So I was browsing through the forums and saw this:
I started writing a response, but it eventually grew long and convoluted enough that I decided it could use its own thread. Anyhow!
I feel like it's true that certain aspects of the Revolutions Mod would have to change in order for it to work in FfH, but I also think there are many aspects of FfH that would let this be even better (read: be even more epic) than it is in the original Revolutions mod. So I figured I'd explain my position here. It's a bit long and complicated, but so is Revolutions.
--------CIVICS
It seems to me that the only Government-type civics should determine your base stability. The least stable would be City-States, the most stable would be Despotism, with Republic and Aristocracy falling somewhere in the middle. (God-King and Theocracy would be situational, depending on distance from capital and the religions of individual cities, respectively.)
I agree with the view that this is a dark fantasy mod, and as such should not require you to adopt Liberty and other wussy civics to stabilize an empire. In this game, what you need is Despotism-- where random imprisonments, secret police and public displays of torture keep nobles and peasants both in line. Rule through fear, Machiavelli-style! The downside, of course, is the fact that Despotism would hemmorhage your economy while you're using it, which means it would be purely a temporary solution until you can get your people to stop whining.
On the opposite end of the scale, City-States is an economical way to manage a large empire, but your cities will tend to break away from you at the slightest provocation. This will work nicely as a rubber-banding effect, forcing large empires to either stop conquering and consolidate once in a while, or else switch to Despotism and make a bid for world domination whilst their economy bleeds.
The general theme is that the more centralized/tyrranical your government is, the better control you have of it, but the less productive your citizens would be. Mind, Liberty would still have its place-- the culture bonus would be good for causing your neighbor's cities to revolt. Also Dark-Fantasy-ish!
---------DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CIVS
Some civilizations love war in FfH, some civs hate it. So it seems to me that we'd have a sliding scale from "Peaceful" to "Warlike" that every leader would have a value for. Warlike civs would have less stability generally, but recieve a greater and longer-lasting temporary boost to stability from conquering cities. Peaceful civs would be the opposite-- they could hold together large empires, but don't have much of an impetus to conquer other peoples for the sake of popularity (and in fact conquering could even be DE-stabilizing for peaceful civs.) It seems to me that this scale doesn't have to have anything to do with alignment (the Bannor, for example, would be more warlike than the Sheaim.)
It also seems to me that we could have each religion, when adopted, give a small but significant modifier to the civilization's base value on the scale.
This system would have the neat effect of having huge empires being built up by civs like the Clan, and then those empires shattering into smaller states when it runs out of opponents it can conquer.
The Overcouncil shifts you to the "Peaceful" end of the Peaceful-Warlike spectrum. Undercouncil has no effect on stability (although I'm thinking that certain of its resolutions could decrease stability in non-UC, or possibly non-Esus civs.) Oh! Or, you could have this reduction of stability be an effect of a Council of Esus-only civic. The opportunity to play vulture with your neighbors would most definitely outweigh the lack of brute power in the religion as a whole.
--------REVOLTS SPAWNING NEW CIVS
Revolts will happen under the command of leaders whose alignment is different from yours, possibly under a Minor Leader of your civ (exception: Illians, the leaders of whom there should only be 1 at a time). And revolts will ALWAYS happen if you change your alignment, with the Rebel Civ being under the old religion/alignment. New civilizations spawned will also get an Adventurer unit, or possibly just a regular unit with the Hero promotion, to assist in its breaking away from the main civ. Breakaways will occur in such a way as to get a mix of alignments; if there are mostly Good civilizations in the game, most of the new civilizations will be under Evil and Neutral leaders, and vice-versa. This will help continue creating conflicts throughout the game, and will prevent situations where all the civs are buddy-buddy with each other (as sometimes happens).
If we wanted to let this work with the Infernals, there would need to be a cap on the population they can have in a city-- it's not much of a "revolution" if the rebels have taken a Size 1 Despero right next to a Size 150 Dis, and having them take Dis instead would just be unfair. Call it a cap of 25 or so. And in fact, I tend to think the Infernals should start revolting HUGE amounts when their empire gets sufficiently large, as Demons are not known for their cooperative tendancies (and, of course, there's the rubber-banding justification, since Hyborem tends to be a monster in the late game if he gets up and running with a decent supply of Manes-- it's really not enough of a challenge when you're him, and especially would be a problem in these very long-lasting Revolutions games. No, if you want to be demons in this mod you've got to EARN your domination win!) This being a dark fantasy setting, I also think it'd be really epic if you were forced to align yourself with the likes of, say, a rebelling Duke Sallos for the sake of bringing down Hyborem's vast empire. The Minor Leaders for the Infernals also look pretty damn cool, so there's that.
As the AC rises, the tendancy for new civs to rise up out of old ones should increase dramatically. Large, established empires don't like Armageddon in the slightest. (Exception: Sheiam/Infernals do not get this penalty, although the infernal's baseline stability will be quite low anyway. Regular AV civs are affected by it, but to a lesser degree.)
I also like this Revolutions mod idea because it means that even in multiplayer games, AIs still exist to use and manipulate (giving a justification for the Overcouncil civic, for example, to get buddy-buddy with the minor computer players.)
---------MINOR LEADERS MOD:
Okay, you can't tell me this wouldn't be awesome. If you're Flauros of the Calabim, you could easily find that you've overextended your vampiric empire and have ended up in a war with Elijah Arnould or Mahon the Butcher. EXCELLENT.
------------------ANYWAY:
Mind, I only do XML, so I'm unsure how viable any of this stuff actually is-- but it doesn't, at least on its face, seem much more complicated that what a simple conversion to the Revolutions mod would entail, especially since most of what I suggest are just minor modifications to what already exists in the Revolutions mod. But I do feel that it has potential to be a very epic addition to FF, so I figured I'd throw these ideas out there to see if any of them catch.
I started writing a response, but it eventually grew long and convoluted enough that I decided it could use its own thread. Anyhow!
I feel like it's true that certain aspects of the Revolutions Mod would have to change in order for it to work in FfH, but I also think there are many aspects of FfH that would let this be even better (read: be even more epic) than it is in the original Revolutions mod. So I figured I'd explain my position here. It's a bit long and complicated, but so is Revolutions.
--------CIVICS
It seems to me that the only Government-type civics should determine your base stability. The least stable would be City-States, the most stable would be Despotism, with Republic and Aristocracy falling somewhere in the middle. (God-King and Theocracy would be situational, depending on distance from capital and the religions of individual cities, respectively.)
I agree with the view that this is a dark fantasy mod, and as such should not require you to adopt Liberty and other wussy civics to stabilize an empire. In this game, what you need is Despotism-- where random imprisonments, secret police and public displays of torture keep nobles and peasants both in line. Rule through fear, Machiavelli-style! The downside, of course, is the fact that Despotism would hemmorhage your economy while you're using it, which means it would be purely a temporary solution until you can get your people to stop whining.
On the opposite end of the scale, City-States is an economical way to manage a large empire, but your cities will tend to break away from you at the slightest provocation. This will work nicely as a rubber-banding effect, forcing large empires to either stop conquering and consolidate once in a while, or else switch to Despotism and make a bid for world domination whilst their economy bleeds.
The general theme is that the more centralized/tyrranical your government is, the better control you have of it, but the less productive your citizens would be. Mind, Liberty would still have its place-- the culture bonus would be good for causing your neighbor's cities to revolt. Also Dark-Fantasy-ish!
---------DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CIVS
Some civilizations love war in FfH, some civs hate it. So it seems to me that we'd have a sliding scale from "Peaceful" to "Warlike" that every leader would have a value for. Warlike civs would have less stability generally, but recieve a greater and longer-lasting temporary boost to stability from conquering cities. Peaceful civs would be the opposite-- they could hold together large empires, but don't have much of an impetus to conquer other peoples for the sake of popularity (and in fact conquering could even be DE-stabilizing for peaceful civs.) It seems to me that this scale doesn't have to have anything to do with alignment (the Bannor, for example, would be more warlike than the Sheaim.)
It also seems to me that we could have each religion, when adopted, give a small but significant modifier to the civilization's base value on the scale.
This system would have the neat effect of having huge empires being built up by civs like the Clan, and then those empires shattering into smaller states when it runs out of opponents it can conquer.
The Overcouncil shifts you to the "Peaceful" end of the Peaceful-Warlike spectrum. Undercouncil has no effect on stability (although I'm thinking that certain of its resolutions could decrease stability in non-UC, or possibly non-Esus civs.) Oh! Or, you could have this reduction of stability be an effect of a Council of Esus-only civic. The opportunity to play vulture with your neighbors would most definitely outweigh the lack of brute power in the religion as a whole.
--------REVOLTS SPAWNING NEW CIVS
Revolts will happen under the command of leaders whose alignment is different from yours, possibly under a Minor Leader of your civ (exception: Illians, the leaders of whom there should only be 1 at a time). And revolts will ALWAYS happen if you change your alignment, with the Rebel Civ being under the old religion/alignment. New civilizations spawned will also get an Adventurer unit, or possibly just a regular unit with the Hero promotion, to assist in its breaking away from the main civ. Breakaways will occur in such a way as to get a mix of alignments; if there are mostly Good civilizations in the game, most of the new civilizations will be under Evil and Neutral leaders, and vice-versa. This will help continue creating conflicts throughout the game, and will prevent situations where all the civs are buddy-buddy with each other (as sometimes happens).
If we wanted to let this work with the Infernals, there would need to be a cap on the population they can have in a city-- it's not much of a "revolution" if the rebels have taken a Size 1 Despero right next to a Size 150 Dis, and having them take Dis instead would just be unfair. Call it a cap of 25 or so. And in fact, I tend to think the Infernals should start revolting HUGE amounts when their empire gets sufficiently large, as Demons are not known for their cooperative tendancies (and, of course, there's the rubber-banding justification, since Hyborem tends to be a monster in the late game if he gets up and running with a decent supply of Manes-- it's really not enough of a challenge when you're him, and especially would be a problem in these very long-lasting Revolutions games. No, if you want to be demons in this mod you've got to EARN your domination win!) This being a dark fantasy setting, I also think it'd be really epic if you were forced to align yourself with the likes of, say, a rebelling Duke Sallos for the sake of bringing down Hyborem's vast empire. The Minor Leaders for the Infernals also look pretty damn cool, so there's that.
As the AC rises, the tendancy for new civs to rise up out of old ones should increase dramatically. Large, established empires don't like Armageddon in the slightest. (Exception: Sheiam/Infernals do not get this penalty, although the infernal's baseline stability will be quite low anyway. Regular AV civs are affected by it, but to a lesser degree.)
I also like this Revolutions mod idea because it means that even in multiplayer games, AIs still exist to use and manipulate (giving a justification for the Overcouncil civic, for example, to get buddy-buddy with the minor computer players.)
---------MINOR LEADERS MOD:
Okay, you can't tell me this wouldn't be awesome. If you're Flauros of the Calabim, you could easily find that you've overextended your vampiric empire and have ended up in a war with Elijah Arnould or Mahon the Butcher. EXCELLENT.
------------------ANYWAY:
Mind, I only do XML, so I'm unsure how viable any of this stuff actually is-- but it doesn't, at least on its face, seem much more complicated that what a simple conversion to the Revolutions mod would entail, especially since most of what I suggest are just minor modifications to what already exists in the Revolutions mod. But I do feel that it has potential to be a very epic addition to FF, so I figured I'd throw these ideas out there to see if any of them catch.
So staving off warlordism in a dictatorship would not be impossible, especially since the leaders in FFH are quite powerful and charismatic simply as individuals, even without their armies backing them up.
