ModMod Theoretical Discussion: Governments

[Sneaks]

Before you guys go further into buildings and such, I think you need to take a step backwards.

Right now there are a dozen or so ideas floating about, some temporary graphics, and the idea of a Governance yield. However, there is yet to be a solid concept of WHAT all of that does together. What I find most useful is to try to type up a short description of how the new function would work in the course of a game.

Some things to consider:
You are creating a yield. Is there a penalty for not having Governance? Is Governance simply a "Culture" yield for government policies?

Stability has been brought up. Will governance control stability in some way? Does it exist more in non-puppet cities? Have you thought of ways to make the AI handle this?

Balancing is a very fine process. Adding a new system with a new yield that adds new policies in the form of governments WILL imbalance the game. Remember that for every boost to science, culture, gold, and production, you are causing the game to go by faster, eras to get shorter, units to obsolete faster.

As I said, start with the rough sketch of what it all does before you start worrying about the names of things.

 

[Thalassicus]

If you add a mod version of culture, will it be like a normal yield? I want to know because I was planning a wonder that added +1 culture to all sea tiles but it didn't work.

Culture is a yield with CiVUP so this easy. I added a few lines of code to "CiVUP - Events.lua" for version v108.5 beta; this type of wonder (or building) is now possible.

 

[Sneaks]

GOVERNMENTS

The Governance Yield

Governance is a specific yield created by Government buildings and civics.


Government Policies - Civics

Civics shall be a Policy system based around the Governance yield.

Civics shall have up to 3 levels of possible implentation:

1. Government System - Each civilization shall be allowed to adopt 1 type of Government at a given time. That government will have minor benefits and detriments.
Arbitrary example - Oligarchy: +5% , -5%

2. Civics - Civics shall determine national policy on a given issue. Civics available depend on governments present.
Arbitrary example - Foreign Policy options
Isolationism - CS relations decay 50% faster. Internal trade routes produce 10% more gold
Interventionism - Soldiers receive a combat boost in foreign lands, 5% boost to unhappiness.
Imperialism - Combat boost when attacking city-states, Policy costs increased by 5%
Pragmatism - Gold bonuses to CS produce 25% more favor, Military and Defense buildings cost 5% more to build
Idealism - CS bonuses increased by 20%, Military unit upkeep doubled.

3. Ordinances - City level governance. Used to construct small bonus buildings in said city.
Arbitrary example - Ordinance: Public Park. - +1

Government Buildings

The Governance yield shall be initially attained through buildings. Initially, there will only be 3 chains of buildings:

1. City Government - Town Halls, City Halls, etc.
2. National Government - National Wonders - Parliament, Congress, etc.
3. World Wonders - No idea!

The specialists able to work these buildings will be Civil Servants

The great person created from Civil Servants will be some sort of Great Leader, which can build an improvement that makes more governance, and perhaps allows the adoption of a civic?



Anyhow, this is all just rough draft nonsense meant to help give you guys a cheatsheet on how to move forward.

 

[Pouakai]

World Wonders could be:

Parthenon
Capitol Building
Beehive ( )
Buckingham Palace / Westminster Abbey
Doge's Palace

 

[albie_123]

Sneaks, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as what I was planning was concerned, the only difference being, I hadn't really considered the 'civics' system. My only issue here is that if civics are available to more than one government, we're really cutting back on the uniqueness of each, so, I'll think about it.

 

[mitsho]

That's the general structure, as I got the impresion. We just didn't write it down like you did.

However, what your description is missing is the purpose of the new system. You write "each government shall have minor benefits and detriments". I agree, but the important question here is imho wether these governments shall be designed for different playstyles, victory conditions, "yields" or whatever else? And then in a second stop the general outline of the various options, and I strongly propose a "gameplay" (as opposed to a "history") approach.

But yes, that's the correct way.

Question regarding the ordinances. So they are buildable/buyable with Governance? That gives an interesting addition to the yield. Of course it opens other questions as wether these ordinance buildings exist regardless of government or what happens to balance (happiness ubiquitos now?)

Also you make no mention of how the governments change which I think is the heart of the new system, because the effects of Anarchy/REvolution have not really been spoken about. The Civic System you mention also needs its relations to the governments cleared as well as the general options (playstyles, etc. you get the drift) nailed down.

Another new building could be the Clock Towever btw. which is a stable in Early Modern/Industrial Cities and would fit in with the government line (As well as the ordinance).

 

[bwoww78]

the important question here is imho wether these governments shall be designed for different playstyles, victory conditions, "yields" or whatever else? And then in a second stop the general outline of the various options, and I strongly propose a "gameplay" (as opposed to a "history") approach.

to agree with the above and with Sneaks previous post, i would argue in the initial modmod the govt types follow directly with playstyle types (i.e. peaceful tall, peaceful wide, conquerors) and victory conditions. Gameplay would trump history (at least initially) until more sophistication can be incorporated into the new modmod system. To compensate, govt types can be linked to techs to scale to historic trends...

Question regarding the ordinances. So they are buildable/buyable with Governance? That gives an interesting addition to the yield. Of course it opens other questions as wether these ordinance buildings exist regardless of government or what happens to balance (happiness ubiquitos now?)

Also you make no mention of how the governments change which I think is the heart of the new system, because the effects of Anarchy/REvolution have not really been spoken about.

this would give a use for the yield distinct from culture. and if changing govt's zeros out the accumulated gov/law yield, then that could represent anarchy/revolution.

likewise, anytime you have less than a certain level of gov/law yield, it could affect happiness (negative modifier, if possible, say a global -X% happiness per turn for X number of turns). That said, i'd be careful not to add the reverse effect in the form of global happiness plus from stability via high gov/law yields---the benefits of higher gov/law yields would at this point be from the ability to construct buffed civics buildings.

 

[Sneaks]

The plan is to have most Ordinances give excessively minor yields and or abilities.

As for the Civics thing, I just happened to list every option I thought of available for Foreign Policy. The idea will eventually be that if you choose Dictatorship as your Government, maybe Idealism and Pragmatism are greyed out as options. Democracy might grey out Imperialism, etc. This is by FAR the smartest way to deal with civics, as it means you have to code in far far fewer, making governments unique but not overly so.

As for the government change thing, I honestly just did not flesh out how such a system would operate.

 

[albie_123]

Not going to go into any more detail, than, here you go:

These are the proposed civics. As far as the Government effects themselves, I dunno yet, to be perfectly honest.

 

[Sneaks]

Pretty good!

I definitely like the system, with a few worries. State Atheism would probably handicap any AI that took it, though in essence I like the civic.

 

[Atlas627]

I love the graphics!

A few things though, some gameplay, some flavor:

Gameplay:
I think Isolationism should give extra happiness from your own resources (+1 per resource) instead of the trade route thing. Not +1 from all resources, just your original ones (not from traded)

Police State and Censored Media seem to be very close. It will be a pain to determine which one is actually more effective. Perhaps change one of them? How about Censored Media decrease golden age cost and decrease culture? And Police State reduces the unhappiness per city but increases the unhappiness per person?

OB gold is very little anyway, how about Barter Economy lessens (or removes) internal trade route gold?

Command Economy and Free Market seem too similar. I know they are opposites, but shouldnt we want cool effects? How about Command Economy increase production and increase golden age cost, while Free Market gives +1 gold on tiles that give 4 already and decrease production while constructing units.

Are soldiers just all non-vanguard units? For militia, I mean.

And is there the option to not take a civic?


Flavor:
Mercantilism should be the other way around.


Just throwing some ideas out there. This is excellent so far!

 

[albie_123]

There is an option not to take a civic, hence why there is no "plain" civic available at first.

It is likely that I'll make the AI unable to choose, or at least very unlikely to choose, any of the 'extreme' policies, such as State Atheism, at least until they make sense for the AI.

 

[bwoww78]

Command Economy and Free Market seem too similar. I know they are opposites, but shouldnt we want cool effects? How about Command Economy increase production and increase golden age cost, while Free Market gives +1 gold on tiles that give 4 already and decrease production while constructing units.

Free Market could buff Great Person production (or just Great Merchants?). the unit production decrease could still work.

 

[albie_123]

So, effectively, where we stand now is here:

- We have a system which could very well work.

- We have an outline of the yield ( Governance), buildings which produce said yield, and the value / purpose of said yield.

- We have a general idea of what policies and governments will do when enacted.

The difficulties we have now, are:

- Implementing this yield in an intuitive way into the UI

- Implementing the Civics and Governments in a way intuitive to the UI and to the player

- Getting the AI to at least get a basic grip on civics and governments.

All of these are possible, it comes down to how well I can actually code it in the game.

A good example of all of the above is the Cultural Capitals mod, which I have been using as a reference.

 

[Sneaks]

I would probably recommend building a new UI from scratch for this. It is inherently different from cultural capitals in setup, and it should be quite easy to build a decent UI for it.

 

[albie_123]

Oh no, I agree. I merely meant that it's good to see how someone else did it - I am building this from scratch, because:

a. It allows us to actually create a UI catered to our needs

b. It's just good form

I haven't used any code from any existing modification.

 

[JohnS]

Hi, new forum user here, long time fan of the mod, and very excited to see governments being implemented.

I just have one fear - that the government system will be too similar to the social policies system. The current culture system does cover what governments did in previous games quite well, and so far the proposed government systems sounds very similar (saving up a yield and spending it on civ-wide effects). I think it would be a shame if governments just ended up being a similar system of bonuses running parallell with SPs. It would be boring if the difference would be in name-only.

There's one small change that I think would make a big difference in thematically separating governments from social policies, and that is how the yield is gained. If I understand it correctly, you now want players to gain Governance (or whatever you choose to call it) from buildings, similarly to how culture is gained. I propose a different system:

I understand that governments and civics are supposed to be separate - that civics represent what laws we choose to implement, whereas governments represents how we implement those laws. If Governance then is supposed to be a measure of ruling power, then this could be represented in-game by making civic changes consume Governance, like you propose, but make government type affect how Governance is gained.

For example, in a democracy, if people are happy with your rule, you will have an easier time governing: this could be represented in-game if democratic governments gained Governance depending on how happy the population is. A monarchy will have an easier time ruling if the population is constantly reminded of the majesty of the king, and so might gain Governance for each culture building.

I understand if you want specific buildings to give Governance as well (it would make sense), but then (1) it becomes very similar to culture and (2) there's an opportunity cost that may intrude on the current game, especially if you add many buildings. I think it would be more fun if governments were fundamentally different from each other and from the social policies system, and one way of representing this would be different types of Governance gain.

 

[albie_123]

Hm. I like the idea.

It will require a bit of rewriting code as far as it goes, but, that's fine - my code at the moment is shoddy at best. I'm finishing up my Uni work though, so, I'll have a lot more time open soon enough.

I think that while Governments changing how you gain governance is a very, very good idea, and one I hadn't really thought of, it will be very hard to implement in a way which enhances the governments' play styles.

For example, switching to Fascism is effectively forcing yourself to play in a conquest-oriented playstyle. This could work with your idea, maybe more governance is gained depending on captured cities? The only issue is, there's only a benefit to be gained, and no detriment.

In other words, where policies are meant to be slight nudges in a certain direction, be it Cultural, Militaristic, Expansive, etc., Governments - or at least how I envisage them - are ways of greatly enhacing one playstyle while greatly diminishing the benefit of others.

EDIT:

Also, a question I've been meaning to ask:

Do people feel that Governments, or, for that matter, Civics, should be discovered at certain techs, or should all be open from the get-go?

I feel that, personally, from both a gameplay and flavour perspective, they should be available at the start. On the flavour side, part of the fun in a Civ game is seeing an 'alternate history' - and there are plenty of examples of governments which strongly resemble the modern fascist nations of our era, or that had such modernist policies as free speech, emancipation and pacifism enacted, or at least considered. On the gameplay side, it also makes it much easier to balance, along with providing an option for all styles of play from the beginning of the game. Some civics were designed with this in mind: Slavery, for example, is extremely useful early game, as it allows you to pump out your first one or two workers quickly. But after that, it will only detriment your growth, and so, is not really viable. Command Economy is an example of the opposite: It is pretty detrimental early game, but after time, in a well developed city, can easily result in more gold.

 

[bwoww78]

For example, in a democracy, if people are happy with your rule, you will have an easier time governing: this could be represented in-game if democratic governments gained Governance depending on how happy the population is. A monarchy will have an easier time ruling if the population is constantly reminded of the majesty of the king, and so might gain Governance for each culture building.

Despots/autocrats could gain governance through combat (via experience gained or at a flat rate per attack). If culture pushes monarchy, that kind of short changes theocracy, but you could have each gain at different % of culture gained and one benefit from wonders built while the other from # of social policies selected or something like that.

That said, perhaps specific policy branches could also provide a small (% bonus or flat) gov yield (ie. Piety to theocracy, tradition to monarchy, etc). It could be just via the openers so as not to unbalance or weigh too heavily on the SP system.

But then again, maybe I'm backing up again into blurring govt type and social policy selection...

 

[albie_123]

I'd like to keep Governments and Social Policies completely unrelated from one another, for now at least.