Ideas for Civ6: Combine Civics and Social Policies

[Pavo1313]

I realized that after trying Civilization V and being disappointed with it, I became a little obsessed over what I would do to make an amazing Civilization VI. I decided to write up my ideas and share them and see what other think. The results have been split up and placed in several posts like the one below.



Civics and Social Policies – I would love to simply combine Civ4 and Civ5. I liked the feeling in Civ4 that I was choosing different government types but I like the ability to build upon different policies in Civ5. So I would propose having developable Civics. For the sake of explanation, I am going to call the larger government choices such as democracy, liberalism, or socialism “civics” while I will call all of the components that you can discover within those civics “policies”.

You would get to discover civics by collecting enough total cultural points, in the same way that you discover technology with science points (like Civ5). I am distinguishing total cultural points from global cultural points mentioned above in that it will be the total value of the culture in all of your cities after they have been modified by the buildings you have in your cities.

The point of all of this would be to create games in which you had to chose which government types to develop. You could always switch to undeveloped civics during the game, but they would not be as good as they could be if you had developed them. At the end of the policy tree within every civic, there could be a Utopian Value, which could benefit your civilization even when the government changed and that would lead to a Cultural Victory once you collected enough of them, as is currently the case in Civ5.

 

[killmeplease]

i like the utopian value idea
maybe it should be a buildable project like the Utopia
that could be built after a certain policy tree (civic) got fully developed.
e.g. Arc De Triumph for Honor, Big Ben for commerce, Statue of Liberty for Freedom, Louvre for Patronage, Taj Mahal for Tradition, Parthenon for Liberty, etc
or these wonders could simply require completed trees

 

[Camikaze]

I think the social policies kinda do incorporate the government types as civics did, just not necessarily as explicitly. You have Universal Suffrage in the Freedom branch, for instance, or Theocracy in Piety. I guess the issue is that with limited social policy picks, some areas of governance are sometimes not covered. But I don't see this as too much of an issue.

The Utopian Value idea is quite interesting, but I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean by it. Could you explain it in more detail perhaps?

 

[Pavo1313]

@killmeplease: Having a wonder attached to each utopian value could be interesting. So maybe rather than having to devote more culture to getting it, you build it in a city. If you get enough of these wonders, you win. The only possible problem I see with this is that it would seem to require so many extra wonders, or it would require gutting most of the wonders that are triggered from the tech tree. That’s not an insurmountable challenge but it’s something to consider.

@Camikaze: It is true that the policy trees in Civ5 do have some aspects of government in them but somehow they never felt as fulfilling to me as definitively changing from one form of government to another. That may just be a personal preference.

The utopian value was simply supposed to be a more expensive civic at the end of each tree that benefits you even when you switch from that government. That benefit would be similar to but perhaps better than what the other policies within each civic were providing. When you get enough Utopian Values, you complete your Utopia and win a cultural victory.

So, for example, maybe the Utopian Value at the end of Theocracy could be Fundamentalism, and it could give you a benefit similar to what you were receiving from the other policies within the Theocracy civic even if you change to Free Religion. The UV at the end of Federation may be Federalism. Etc…

I guess I can also take this time to throw out specific civics for which I was hypothesizing about how they could work. As I said, a lot of the overall ideas are simply taken from Civ4 and expanded with policy trees so a lot will be familiar. And actually, because you are probably familiar, If the effects of the civic are similar to one of the other Civs, I’ll just label them with which one.

Govt:
Democracy – less corruption
Monarchy – Civ5 + may provide benefits w/ colonies
Federation – Reduce city’s cultural territorial expansion costs in large civs.
Oligarchy – production benefits
Fascism – Civ4?

Social:
Authoritarianism – Use military to suppress unhappiness
Slavery – Cheap workers. Can enslave defeated units
Feudalism – Civ4
Caste System – Civ4
Liberalism – Culture Bonuses + more immigration?

Economy:
Agrarian – food bonuses
Free Market – bonuses from transit charges (see post on economy)
Mercantilism – Civ4
Humanitarianism – more happiness and health (things like universal healthcare)
Socialism – no income from transit costs, can tax and redistribute production?

Religion:
Paganism – can get religious cultural benefits from citizens without any major religion
State Religion – culture and happiness among citizens with official religion
Theocracy – extra money and production from citizens with official religion
Rationalism – science, more culture from non religious sources
Free Religion – can get religious cultural benefits from people of all faiths in city


And wow, I seem to be good at writing novellas for my posts.