Genius Design in Civ5 should come to Civ7

[Bonyduck Campersang]

No, it isn't. You made a mistake. A grave one. YOU SPOKE!

Ah, but I've been silent-er, which means my opinion is more authoritative than yours at least

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Please stick to the topic of discussion and cease the thread spam.

 

[pdome01]

I was certainly no huge fan of Civ 5, especially at launch. Felt too board gamey compared to previous titles, and lacked features. After all the expansions, added content, and even Ideologies it really turned into quite a fun game. Hopefully I didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings by using the word Ideologies? Well just call it the I word.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Personally, I wasn't really a fan of how ideology was treated mainly as a way to simulate the diplomatic tensions of the cold war and/or WW2. I would much rather have ideologies expressed as some form of simplified equivalent to the social class system seen in various Paradox grand strategy titles, most notably the one in Victoria 3.

The way I would depict ideology as a mechanic, would be to have each citizen subscribe to one of five different ideological factions (one for each corner of the political compass plus the dead centre of it), based on where they're stationed and what other citizens they're neighbouring. On top of that, each social policy would have a positive/negative modifier associated with at least one ideological faction each, with said effect's strength determined by the respective faction's prominence within the civilization. Perhaps the different factions should also have pronounced attitudes towards the different victory conditions as well.

I don't know, I feel that when making a game like Civilization, it's generally better to draw inspiration from sociology and anthropology rather than from history. History is about what did happen, and Civilization is a game about what can happen

 

[GeneralZift]

Personally, I wasn't really a fan of how ideology was treated mainly as a way to simulate the diplomatic tensions of the cold war and/or WW2. I would much rather have ideologies expressed as some form of simplified equivalent to the social class system seen in various Paradox grand strategy titles, most notably the one in Victoria 3.

The way I would depict ideology as a mechanic, would be to have each citizen subscribe to one of five different ideological factions (one for each corner of the political compass plus the dead centre of it), based on where they're stationed and what other citizens they're neighbouring. On top of that, each social policy would have a positive/negative modifier associated with at least one ideological faction each, with said effect's strength determined by the respective faction's prominence within the civilization. Perhaps the different factions should also have pronounced attitudes towards the different victory conditions as well.

I don't know, I feel that when making a game like Civilization, it's generally better to draw inspiration from sociology and anthropology rather than from history. History is about what did happen, and Civilization is a game about what can happen

The system they took in Civ5 was one of convenience not necessarily accuracy, I think it's just far easier to have people pick what Ideology they want rather than an alternative system where the Ideology is decided for you based on your people.

At the end of the day the result is the same, your country has an ideology, but how you get there would be more difficult and tedious if you had to manage citizen's individual ideologies.

I reckon a system where each policy has an ideology it's associated with is still good, I like that part of your suggestion, so obviously Police State gives you bonus points towards Dictatorship for example.

The important part of the Ideology system is the butting heads of players and the conflict of interests across the game map

 

[Gori the Grey]

Like the OP, I thought it was genius game design. You on your own can rarely have sufficient counter-pressure (culture) to counterbalance two blocs exerting pressure on you at once, and the happiness hit that you took really made you scramble. So you would sometimes pick one, get the huge happiness bonuses, but as soon as the world shook out, it wasn't sustainable, and you had to shift.

I think that basic structure could be replicated throughout the game to put up a more natural obstacle to snowballing than the age-reset that 7 plans to use.