Civics Changes Discussion

The modern UK is not a constitutional monarchy.
Yes it is? It is quite literally the very first example I would think of?
 
The UK doesn't have a constitution and the Monarch doesn't govern at all, let alone with power limited or constrained by a constitution.
 
The modern UK is not a constitutional monarchy.

Maybe not in the meaning you might intend for a constitutional monarchy civic, but it certainly is a constitutional monarchy IRL.

The UK doesn't have a constitution

It doesn't have a single law/document called the constitution, but it does have a constitution that is a combination of multiple written documents/laws/judgements and unwritten traditions.
 
Maybe not in the meaning you might intend for a constitutional monarchy civic, but it certainly is a constitutional monarchy IRL.

It doesn't have a single law/document called the constitution, but it does have a constitution that is a combination of multiple written documents/laws/judgements and unwritten traditions.

I'd say the UK is officially a constitutional Monarchy, but de facto it's a paralmentary Republic (as the actual Governmebt is chosen from with in the Parliament.)

Another possibility to split the Government civic migth be the following:
Absolute Monarchy
Oligarchy
Constitutional Monarchy
Autocracy

Parliamentarism (or Representation):
Any Government, where the executive Power lies with an elected Parliament. This system would describe both most modern constititutional monarchies like the UK, and parliamentary Republics like Germany.

"Electoralism" (Better name needed):
A Merry of elective Monarchy and Presidentialism
A system where the power lies with an elected head of state (either for a fixed period or until his death), who is bound to the interests of the group who elected him. (This group, as always, would be defined by the social civic) I propose this merge, as, aside from the duration, for how long the Monarch\President is elected, Presidentialism and elective Monarchy are quite similar. One key difference would of course be, that in most elective Monarchies only the Aristocracy was allowed to vote, but that is again represented in the social Category. So the US would run Egalitarianism+Electoralism, the HRE would run Aristocracy+Electoralism, the Papal State migth be considered a bureaucratic Electoralism (If you view the Cardinals as a form of Bureaucrats). My main motivation for this proposal were:
1) While a Egalitarian elective Monarchy migth make sense, I don't think it has historic precedence.
2) I wanted to have a distinction between the political System of modern Democracies, as it seems boring to have the majority of civs run Republic in the modern Era.
 
2) I wanted to have a distinction between the political System of modern Democracies, as it seems boring to have the majority of civs run Republic in the modern Era.
Yes, hence the Constitutional Monarchy civic, which is currently run by such illustrious civs as the UK, Sweden and Spain.

Btw I just noticed, in this new civics roster we don't seem to have a way of differentiating between totalitarian and authoritarian dictatorships, or have I overlooked something?

Edit: Also I do believe it would make sense for monarchical civics to provide extra Great People Birth in the capital and reduced Great People Birth everywhere else.
 
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What do you think about +GP birth for Constitutional Monarchy and +cottage growth for Republic? Both have diminishing returns the further you get in the game, making them more interchangeable in the late game.

Totalitarianism can still appear somewhere in either the Society or Administration columns, really, which should be enough to distinguish it in combination with dictatorship.
 
Totalitarianism can still appear somewhere in either the Society or Administration columns, really, which should be enough to distinguish it in combination with dictatorship.
What would it replace though? Militarism or Nationalism in Society?
 
There is no reason to replace anything, there is no Society category yet. I would put Nationhood in Organisation/Territory.
 
There is no reason to replace anything, there is no Society category yet. I would put Nationhood in Organisation/Territory.
Oh, I thought we were going by Bautos42's suggestion. Would you mind posting the current state of the roster you have in your head?
 
I don't have anything explicit yet, but I'm going to work off Bautos42's suggestion somehow. I'm just going to say that there's no reason to think about it in terms of A replaces B ideas like you would when adjusting an existing system. We can just come up with things we'd like to have in there and then decide what's best when paring things down to 6-7 choices.
 
Okay, so I have been mostly thinking about Society lately. Let's start with the modern half of that category:

Individualism (Civil Liberties): represents Western societies developing during the early modern period, the rise of a middle class, private enterprise, natural rights and that kind of stuff - the opposite to the rigid feudal stratification that preceded it.
Egalitarianism/Equality (Civil Rights): represents changes in Western societies during the 20th century, equal rights for all citizens, universal suffrage, action towards economic equality, protection of minorities, multiculturalism.

For the third civic there are a couple of options:
- I think Nationalism better slots into the Organisation category as Nationhood, I'll elaborate a bit more on it below
- Not sure if Proletariat isn't too specific, but if we want something explicitly communist that isn't captured by Egalitarianism/Totalitarianism (depending on how malevolent/benevolent your state is in its application of communist ideology) I would rather move my proposed Collectivism (Labour Unions) from the Labor column here
- Totalitarianism (Psychology) should be somewhere as your explicit "going fascist" option compared to a vanilla dictatorship. I personally envision Society as the column with the strongest effects, for instance the traditional + town commerce and + specialist commerce for Individualism and Egalitarianism. In that vein, Totalitarianism could get strong effects that help you wage war or maintain a large empire at the opportunity costs of these effects

What is more interesting is the other half of the tree which should cover pre-modern societies. Like the stuff above, these civics should be more about the general idea that governs the relationships between individuals in a society, not what domain the society is focused on ("the military", "trade" etc.). I have a couple of ideas, but it's hard to make a good choice and find a fitting name, that is both descriptive and general enough:
- social status defined by birth: this is basically your feudal society, and what basically what both Caste System and Estate System were getting at in my original proposal (the former being a more extreme example of the same principle). Names: Stratification? Aristocracy? I find it hard to describe with a good word.
- social status defined by legal status: a bit of a counterpoint to the above, where there is more social mobility and you can gain a higher status and have it legally recognised. This is for instance the Roman Republic and early Empire in my mind, and what Citizenship was getting at. If we are casting the net a bit wider, and use Aristocracy above, maybe Meritocracy also works.
- another idea that is a bit orthogonal to the above so it might not fit next to them: something representing the East Asian social ideas of social duty and filial piety. What I like about this is that this could be a reasonably early civic that can still be feasible later in the game, and also contrast with Individualism.
- I think Militarism (although I prefer Martialism) could also work, and could both represent societies where the warrior class (pre modern) or a more organised military (modern period) dominates society. Especially in case Totalitarianism is not in this category.

On Organisation, I don't think categories like Unitary and Federal really work because states that use these principles seem to be so all over the place, which makes it hard to derive effects from them. I'm also not happy with an "Empire" civic, because you generally always want to be an empire, and there shouldn't be a civic especially helping you with that. "Imperial center ruling over large territories" would be better captured with something like Centralism. Nationhood also belongs into this category, as it was the innovation in how states conceive of themselves that occurred in Europe during the early modern period. Other than that, we have
- Vassalage: the state as interpersonal relationships of mutual obligation
- Thalassocracy: the state as coastal territories connected by the sea
- Colonialism: your early modern overseas colonial empire (not sure if there isn't an overlap with all of these categories, e.g. Britain could also be understood as a thalassocracy)
- City States / Confederation: a loose association of states bound by mutual treaties
- something modern that transcends the nation state, with open borders, multiculturalism, devolution/federalism and international integration

It would be cool if we had mechanisms in this category that would reward you for not expanding beyond your core (various polities considered themselves self-content over the course of history, most famously Ming and Qing China), or give different benefits for expansion for your core. But I'm not sure how we could implement that using existing game mechanics, that isn't just additional benefits on top of the inherent benefits of expansion itself.
 
It would be cool if we had mechanisms in this category that would reward you for not expanding beyond your core (various polities considered themselves self-content over the course of history, most famously Ming and Qing China), or give different benefits for expansion for your core. But I'm not sure how we could implement that using existing game mechanics, that isn't just additional benefits on top of the inherent benefits of expansion itself.
High Upkeep, increased city maintenance, and a free specialist and a free trade route in every core city?
 
Something like that.
 
Well, since I see nationalism and nationhood brought into the discussion here, it would be interesting to have interactions between these civics, the territorial extension of the civ, and the ethnic composition of the population (which shows up in the city screen as cultural composition, showing %'s for all civs and independents).

First of, ethnic composition in core areas should naturally move towards that of the civ, ie, even if other civs settle there, or if there is migration (as in the New World). Historical territory could have a slow rate of assimilation, while foreign areas should have no assimilation whatsoever. So even if you settle in foreign areas, the population should have a consistent high rate of independent culture.

Keeping to the core would lead to having a homogeneous population, which can bring increased stability, and some bonus on production, commerce, culture, and research rates - all of which derived from the facility of shared language to communicate and common social norms. Expanding beyond the core would lead to a decrease in these rates, and we could differentiate this by city composition, so that the more different from your culture, the higher the costs of that city is (in terms of maintenance, unhappiness, etc).

I can see different civic effects, nationalism/nationhood should aid with assimilation, homogeneizing the population, while universal democracy and similar civics (republics are in theory good for representation) could decrease the malus of multiethnic empires without

That's just an idea to build on, of course.
 
So here's another attempt. I tried to incorporate some suggestions that I really liked, but not everything worked within the constraints that I've set for myself, so this is the best I can do. We know have the following categories:

Legitimacy
Authority
Society
Economy
Religion
Expansion

Legitimacy + Authority is the new pair of government categories, and describes where the government derives its power and how exerts it. I couldn't manage to represent all forms of government while still representing historical progression and allowing for flexibility between republicanism and monarchism without using two columns. To make room, I have basically scrapped the Labour category and merged it with Society due to their similarities. Economy and Religion remain mostly unchanged from previous proposals. Expansion has a couple of civics that should each have a unique penalty for non-core cities and a unique bonus for core cities or the capital.

LEGITIMACY
Despotism (Property)
Divine Mandate (Divination)
Oligarchy (Writing)
Dynasticism (Nobility)
State Party (Journalism)
Republic (Statecraft)

AUTHORITY
Militarism (Generalship)
Vassalage (Feudalism)
Bureaucracy (Civil Service)
Plutocracy (Finance)
Totalitarianism (Psychology)
Democracy (Representation)

SOCIETY
Slavery (Masonry)
Manorialism (Calendar)
Citizenship (Law)
Individualism (Civil Liberties)
Collectivism (Labour Unions)
Egalitarianism (Civil Rights)

ECONOMY
Redistribution (Arithmetics)
Merchant Trade (Currency)
Regulated Trade (Guilds)
Free Enterprise (Economics)
Central Planning (Macroeconomics)
Public Welfare (Social Services)

RELIGION
Imperial Cult (Ceremony)
Organised Religion (Priesthood)
Asceticism (Philosophy)
Theocracy (Clergy)
Religious Tolerance (Civil Liberties)
Secularism (Civil Rights)

EXPANSION
City States (Contract)
Thalassocracy (Navigation)
Tributaries (Politics)
Centralism (Education)
Nationhood (Nationalism)
Subsidiarity (Globalism)
 
To make room, I have basically scrapped the Labour category and merged it with Society due to their similarities.

[...]

SOCIETY
Slavery (Masonry)
Manorialism (Calendar)
Citizenship (Law)
Individualism (Civil Liberties)
Collectivism (Labour Unions)
Egalitarianism (Civil Rights)

ECONOMY
Redistribution (Arithmetics)
Merchant Trade (Currency)
Regulated Trade (Guilds)
Free Enterprise (Economics)
Central Planning (Macroeconomics)
Public Welfare (Social Services)

Hm. Say what you want about the old roster, but I liked that you could represent modern China's state capitalism by running Capitalism with Central Planning, something that doesn't really seem possible now.

Expansion has a couple of civics that should each have a unique penalty for non-core cities and a unique bonus for core cities or the capital.

Hm, shouldn't at least one or two civics not give a penalty to non core cities? I like the possibility to choose how and how much I want to exploit the periphery, but saying every single civilization in the entire history of humanity did that is kind of a bleak outlook on things.

Divine Mandate
[...]
Secularism

Sigh.

Also wait a minute, has there ever actually been a dynastic monarchy that didn't claim divine right?

RELIGION
Imperial Cult (Ceremony)
Organised Religion (Priesthood)
Asceticism (Philosophy)
Theocracy (Clergy)
Religious Tolerance (Civil Liberties)
Secularism (Civil Rights)

Huh?
 
(Accidentally posted in the wrong thread, moved the discussion here.)

Hm. Say what you want about the old roster, but I liked that you could represent modern China's state capitalism by running Capitalism with Central Planning, something that doesn't really seem possible now.
That's true, maybe at most Plutocracy + Central Planning. In general private enterprise is also represented in Individualism but I wouldn't consider that fitting for China in particular. I think it's better to be rid of a Capitalism civic though.

Hm, shouldn't at least one or two civics not give a penalty to non core cities? I like the possibility to choose how and how much I want to exploit the periphery, but saying every single civilization in the entire history of humanity did that is kind of a bleak outlook on things.
Yeah, maybe the last one should.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also wait a minute, has there ever actually been a dynastic monarchy that didn't claim divine right?
It's not really about divine right, more divine ancestry, origin or guidance. So e.g. Egyptian or Babylonian, and later South Asian priest kings, and the Mandate of Heaven.

I think there should at least be one civic where there is no formal organisation to the religion. I know the name is weird, haven't found anything better yet.
 
Divine Mandate
[...]
Secularism

Sigh.

Israel, maybe ? ;)

Also wait a minute, has there ever actually been a dynastic monarchy that didn't claim divine right?

Greek one ?

I think there should at least be one civic where there is no formal organisation to the religion. I know the name is weird, haven't found anything better yet.

Maybe "sects", it would be appropriate for buddhism, and early christianity, what civs are supposed to run this civic ?
 
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