Ideas on New Governments

[Mr. Blonde]

I think that the team surely knows that social engeneering needs an improvement. They invented luxury resources, culture and the civtraits for civ3, but the governments were kept nearly 1:1 from the predecessors.

I look forward that they will improve this system, since there already was the SMAC social engeneering, which everybody I know was very fond of. Maybe it was too easy to switch, but together with the unique fractions and the forbidden choices (no paradigma knowledge for the religious fraction for instance) it was the best system around at this time. (I don´t know Call to Power, maybe it was better there).

All they need to do is a workover in the frame of civ and a balancing of the effects with other changes. I think for instance that the effects of the civtraits have to be reworked when they change the social engeneering.

What impacts should the social engeneering have?
Several which come to my mind are (with big credit to SMAC):
Happiness
Corruption
Commerce
Production
Growth
Unit support
Unit morale
Science output (independend of commerce)
Tax output (independend of commerce)
Culture per citizen (I think that every citizen should produce culture which
would only go to the civs total culture, maybe some
choices would lead to a decrease of culture-think of real
world fascism, communism, theocracy like in Iran,...)

As you can see some impact interferes strongly with civtraits - growth and agricultural, unit morale and militaristic... With this system the civtraits make sense if they prevent some choices or force you to take some choices when they are available. This would lead to little difference between the civs in the beginning as there are less choices but there would be a bigger differentiation in a later stage of the game, though I´m not sure if this is good.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

By the same token though, Mr. Blonde, setting and maintaining certain social engineering settings should be one of many factors in the 'evolution' of civ traits! For example, a commercial civ might adopt a very militaristic policy and set its militarism levels high! This would have the positive effects of lowering war weariness and either (a) speeding up the speed of unit contruction or (b) improving unit training rates. The negative effects would be that this would neccessitate a lower setting in another social engineering trait AND the possible loss of the commercial trait (to be replaced with the militaristic trait!)
Anyway, it does bear some consideration, IMHO!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

A good point. So at the beginning your civs boni would be determined by your initial traits as there are little choices in social engeneering, but as the game proceeds your civ would develop depending on the choices you make.
Imo, there have to be restrictions considering the frequency of transitions and the choices you can take, so that the development is somehow gradually and not too fast. It would be impossible to switch in an instance from a representative, monotheistic, capitalistic and wealth as paradigma government (some form of democracy) to its complete revert a Fascist like government which would for instance be absolutistic, atheistic, communistic and with power as paradigma. This would force the player to plan more long term concerning playstyle and the victory condition you want to meet. You would have to live with your choices longer and you can not play too opportunistic.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The way you would probably do what you describe would be to slowly pare back Sufferage and Libertarianism levels, to ween your people off of democratic principles (i.e. your current sufferage levels might be +3 and +4 respectively, and you drop them back to -1 and -2, respectively, over several turns) Once you have 'prepped' your population, then you can turn around and change to fascism, without major difficulties!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I like that.

Having to ween people towards a very different lifestyle...
Having to make difficult choices about what lifestyle your Civ should lead...

 

[Teabeard]

Maybe there should be sliders that you can only move once every X turns and when you do so there are at first some 'resistance' to the new policies but gradually it dies down and then you can make another incremental change towards the direction you want to go towards.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Alternatively, you could have two other ways of limiting the extent to which you can move sliders:

1) Tech Level and Government Dependant. Each government might have a minimum and maximum setting for each slider. In addition the maximum/minimum setting you might have for each slider might be limited to your current tech level in the area connected to that slider!

2) YES you can move the sliders more than one place in a turn, but the amount of resistance and unhappiness you encounter will increase for each additional place you move it! This might be exacerbated depending on your civ traits!

This way, a leader who had encouraged great wealth and happiness in his nation might have much greater latitude for making major reverses in the peoples freedoms and attitudes!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[rhialto]

For many of these government choices, a binary slider isn't logical. Notice that SMAC had 4 different choices for each aspect, none of which lent themslves to being a slider. A green economy is not simply a more extreme socialist economy, it is qualitively different from socialist, controlled, and capitalist schemes.

 

[dh_epic]

Yeah, doesn't have to be a slider, could be a radial or drop down menu.

I think combining an economic model (Free Market, Re-Distributed, Socialist, Green, Regulated) with a political model (Direct Democracy, Representative Democracy, Elected Monarch, Oligarchy, Spiritual Leader) and a few other civil choices (Police State, Welfare State, Collectivist State, Father Knows Best State, Libertarian State, Consumerist State) ... this could really correspond with the tech tree. Discovering new ideas on how government or economy or human rights ought to be ensured would open up a new option.

I'm still keen on sliders equally as much though.

 

[GrendelS]

Just one important governtment-type missing in there -- Fundamentalism/Theocracy. It should probably be similar to Fascism, but have a lower corruption, higher support ability and higher support costs, as well as some sort of penlty to Science and to other, non-Fundamentalist, governments (if religion is implemented, always at least Polite toward Fundamentalisms of the same religion).

Theorcracy as a form of government is missing, but your characterization is far from being realistic. Similar to Fascism, well, debatable, as everything that doesn´t depend on the power of the people can be fascist - but lower corruption, excuse me, what planet do you live at??
Penalties to Science might apply, but if you look to real world examples, Iran is not really behind in developing nuclear weapons. About your last point: Real life politics is basicly machiavellian, pragmatics rule - if I can ensure my power over my country, I´ll make an agreement with the devil. ;-)

 

[dh_epic]

I think the problem with Civ when it comes to autocratic governments is that you have complete control over your civilization ANYWAY. An autocratic government in real life, corruption is more than losing a few gold here or there. It is a constant, ongoing threat to the order of the government that could fall at any moment. Under a democracy, the government accomplishes much less, but there's more order and less threat to the order of it because of it.

Until you model that, there is no disadvantage to being machiavellian, and no advantage to being gracious.

 

[rhialto]

@dh_epic
The solutipon to that is that autocratic govs should have higher corruption than democratic ones. However, democratic govs should have a % chance each time something is finished that the city leaders demand that a particular building be produced in their city. Of course, you don't have to build that in the city, but unless and until you start building it, the city suffers from war-weariness-style unhappiness. The happiness advisor would then say something like, "Sir, the people are unhappy because you are denying them their democratic rights".

 

[dh_epic]

Corruption is not enough. As of now, it's more of a nuisance -- it's never stopped me from winning, let alone expanding. And there's talk of eliminating corruption.

But I think the whole idea of "democracy weariness" is a killer idea. A lot of people have talked about "forcing" the user to do stuff under democracy, because the people want it. I think the biggest problem with this is that it takes control away from the user. But in this case, with unhappiness being the motivator, the user can still make the choice themselves -- but there's an incentive to behave differently in a democracy than you would in a fascist country. I think this is a killer suggestion, rhialto.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I like the idea of your people being able to try and block your decision making in democracies and republics-as I have so often said before.
Personally, I think the chance of being blocked by your people should depend on how much 'sufferage' you give them, as well as how much your decisions chime with their own goals. This can be, in part, dictated by your civs traits, so that a commercial civ will be much more likely to support decisions you make that increase the wealth of your cities, wheras religious civs might be more supportive of decisions which increase the influence of religion within your society! This can even extend to your foreign relations, and support for war, peace and/or any other diplomatic relationship. You can ignore your peoples wishes, of course, but this will reduce happiness levels-as has been suggested previously. Do this too often, and you could be looking down the barrel of a rebellion and/or civil war!
As for corruption, I think it would be unwise for Firaxis to 'throw the baby out with the bathwater', as they say.
Instead, I think it is possible to make corruption more effective AND less tedious to deal with. Firstly, 'corruption' should be seperated out into crime, corruption and waste. Government and 'relative' distance should still be a factor in all three determinants of 'Corruption', and 'relative distance' can be reduced through improved technologies. Overcrowding, unhappiness, poverty, and legalism/libertarianism levels should all contribute to crime levels. Wheras excessive luxuries, wealth and legalism/libertarianism levels should help to contribute to corruption. Tech level and city size should contribute to waste. Waste, corruption and crime should also all be reducible through the building of appropriate wonders and improvements, and the assignment of specialists.
Lastly corruption should primarily bite into a cities per turn income, with a minor effect on shields/food. Crime should effect primarily shields and food, with a minor effect on the cities per turn income. Waste should effect primarily shields and, to a lesser extent, food-and produces pollution.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Xanthippus]

I don't like the idea of more units, more techs, more options,...
it makes the game more difficult to play and to balance. The essence is the way you conquer (diplomatically, military, demographically, ...) the world. Adding fifteen governments would not change the game. It makes it only harder to understand the game and to balance it...

I do. The more techs, the more units, the more governments: the better. I love complexities and really loooooooong, drawn out games. But each to their own.

The point I am making is that there will always be two sides of the argument, and a compromise on the matter might leave both unsatisfied - too much for one, too little for the other. Seeing as, in the event Firaxis decided to make the game more complex, they would have to do the work anyway, perhaps they could include two modes: Simple and Extended (or Complex/Advanced/etc.) The Simple game can remain closer to the original, plain Civ game, and the Extended game can include all the new additions. That way, everyone is happy.