Civics Mod: Balance

[Armandeus]

Quite a few changes were made since I first posted this. The latest changes are in italics.

This is the civics mod I made for my own use. There are no new civics or civic categories. My goal was to tweak the existing civics to have positive and negative aspects, and to more closely reflect the descriptions given for them in the Civilopedia and what my "common sense" perception of that civic was.

I've been playtesting and tweaking this for a couple weeks now.

I may have been inspired by the creators of a few other civic mods, but I can't recall which. I give my thanks to them.

Here is a list of only what I changed. Remember, those bonuses and negative effects I did not change are not listed here. (For example, I didn't remove the -100% city maintenance by distance bonus you get with State Property, or the +100% culture per city with Free Speech, so I didn't list them here.) Keep that in mind when you evaulate my changes, please.

Government
Despotism
Anarchy length 2 (this doesn't affect you when you start off with despotism, but it seems like there would be trouble if you reverted back to it later)
+20% city distance maintenance cost (rule by might could get expensive over large distances, I thought)
-25% war weariness (this charismatic dictator type civic seems fit for a bonus such as this)
Hereditary Rule
+10% city distance maintenance cost (monarchy may not be much different from despotism in this respect)
+10% commerce/production in capital (due to royal court presence)
Representation
+20% city distance maintenance cost (holding elections for representatives and funding parliament seem more expensive over distance, also represents pork-barrel politics)
+2 happiness in largest cities (+3 seemed too much for just Low upkeep)
+1 culture/commerce/production per specialist (rather than only +3 commerce - to reflect a bigger variety of positive things this civic may give)
Police State
Anarchy Length 3 (seems like there would be some resistance - more resistance added per The Q-Meister's insinuation, to keep players from abusing this civic)
-20% great people chance (described in Civilopedia)
-3 happiness in largest cities (due to presence of martial law and secret police)
+1 happiness for each military unit in a city, representing the "police" (people are not getting "happy" but unhappy people are getting dealt with - same game effect)
This civic has two big bonuses (-100 war weariness, faster unit production) but three demerits: less great people, unhappiness, and cost. I thought it should be a difficult civic to maintain for a long time, as it seems to have been historically, at least in modern times.
Universal Suffrage
+10% city distance maintenance cost (same reason as Representation, but we are getting more efficient)
+1 commerce and production in towns (default was +1 production only - this is to somewhat offset the maintenance cost and represent improvements in society)

Legal
Barbarianism
Anarchy Length 2 (reverting to barbarianism may not be seen as a positive thing by society)
-1 happiness in largest cities (brutality - read Civilopedia entry)
Vassalage
(no changes)
Bureaucracy
-10% great people (creativity stifled - described in Civilopedia)
-100% number of city cost modifier (having lots of cities no longer costs extra gold) (removed)
-50% distance maintenance (better able to manage a large empire)
Nationhood
Anarchy Length 2 (revolutions were often fought to achieve nationhood - France, US, etc.)
Free Speech
Upkeep Medium (Low was too cheap for all the good things this civic provides, including the default +100% culture bonus)
+50% great people chance (creativity encouraged)
+20% war weariness (easier to protest war)
removed town bonuses (I think the great people chance is a good replacement - universal suffrage encourages the economy, but free speech? Hmm.)

Labor
Tribalism
-10% worker speed (hard to organize major projects with this civic)
Slavery
Anarchy Length 2 (may be some resistance to this change in civics)
-10% great people mod (stifles creativity - described in Civilopedia)
-2 happiness in largest cities (slave revolts)
+1 hammer for quarries only
+2 commerce for plantations (changes made according to [to_xp]Gekko's suggestions)
(I assume these are where slaves were traditionally used most, and without labor costs, the masters gain benefits)
Serfdom
-1 food on farms, but +2 gold instead, to represent landlords taking their cut of the serfs' farm production and getting rich themselves (suggestion by MrCynical)
Caste System
-1 health in cities (to represent the slum conditions the lowest castes might have to live in, and offset the unlimited specialist bonus) (removed)
High upkeep - to represent a wasteful aristocratic upper caste
Emancipation
Anarchy Length 2 (the US fought a civil war over this civic)
Upkeep Medium (to represent restoring areas that once relied on slavery but are now ruined economically)
1 free specialist in each city (freed slaves often became influential people)

Economy
Decentralization
-10% trade commerce (no regulation, much corruption, etc.)
No upkeep (the trade penalty is penalty enough)
Mercantilism
removed free specialist and replaced it with:
unlimited merchant specialists in cities (which made more sense than allowing just any kind of free specialist)
-25% distance maintenance - to simulate a drive toward colonialism
High upkeep - to represent inflation caused by large amounts of gold coming into the economy
Free Market
+10% to trade (seems reasonable due to less protectionism)
-1 health in each city (representing pollution from rapid economic development)
-10% state religion great people modifier (representing a more materialistic society)
State Property
Anarchy Length 2 (again, revolution was often necessary to achieve this civic in our history)
-10% great people (creativity stifled - see Civilopedia entry)
(I removed my "no state religion spreading" setting because it wouldn't make any difference: religious civics determine things like that.)
-10% foreign trade yield (no hard currency, restrictive trade practices based on politics) (reduced from -25% penalty)
-10% gold in commerce (same as above)(removed)
+1 happiness with factory (the factory is the focus ideologically)
+1 hammer with workshop, but removed default +1 food for watermill
(collective farms were not efficient historically - starvations occured)
+1 hammer, -1 gold in towns (based on Brancaleone's suggestion)
Environmentalism
changed tech requirement to Ecology from Biology (makes sense?)
Anarchy Length 2 (big business would resist)
Upkeep High (mandatory recycling taxes, alternate but expensive fuels, etc.)
Extra Health reduced to 4 (from 6 which seemed too high)
Recycling Center gives +2 health (which restores original +6 if you build it) (my mistake - buildings can't give health through civics. I changed this to +1 happiness)
+1 food at windmills (hydroponics, etc.)
-1 hammer at mines (strip mining frowned upon)

Religion
Paganism
No state religion allowed (if you could choose one of the game religions as your state religion - you wouldn't be pagan anymore, right?)
Organized Religion
Upkeep Medium (less expensive than Theocracy, but still costly to build all those ornate temples and fund the clergy)
+10% state religious great people modifier
+1 state religion happiness (OR is not as oppressive as Theocracy - so the state religion gives happiness)
+15% state religion building modifier (reduced from 25 to offset the great people bonus)
-10% research in all cities (religious dogma often held back science - Copernicus, Galileo, etc.)
Theocracy
Anarchy Length 2 (may require revolution, like in Iran)
Upkeep High (the religion is the govt. - and you need to fund those religious police to enforce religious law)
+25% state religion great people mod (the society is focused on this)
State religion building production +25 (an extension of what Organized Religion gave you - seems logical)
-30% research rate (see above, but more conflict more likely due to very powerful clergy and stricter interpretation of religion)
Pacifism
Upkeep Low
-50% military production (if your civ is pacifist, you shouldn't be aggressively building up your military)
+100 war weariness (it is Pacifism, right?! The +1 gold cost per military unit never seemed to cost me much of anything, and although I didn't remove it, I didn't think it was balancing enough on its own.)
Free Religion
+20 culture in each city instead of +10 research (I think religious dogma not suppressing science is the default. For example, the ancient Greeks did not suppress science/research with their "Paganism." I represented the suppression of science/research in the more dogmatic Organized Religion and Theocracy civics. Also, although not all techs are science per se, after achieving Free Religion, you're researching a lot of hard science techs. I therefore think the diversity you get from free religion should be a cultural bonus, not a research one.)

You need two files, the CIV4CivicInfos.xml to be placed in your My Documents\My Games\Civilization 4\CustomAssets\xml\gameinfo folder, and in order to get the extra civic descriptions to fit neatly on the Civic screen, you also need CvCivicsScreen.py to be placed in My Documents\My Games\Civilization 4\CustomAssets\python\screens. This is if you want to run this as default. If you want it as a mod, move these files to the corresponding folders under Mods, and make your own mod.ini.

I hope you all like this. Feedback (constructive criticism, please) is welcome.

 

[anjf]

Government
Representation
+20% city distance maintenance cost (holding elections for representatives and funding parliament seem more expensive over distance)
+2 happiness in largest cities (+3 seemed too much for just Low upkeep)
+1 culture/commerce/production in each city (rather than only +3 commerce - to reflect a bigger variety of positive things this civic may give)
Police State
Anarchy Length 2 (seems like there would be some resistance)
-20% great people chance (described in Civilopedia)
-3 happiness in largest cities (due to presence of martial law and secret police)
This civic has one big bonus (-100 war weariness) but three demerits: less great people, unhappiness, and cost. I thought it should be a difficult civic to maintain for a long time, and is mainly a wartime civic. It seems to have been that way historically too, to my limited knowledge.
Universal Suffrage
+10% city distance maintenance cost (same reason as Representation, but we are getting more efficient)
+1 commerce and production in towns (default was +1 commerce only - this is to somewhat offset the maintenance cost and represent improvements in society)

Legal
Free Speech
Upkeep Medium (Low was too cheap for all the good things this civic provides)
+50% great people chance (creativity encouraged)
+20% war weariness (easier to protest war)
removed town bonuses (I think the great people chance is a good replacement - universal suffrage encourages the economy, but free speech? Hmm.)

Labor
Caste System
-1 health in cities (to represent the slum conditions the lowest castes might have to live in)
1 free specialist in each city (to offset the health penalty by simulating the highest castes' contributions)
Emancipation
Anarchy Length 2 (the US fought a civil war over this civic)
Upkeep Medium (to represent restoring areas that once relied on slavery but are now ruined economically)
1 free specialist in each city (freed slaves often became influential people)

Economy
State Property
Anarchy Length 2 (again, revolution was often necessary to achieve this civic in our history)
-10% great people (creativity stifled - see Civilopedia entry)
No non state religion spreading (to represent oppression of religion that often occurred with this civic)
-25% foreign trade yield (no hard currency, restrictive trade practices based on politics)
-10% gold in commerce (same as above)
+1 happiness with factory (the factory is the focus ideologically)
+1 hammer with workshop, but removed +1 food for watermill (collective farms were not efficient historically - starvations occured)

Religion
Pacifism
Upkeep High ("None" was too good to be true. As long as you stay out of war, you can use this civic to boost great people output hugely with no negative effects at all!)
+100 war weariness (it is Pacifism, right?! The +1 gold cost per military unit never seemed to cost me much of anything, and although I didn't remove it, I didn't think it was balancing enough on its own.)
Free Religion
+20 culture in each city instead of +10 research (culture output seems more tied to religion than science output, right?)

Al those I have quoted above are in my opinion bad ideas for the rest I think its nice.

To start: Representation, +20% maintenace cost is way to much, it just makes a bit of a lager empire almost impossible, since there are few maintenace cost lowering civics. Just either turn that 20 into 5 or something or just make the upkeep lower, and in the older types of Representation most people couldn't vote so i think that the election costs weren't that high.

Police state, that unhappyness in the city isn't correct, this civic comes with Fascime so I think this civ should represent is the way a Fascime works, The 2 most know Fascimes Italy and Nazi Germany didn't have unhappy people, at least not more then normaly, in germany even MUCH less then in the Republic of Weimarr.

Universal Suffrage, same story as with representation make it 5% or higher upkeep.

Free Speech, why should it have high upkeep there isn't much to keep up for the government, they don't have to arrest people who say bad things about the government, right.

Caste System, the -1 health is not logic, the lowest caste has got it just as bad as the lowest and poorest as those of other countries.

Emancipation, I believe only the USA fought hard about this so no realy need for 2 turns anarchy, that medium upkeep isn't realy good, i see the point of it but such a upkeep is for all the time you have it not just for the start, and
at the end it is an great improvement for the economy so turn the upkeep to low.

State property(You just ruined my favo. civic ), -25% is to much turn it in -10 or just in -o because if worked out carefully this could also provide a very strong currency. -10% commerce. in the beginning of this in the USSR and China this gave the economy and the wealth a hugh boost, It failed in Russia because they spend it all on military, and in china because it wasn't worked out well. No state religon, you are mistaken this with is in fact communisme as economic system with the communisme marx made, this is just the economical aspect of that so this shouldn't effect religon, because if you use Marx's manifest that would immidatly fill al 5 different types of civic since his manifest contains all 5.

Pacifisme, HIGH upkeep?!?!?! NO NO NO NO. Does every civic has to have a negatieve point, I think having to pay more for your units and +100% war warines is a high enough prices, wenn using a Pacifisme I allways feel,m and am, very vanuarble. Besides how much does it cost to do nothing in the military aspect(thats one of the biggest money-costers)

Free Religons, multiple people from multiple religons have differnet views and so can a groupm of those can come up with a wider selection of ideas over ther same periode or with a good idea in a shorter period.

I believe that was all my comment, I like they idea much and there should be changes but not those in my opinon.

Ps sorry for my bad english

 

[pinkballoon]

Slavery stifles creativity? Nope.

One-third of all people living in Attica during Athens' golden age were slaves.

America's industrialization was built on slavery--whether the U.S. could've developed into the economic powerhouse it is today without getting a jumpstart from forced labor is openly debated among historians and economists. How many "great people" has America produced?

Not only did slavery *not* hurt the chances of great people appearing, it massively increased those chances by freeing aristocratic and merchant classes from necessary work. Athens didn't produce Sophocles, Phidias, Plato, and Aristotle because Athens was just that great, but because those people had so much leisure to devote to philosophizing.

And need I mention all the culture that's produced by anti-slavery narratives? African-American struggles produced the blues, jazz, rock, and hip-hop. Exodus produced the Old Testament.

I am not (yet) technically proficient enough to do this, but a mod based on civilization's barbarism is sorely needed. The Civ series has always put the smiley face on thousands of years of progress but failed to show all the digressions--slavery, genocide, oppression--that went into that progress.

 

[Armandeus]

Thanks for the feedback.

Does every civic has to have a negatieve point

Hmm. Basically my whole point for creating this mod is: yes! Consider me a slightly cynical realist. Anyway, I like to have to weigh the good and bad of a civic before choosing.

You pointed out the maintenance costs are "too high." I had lower values for maintenance at first, but there was virtually no impact on my budget: even with 10 or 20% extra, the rise in cost is maybe 5 to 7 gold, and I tend to build big spread out empires with too many cities!

The same goes for the +1 gold cost for pacifism. Even with umpteen units (in my own territory, admittedly) and pacifism, upon checking the financial screen I saw that I had to pay exactly 0 gold for units! This is certainly not a balancing factor for getting +100 great people chance. It had no effect at all.

Fascism/Police State, as you describe, may be a popular movement in the beginning when the party rises to power on its charisma and rhetoric, but how did people feel later on in East Germany, the Soviet Union, or in your example, Nazi Germany after the initial fervor wore off and relatives began "disappearing" for political reasons? Saddam Hussein had a Police State, do you think the Iraqis were happy with the arrests and torture?

The cost for Free Speech is admittedly to balance out it's positive aspects, which are exceedingly good. Otherwise it's a case of something for nothing, I think. You could consider the higher maintenance the cost the government must pay in order to maintain positive public opinion and support.

With Caste System, again, it is for game balancing. Otherwise it is all bonus, no drawbacks. That is the whole point of this mod!

With Emancipation, you are causing anger in other civs' populations just by virtue of having chosen this civic. That is a bonus and is like a weapon. There should be some counterbalance to it.

Your arguments against my State Property choices are based on a concept of "ideal communism," which man has never achieved. I chose to instead base them on more or less what really happened in history.

Free Religion gives culture bonuses instead of science bonuses for exactly the reason you gave. However, most late-game techs are scientific rather than purely cultural, so giving Free Religion a research bonus at that point late in the game seems strange. How does free religion contribute to scientific advancement, like getting the Physics or Composites tech?

Slavery stifles creativity? Nope.

You may have a point. However, whoever wrote the Civilopedia at Firaxis seems to believe otherwise: "Aside from its basic moral repugnance, the disadvantages of slavery are numerous: it corrupts both slave and master, it badly underutilizes the intelligence and creativity of the subject people, and it almost inevitably leads to revolts and internal strife."

That is what I based my version of the civic on. I tried to keep things in line with the descriptions in the Civilopedia as much as possible.

The Civ series has always put the smiley face on thousands of years of progress but failed to show all the digressions--slavery, genocide, oppression--that went into that progress.

And that is part of what I am trying to achieve with this mod (within the limits of my modding ability). To show the good and the bad, and give the player an interesting dilemma when choosing civics.

I appreciate your comments.

However, if you are simply opposed to the entire idea of giving negative aspects to civics to balance them, then you will not be interested in my mod in the first place, right? If you hate the idea to begin with, then just ignore my mod. You won't use it anyway, right?

I would rather hear constructive criticism from those people who would like the civics balanced in this way, if possible.

 

[The Q-Meister]

Fascism/Police State, as you describe, may be a popular movement in the beginning when the party rises to power on its charisma and rhetoric, but how did people feel later on in East Germany, the Soviet Union, or in your example, Nazi Germany after the initial fervor wore off and relatives began "disappearing" for political reasons? Saddam Hussein had a Police State, do you think the Iraqis were happy with the arrests and torture?

Well first off, many police states (China, USSR, etc) lasted for decades and continue to last, during peacetime. So no I don't believe Police State should be only or even primarily a "war time" Civic. Furthermore, I would like to make the Police State used a lot less just for war and then off again during peace like a light switch. I know many players do this but I feel it is silly and unrealistic; perhaps there can be higher penalties or anarchy periods for going back to a police state once you have gone to a more "liberal" form of government?

With regards to people's "happiness", Iraqis may or may not have been happy under Saddam Hussein, but the point is, the vast majority did not show it overtly (precisely because it WAS a police state) That is what unhappiness in Civ is all about: Overt unhappiness, refusing to work, protesting etc. That sort of thing would NEVER be tolerable in a police state. (What happened in East Germany, etc I would argue has more to do with the economics than just being a Police State; for the repression did not suddenly occur in 1989, it had always been there, what did change was the economy) You know the old saying "When people's bellies are full, only the intellectuals care about freedom" As a cynic I'm sure you will appreciate this.

Sure the people may not like their relatives being taken away, but they would do very well to keep quiet about it. Since there is really no way to show "quiet" internal unhappiness in Civ IV, I don't think we should use overt, obvious happiness as a penalty for Police States when such a thing in real life would be dealt with swiftly and harshly.

 

[anjf]

Fascism/Police State, as you describe, may be a popular movement in the beginning when the party rises to power on its charisma and rhetoric, but how did people feel later on in East Germany, the Soviet Union, or in your example, Nazi Germany after the initial fervor wore off and relatives began "disappearing" for political reasons? Saddam Hussein had a Police State, do you think the Iraqis were happy with the arrests and torture?

Your arguments against my State Property choices are based on a concept of "ideal communism," which man has never achieved. I chose to instead base them on more or less what really happened in history.

This two I wish to point out onther time. I think that the other civics just depend on opinons and how history is interpeted but about this 2 I would like to say something.

With the police state I agree with the q-meister, and thats also were my comment was based on, it does counts if they are unhappy but if they act unhappy.

State Property, I based my arguments on ideal communisme because you did the same by saying no non-state religion spread, if you want to show it as it was you should or stay to the economie part, or say no state religon since the church was one of the enemies of ideal communisme. The state-propertie in the USSR failed as said before, throw the cold-war and through bad-orginasiation in Moskou, for China the same story, so I think that if you would try this system in a modern country with well educated people and a good infastructere and a good working system to do administration etc. i geusse it would work a lot better then it did in a few failed cases. You only based your points on a few failed tries I think you should also consider if it would work the same in a very well organised modern countrt and I think it could deliver quite good resultes(even though I am affraid I will never have the option to see if it is that way)

 

[Armandeus]

Well first off, many police states (China, USSR, etc) lasted for decades and continue to last, during peacetime. So no I don't believe Police State should be only or even primarily a "war time" Civic. Furthermore, I would like to make the Police State used a lot less just for war and then off again during peace like a light switch. I know many players do this but I feel it is silly and unrealistic; perhaps there can be higher penalties or anarchy periods for going back to a police state once you have gone to a more "liberal" form of government?

So should I up the Anarchy to 3 or 4 to discourage this then?

With regards to people's "happiness", Iraqis may or may not have been happy under Saddam Hussein, but the point is, the vast majority did not show it overtly (precisely because it WAS a police state) That is what unhappiness in Civ is all about: Overt unhappiness, refusing to work, protesting etc...Since there is really no way to show "quiet" internal unhappiness in Civ IV, I don't think we should use overt, obvious happiness as a penalty for Police States when such a thing in real life would be dealt with swiftly and harshly.

Look at the city screen at the top. You have a total happy/unhappy score, and if you mouse over it, you get exact reasons why x-number of people are happy/unhappy. With police state, you will get 3 unhappy people in your 6 (I believe it is) largest cities, complaining about the civic. You remedy this with buildings or the presence of military units or whatever. So, yes, I think it is modeled reasonably well. The game lets you oppress/appease the unhappy citizens. The game even lets you build jails to throw war protestors into, right?

 

[Armandeus]

State Property, I based my arguments on ideal communisme because you did the same by saying no non-state religion spread, if you want to show it as it was you should or stay to the economie part, or say no state religon since the church was one of the enemies of ideal communisme.

State Religion is set to 0 by default for State Property, so that's why I didn't mention it - I didn't change it. What I did was in addition to the game's default of not allowing a state religion with this civic (unless mixed with another, I guess), I took it further and stopped all religions from spreading. So you and I are actually in agreement here. It is a limitation of the way the civics are organized that you can pick State Property (which supposedly shuns religion) and say, Theocracy and get a "Marxist Theocracy" or whatever. To remove that possibility we would have to redo Communism as a Religion, not an Economy choice. Either that, or add "Personality Cult" (a la Stalin, Mao, or Kim) to the list of religions in the game!

EDIT: Since I realized that setting religion flags in non-religious civics is pointless (because you obviously can have a state religion if you pick the default version of State Property, set to state religion 0, and the default version of Organized Religion, state religion 1, together in the vanilla game), I reset the non-state religion flag to the game default of 0 for State Property (as it is for all other non-religous civics). Unless someone can write a python script or whatever that requires you to set your religious civic to say, Paganism (with state religion=0 and non-state religion spread also changed to 0 in that civic), and also removes all religions in your cities when you choose State Property, it is not possible to force the removal of the main religions in your civilization and simulate a "personality cult" upon choosing State Property.

The state-propertie in the USSR failed as said before, throw the cold-war and through bad-orginasiation in Moskou, for China the same story, so I think that if you would try this system in a modern country with well educated people and a good infastructere and a good working system to do administration etc. i geusse it would work a lot better then it did in a few failed cases. You only based your points on a few failed tries I think you should also consider if it would work the same in a very well organised modern countrt and I think it could deliver quite good resultes(even though I am affraid I will never have the option to see if it is that way)

Well, I am not such an optimistic idealist Marxist, and I instead based my interpretation on the numerous real-life outcomes of communist societies. First, because in history, the bad organization etc. you speak of inevitably happens in all historical cases (either that, or central planning is almost entirely abandoned in favor of capitalism, and the country is not truly State Property any longer), and second, because the aim of this mod is to provide both positive and negative aspects to each civic to make things balanced and interesting.

Therefore, concerning the game, "ideal" communism does not interest me any more than "ideal" theocracy, or the perfect-world version of any other game civic, because that's not what I'm aiming to simulate at all.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

hi, your mod sounds interesting, but did you just add these changes to the existing ones, or substitute the old ones? i.e. does hereditary rule still give happiness for military units inside a city?

 

[Armandeus]

hi, your mod sounds interesting, but did you just add these changes to the existing ones, or substitute the old ones? i.e. does hereditary rule still give happiness for military units inside a city?

As I said at the top of my mod description, if I didn't list it, I didn't change it. So yes, Hereditary Rule still gives happiness for units in a city. I didn't change that.

 

[gianluca790]

Saddam Hussein had a Police State, do you think the Iraqis were happy with the arrests and torture?

I think that what you have just said qualifies as "begging the question".

 

[gianluca790]

"To remove that possibility we would have to redo Communism as a Religion, not an Economy choice. Either that, or add "Personality Cult" (a la Stalin, Mao, or Kim) to the list of religions in the game!"

The default Religion for Communist/Fascist systems was always a form of Personality Cult, comparable to extremist fringe religious and political terrorist groups and other zealots. Bin Laden's Al-Quaeda comes to mind as the most modern form of such a personality cult system in a terror network. Don't you think such systems were based on the popular personal fanbase and supposed successes of the dear fearless leader of the movement? Kim Jong-Il comes to mind, as does Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984 or even Brave New World and Repent Harlequin said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison. Most despots tend to like the idea of going back to a more pagan past such as the Aryan Cult of the Germanenorden that the Nazis endorsed. Hitler, Mao and Stalin are just other examples, whose lack of sucess can be boiled down to the fact alternatives were given to the people and chosen by them.

 

[Optimizer]

Saddam Hussein had a Police State, do you think the Iraqis were happy with the arrests and torture?

One problem is that happiness in Civ does not represent real happiness, but order and discipline.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

As I said at the top of my mod description, if I didn't list it, I didn't change it. So yes, Hereditary Rule still gives happiness for units in a city. I didn't change that.

oops... sorry for not reading that the first time

- it seems to me you are mistaken on universal suffrage: in vanilla civ4, it already gives +1 production for towns. no +1 commerce though.

anyway, I'm going to wait till some discussion and refinement goes on with this mod, then I'm sure I will add in to my modpack, so thanx in advance for your contribution

 

[Xuenay]

Hmm. Basically my whole point for creating this mod is: yes! Consider me a slightly cynical realist. Anyway, I like to have to weigh the good and bad of a civic before choosing.

Don't forget one thing, though - *every* civic already has heavy disadvantages in the form of opportunity cost. If you choose, say, Vassalage instead of Bureaucracy, you're effectively being disadvantaged by not having the +50% production and commerce in your capital. I wouldn't say that adding more disadvantages to all civics is really any different than adding more advantages - in both cases, you're just adding more variables to be taken into account.

 

[Armandeus]

Saddam Hussein had a Police State, do you think the Iraqis were happy with the arrests and torture?

I think that what you have just said qualifies as "begging the question".

From Fallacy Files:
"Begging the Question
Type: Informal Fallacy
Form: Any form of argument in which the conclusion occurs as one of the premisses, or a chain of arguments in which the final conclusion is a premiss of one of the earlier arguments in the chain. More generally, an argument begs the question when it assumes any controversial point not conceded by the other side."

This is my argument:
Premise 1: Police State is a brutally oppressive society by definition and/or necessity
Premise 2: Brutally oppressed people are generally unhappy
Conclusion: Therefore people in a Police State are generally unhappy

OK, so you are accusing me of begging the question. Please give me an example of a Police State without brutal oppression, i.e., refute the truth value of Premise 1. So far, you have not convinced me. Was the feverish support worked up by the Nazi party in its rise to power sustained for as long as Germany was a police state; was the common German pleased with the Gestapo? What about Stalin's Soviet Union, Kim's North Korea, Mao's China, etc.? Why did people risk their lives to jump the Berlin Wall? When did these countries (if ever) cease being brutally oppressive? Did it not coincide with their relaxing their Police State ideology?

My reply was intended as an example of Premise 1, not an assumption that it is true without a doubt.

 

[Armandeus]

The default Religion for Communist/Fascist systems was always a form of Personality Cult, comparable to extremist fringe religious and political terrorist groups and other zealots.

I don't deny this.

I think it would be interesting to have "Personality Cult" as a religion in Civ IV, but it probably wouldn't fit in with the current model of religion (missionaries to other civs, etc.), so it would be a major change from the current game.

 

[Armandeus]

Don't forget one thing, though - *every* civic already has heavy disadvantages in the form of opportunity cost.

That's very interesting. Thank you. But I felt that the opportunity cost was not significantly high for the resulting gains received by changing civics. Of course you lose the advantage of your previous civic to gain a new advantage. But you are always receiving some form of major advantage. It seems similar to being able to choose from a Rolls Royce or a Lamborghini each time.

Giving you trade-offs by adding negative effects to your current choice in order to make that choice more interesting, and representing the opinion that utopia is ultimately only an unattainable ideal, are the two main rationales behind this mod. If you disagree with these points, then this mod will not interest you. I respect your choice not to be interested, of course.

 

[Armandeus]

oops... sorry for not reading that the first time

- it seems to me you are mistaken on universal suffrage: in vanilla civ4, it already gives +1 production for towns. no +1 commerce though.

You may be right. I was reading directly from the XML file, where it is sometimes difficult to tell which is which. I will double check.

[QUOTE='[to_xp]anyway, I'm going to wait till some discussion and refinement goes on with this mod, then I'm sure I will add in to my modpack, so thanx in advance for your contribution [/QUOTE]

You're very welcome.

 

[Armandeus]

One problem is that happiness in Civ does not represent real happiness, but order and discipline.

Perhaps this is true, but the whole game is highly abstracted, so I think we should be allowed this stretch, don't you think?

For a much less abstracted similar game, I point you to Europa Universalis II, for example. Even then, the abstractions are in different areas.

More to the point, even if "happiness" really represents "order and discipline" then my concept of Police State causes a crisis where your civilization must divert more resources to maintaining "order and discipline" in exchange for suppressing war dissent. Is that an acceptable explanation?