Civic Idea: Oppression

[Tarquelne]

So it seems oppresion is rather a short term policy, bringing you temporary benefits, and long term drawbacks. You should play revolution mod...

Yeah - I was just thinking about the Revolution mod. I think an "Oppression" civic would be a great FF feature once Revolution is added to really flesh out the pros and cons. (Heck, it might be worth it to have an "Oppression" civic category.) FfH being "dark fantasy" Oppression might work better in general, but it should still take significant and ongoing commitments of cruelty and strength to make it "work."

(Hmm... in a way it's a simple matter of stasis vs. adaptation. People adapt to any system, "adapt" often meaning "find it's weaknesses and exploit them to the detriment of the system." With a good, just system that brings general prosperity... you have people working to pervert the system. With an unjust system that enforces a lot of suffering you're going to have a LOT of people working to pervert - if not destroy - the system.)

Afterthought: So far as game-mechanics go I'd be amusing of "Oppression" caused *happiness* in other civs when you run it.

 

[Humakty]

The only effective way of applying a reppresion is to totally anihilate the people oppressed, or to reduce them to a non significant part of the population. Anything else will be a long term failure.

It will maybe be the case in Tibet, as it was in USA some time ago. (remember the native americans ?)

StW is rather efficient, as far as oppression goes, why would you want to add more ?

PS :bar one or two exceptions, I find civics in FFH or FF to be quite opressive. (Who would want to worship a god king?)

 

[Thunder_Gr]

You forgot the Tibet. This country is oppressed by China at the moment. And and it's not likely to be independant.

Yet, they are in constant revolts. Noone forgets about Thibet.
Thibet gives the chinese government a lot of headache. And they practicly get nothing out of it.(An equivalent of -80%, -80% )

 

[1234567890]

(Heck, it might be worth it to have an "Oppression" civic category.)

Oppression, Tolerance, Assimilation, Vassalization, Xenophobia can be appropriate civics. See also my last post about the Requisition ability.

 

[Thunder_Gr]

(Who would want to worship a god king?)

The Roman empire, practicly all countries in the middle ages, Persian empire, Ancient Egypt and more and more...

 

[Humakty]

Thunger gr : Yeah, it doesn't make it any less oppressive.... And I was talking about your personnal taste, not about what an empire would do. But if you want to worship someone, uummmh, me for example, just PM me your banking data.

 

[Thunder_Gr]

Thunger gr : Yeah, it doesn't make it any less oppressive....

Monarchy was not neccessarily oppressive. It always depended upon the monarch.
Middle Ages Monarchy was oppressive, mostly, but there are some exceptions, where the people prospered under the rule of a good King.

Besides, it is well known that A good Monarchy is always much better than any bad Democracy!

 

[Humakty]

Well, monarchy is a bit large. constitutional one ? with a parliament ? dominated by a house of lords ?
If the king is only symbolic, like in england nowadays, it's just another form of limited democracy.(perfect democracy being only theoricall, like perfect communism)
To come back to god king, well, if you have no other choice, it can maybe be good, if you have the luck to find someone worthy of the throne.(1 guy on a billion, or two ?)

And I bet the other part of your citation is : A good Democracy is always much better than any good Monarchy !

 

[Thunder_Gr]

Well, monarchy is a bit large. constitutional one ? with a parliament ? dominated by a house of lords ?
If the king is only symbolic, like in england nowadays, it's just another form of limited democracy.(perfect democracy being only theoricall, like perfect communism)
To come back to god king, well, if you have no other choice, it can maybe be good, if you have the luck to find someone worthy of the throne.(1 guy on a billion, or two ?)

And I bet the other part of your citation is : A good Democracy is always much better than any good Monarchy !

Well, why do I get the feeling this discussion is shifting out of topic?
Anyways. If the propability to find a good guy for a throne is 1 in a billion, the propability to find x thousands of people able to form a good democracy is so impropable, that such a situation may not exist.

However, apart from the philosophical discussion, the oppression civic should be a cultural civic, IMO, that would give -50% , -25% , 0.5% of revolt per population point of city, -1 Unhappiness per 2 levels of troops stationed in the city, and the ability to instantly end a revolt in a city using the mechanism described by WarKirby.
The chance of revolt should rise 0.05% per population point of a city, per turn(or something similar) to reflect the fact that oppressing governments face difficulty when such methods are used for long time periods.
Also, there should be a chance for the city to defect to barbarians or another civ, if there is excess military use to end revolts.
There should be a limit of, at least 30 turns(standard time) between changing from/to this civic.

Anyway, these are some ideas. I hope they would contribute something to the shaping and balancing of the idea.

 

[WarKirby]

-1 Unhappiness per 2 levels of troops stationed in the city,

This is the part I don't like.

That means if you don't have enough troops, some people will be working, and others won't. That makes no sense

The troops would go and order the people back to work, and execute them for noncompliance. The whole point here is that everyone works. The military aspect comes in preventing the revolts.

I still think the no unhappiness is a better idea. The balancing factor would come, in hat a growing city needs more and more troops to control it. And also remember the point about the Suppress Revolt thing, is that it would essentially be a "combat" between your troops and the rioting citizens. Possibly resulting in your soldiers all dying, and the revolt continuing.

 

[Thunder_Gr]

This is the part I don't like.

That means if you don't have enough troops, some people will be working, and others won't. That makes no sense

The troops would go and order the people back to work, and execute them for noncompliance. The whole point here is that everyone works. The military aspect comes in preventing the revolts.

I still think the no unhappiness is a better idea. The balancing factor would come, in hat a growing city needs more and more troops to control it. And also remember the point about the Suppress Revolt thing, is that it would essentially be a "combat" between your troops and the rioting citizens. Possibly resulting in your soldiers all dying, and the revolt continuing.

Well, there are always people trying to avoid hard labor, aren't they? Besides, people stop working when unhapiness is greater than happiness. Not per unhappiness point.

EDIT:Using the -1 Unhappiness for 2 levels of troops, makes a level 10 scout to be able to handle 5 population. Not too bad, now, is it?
If you go with no unhappiness, you would get celebration results in all cities...Very odd for an oppressive government...isn't it?
Fits better if you get them when having enough/or quality, troops in the city.

 

[WarKirby]

Well, there are always people trying to avoid hard labor, aren't they? Besides, people stop working when unhapiness is greater than happiness. Not per unhappiness point.

EDIT:Using the -1 Unhappiness for 2 levels of troops, makes a level 10 scout to be able to handle 5 population. Not too bad, now, is it?
If you go with no unhappiness, you would get celebration results in all cities...Very odd for an oppressive government...isn't it?
Fits better if you get them when having enough/or quality, troops in the city.

Unhappy citizens aren't just slacking off though, they're "refuses to work". They're taking a stand and saying "this isn't good enough. We demand a better standard of living".

That kind of disobedience inspires a rebellious spirit. You let one get away with it, and soon everyone is throwing down tools and rebelling, so it has to be completely crushed.

If no-unhappiness is too powerful, then I think other economic penalties to counteract it are better, than changing that concept, because it's kind of central here.

 

[WarKirby]

If you go with no unhappiness, you would get celebration results in all cities...Very odd for an oppressive government...isn't it?

Best option here, permanantly disable "we love the king day" while running this civic.
Even under circumstances where it would normally be deserved, because nobody loves the oppressive king

 

[25Hour]

If no-unhappiness is too powerful, then I think other economic penalties to counteract it are better, than changing that concept, because it's kind of central here.

I agree. -20% commerce is quite a considerable penalty, because it not only decreases your research directly, it also increases the percentage of income you have to allocate towards wealth rather than research in order to break even. At -20% commerce, this civic will damage your economy regardless of how huge you grow your cities.

That said, I'm not a huge fan of the revolt thing, just because its effects I feel could be more smoothly/less annoyingly replicated with simple, per-turn bonuses and penalties. The revolts themselves are just a complex way of granting culture and commerce penalties, for example. (The culture penalty = increasing the chances of revolting to a nearby civ, the commerce/hammer penalty = that which is lost while the city is rioting.) It's not an exact fit, but pretty close, and removes a lot of the random element/micromanagement of shuffling soldiers around to different parts of your empire.

Come to think, since this is Fall Further (man, I love Xienwolf's XML changes), the order-granting effect of the soldiery could also be simulated quite well with a promotion-- automatically gained with the civic-- granting +1 hammer to a city per soldier stationed in it. Of course, they'd still cost maintenance, so you couldn't go overboard, but it'd be quite a nice boost encouraging lots and lots of military police to make your populace more productive.

Best option here, permanantly disable "we love the king day" while running this civic.
Even under circumstances where it would normally be deserved, because nobody loves the oppressive king

Heh, yeah, I was figuring "We Love the King Day" would feel a smidge Orwellian in this context.

 

[1234567890]

Maybe you should add a special ability for military units:

Requisition (can only be cast in cities)
- -1 pop in <City>
- Recieve 10 per pop in the city.
- The unit gains 1 XP
- +10% chance of revolt for 5 turns.
- -10% for 5 turns.

This ability should balance the lack of .

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Not a good idea for the ability. Calibim already eat up population, this would make all civs gold-vampires.

 

[1234567890]

Oppression shouldn't be available to good leaders of course. And this ability should be available only in foreign cities.

 

[WarKirby]

Oppression shouldn't be available to good leaders of course. And this ability should be available only in foreign cities.

It should be available to good leaders.
The point being, the alignment hit is big enough that you'd no longer be good after adopting it. Unless you're pure good, like Order. Then an Oppressive Order civ would kind of make thematic sense.

 

[1234567890]

Not a good idea for the ability. Calibim already eat up population, this would make all civs gold-vampires.

Maybe not +10 per pop... +5 ? +3 ?

 

[Humakty]

Thunder GR said earlier :

Well, why do I get the feeling this discussion is shifting out of topic?
Anyways. If the propability to find a good guy for a throne is 1 in a billion, the propability to find x thousands of people able to form a good democracy is so impropable, that such a situation may not exist. (end quote, sorry guys !)

The problem with your reasoning is that you think you'd need perfect people to lead a democracy, in the same way than in a monarchy (in our present situation, an absolute one ).

But, in a democracy, you can get rid of a disloyal leader by various legal means, and there are most often ways, like the mysterious elections (obviously unknown in your country...), to choose another leader.

In a monarchy, if your leader is bad/dishonest/WTH, you have to keep it, or organize a revolution.

So I do think the merits of a democracy are quite obvious, as opposed to those of a monarchy, even more compared to God King, 'cause you can't even publicly say the GK is wrong, 'cause god speaks through his mouth. ya know.

What if Mr. Bush had been a god king ? (I'm taking an example everyone can understand)