Governments in Civ 5

[The_CatSnack]

Does anyone know how governments will work in Civ 5? I loved civics in Civ 4 (and even more in alpha centauri) but from what I gather in this Civ, there will be no revolutions as such - the beaurocracy simply evolves as you unlock more technologies. Does anyone know for sure?

 

[Ahriman]

There are no governments as such; Civ4 civics are replaced by social policies.

We don't know a lot about the details of social policies.

There are 10 categories of social policies, including Tradition, Liberty, Freedom, Autocracy, Honor (military bonuses), Commerce, Piety, Rationalism, and 3 more whose names I forget.

Trees are unlocked gradually over time.

Each tree has 5 policies within them, which each give a benefit - Tradition includes an Aristocracy policy that gives a ~+30% bonus to wonder production, for example, and an Oligarchy policy.
These policies are somehow "purchased" with culture, and once you have a policy you retain those benefits.

Some trees block others, so you can't improve both Autocracy and Freedom at the same time.

Check out some of the other threads that talk about social policies.

 

[migkillertwo]

There's a "social policy tree" which contains 10 branches, each of which have 5 policies. Culture is generated by the empire as a whole and is no longer produced by individual cities. Because of this, culture points are spent on persuing certain branches of the policy tree, and every policy gives certain bonuses. So it's more about persuing certain branches of the social policy tree rather than choosing different government styles from a smorgasbord of governments, like it was in Civ IV or Civ III