Ideas for a Broader Civic System

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hi guys,

Well, I have to say that I am VERY happy about this new Civic System-it is going to allow for a lot greater flexibility! That doesn't mean that we can't expand it even further. Without knowing exactly how much will be possible with the games editing tools, I have gone ahead and put together a list of Civics Categories and Choices-namely Government, Philosophy/Ideology, Organisation, Rights, Legal, Labour, Economics and Religion.
What I would like to know is if people would be interested in looking at the list, and then posting suggestions for possible effects for them. Obvious things to consider, from what we know of the game, might be:
-possible associated Improvements, Wonders and Units.
-Happiness and Health bonus and penalties.
-Birth Rates of Great People.
-changes to City Maintainance costs.
-Bonuses/Penalties to Culture, food, hammers, gold and food.
-Free specialists.
-Trade bonuses/penalties.
There may be others, but these are the most obvious.

Anyway, I have started with a list of the possible impacts of Ideological choices, but anyone who would like to make alternate suggestions and/or contribute ideas for the other categories, then I would very much appreciate it. Thanks in advance !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Holistic]

Is it possible to make the civics choices change over time? For instance, could Despotism become Dictatorship once the prerequisite tech is discovered, Paganism evolve into Atheism (though Secularism might perhaps be a better name?) and Plutocracy into Aristocracy. Republic, if available early on, could initially have penalties that are ideally offset by running Slavery economics (and vice versa). Perhaps rename Democracy to Parlamentarism? Corporatism as an economic civic instead of Bureaucratic?

Perhaps the ideology-category should be renamed Justification of power (or something like that). Having any state ideology would seem rather incongruous running Republic, Democracy or Anarchy.

Anyway, I'd lose the negative food and the bonus entertainer for Plutocratic ideology, in order to cause more problems with happiness, and perhaps add a modest experience bonus instead of a bonus soldier for Militarism. Theocracy should make Pagan, Free Religion and Atheism unavailable.

 

[Che Guava]

You never cease to amaze me in the detail you put into your ideas

I gotta say, at first glance, I like it all. What I'd like to see is the choices you make in terms of government relected on the types of choices you can make during the game. For instance, if you have a devolved, free market democracy, you should not be able to build city improvements, just buy them. I know that might sound a little drastic, and might betray some of the central tenets of the game, but I've always felt that the downsides of democracy (particularly when yu're playing an agressive game) are too downplayed in civ3. I'm a firm beleiver that the best system of government would be a benevolent dictatorship, but I feel like the penalties in production and trade you incur from chosing an autocratic form of government make it too difficult to compete in certain areas.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hmmm, Benevolent Dictatorship in my system would probably be:

A Federal Socialist Dictatorship-with Universal Rights, either a Judicial or Environmental legal system (the latter predicated on the existence of the former), a Unionised Labour Force, a Welfarist economy and Free religion.

What would that give us in gameplay terms though??? I would say reduced maintainance costs from being federal, reduced war-weariness and increased unit support from being a dictatorship, and a bonus farmer, civil servant and labourer from being Socialist. The universal rights would grant bonus happiness and health (to cancel out the negatives caused by dictatorship), and the judicial law system would produce a bonus happy face and/or boost the effects of jails and courthouses. a unionised labour force would grant a bonus hammer and a bonus happy face, whilst generating -1 gold. A welfarist economy would generate a bonus health and a bonus happy face, and either increase maintainance costs or -1 gold. Lastly, the free religion would have a happiness boosting effect-as it already does in the standard civic system.

So, overall your Benevolent Dictatorship would be:

-happier, healthier and more productive, but monetarily poorer.
-Would be able to conduct wars for longer and cheaper.
-overall, though, this combo of civics choices would be very costly to maintain, as well as requiring a fairly high level of enlightenment (tech level).

How does that sound to you Che?

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Che Guava]

Quite good

Just a thought on federalism: in real life, I think any national gov't loathes giving out federal powers because it limits thier control. In the game, however, the player controls everything and doesn't have to give up control. YOu therefore get all the benefits of decentralization (less corruption, less costs) without having to really give up anything...unless that is what you're trying to represent with the [-1 health, -1 beaker, -1 happiness] in federalism...

[oops! I misread, that should be FEUDALism in the last sentence..so my question stands...]

 

[apatheist]

I gotta say, at first glance, I like it all. What I'd like to see is the choices you make in terms of government relected on the types of choices you can make during the game. For instance, if you have a devolved, free market democracy, you should not be able to build city improvements, just buy them.

I support that. Actually, you shouldn't even build many city improvements at all. Barracks, sure. But no building of temples if you're a freedom-of-religion free market government. No building of factories in free markets.

I know that might sound a little drastic, and might betray some of the central tenets of the game, but I've always felt that the downsides of democracy (particularly when yu're playing an agressive game) are too downplayed in civ3. I'm a firm beleiver that the best system of government would be a benevolent dictatorship, but I feel like the penalties in production and trade you incur from chosing an autocratic form of government make it too difficult to compete in certain areas.

Are you saying this from a realism perspective or a gameplay perspective? I disagree in either case.

This can't happen in this iteration of the game, especially with current CPUs, but I'd like to see something a little deeper. I'd like to see these things actually get modelled rather than simply being a list of advantages and disadvantages attached to an arbitrary label. I'd like to see it change not just how the player plays, but what the player does to manipulate his nation. Rather than saying "free markets: +2 trade in each city, -1 happiness," I'd like to see that one person in Beijing is a spice producer and becomes unhappy with the switch to free markets because he's making less money than he would under a protectionist state because his countrymen are now buying cheap spices from India.

I'd like a state-controlled economy to require the player to purchase luxuries and distribute them through direct control (with automation to help the tedium), while in a free market system, the buyers and sellers operate independently and the goods flow naturally.

I'd like a democracy to make poorer people happier because they are less likely to be conscripted, be sold into slavery, can express themselves freely, etc., while (a smaller number of) richer people would be less happy because they are smaller fish in a bigger pond. Each citizen (population point) would have various attributes, like education, prosperity, vocation, religion, ethnicity, etc. that can get perturbed by the action of a particular civics choice.

Instead of leaping directly to approximate results, in other words, I'd like the game to model each citizen as an independent actor operating in the environment you design. That way, instead of having 5 choices in 5 categories, you could really get creative and design all kinds of social engineering policies with deterministic (though not necessarily realistic) results, because you're not defining the results, you're calculating them. In some ways, this would be easier for an AI to handle than the current approach, though I'm sure it has complications of its own.

 

[Matches10]

One of my more radical models sort of does away with, at least, the capitalist-socialist concept as far as civics goes and puts it into actual practice. You don't just SAY you're a socialist civ, you ARE a socialist or capitalist (or, more likely, mixed) civ based on the rate of tax you set.

It doesn't quite solve the problem of a central government building a temple, but it could easily implemented. Under the new model, each city has two build queues, one "local" and one "national". "Local" represents private and locally-funded construction, national represents nationally funded/mandated constuction. This way you could have the temple option disallowed for national constuction if you are are a "free religion" civ.

The problem with my model is that it is modeled on a system of wages, and would have to somehow be adapted to labor systems such as slavery or even serfdom.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well one thing I was thinking of, as I drew up my list of Civics Options, was the need for a broader economic model to go along with it-perhaps something along the lines of Meleager's model.
Even a very basic tax system could work though-to perhaps 'pay' the cost of more 'socialist-welfarist' civic choices.
For instance, a simple solution might be to have each city carry a gpt value of (total net gold from tiles, improvements and specialists)*(Population*Specialist Earning Power)/N (with N perhaps being based on game difficulty. This is the value of each city if you have a tax rate of 100%. Unfortunately, the closer to 100% you set your taxes, the worse your nations happiness and 'health' becomes, with perhaps the effect being increased under more democratic government types. Note that this would be alongside, not instead, of the 'tax' sliders for culture, revenue and science. i.e. your actual tax system would determine a good-sized portion of the money you have to allocate to science, culture and general revenue.
Another factor which your Government, Labour, Economic, Organisation and Philosophy civics could effect, then, is a 'tax penalty'. i.e. perhaps those in Plutocratic, Free Market societies will become unhappier about their tax settings at a lower level than someone living in a Socialist, Welfarist one.
Anyway, just some extra thoughts.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[apatheist]

You don't just SAY you're a socialist civ, you ARE a socialist or capitalist (or, more likely, mixed) civ based on the rate of tax you set.

Oh, it's gotta be much more than that. Taxation is but a tiny facet.

 

[Matches10]

Perhaps in reality but - as far as gameplay is concerned there's never really been any dichotomy or really discussion at all about socialism as a governing ideology in the game. We're seeing some steps here with civics but never has there been any option. It seems hard enough to even define what socialism is in most circles so obviously working these ideas into a game like Civ is going to be on a very superficial level. That in particular is why I think a sliding scale makes a bit of sense - few places are entirely capitalist or entirely socialist even if you can get two people to agree what those terms mean.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

This is true, Matches, but that certainly doesn't stop nations from calling themselves Socialist, which is part of what that civic category is all about-labels-whilst at the same time providing some 'in-game' benefits, in the form of free specialists, and penalties. These benefits and penalties, of course, are heavily dependant on whatever other choices a player makes in other civics categories-so just because you call yourself socialist, doesn't stop you from adopting slavery !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Meleager]

Looks good, Aussie. Best thing is that it shouldn't be that hard to mod.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Thanks Meleager. Yeah, from what I have seen of the civics options so far, the underlying 'code' is already there, which makes things easier from the get go (i.e. the free specialists are already a feature of certain civics choices, so it is just a question of altering the parameters).
One thing I would like to do, though, is have Slavery actually generate a 'free' slave specialist in each city, but also tie that slave to something negative-like, instead of a 'Great Person', if you generate enough Slave 'great people' points in a city, then there is a chance that the city will undergo a 'Slave Revolt'-imagine Spartacus as a 'Great Slave'-and go 'barbarian-also, have slave specialists increase the negative impacts of emancipation in other nations. It may be possible, but it sounds much more difficult than what I have previously proposed here.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Meleager]

have slave specialists increase the negative impacts of emancipation in other nations.

Wouldn't slave specialists increase the negative effects of emancipation on your city rather then vice versa?

Yeah I beat apatheist to 1000 posts. I'm a real nerd now. ... umm, I mean

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Oh sorry, I wrote that wrong. What I meant was-every slave specialist you have in a city should increase the negative impacts to that city when another nation adopts the Emancipation civic. So, yes you were right !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Oh, and congrats on being the bigger nerd, Meleager, though what does that make me with my 3,000 odd posts?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Everyone,
Well, I have moved a step closer in the development of the broader civic system, and have created a range of effects for the different government choices. Boy it is a LOT harder to balance these suckers than I had originally though, but I am getting there.
Rights should be fairly easy to do-as it will encompass either an ever increasing 'happiness/health' or 'happiness/culture' effect, with Universal Rights having the added impact of acting like Emancipation. The costs would be in terms of increased risks of spy missions and simply the high civic maintainance cost of better rights.
Legal will sucessively boost the benefits of legal improvements and, in some cases, will generate a bonus Civil Servant-as well as possibly reducing the effects of spy missions. The downside is that they also can increase the cost of legal improvements, cost happiness in some cases AND, like Rights, the higher ones come with a higher civic maintainance cost.

Anyway, any thoughts and suggestions on what I am putting forward here will be VERY much appreciated as always !

 

[apatheist]

Perhaps in reality but - as far as gameplay is concerned there's never really been any dichotomy or really discussion at all about socialism as a governing ideology in the game. We're seeing some steps here with civics but never has there been any option. It seems hard enough to even define what socialism is in most circles so obviously working these ideas into a game like Civ is going to be on a very superficial level. That in particular is why I think a sliding scale makes a bit of sense - few places are entirely capitalist or entirely socialist even if you can get two people to agree what those terms mean.

A tax slider with one end labelled "Capitalism" and the other labelled "Socialism" is worse than nothing.

Yeah I beat apatheist to 1000 posts. I'm a real nerd now. ... umm, I mean

I aim for quality over quantity.... *cough*

 

[Che Guava]

Are you saying this from a realism perspective or a gameplay perspective? I disagree in either case..

Are you saying you don't want to come and live in my country?

Instead of leaping directly to approximate results, in other words, I'd like the game to model each citizen as an independent actor operating in the environment you design. That way, instead of having 5 choices in 5 categories, you could really get creative and design all kinds of social engineering policies with deterministic (though not necessarily realistic) results, because you're not defining the results, you're calculating them. In some ways, this would be easier for an AI to handle than the current approach, though I'm sure it has complications of its own

I'm in total agreement! Managing a civilization should be a balancing act: keeping some people happy all of the time, but never all of the people all of the time. Having a game where each citizen acts as an independent actor would make for an exciting game where internal conflicts and pressures would finally come to be equal with foreign affairs. Giving more identity to each citizen (race, religion, social standing) would maki for some very interesting situations: E.g. your poor german minority in a border city of yours is unhappy with your current capitalist economic model, and threatens to revolt. You could change to please them, but then risk upseting the rich Persian majority you have in your capital..etc etc etc..

 

[Sullla]

Hi Everyone,
Well, I have moved a step closer in the development of the broader civic system, and have created a range of effects for the different government choices. Boy it is a LOT harder to balance these suckers than I had originally though, but I am getting there.

Yep, you're going to have to put a LOT of playtesting into any extra civics columns added in order to make sure that individual options aren't unbalanced. And if the ones that ship with the game haven't been balanced properly by Firaxis, we should reserve the right to whip them into shape.

 

[HourlyDaily]

Its good to see you putting your ideas into practice, even at this stage Aussie.

I think that the labels and the effects of each choice, as Firaxis have done, are all we can really expect to be implemented in the game. Unfortunately it seems modelling civics choices at a deeper level will take plenty of skill and plenty of time to get right. And the effects on AI turn time could be exponential depending on how the individual citizien calculations take.

Until that happens (and if it does,) I will certainly be using Aussie's new civics system when its availiable. And if thats only on a superficial level, I won't be bothered at all.

Good luck digging through the .xml, and well done to everyone else for contributing sensible thoughts (at least until I stuck my head in and contributed nothing.)