Judging from your comments and examples, I am guessing you have only played Fallout 3/NV and not the originals?
The game we are building, spans from before F1 right the way through to NV, so some of the assumptions that you made are not entirely fitting.
The first era is set in a pre F1 time frame. You take on the role of a small band of survivors who must build up their little huddle of frightened people to the beginnings of a frontier town and the birth of a Fallout empire. (Unless you play as the Enc or BoS)
I purposely avoided using 'modern' social, political and economic ideas as I do not want them to feel like a clone of the BtS civics. Also the 'general' concept is intentional, I do not want the concepts to be too specific, it is all about the emphasis of where power lies within a given faction. So Military is simply the concept that those who fight the wars also rule the empire. So in a military system, he who controls the army controls decision making, this could be a 'Hawk' party, a general, or the man who inspires legendary devotion in his troops, it is a power that emphasises the power of the gun in the hands of men within an accepted military hierarchy. Strength is simarly but different, it is the 'Alpha Male' mentality, There can be only one! and it is up to them to put down rivals and pretenders through a show of personal strength.
bartering and bottle caps are two very different concepts, bottle caps represent the first evolution of apocalyptic economy, that require everyone to agree on a common market value for a bottle cap, before this moment a chicken was worth what ever anyone would be willing to give you for a chicken, with bottle caps, everyone has to agree that a bottle cap is worth the 'promise' of something else. Bottle caps reward the best scavengers, because if you find a bottle cap it is worth something.
Printed currency is a more 'power centric' form of currency, again everyone has to agree that a particular promisery note is worth something (denoted by the overall power and influence of the issuing group) it allows a power group to control the distribution of wealth within their own sphere of influence, they print the quantity of wealth and distibute it to who they see fit.
Stocks and shares, denotes a focus on land and control of real estate and productivity, the value comes from what a particular company or property can produce of value, a factory that can sell 10 things a month has less promised value than something that can produce and sell 100 things. Military Control, throws out the system of economic value and returns it to a 'legitimate banditry' it simply states, 'If I want what you have I will take it! Whether or not you are still breathing after is up to you'. Strength becomes the only legitimate currency.
For science, I wanted the player to be able to specifiy where the energy of scientific study is focussed, also allowing them to make certain questionable choices to enhance the speed of development if they have a firm control of their population.
What a faction does with the tech will in one way be determined by the specific factions personality (Enclave Bad, Super Mutants Worse)and through unique and civic specific buildings and also if the player wants to spend his cities time building 'public works' or specific buildings to further his own agenda, you decide what you do with the tech, by deciding what to build.
For recruitment, this is about more than just military recruitment, this is about the way you enlarge your population and 'welcome' others into your post apocalyptic family. Do you offer food and shelter, or simply the promise of continued existence if they do what you say. How much power and rights do you give to the individual, refuge is cashing in on the gratitude of strangers for their safety, slavery is simply that you do not give a crap about their well being, they can work for you or they can die, the choice is their's, penal system puts undesirables to work, but with in a frame work of minimal rights. Citizenship is the empowerment of equality, join and receive rights and privileges like everyone else.
I also want to try and avoid a progessive civic tree, by that I mean a new civic is not necessarily a better civic, it depends much more on the situation of your faction, if you have a lot of scavenger camps then scavenging will remain a powerful civic for a long time, but if you have a lot of villages around your towns, they a printed currency would serve you better.
I am still working on what the various civics will actually do in game terms, I need to try and break it down to smaller stages of coding development, starting with the inherrent civic stats, then moving onto how they affect specialists, then move on to speicifc building and unit combos probably... whether all of these things will be available in the alpha release, I do not know.. It depends how far we get with development overall, as to what exact form of 'finishedness' the Alpha release will represent. (and how much work I can con out of my helper monkeys
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