Civic Effect Ideas

Leoreth

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Separately from the Civic Changes discussion, I'd also like to brainstorm interesting civic effects. I'm not talking about which civics should get which effects, but rather what would be interesting effects to have in the game in general.

In particular, I'm looking for stuff that goes beyond +x [yield/commerce/etc] to [game element], but rather opens up new abilities or trade offs. Example effects that already exist are:
- happiness from military units
- sacrifice population/gold for production
- sacrifice population to create units

It would be cool if there was more like this, because having the civic associated with this would open up a new dimension of the game instead of just making something you already have better.

On my end, I was thinking about how different Labor civics could enable different ways to "spend" (surplus) worker units, for example:
- Slavery: workers can hurry building production
- Serfdom: workers can hurry unit production / be promoted to your baseline military unit
- Wage Labor: workers can add +n turns to cottage development
- Public Welfare: workers can add +n temporary happiness to a city (public works etc.)

Further ideas and discussion welcome!
 
I already proposed something like this for the empire civic, but there should be a mechanic that gives you a bonus in your core cities or at least your capital that gets bigger the more cities you have. That way we can make a civic encourage large empires even if it doesn't reduce city maintenance or provides a per city bonus as were the incentives for that until now. Hell, it could even increase city maintenance or decrease yields or commerces in all cities if the bonus in the core/capital is high enough.
 
We really don't need to encourage large empires even further.
 
some ideas for civics that came to my mind were:

-additional strength for (certain) military units
-additional movement for military units
-additional attacks for military units (eg nomadic civic allows horsemen to attack twice or national unit gains another attack after surviving when attacking)
-additional durability for military units (eg regain some hitpoints after battle)

-peaceful (less combat in a turn gives a bonus (eg. to culture and or happyness)
-explorer (bonuses tied to discovery of the landmap)
-diplomacy (bonuses tied to good relations and/or easier diplomacy)

-"illegal" upgrades (let a unit switch upgrade path)
-temporary civic (allows switch of a civic for a predetermined amount of time without anarchy (eg. switch one civic for 10 turns without anarchy but civics can not be changed for 13 turns)

-exchange superfluous xp on military units for worker turns

I hope ideas along these lines was what you were looking for.
Good luck and have fun cooking up additional and even more outrageous ideas for civics.
 
We really don't need to encourage large empires even further.
Like I said, that civic can have some other downside, like increased city maintenance. The idea is to represent how empires usually tend to exploit their periphery to benefit their core, something that isn't really in the game at all. Literally all mechanics that are supposed to represent such things (slave plantations, Trading Company etc.) don't actually hurt the periphery, they either give a bonus to periphery and core equally or even give a bonus to the periphery but not the core. The one way this is kind of sorta represented is increased unhappiness from slaves, but that is really meager. What we should encourage is long term development in the core and short term exploitation in the periphery. Currently all that happens is that we have some mechanics (slavery,Trading Company, newly founded cities start with extra pop and buildings) that bring the periphery up to speed so that they actively contribute to the production and commerce of the civ after a relatively short time of being founded, but nothing that actively penalizes peripheral cities to boost the core. I don't want to give large empires more bonuses, I just want the bonuses they already have to be distributed differently.
 
Could the democracy events from fall from heaven be adapted for the doc ?
That would be a nice touch for democratic civics.
 
I don't remember what it does, can you remind me?
 
Iirc, every few turns you had an "election" event, and you could choose between two candidates, each one giving different bonuses and/or an extra trait.
Maybe it was only in the fall further modmod, though, I'll try to find it and see if I can be more precise.
 
Sounds like Republics in EU4.
 
Spoiler :
upload_2017-1-17_12-39-41.png

Here it is
The second and third options give

2nd option : 80% chance of golden age / 20% chance of nothing
3rd option : 50% chance of golden age / 50% chance of gaining the spiritual trait

So it is basically choosing between two bonus, which would make democracies very powerful, but maybe we can imagine some more balanced choices.

Edit : another one :

Spoiler :
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Looks interesting, don't know if that should be an "effect" of the civic per se, but you could definitely design some events around that.
 
I don't think Secularism necessarily implies tolerance, but if there is an actual Tolerance civic it should probably lose access to persecutors.
 
Maybe something like every 6 turns, you get an election event that lets you choose between 2 candidates, which have different platforms, with various tradeoffs:

examples :

Education : -2 :gold: +5 :science: for universities

Militarism : +2xp, -50% cost of upgrading units, -3 relation with neighbour
Social security : +3 :health:, 1:mad: and -25%:gold: for banks

No anarchy for shifting to a specific civic

Subventions for culture : +10%:culture: -2:gold: for theatres

Anti-communism : +1:mad:, -20%:gp: in cities, Factories +5:hammers:, -10 relations with communist civs

etc, etc
 
I don't think Secularism necessarily implies tolerance, but if there is an actual Tolerance civic it should probably lose access to persecutors.
As long as we don't have a dedicated State Ideology civic (unless we count Imperial Cult + Totalitarianism or Dictatorship or whatever as such) I understand Secularism to also stand in for the USSR et al, which would ideally want to get rid of any religion.

No anarchy for shifting to a specific civic
I like this, you could vote yourself out of a Democracy into a Dictatorship without anarchy like Germany in the 1930s. It should have some other prerequisites though and not just be available whenever, something like you lost the last war and agreed to shameful peace conditions instead of bravely fighting to the last man, and now your people think this is because (((someone))) stabbed you in the back. Or perhaps some major events only become available depending on your choices in earlier minor events, like if you consistently voted for right wing options a few times you get an event allowing you to switch to Militarism/Nationalism/Dictatorship/Free Enterprise without anarchy, or if you consistently voted for left wing options you can switch to Egalitarianism/Central Planning/Public Welfare/Regulated without anarchy. I have great hopes for this mechanic.

Edit: Then again such mechanic would discourage the use of Great Statesmen in democracies, which are supposed to spawn them more than any other form of government. Just granting a free Great Statesman would also be lazy. The Vox Populi mod for Civ5 has an interesting take on this: Some random events can give you raw Great People points towards a specific Great Person in a specific or all cities. Not GPP per turn, just e.g. 100 more in one go. Then again Civ5 has separated bars for every type of Great Person.

Would it be possible for a random event to bestow a lump sum of say 100 GPP upon a city that act as if they had been produced by a Statesman specialist?

Then again, no, democracies should produce Great Statesmen and the ability to switch civics without anarchy with their own specialists instead of being handed them for free in any form. If a random event allows you to switch even a single civic without anarchy it should have very specific prerequisites. What a major random event could do is give you the option to switch most or all of your civics right there and then, triggering anarchy, for which it is your own responsibility to have a Great Statesman ready, and then reward you in some other way for switching those civics then and there. If we treat the Weimar Republic turning into Nazi Germany that way, as a major random event induced civics switch with anarchy that was immidiately resolved by a Geat Statesman, the gameplay rewards could be something like extra military production or a number off free tanks or if we get more creative we could temporarily grant the Mongols' UP and enable the civ to steamroll aneighbor or two.
 
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Something I already proposed months ago but just now remembered: Fall From Heaven II has a building which gives +1 Production per unhappiness, surely there is much that can be done with that. Imo that effect would be fitting for Totalitarianism. Something similar could be done for Sustainability/Environmentalism if we keep it. In fact, what refreshed my memory was going through old threads* and happening upon this statement:

Also, I think Environmentalism is a bit upside down atm. Imo the aim of Environmentalism should be to reward players who maximise health in their cities, ahead of growth and production, not just remove unhealthiness, which is largely unnecessary in the late game anyway.

Following that line of thought it could give +1 Commerce per health and -1 Commerce per unhealth, effectively turning surplus health into money and punishing pollution more than usual. Or it could give extra happiness for every surplus health and extra unhappiness for every surplus unhealth.

Public Welfare or Democracy or Egalitarianism or something like that could provide extra yields from surplus happiness.

The only effect for which I can't think of a fitting civic would be extra yields from unhealthiness, unless... we throw that at Totalitarianism too. Totalitarianism then would be all about making life as miserable as possible for your people. Can you just imagine that? +1 Food from surplus unhealth and +1 Production from unhappiness in the same civic? Who cares about war weary citizens, they can be war weary all they want while assembling tanks in the concentration camps!

*
Spoiler Unrelated :
The reason I am looking through old threads is because I'm searching for the exact moment Leoreth implemented the corporation mechanics from Sword of Islam in the hopes that I can identify the necessary measures to extract and put them into their own standalone mod for plain BtS, to be then merged into an entirely unrelated mod.
 
Following that line of thought it could give +1 Commerce per health and -1 Commerce per unhealth, effectively turning surplus health into money and punishing pollution more than usual. Or it could give extra happiness for every surplus health and extra unhappiness for every surplus unhealth.
So... pollution would affect environmentalist civs but not the other ? That's a little counter-intuitive.
 
So... pollution would affect environmentalist civs but not the other ? That's a little counter-intuitive.
It's less counterintuitive than environmentalist civs building Coal Plants everywhere because they don't have to worry about pollution. Still, you are right. The ideal solution would be +1 unhappiness for every surplus unhealth and +1 commerce or +1 happiness for every surplus health.
 
I really like the ideas that give benefits for excess happiness or health. It's true that it doesn't make sense to make pollution easier for environmentalists, when we should encourage them to provide health instead. And it would make buildings that provide these benefits more valuable.
 
Something I just remembered: Final Frontier has some civics that decrease the cost of certain unit types, e.g. Capital Ship Doctrine reduces the cost of Capital Ships by 20% while Light Ship Doctrine reduces the cost of Light Ships by 10%. Note that I'm saying cost, not +% production. The affected units themselves cost less production with the appropriate civic, and accordingly cost less to upgrade too. Perhaps we could fit something like that in somewhere?
 
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