[R&F] Civilization gives you lots of Government. But doesn't let you govern.

acluewithout

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Civilization gives you lots of Government. But doesn't let you govern.

Governments are a mainstay of the Civilization series.

In Civ VI, your Government has a big impact on gameplay. It's a big high level choice about where you're going strategically - are you building, expanding, or going to war? - and the choice then helps you organise other key decisions - particularly what Policies you'll use.

Your Government is also a big part of the game's immersion.

You see, you don’t really have leaders in Civ or a cultural identity. Instead, you have one "immortal leader", that once you start playing you can’t see them. And your "leader" and your Civilization's "cultural identity" are basically fixed at the start of the game, and boil down to two abilities (maybe including some sub-abilities), a unit or two and some infrastructure. In Vanilla, the only way you really "shape" your Civilization in a permanent way is through your pantheon and maybe having a religion.

But you do at least control your Government. Choosing a Government lets you feel like you're shaping your Empire at its highest level. And by linking Governments to the Civics Tree, and having Government Tiers, you get the feeling your Empire's political and cultural power grow over time, giving you concrete and powerful control over your Empire, and its territory, resources and priorities.

The thing is, this is a trick. Because for all that, Civ doesn't actually let you govern your Empire. Your Goverment is really just a "character class", that is full of flavour, but short on substance. And that's why Governments are so good.

Civilization is a Boardgame

Civilization is a giant board game: about 2/3 Catan and 1/3 Risk.

The basics of the game is this. Like Catan, you have a randomly generated map, and you build things on that map to claim parts of that map area and to take advantage of resources on the map (although, unlike Catan, you can’t see all of the map at the start). It then adds some wargaming like Risk (okay, a little more complicated than Risk). You win by either building more stuff, murdering everyone else, or a combination of both. There are a few other systems - eg a kind of card game (policies), roleplaying - but that’s basically it. Grand strategy, it isn't.

Civ cements this board game feel by having (at least on the surface) mechanics that are not mathematically complicated*. You always feel like, if you had a big enough board, enough room for all the cards, pieces and bennies, and could somehow hold all the many rules in your head, then you could actually play Civ on a table with some dice and some friends - no computer needed. That's precisely the genius of Civ: a board game that you play on a scale much bigger than is possible in the real world.

I talked about the importance of the map to Civ here. The key thing is this: Civilization mostly limits randomness to how it generates the map. Sure, there’s a little randomness with combat challenges, great people abilities, goody huts and barbs etc., and the AI is somewhat unpredictable. But the map is the main source of randomness.

Civilization doesn’t give you control over the map. The map is random. But by minimising randomness from other sources, it gives you agency over the map. Sure, you get a random map, but you know what resources, tactics and strategies you have available to exploit any map, the mechanics though numerous are easily understandable, and you can therefore adapt to any specific map every time. Every game is different and challenging precisely because (1) the map is random and (2) nothing else is random (mostly).

Civilization: can you (pretend) to build an Empire which stands the test of time?

This gameplay design results in a core game which is great fun, particularly when you add in the whole 'one more turn mechanic' (basically, the constant feeling that one more cool think will unlock or happen after every turn). But this design also creates constraints, because the game can't have elements which cut across its core design.

Civilization wants to be a game about Empires. But the core gameplay isn't really about Empires. It's about building stuff and murdering stuff (usually in that order). So, Civilization tries to feel like an Empire game, like Grand Strategy, through roleplaying elements. Civ uses historical elements to theme the game and to help structure the gameplay (creating analogies with real world history, or at least with a particular view of history).

Civilization tries to convince you you’re managing an Empire, not just putting pins in a map and shuffling pieces. But it’s not really an Empire. Look at other grand strategy games like EU4 to see what I mean.

You don’t have leaders (monarchs, dictators) or internal factions (whigs, torries) to negotiate with. You don’t really have people or an economy to manage. Your citizens always work the tiles you tell them, always with the same enthusiasm (except maybe if they're 'displeased' or 'ecstatic') and don’t really have any opinions beyond “we like tea, turtles and gypsum (but only one of each please), we don’t like war, and we don’t like changing back to governments we’ve already tried but are always happy to try something new”. You can't even really run out of food or money - not enough food and cities just stop growing rather than starve, and run out of gold and your units just disband and your citizens become a little grumpy. You don’t even really have any ability to tax citizens, or raise finance. Your empire will never face a tulip bubble, sub-prime mortgage crisis, or have a reality TV star in control of its nuclear weapons.

Civ Government: all the flavour but now 100% politics free

Which brings us back to the Government system.

Governments are all about flavour, not history or simulation. That’s why they work so well.

You can see why FXS went with the current Government system mechanically. Maximum flexibility and consistency; the ability to pivot both the direction of you Civilzation at its highest level and at a more micro level (ie Policies). It's also easy to compare Governments and Policies: Governments have only two bonuses, and then "Policy Slots" which are easy to compare; those slots increase between Tiers so it's easy to understand the power difference between Government Tiers; and while Policies all have unique effects, and can interact in interesting ways, they are again easy to compare because each Policy has the same cost (i.e. it takes up one slot).

This approach does limit how much you really govern your Empire. Your citizens are equally happy with every Government and your Government never actually impacts your culture, development or economy beyond granting some buff and how they divide up card slots. There’s no need to actually sell your citizens or stakeholders on any policies: you just slot policy cards and they always work. Whatever leaders your governments have, they’re all equally good, because the benefits you get from you government don’t change.

It has to be this way. Governments and Policies are predictable and flexible, precisely so you can adapt to your random map. To compensate for this, FXS pull in lots of flavour: from the different Government names, where they're placed in the Civics Tree, the cool little pictures they get, and the different names you can give policies and again linking policies to the Civics Tree. Governments are therefore a lot like a "Character Class" in a roleplaying game - it has or grants access to a few benefits, allocates value between certain key share stats, and then adds lashings of flavour text.

I think the Government and Policy Card systems are a great feature of Civ. The core gameplay is great, and then FXS have been very clever to create a "government" feel within the constraints of that gameplay.

So why doesn’t R&F build on this?

R&F expands "governance" in three ways: Loyalty, Governors, and the Government Plaza (and its buildings).

I’ve written about Loyalty here. I think it’s a good system, but it isn’t much connected with your Government, but it does interact well with Policy Cards, Governors generally, and other mechanics.

Governors and the Government Plaza and its buildings are a bigger problem, however.

To be clear, both Governors and the Plaza / buildings work perfectly well in terms of gameplay. Both provide predictable and consistent bonuses that let you adapt better to the map. Governors integrate really well with cities, and really help differentiate between what you could call core, satellite and colonial cities. Governors are easy to distinguish because of their character names and picture, easy to compare because each is structured broadly the same way, and easy to balance because they all do something different but you can only get one of each and they are available to everyone. Likewise, the Government Plaza is well designed to work within the existing district system. And the various different bonuses they all offer are generally very clever and throw up great synergies and strategies.

But both Governors and the Government Plaza seriously undermine the feeling of governing your Empire.

  • Governors are yet another "immortal" ruler. Your existing immortal civ leader (and other civs leaders) already requires a degree of suspension of disbelief, but at least your own leader fades into the background during games, and the leaders do at least represent great historical figures. But Governors are front and centre, don’t represent anybody and are always, always the same. For every Civ. For every game. And for every Civ in the same game at the same time, every time. And because they don’t behave differently depending on your Government (I’m pretty sure democratic, communist and fascist governors would play out differently), they only emphasise how limited and shallow your governance is, and take away focus and the significance of your Government choices. It doesn't help they all permanently dressed like its the Medieval era (except for Magnus, who I assume is some sort of Time Lord).

  • For all that, you also don't get anything from your Governors in terms of immersion. Sure, they have a cute little picture, but otherwise they don't talk, don't have opinions or preferences. They just go where you tell them to go without complaint. They don't even really get better with experience - sure, they unlock different abilities, but a promoted Governor is no better at generating loyalty, or moving between cities, or anything else than an un-promoted Governor.

  • The Plaza has a similar problem. The Plaza itself just feels like “another” district. And by placing government buildings outside you cities, it undercuts the idea you have a real Capital city or centre of power. Every Civ gets one and so every Civ builds one. So it feels like everyone is the same (compare other districts, where you might decide to just build campuses, or theatre squares, or maybe you think encampments are optional or instead essential). The first tier buildings are also all very flavourless, and by giving you more flat bonuses, they again just emphases that for all it is having a “cultural identity” “great leader” and “Government” these are really just a random collection of gameplay buffs. The Plaza and its buildings just take more focus away from your Government.

  • And the worst thing the Plaza does is that it doesn't actually let you build a "government" building. There is no Roman Senate, no English Parliament, no American or Chinese Congress, no Chancellors Office or a Sun Palace. Governments are all defined by the building where that "Government" happens. Not having an actual "Government" building is a huge missed opportunity. Seriously, how do I have a "War Department" but no other Ministries or PMO?

So, ah, why I you posting all this?

Because I have too much time on my hands, and the harsh rays of the sun burn my zombie flesh.

But also I wanted to highlight two things. First, I wanted to highlight what I think are clever design aspects of Civ, and some of the nuanced and well judged trade-offs which are made to ensure you get both gameplay and immersion.

Second, I wanted to highlight an issue with R&F's Governors and Government Plaza. Mechanically, they work really, really well. But they need more flavour.

Again, I don't want to make this an ideas thread. But discussing ideas does sometimes help clarify the problem.

Here’s are some things I believe would help, and which hopefully illustrate some gaps.

  • Governors should not have the same identities every game. I get why they do: they are easier for the player to identify and (I’m guessing) less art assets are required. But I think a happy compromise would be: (1) each Governor’s identity is randomly chosen from a small pool of historical figures for that type of Governor (maybe 3 for each type), (2) you only see the specific Governor for your own cities, the AI cities always just use a generic coat of arms for the different governor types (ie no clone Governors). The specific types of Governors could keep having the same abilities, so the "Steward one" would still provide bonuses to chops; but when you selected the Steward, you might get Thomas Cromwell or Pontius Pilot (just as random examples).
  • Governors might also benefit from having some more screen time. Animating them might be too much work, but they should at least pop up and provide advice or gossip, so you feel like you’re actually interacting with someone not just assigning bonuses. (Although, perhaps that would feel like the resurrection of Clippit.)
  • Perhaps Governors could also use a little more variation: they might not all give the same loyalty, and promoting them should make them better Governors, eg grant more loyalty per level or something. And perhaps they should interact with your Government a little, eg maybe buffing specific citizen yields based on your type of government.
  • The Government Plaza and buildings should emphasise what’s good about the Government system.
  • Maybe instead of providing straight bonuses, your Plaza and Buildings could unlock unique Policy Cards. So, the Audience Chamber still gives you extra housing and amenities etc., but instead as a Policy Card not as a flat bonus. Policy Cards are the fuel of the Government Tier jet plane. That’s we’re the bonuses should be, so as not to detract from Governments and their Policy Cards.
  • Perhaps you should also have more than one Government District, so it doesn't have so much emphases (which in turn pulls attention away from Cities). Perhaps you have one Government Plaza (as is), but also a new Court House district or Governors Mansion district, which can go in other cities representing regional government and control.
  • Lastly, perhaps FXS should let you name your Government Plaza, e.g. Parliament, and or let you “upgrade” your Capital or "main" city with some "apex" Government Building.
***​

Civ is a funny game. It's a Board Game with a wonderful delusion of granduer. But I think that, for all R&F gets right with gameplay, it needs to help us to share the delusion a bit more.
 
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I think there is a missed opportunity here. Governments should define what cards can be used and which ones are a no-no... right now, you want a Free Market Communism :crazyeye: ? Go ahead! Use that card! Seriously?

The system is great. But it should be more constrained. As in, the example above. More cost/benefit considerations. OK, I want to go Communism... but I also want that Free Market... what to do? What to do?

Right now, anything and everything is "just fine", as some Utubers like to say...

EDIT: hmmm, perhaps I should try and mod that...
 
More negatives and conflicting polcies would be good. Free Market could reduce loyalty, for example (seeing as we cannot simulate massive inequity in civ6).
 
I think there is a missed opportunity here. Governments should define what cards can be used and which ones are a no-no... right now, you want a Free Market Communism :crazyeye: ? Go ahead! Use that card! Seriously?

The system is great. But it should be more constrained. As in, the example above. More cost/benefit considerations. OK, I want to go Communism... but I also want that Free Market... what to do? What to do?

Right now, anything and everything is "just fine", as some Utubers like to say...

EDIT: hmmm, perhaps I should try and mod that...

I fully subscribe to this @Aristos.

Sorry but I cant agree with initial author @acluewithout ideas here. Seems like all he wants is more animations and different clothes for governors. But this adds nothing to the gameplay. This is exactly what FXS is doing now with all DLC instead of fixing core gameplay. More bells and whistles - less substance.
 
@FearSunn Thanks for the comments. No need to say sorry. It's just my (maybe rambling and or poorly thought out) thoughts, and I appreciate people will disagree and respect that.

I can certainly understand people wanting governments to have more depth and or more trade offs. And, yeah, I'd like that too, and there is definitely some more room for that. I didn't mention it directly, but the lack of cost when changing governments really annoys me. You'd think there would be at least a dip in loyalty or happiness or production when you move from classical republic to oligarchy. I mean, I can't think of many examples where changing government systems didn't cause a few cross words.

I guess my central point though is that I think the core Government system actually works really well in terms of gameplay. And although it could have more depth (e.g. there could be more variation or differentiation between Governors), there's a real limit to what you can do before it all gets too difficult or cuts across what is good, e.g. flexibility.

Not lettting Communist governments run free market is a good example of what's tricky. I get how if you couldn't run that policy based on your government it would create interesting decisions and fits with one view of how governments work. But it also closes off other gameplay possibilities, and I'm not sure it's based in all that much reality - China and Vietnam are pretty free market...

What I think really hurts all these governance systems is that they don't really build on the core governance system in Vanilla, and that original core systems is itself very solid. Really, the only building on the core system is that some policy cards now give loyalty, some cards buff Governors and the new Legacy Cards and (sort of) Dark Age cards; but all this is very limited. The other thing is that a lot of what's been added in R&F - even if it "works" - really lacks flavour, and really pulls you out of the game as a result.
 
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It's easy to get caught in the semantics of history because of the names of the governments and policies. But the governments are really just aimed at different play styles. They could have named the tier 2 governments "Economy, War, Religion" or something.
Personally, I liked that Civ5 BNW had generic ideology names like "order" but I digress.

Dark Age policies are some of the coolest new features of R&F because of their positive and negative sides. Robber barons is an incredibly fun card- monster boosts to production and gold, if you can sustain the amenity hit. Likewise with the earlier ones- they lend players lots of situational power.

Civ6 has a ton of situations where players are choosing between competing bonuses rather than being forced to take a plus and minus. Instead of having a government-card system locking governments out of certain things, it might be more in the spirit of the design philosophy to expand on our legacy cards to include some of these "extremes" of the governments. End result- choosing a certain government (particularly one of ideologies) grants unique policy options, rather than excluding you from any. The mechanics of them could be tailored around what victories of strategies the government is aimed at; they might be flavored towards the name and history of the ideology itself.

I really like the government/policy system, my only current gripe is that they haven't re balanced the card slots among them to reflect the present state of things. (economic slots are worth much more than military slots; with R&F wildcards are worth a lot more too- this heightens the imbalance between say, monarchy and merchant republic.)
 
It's easy to get caught in the semantics of history because of the names of the governments and policies. But the governments are really just aimed at different play styles. They could have named the tier 2 governments "Economy, War, Religion" or something.

I'm glad they didn't. Ancestor's Hall, Warlord's Throne, etc. make me roll my eyes or worse. I wish the development team had picked some government building names from history to give to the Tier 1 government plaza building.
 
I think some of this in terms of your government decisions mattering, especially related to tier 3 governments, is reliant upon late game systems to reflect the differences in ideologies that are not currently there, such as a World Congress and voting blocks. I also think that they missed an opportunity to tie the government into happiness and tourism, and happiness into loyalty, to create a similar effect of what we saw in the late game of Civ 5 where cities could flip due to competing government philosophies.

I also think one possible simple solution for making government plaza buildings more effected by government is to have bonuses applied to the yields of a government building when it matches with your current government (balancing can determine if the bonuses should apply to, for example, every economic government (classical republic, merchant republic, democracy) v. that specific government (merchant republic only).
 
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I don't really like the way governments are implemented right now.

In CIV V (and in the real world) there were consequences if you tried (more like were forced) to change government. It makes sense and it forces you to think and plan in advance wich one you would pick and why i.e. your a committing to a certain type of government (ideology in V) with its own advantages and restrictions that could greatly affect the gameplay. Right now you can change your government every few turns, wich is unrealistic and make the election like its worth nothing to be honest.

There is also not that much of a difference between governments, aside from two minor bonuses and the card slots. Like other have said, there should be some exclusive cards in each, specially in the Tier 3 Capitalism/Communism/Fascism. Either that or increase the amount and/or impact of the bonuses that come with it. It's also ridiculous that you can interchange policies from one to another.

At last but not least, I miss some kind of interaction between Tier 3 Governments and the Loyalty system. Something like if your neighbour has more culture/citizens than you and a different government, he has bonus pressure against your cities as long as both governments remain different, thus forcing you to choose between adopting his government or dealing with loyalty loss.
 
At last but not least, I miss some kind of interaction between Tier 3 Governments and the Loyalty system. Something like if your neighbour has more culture/citizens than you and a different government, he has bonus pressure against your cities as long as both governments remain different, thus forcing you to choose between adopting his government or dealing with loyalty loss.

I'd like to see something that gives a value to tourism besides winning the tourism victory. And I'd like to see more factors influencing loyalty than there are now. I'm not sure the forcing someone to adopt your type of government will have the same impact in Civ 6 as it had in Civ 5, though. In Civ 6, changing government isn't a big deal.
 
@Sostratus I would very much like to see more "Legacy" policy cards, i.e. unique cards that you only have a limited opportunity to grab and, if you take one, you can't take some other. I think FXS could do more with Legacy Cards to get at what others have suggested about x government not being freely able to use card y.

@Trav'ling Canuck Yes, I really hate the Tier 1 building names. I'm fine with the buildings being the "tall strat" one or whatever mechanically, but the utterly generic sounding names really annoy me. The buildings need "proper" names regardless of what ever mechanical role they fill. I'd also really like changing governments to be a bigger deal: I like being able to pivot governments freely, but doing so should have real consequences so you have to manage your empire when you do; e.g. a sudden dip in loyalty or dip in happiness or a risk of spawning partisans.
 
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It's easy to get caught in the semantics of history because of the names of the governments and policies. But the governments are really just aimed at different play styles. They could have named the tier 2 governments "Economy, War, Religion" or something.
Personally, I liked that Civ5 BNW had generic ideology names like "order" but I digress.

Dark Age policies are some of the coolest new features of R&F because of their positive and negative sides. Robber barons is an incredibly fun card- monster boosts to production and gold, if you can sustain the amenity hit. Likewise with the earlier ones- they lend players lots of situational power.

Civ6 has a ton of situations where players are choosing between competing bonuses rather than being forced to take a plus and minus. Instead of having a government-card system locking governments out of certain things, it might be more in the spirit of the design philosophy to expand on our legacy cards to include some of these "extremes" of the governments. End result- choosing a certain government (particularly one of ideologies) grants unique policy options, rather than excluding you from any. The mechanics of them could be tailored around what victories of strategies the government is aimed at; they might be flavored towards the name and history of the ideology itself.

I really like the government/policy system, my only current gripe is that they haven't re balanced the card slots among them to reflect the present state of things. (economic slots are worth much more than military slots; with R&F wildcards are worth a lot more too- this heightens the imbalance between say, monarchy and merchant republic.)

If each government had pluses and minuses, that would make the decisions much better. A great example of that was in Alpha Centauri - each government gave you certain positives and negatives, so you had to balance them. But then on top of that, your faction would give other bonuses, and you had 3 or 4 axis to choose along, so it was all about having them work together. So a police state would reduce efficiency, you either live with that or pick another policy from another group that increased that.

Now, this doesn't work as well in Civ6 as we don't have simple number modifiers to go up and down with, and the cards are much more complex. But maybe instead of each government having a major and minor bonus, instead they had a bonus and a drawback. I mean, they try to do that by not having military slots in the Classical Republic government, for example, but I don't know if that goes far enough. Maybe they need something like "Classical republic: same bonuses as now, but you have no control over which tiles your citizens work". In this way, you're basically "giving government back to the people", however you're giving up control in another form.

And also, I think that now that they have more variety with the wildcard spots given the legacy/dark policies, I would be very tempted to remove the ability to use any policies in wildcard slots, and force you to use only wildcard policies there. You'd probably need a couple more that acted as pseudo-military or pseudo-economy ones, but that would also change the balance. Especially the later tier governments - I stick in Democracy because I know I'll never need to run more than 3-4 military slots even at the worst times. But if I was suddenly allowed to run ONLY 1 military slot to stay in there, that changes the decision entirely.
 
I'm glad they didn't. Ancestor's Hall, Warlord's Throne, etc. make me roll my eyes or worse. I wish the development team had picked some government building names from history to give to the Tier 1 government plaza building.

Seconded. When I heard that one of the buildings was called “Warlord’s Throne,” I was nauseated. I’m playing Civ, not Conan the Barbarian. Even “War Council” would have been better.

I am not entirely happy with the roll-out of the GP. When I first heard they were going to introduce it, along with loyalty, I thought the GP was going to be how Civs managed loyalty points, not get extra perks. The perennial fav Courthouse could have come back into its old function of helping manage a farflung empire, if not through fighting corruption/unhappiness as in older Civ titles, than through loyalty. The Foreign Ministry should relate to envoy influence points, not the rarely used levy option. There just seems to be a missed opportunity here.

As other posters have mentioned, the policy cards should have greater stakes other than opportunity costs. I believe that once you select a certain government, not all policy cards should be available to you, just like you cannot use Dark Age cards during a non-Dark era. For instance, Theocracies should not have the benefit of the cards unlocked by Enlightenment. Classical Republic and God-King are a no-go. I think this could make for more challenging and worthwhile decisionmaking.
 
I like how lots of the new R&F systems work individually. But many of the new systems feel like they were created by totally different people - with a totally different paradigm - to Vanilla.

I like how the Governor system works. But it could have been taken in different directions, and would have fitted with the existing mechanics better.

eg you could have had Governors basically be a unit (maybe one you can’t build, on purchase with faith or gold). They would have had escalating costs, still have promotions, maybe different types of Governors (military focused, finance focused etc), and you’d assign them like spies.

or, eg, they could have worked like great people, but perhaps uniquely they would have still had specialisations and promotions.

I get how you maybe can’t have more than one “Magnus” type Governor, but I really dislike how I can’t have more than one Victor or Reyna. It limits your ability to really specialise your empire, both from a gameplay and roleplaying perspective.

Seriously, why can’t I recruit multiplie war Governors? Or multiple finance focused Governors? The British had great Governors; but I don’t think they ever said “sorry, we can only have one of you good at generating gold, so you over there need to focus on theatre and arts instead and you need to focus on religion”.

Making Governors units or GP would have allowed this. So would keeping the current system, but having the specific Governor selected from a pool of identities (see above). If you had a pool, then you could select another from that pool to cover a duplicate.

More generally, the current “Governance” system seems made up of too many sub-systems, all of which come from different places in terms of design and logic. The result is a lack of flavour (mostly it just feels like “more stuff” all unconnected), slightly undermining the depth and feel of existing systems (eg policy cards) and also a lack of integration and depth overall.

Examples include Governors being “made up” people, when Civ otherwise usually focuses on real world people, and the Government Plaza being a one build district, which really bucks the “cities specialise through districts” logic, because you end up with one district everyone has to build no matter what.
 
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Seconded. When I heard that one of the buildings was called “Warlord’s Throne,” I was nauseated. I’m playing Civ, not Conan the Barbarian. Even “War Council” would have been better.

I am not entirely happy with the roll-out of the GP. When I first heard they were going to introduce it, along with loyalty, I thought the GP was going to be how Civs managed loyalty points, not get extra perks. The perennial fav Courthouse could have come back into its old function of helping manage a farflung empire, if not through fighting corruption/unhappiness as in older Civ titles, than through loyalty. The Foreign Ministry should relate to envoy influence points, not the rarely used levy option. There just seems to be a missed opportunity here.

As other posters have mentioned, the policy cards should have greater stakes other than opportunity costs. I believe that once you select a certain government, not all policy cards should be available to you, just like you cannot use Dark Age cards during a non-Dark era. For instance, Theocracies should not have the benefit of the cards unlocked by Enlightenment. Classical Republic and God-King are a no-go. I think this could make for more challenging and worthwhile decisionmaking.
There would actually be less meaningful decisions if the game were heavy-handed about policy placement. I should avoid God-King and Classical Republic because it is the least beneficial policy there, not because the game forces me. Same with Enlightenment Theocracy policies, I should be able to do it, but really it's a better idea to have merchant Republic with those policies.
 
There would actually be less meaningful decisions if the game were heavy-handed about policy placement. I should avoid God-King and Classical Republic because it is the least beneficial policy there, not because the game forces me. Same with Enlightenment Theocracy policies, I should be able to do it, but really it's a better idea to have merchant Republic with those policies.

Yes and no, though. For example, say I currently would like to run 2 military policies, 1 diplomatic, and 3 economic policies for my middle tier government. With that, I can either run Merchant Republic or Theocracy, and so the only decision that I have to make there is whether I want the faith boost or the gold boost, since I can fit the cards into either one. I mean, sure, there's decisions because they're on opposite ends of the tree, and maybe I'd rather run one than the other later on if I want to swap in more wildcards later, but for my current effective choice, there's no arguments.

However, if certain policy cards were only open in one government or the other, then that totally changes things. If Trade Confederation or Triangular Trade were only available in a merchant republic, then maybe that pushes me down that way. However, if at the same time Feudal Contract was not allowed, then that's a tougher decision whether the merchant republic is still worth it if I did think I might need to build some more troops.

It's the question of whether you want less decisions, but they're a larger/tougher decision. Should the government be about a couple bonuses and a general sense of the civ, or be a truly overarching direction for your empire. And I think right now, the overall government bonuses are too weak to truly matter. At least previously, there was a little more decision in Theocracy vs Merchant republic with the whole faith buying of troops. But since they got rid of that, I find there's very little drawing me from one government to another other than picking whichever one has the most economy slots for me to use.
 
Yes and no, though. For example, say I currently would like to run 2 military policies, 1 diplomatic, and 3 economic policies for my middle tier government. With that, I can either run Merchant Republic or Theocracy, and so the only decision that I have to make there is whether I want the faith boost or the gold boost, since I can fit the cards into either one. I mean, sure, there's decisions because they're on opposite ends of the tree, and maybe I'd rather run one than the other later on if I want to swap in more wildcards later, but for my current effective choice, there's no arguments.

However, if certain policy cards were only open in one government or the other, then that totally changes things. If Trade Confederation or Triangular Trade were only available in a merchant republic, then maybe that pushes me down that way. However, if at the same time Feudal Contract was not allowed, then that's a tougher decision whether the merchant republic is still worth it if I did think I might need to build some more troops.

It's the question of whether you want less decisions, but they're a larger/tougher decision. Should the government be about a couple bonuses and a general sense of the civ, or be a truly overarching direction for your empire. And I think right now, the overall government bonuses are too weak to truly matter. At least previously, there was a little more decision in Theocracy vs Merchant republic with the whole faith buying of troops. But since they got rid of that, I find there's very little drawing me from one government to another other than picking whichever one has the most economy slots for me to use.
You can certainly still buy troops with faith, even having the best of both worlds and doing it under a Merc Republic. Trade Confederation and Triangular trade are on a similar civic path to merchant Republic so there's still a push to join those together. I put more weight on what the governments do and what civic inspirations I have so if I haven't boosted exploration or reformed church I may stay in something else.
 
More negatives and conflicting polcies would be good. Free Market could reduce loyalty, for example (seeing as we cannot simulate massive inequity in civ6).
I support this. It also irks me how you can just run Triangular Trade for 300 years without anybody ever as much as lifting an eyebrow. I don't know if 'Triangular Trade' is generally used as a term to describe anything apart from slave trading (I genuinely don't know, I might be misreading things into this because of language), but to me, it should include something like -1 amenity for each trade route.
 
So, at the risk of wearing out my welcome, can I try to distill a few thoughts here.

Basically, I think there’s some relatively small changes FXS could make that would really enhance governance.

These changes won’t fix everything, or make everyone happy, but I think would still go along way.

- Governments. You choice of Government needs be more weighty, but still retain flexibility. This shouldn’t be hard to do.

- Let players keep switching governments, but when you do, there’s is at least some short term negative; e.g. reduced loyalty, and % risk of partisans.

- All Governments should be grouped by liberty, tradition or honour (or something like that) and should have slightly different (e.g.) loyalty and war weariness considerations based on that grouping.

- So, perhaps, liberty governments (classical republic, merchant republic, democracy) produce slightly more loyalty per citizen, but are hit harder by war wariness; tradition governments (autocracy, monarchy, and communism), get more loyalty from governors and have normal war weariness; honour governments (the rest), get no loyalty boost, but much reduced war weariness and maybe reduced unit maintenance costs.

- Each government group also has maybe one unique casus belli.

- Each Era you get five dedications to choose from; the usual four, plus a fifth determined by your government.

- Policies. Expand legacy cards a little. You get two legacy policy cards when you build a government plaza building; the usual one from your government, and a second one determined by the government building.

- There are also other policy wild cards based around liberty, honour and tradition that you can only use if you’re in a liberty, honour or tradition group government. So, mostly all policy cards are available for all governments (subject to researching the relevant civic), but there are a few restricted cards for each group.

- Governors. Keep these as is, but have some differentiation between them (some give more loyalty that others), and make them provide more loyalty or yields to cities based on experience.

- I’d like to see your Governors identity chosen from a pool of historical persons, but maybe this would be too much work to implement. But at least don’t use the Governors identities for other Civ’s Governors - just use a generic symbol instead.

- Government Plaza. Basically keep this as is, but create an additional “Court House” district you can put in other cities. This provides a regional loyalty boost, have good adjacency, and maybe enhances a Governor when in a city with a Court House and or enhance the bread and circuses project. The Court House building district doesn’t need its own buildings.

- Change the names of the tier one buildings, including culturally appropriate names where relevant (eg Rome builds a Senate not an Ancestral Hall). At some point, let players rename their Government Plaza something (say when they unlock a tier 3 government).

There’s lots of other stuff that would be great, and might well get introduced via the World Congress and Ideologies in the next expansion.

But I think the above would make a huge difference, and (if you agree) hopefull illustrates my point. There’s lots of stuff in Civs governance system that works, it just needs to be pulled together more and made a little more flavourful.
 
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