Genocide and other Atrocities

[sir_schwick]

I think we can all agree that 'ethnic cleansing', gassing civilians, genocide, religious genocide, and all other such actions are true atrocities. However, ignoring them in civ is actually a dishonor to those who were victims of these atrocities. Forgetting history is not a progressive attitude, and these things happened for a reason and at a time. Progress elminated them, not ignorance. With that intro, here is what I mean for gameplay.

Scapegoating:
Governments throughout history have been guilty of using ethnic or religious scapegoats for whatever bad time, depression, war, or in general their rape of the country. You might have to do the same to appease your population if you use too much forced labour or have to increase taxes or such. Here are the mechanics. You first initiate a program that will make a certain ethnicity or relgiion, or combination, a scapegoat. This program will take 10 turns to reach effects.
Any scapegoat citizen will instantly have an unhappy face. All citizens in a city with the scapegoats will have a happy face. Each turn their is a percantage chance(No. of non-scapegoats/no of scapegoats) in a particular city that violence against the minority will be so great the pop point is lost. In that case the minority group in that city has double the unhappiness for 10 turns. Civs whose majority demographic is your scapegoat will have poor attitude to your government.
Once lynchings occur frequently enough in your civ, the scapegoat will start demanding rights, which doubles unhappiness until you being programs to end the descrimination. It will not be civ wide, but will grow from the epicenters.
Eventually you will want to end scapegoating, especially if the group appears in larger numbers or it is just too disruptive to your civ or you don't need it. If the scape-goating lasted for long, it takes a lot longer to end. The base time is 10 turns. Every 10 turns the descrimination occured adds one turn to the turn-around time. EAch mass-lynching adds 1 turn. During the transition the scapegoats are still as unhappy, but the non-scapegoats only get half the happy faces.

I have more ideas but cannot type right now. Discuss please.

 

[Colonel]

i like this but not as much detial. Lose some of the extra detail

 

[ManOfMiracles]

Although I'm not fond of this whole concept, there is historical justification for it. I think there should also be some anti-culture associated with it; either the city garners no culture points for a length of time, has negative culture points for a time, or refuses to produce cultural improvements for a time.

 

[Dr. Broom]

It is a good start but you left out the genocide. Genocide would be a double edged sword in CivIV. Good parts would be things like higher culture, decreased war weariness and less corruption. There would be bad parts too such as the nations who's people you are killing would get annoyed if they found out, it would cost a lot to do because you would have to use propaganda and such but it should be cheaper if the group you are killing was your scapegoat for a while and then obviously the possibly crippling dent to your population depending on how many of the genocidees you have. There should be an option to keep the genocide a secret at extra cost but if one of your cities gets taken over then there is a chance whoever took it will find out about the genocide and if that city has been commiting genocide then that chance would rise enourmously.

 

[ybbor]

doesn't this already exist in the facism government?

 

[Dr. Broom]

No, actually it doesn't

 

[warpstorm]

The fascism forces you to lose two population per city representing this. They gave it teh whitewashed name of "forced relocation", but the population points are gone.

 

[Dr. Broom]

I know you lose 1, 2 or 3 pop points but you don't get to choose which type of population to lose and if you have a city of 20 with 5 of them being people you want to get rid of then too bad because you only got rid of 3 of them. All it is is pop loss and no other effects we are speaking of a new game concept not just population loss. Additionally, civs who's people you killed don't care at all and the bonuses from Facism are just from the government itself nothing really resulting from the killings. It is an uninterestingly shallow representation for an elaborate issue.

 

[dh_epic]

A few things:

1. Before the modern era, this should be perfectly legal. After the modern era, there should be serious penalties.

I know it's pretty teleological and eurocentric, but I can't think of any other way to reflect the gradual change in attitude about war. It used to be "the spoils of war are yours, and there's no such thing as an innocent casualty on your enemy's side". Now you can see just how much moral highground and respect a nation loses when there are innocent civilian deaths.

2. Genocide, forced relocation, scapegoating, and slavery will all mean very little unless ethnicities have different attitudes and roles in your civilization.

Just simple calculations, like how happy they are, how they feel about the war. This way you can find out "damn those enslaved Americans are being a nuisance, time to take out the garbage".

3. Assimilation will need more thought.

Some peoples are easily assimilated. Some less-so. But these dynamics can't have a one-size fits all approach. All automatically calculated by the system, genocide and other atrocities would slow down the assimilation process. Assimilation would be the ideal solution to a pesky ethnicity, whereas persecution would be the quick but hazaardous fix.

Moreover, a civilization like the Greeks was hard to assimilate into Roman life. Why? Because they had a strong cultural identity (language, architechture, philosophical thought). Simply, in Civilization, the more culture points a Civ has, the harder it should be to assimilate. The printing press is a huge turning point for this, since it allowed many oppressed peoples to express themselves and show unity -- so the printing press should generate a culture point in every one of your cities.

4. Genocide and other atrocities will have more meaning, and seem less bigotted and contraversial, if it targets factions as well.

Why stop at enslaving the Americans living in your Roman empire? Might as well send the intellectuals off the internment camps, and kill 50% of your commercial population. It's the only way to stabilize your fundamentalist religious empire, afterall.



Just food for thought, in manageable, bite-sized chunks. PS: I think the sanitized language should be "Government Pressure".

 

[sir_schwick]

A few things:

1. Before the modern era, this should be perfectly legal. After the modern era, there should be serious penalties.

I know it's pretty teleological and eurocentric, but I can't think of any other way to reflect the gradual change in attitude about war. It used to be "the spoils of war are yours, and there's no such thing as an innocent casualty on your enemy's side". Now you can see just how much moral highground and respect a nation loses when there are innocent civilian deaths.

2. Genocide, forced relocation, scapegoating, and slavery will all mean very little unless ethnicities have different attitudes and roles in your civilization.

Just simple calculations, like how happy they are, how they feel about the war. This way you can find out "damn those enslaved Americans are being a nuisance, time to take out the garbage".

3. Assimilation will need more thought.

Some peoples are easily assimilated. Some less-so. But these dynamics can't have a one-size fits all approach. All automatically calculated by the system, genocide and other atrocities would slow down the assimilation process. Assimilation would be the ideal solution to a pesky ethnicity, whereas persecution would be the quick but hazaardous fix.

Moreover, a civilization like the Greeks was hard to assimilate into Roman life. Why? Because they had a strong cultural identity (language, architechture, philosophical thought). Simply, in Civilization, the more culture points a Civ has, the harder it should be to assimilate. The printing press is a huge turning point for this, since it allowed many oppressed peoples to express themselves and show unity -- so the printing press should generate a culture point in every one of your cities.

4. Genocide and other atrocities will have more meaning, and seem less bigotted and contraversial, if it targets factions as well.

Why stop at enslaving the Americans living in your Roman empire? Might as well send the intellectuals off the internment camps, and kill 50% of your commercial population. It's the only way to stabilize your fundamentalist religious empire, afterall.



Just food for thought, in manageable, bite-sized chunks. PS: I think the sanitized language should be "Government Pressure".

1) Very good point about the legality of persecution. A bit eurocentric, but then what is not about Civ. Maybe certain global conventions could be convened similair to the Geneva Convention. This could be used by more tolerant powers as a way to cripple other countries relations or work around peace-niks internally when attacking human rights abusers.

2) Ethnicities are naturally at odds with each other. Scapegoating is an easy way to make the majority of your people happy. However, it will also severely detract immigration of minorities in general, even if they are in the clear. Maybe you could also extend short-term actions against those who are unhappy for reason 'x' meaning, war, persecution of minorities, foreign nationals in occupied territory, etc.

3) True, assimilation should also be able to occur in reverse. The Romans practically inherited Greek culture as their own. Even though the Greeks were not independant, they were the dominant culture of the Mediterranean through the Romans. Reverse-assimilation would not flip cities, but rather change the direction of cultural developement.

4) This would be hard to do, unless you started to define who was what. Interesting idea though.

 

[ManOfMiracles]

Moreover, a civilization like the Greeks was hard to assimilate into Roman life. Why? Because they had a strong cultural identity (language, architechture, philosophical thought). Simply, in Civilization, the more culture points a Civ has, the harder it should be to assimilate. The printing press is a huge turning point for this, since it allowed many oppressed peoples to express themselves and show unity -- so the printing press should generate a culture point in every one of your cities.

Printing press should generate culture or help resist assimilation only if your civ has a certain level of literacy. If no one can read, what good is it?

 

[sir_schwick]

Printing press should generate culture or help resist assimilation only if your civ has a certain level of literacy. If no one can read, what good is it?

Two problems with this sentiment.

1) Demographs are not tracked very accurately or realistically in civ. You would have to have a major overhaul of the system for it not to be abused severely.

2) The Printing Press helped to raise literacy considerably, because books were then much cheaper to manufacture.

 

[dh_epic]

Moreover, you don't necessarily need a literate population to see books influence it. Transmitting your ideas around the world to only the elite intellectuals, it still does a lot to cement your nation's values and ideals among the illiterate population.

Nationalism isn't even possible without the philosophers, writers, artists, musicians expressing some kind of ideal.

Why do you think "Freedom" is such a beautiful, wonderful word in American music?

I think the factions idea is possible, based on an idea Aussie ran by in another thread (I think it was "addressing your people", but not sure). Not too complicated.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Can't be bothered to read thru the entire thread, so forgive me if this already have been suggest, but how about, to represent Vietnam-like situations, representative gov'ts took extra War Weariness for commiting atrocities (razing cities, bombing civilians, disbanding slave workers)? To compensate, WW from defensive war could be lessened.

 

[dh_epic]

I think that's a pretty good idea, Last Conformist. Makes a lot of sense, and makes for more strategic choices in government and war.

 

[Dr. Broom]

A few things:

1. Before the modern era, this should be perfectly legal. After the modern era, there should be serious penalties.

I know it's pretty teleological and eurocentric, but I can't think of any other way to reflect the gradual change in attitude about war. It used to be "the spoils of war are yours, and there's no such thing as an innocent casualty on your enemy's side". Now you can see just how much moral highground and respect a nation loses when there are innocent civilian deaths.

2. Genocide, forced relocation, scapegoating, and slavery will all mean very little unless ethnicities have different attitudes and roles in your civilization.

Just simple calculations, like how happy they are, how they feel about the war. This way you can find out "damn those enslaved Americans are being a nuisance, time to take out the garbage".

3. Assimilation will need more thought.

Some peoples are easily assimilated. Some less-so. But these dynamics can't have a one-size fits all approach. All automatically calculated by the system, genocide and other atrocities would slow down the assimilation process. Assimilation would be the ideal solution to a pesky ethnicity, whereas persecution would be the quick but hazaardous fix.

Moreover, a civilization like the Greeks was hard to assimilate into Roman life. Why? Because they had a strong cultural identity (language, architechture, philosophical thought). Simply, in Civilization, the more culture points a Civ has, the harder it should be to assimilate. The printing press is a huge turning point for this, since it allowed many oppressed peoples to express themselves and show unity -- so the printing press should generate a culture point in every one of your cities.

4. Genocide and other atrocities will have more meaning, and seem less bigotted and contraversial, if it targets factions as well.

Why stop at enslaving the Americans living in your Roman empire? Might as well send the intellectuals off the internment camps, and kill 50% of your commercial population. It's the only way to stabilize your fundamentalist religious empire, afterall.



Just food for thought, in manageable, bite-sized chunks. PS: I think the sanitized language should be "Government Pressure".

Some interesting ideas but I do think that genocide should not be a hazardous solution, maybe expensive in the way of gold and certainly population, but there should be an option to use propaganda effectivly in order to reduce unhappiness due to genocide among your non-persecuted population. If you use your propaganda like Hitler, Stalin and to an extent the Roman Emporor Nero did well enough it should even increase happiness among non-persecuted citizens. For this to work correctly though there should already have to be an existing hatered for your genocide victims. For example if you play as England and you have a consistant rivalry with the Zulu, your non-Zulu citizens would start to hate the Zulu living among them and the Zulu living in your empire would start to hate its other citizens making them an easy target for genocide. On the other hand you have had peaceful relations with the Greeks so it would be much harder and take more time and money to get your people to help you prosecute Greeks in your empire.

Genocide and Prosecution(treating a faction badly without killing them) would obvoiusly be on the opposite side of the scale of things like assimilation and toleration but the scale should be about even. So what I am saying is that Genocide and/or prosectution may not be a good option in real life (since real people have feelings and all that) but in the world of Civilization it should be a decent option. Don't make it too handicapping or else nobody will use it and we will end up with another situation where doing things one way is always better again, reference to Communism/Democracy duopoly and settler rush is always better than building a few cities and focusing developement on them. We always need both sides to be good options in order to preserve initial value as well as replay value of the game.

 

[dh_epic]

Hitler, Stalin, and the emperors of Rome all experienced massive amounts of resistance -- even from non-persecuted citizens. Especially in the modern age, where the foundation for universal sufferage and the UN (with human rights) are already spreading into mainstream consciousness, you'll see entire nations divided between those who support persecution and violence in the name of security, and those who believe there is a better way to acquire prosperity.

Not to mention that in the modern age, there are and WERE huge reprocussions for Hitler and Stalin.

I think a penalty is appropriate. But the penalties should not outweigh the benefits. Like I said, the penalties should be in the form of diminishing popularity, and in the case of the modern age there should be even greater penalties (in the form of UN intervention, or just lowering your score).

 

[Dr. Broom]

Hitler, Stalin, and the emperors of Rome all experienced massive amounts of resistance -- even from non-persecuted citizens. Especially in the modern age, where the foundation for universal sufferage and the UN (with human rights) are already spreading into mainstream consciousness, you'll see entire nations divided between those who support persecution and violence in the name of security, and those who believe there is a better way to acquire prosperity.

Not to mention that in the modern age, there are and WERE huge reprocussions for Hitler and Stalin.

I think a penalty is appropriate. But the penalties should not outweigh the benefits. Like I said, the penalties should be in the form of diminishing popularity, and in the case of the modern age there should be even greater penalties (in the form of UN intervention, or just lowering your score).

Hitler and Stalin were both loved in their countries except by the people they were prosecuting and a small minority of others. Maybe you misunderstood but I was saying that the penalties shouldn't outweigh the benefits. In the modern age I can see UN intervention unless most UN nations are similar to yours in the way of not caring about human rights and such but it really shouldn't lower your score just because of your playing style.

 

[sir_schwick]

Here is my prospective on the cost/benfits of persecution, since genocide is just the ultimate act of persecution. It should be the option in teh Ancient Era, and much more costly in the Modern Era. As peoples are enlightened and socially progress, more and more will find problems with persecution in general. It will not be a bad thing in the mOdern Era if you have been persecuting for a while. Also, over time countries will become more likely to declare war or make coalitions to stop persecution.

 

[dh_epic]

I think the question at the heart of it is this: Do you believe that modern distaste for genocide is teleological, or do you think it could have turned out some other way?

I might agree with you that it could have turned out some other way... but the reality is that Civ has movements like Universal Sufferage, the UN, and Environmentalism built in. If Civ were complex and advanced enough to let the modern era turn out differently, that would be cool. But scientific evolution is teleological in Civ, and thus so is the mainstream attitude towards genocide, women, ethnicities, and the environment.

The idea of having a UN where everyone gets together and says "Way to go, man, great job on the genocide" is just impossible. The UN's very fundamental existence is based on the equality of nations. If there's a hierarchy of nations with one dude trying to conquer the world, the UN doesn't exist. The world order is "answer to me", not "United Nations".

As a second point, there is no reward for playing peacefully. None. Zero. Not in Civ 3. This makes ruthlessness inherently more profitable. This is not the case in reality, and because of that the Civ game gets pretty boring in the modern age (which in my opinion is one of the most exciting times in history).

Do you know what would if a real nation were as ruthless as the best Civ player? -- since we don't have a time limit at 2050, or a homogenous "do what you like" policy to leadership?