently? I was really looking forward to a final version.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

Environmentalism, and to a lesser extent, socialism, has the convenient side-effect of significantly lessening the opportunities for social mobility engndered by free enterprise, hence its appeal to those already on the top of the heap, and the understandable frustration of those like max.

Wow... you dug up this three month dead thread just to flame environmentalism and socialism? Must be a slow news day...

Has this been updated recently? I was really looking forward to a final version.

Thanks for the interest, but this has been a dead project for quite some time... although this thread now seems to be the place to engauge in the off-topic and ever popular capitalism vs. socialism debate.

 

[Tyrion]

Why?!?!? Sorry but this was looking promising.... Ah well

 

[Houman]

It is a pity that project died. The ideas were really nice and I was taking it into considereration to add it to my Mod.

It needs some more balancing though.

 

[Leif]

How I wish this wasn't dead.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

How I wish this wasn't dead.

Tell you what... since I'm such a nice guy and this seems to still be ever popular, I'll start taking comments and look at the ones that have already been made and work on a final version.

One of the big things that has to be looked at is the number of civics options. I like the following options:
1) Political System
2) Economic Base
3) Cultural Value

However, I've always found any options in addition to this to be lacking. Currently, "oppression" is the fourth option and there is no fifth option. I'd like to drop "oppression" and add something else in its stead and come up with something additional for the fifth option.

Here's some ideas of additional options:
- Military (but are there enough for 9 civics in this type... probably)
- Ruling Class, meaning the social class that actually has power despite the political system (e.g., just because you have an absolute monarchy doesn't mean somebody else is pulling the strings...). Things like Clergy, Aristocracy, Plutocrats, Proletariat, Academia, Officers, Technocrats, Personality Cult, etc would be options. I'm leading towards this... you could have cool things like the following: Make a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" with: Democracy, Planned Economy, Equality, Proletariat as the civics. Make a Pinochet-style dictatorship with the following civics: Military Dictatorship, Capitalism, Social Order, and Plutocrats. Even a crazy, theocracy run by green-economy technocrats
- ?

Everybody, let me know what you think.

 

[dh_epic]

One of the challenges I find with adding too many civics columns is that you need to avoid an overlap. Otherwise, you can end up with peculiar results. For example, your ruling class is the Clergy, but your religious values are Atheist.

Whatever you do, I think it's ideal to 'carve politics at its joints'. If you can compartmentalize each column, then you can have results that are fun AND make sense.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

One of the challenges I find with adding too many civics columns is that you need to avoid an overlap. Otherwise, you can end up with peculiar results. For example, your ruling class is the Clergy, but your religious values are Atheist.

Whatever you do, I think it's ideal to 'carve politics at its joints'. If you can compartmentalize each column, then you can have results that are fun AND make sense.

True, true... I was just throwing out some ideas. Right now, I'm reworking a lot with this, basically starting from scratch.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Each catagory must answer a question such as...

WHO runs the goverment and how they are chossen
HOW the goverment is run and structured
WHAT is the relationship between goverment and its subjects (rights or lack of)
WHAT do the people value in their lives
WHAT is the role of religion in society
WHY do people work and what motivates them to do so
HOW is the surplus productivity of society divided
WHAT are the rules of the market and private property

From these I would draw the following Catagories

Rulers
Goverment
Rights
Values
Religion
Labor
Welfare
Economy

Ruling Classes can be melded into Rulers. Their would be options under it for various Dictatorships, Juntas, Aristocracy ect ect. Sometimes power is held colecticly by a Class and sometimes its held by one man. Oppreshion becomes "Rights" or lack their of for most of the game, its also a good place to put things like Universal Sufferage. Welfare has to do with how resorces are divided so you have things like "Spoils", "Patronage", "Manorism", "Cradle to Grave".

 

[dh_epic]

Something you can do to avoid too much overlap is to be careful how you carve out those actual civic titles.

For example, take the ruling class, and the religion column. If you have a "Clergy" ruling class and a "Theocracy" religion civic, you also end up with odd things like a Clergy ruling class with Atheism. But you could seperate them by turning the "Clergy" into a group of "Moralists". That is, even societies without religion can have a group of moralists, be their Neo-Conservatives who believe that your highest priority is the spreading of economic freedom, or Communists who believe that your highest priority is a dictatorship of the proletariat, or Utilitarians who calculate 'the common good' with an eery precision. And they place this moralistic dogma higher than anything else: the desires of the aristocrats, the advice of their highest Generals, and the will of the people.

 

[n003lb]

Has this been dropped again? I am just getting back into Civ after a few months hiyatus, and I'm trying to sort out some mods to improve it. Last time I was playing, the SDK had not even come out yet. I've got Dale's COmbat Mod installed and I'm very happy with it so far. Now, I want to tackle the civics and religion.

I'm curious, if this project has died again, then could someone point me to some other civic mods? Is there a site around that is a repository for mods and mod components, without having to deal with dredging through forums?

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

Has this been dropped again?

No, just low priority. Highest on my list is the 19th Century mod.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Once again, AG, I am in awe of you. You have succeeded in doing-more than once I might add-what I have failed to do on multiple occasions, which is to create a nicely balanced civics system which is a little less 'cut and dry' than the vanilla system.

Just a couple of things (though my mind might change after testing it). Mercantilism was also highlighted by the rise in European colonialism-as a means of securing 'finite' resources. Thus, would it not also be good for this civic to grant some kind of reduction to distance from capital maintainance?
Perhaps you can balance this with a Medium maintainance cost for the civic.

Second, I definitely think that Consumption, Capitalism and Socialism need some kind of counter-balance to the good they provide. Not entirely sure what that should be though!

Great work all the same, though.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

Once again, AG, I am in awe of you. You have succeeded in doing-more than once I might add-what I have failed to do on multiple occasions, which is to create a nicely balanced civics system which is a little less 'cut and dry' than the vanilla system.

Just a couple of things (though my mind might change after testing it). Mercantilism was also highlighted by the rise in European colonialism-as a means of securing 'finite' resources. Thus, would it not also be good for this civic to grant some kind of reduction to distance from capital maintainance?
Perhaps you can balance this with a Medium maintainance cost for the civic.

Second, I definitely think that Consumption, Capitalism and Socialism need some kind of counter-balance to the good they provide. Not entirely sure what that should be though!

Great work all the same, though.

Aussie_Lurker.

Aw... schucks . Thanks for the kind words, Aussie_Lurker. Thanks for the feedback as well. I agree that the Mercantilism trait should have some sort of colonial bonus, as you mention.

I noticed in testing a long time ago, that several negative traits on civics mess up the AI. It just can't weigh benefits and costs like we human players can. Thus, I think maintenance costs are the way to go for negative some effects (although the AI handles some negative effects well). Guess it just means heavy testing.

There's nothing new up for this yet... I don't even think this old mod works with version 1.61. Right now, I'm just collecting ideas on the side while I work on other projects (19th century mod).