More Realistic Democracies

[Tboy]

I find it strange that you can rule a 'Democracy' as a virtual dictatorship. I therefore propose that these changes be made:
1. After the concept of democracy is discovered by any nation, citizens under other governments start becoming unhappy due to to want of freedom, and this gets worse over time.
2.Democracies should have elections-either randomly chosen or influenced by game features-and with certain parties elected you must do certain things e.g. If the green party is elected, no buildings that produce more than 2 pollution.
3.War must be agreed upon by the Parliament/Senate/Congress and have good reasons e.g. Continual breakage of treaties.

 

[Kayak]

Now this is an interesting idea. But what benefits do you give to counteract this? Hardly anyone uses demo now as it is. Reduce control more and it will be DOA.
Another thought. You could take this all the way down to city level in Rebublic. An indivual city could refuse to make military units because it's leaders were anti war!

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

I like it, but make democracy stronger, so it is a viable form of government. Maybe more resource bonuses?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Very simple solution guys:

1) Make it so that the base happiness levels of cities in a Republic or democracy are higher than under Feudalism, Fascism or Dictatorship. The level of citizen happiness can be boosted further still by increasing your peoples 'Sufferage'. This happiness boost would, generally, translate into greater wealth, higher productivity and lower crime and corruption.

2) Just because the PLAYER might not want to choose democracy, doesn't mean his people don't as well. After all, if most real-life leaders had their way, I doubt that they would retain democracy either. Basically, if a player refuses to change to a government the people demand (based on the Heirarchy of preferred governments for each civ, and the most influential faction in your society at present) then there is a very great risk of a revolution or civil war (in my model, a revolution is when a particular social 'faction'-such as workers or clerics-rebel against you in the majority of your cities, wheras a civil war is when specific cities seek to break away from your rule, regardless of their 'factional' make up).

3) Related to (2). Changing to a government which your most influential faction DOESN'T like (or is less preferred in your civs 'preferred government' heirarchy) is also a recipe for civil war or revolution-as would frequent 'back and forthing' between government types. These two solutions would greatly encourage players to adopt government types that might be bad for them from a victory perspective, as well as encouraging greater governmental diversity between civs, and greater government stability within civs (as opposed to the monarchy/republic, democracy/communism switch that occurs between war and peacetime).

4) Another benefit of being a democracy, though, is that your international reputation rise at a faster rate than in other government types-especially with other democratic governments. Many democracies would even be willing to overlook radically different religion and culture if you are also a democracy.

5) The down side, though, is that as you increase sufferage (irrespective of the government type you are in) you get less and less control over your decisions. Cities can overrule you on choices of what improvements to build and what resources to focus on harvesting. In diplomacy, you can get overruled over what alliances you form, or what wars you fight. The up-side, though, is that if you DO successfully go to war, then the higher your sufferage the slower your war weariness builds up.

6) The other 'down-side' to democracy, though, is that any bad acts which you commit (and that are found out) will have a far greater impact on your international standing than in other government types (though you still recover faster from them too) as well as reducing your standing amongst your own people (which risks civil war or revolution).

So as you can see, if this system were implemented you would trade off a degree of freedom in your player choices, but would gain a much happier and productive society in the bargain-and one which is also well respected on the world stage. I don't think having elections is neccessary within the game, as the sufferage rating (a civics setting) is an abstraction that adequately reflects the frequency and scope of both elections and post-election decision making by the people.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Synergy67]

Aussie, I think if we could put you and Sir Schwick alone on the design board for Civ IV, we'd have about as near perfect a game model as I could possibly hope for...not to imply that there aren't tons of other great ideas from lots of other people here too, including my own.

 

[Kayak]

Great thoughts Aussie. Let me add a few ideas to yours if I may be so bold.

1) Greater freedom and wealth should translate into a much higher research rate as well.

2) I think they should do away from a fixed list of preferred governments and let outside influences do that job. I.e. if there is a great nation right near you and it is currently communist, this should influence your citizens to lean towards communism as preferred. After all everyone wants to pick the winner.

3) Back and forthing between governments should weaken internal stability and cultural cohesion and make it more likely that your cities will flip to another civ.

4) Democracies should be less likely to declare war on other democracies as well.

5) It should reduce your standing more among other democracies, not as much with the other types of governments.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Thanks for the kind words Synergy and Kayak. As fas as your suggestions go, Kayak, I would like to put forward the following thoughts:

1) I had just assumed that a greater wealth etc would translate into a better research rate, this ties into my feelings about improved 'productivity', overall, in democracies-from beakers, to shields, to culture, to food and to wealth.
Other factors will, of course, play a role in happiness on a city by city basis.

2) The problem in civ3 was that there WAS no fixed LIST of preferred and shunned governments, just 1 preferred and 1 shunned, and that didn't mean much anyway . I think that the government your people WANT should be a mix of a preferred gov heirarchy AND other internal and external factors in each game (just for replayability). This way, Greece's most preferred government type might be Democracy, but in the current game Greece has played in a very militaristic fashion-leading to a much more dominant military faction, who will want you to change to a Junta rather than a Democracy!

3) Agree on the internal stability factor, but I'm not a big fan of direct 'city flips', and feel that back and forthing should simply increase the chance of a civil war-if other factors are also ripe.

4) Shared government type should ALWAYS be a factor in deciding if people want you to go to war with other nations-along with culture group, religion, international reputation and civ-traits-which factors get the most weighting would depend on your civics settings.

5) Couldn't agree more! The general effect should still be worse, but to a lesser extent amongst non-democracies. Even a fascist government will look more askance at a democratic civ that razes whole cities-not because they wouldn't do the same themselves, but because they think the democracy is being a HYPOCRITE!!! If another Fascist government did it, though, the aforementioned Fascist regime would probably go 'Care?!'

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Trade-peror]

These ideas are very good. The only issue I see concerns this point:

The down side, though, is that as you increase sufferage (irrespective of the government type you are in) you get less and less control over your decisions. Cities can overrule you on choices of what improvements to build and what resources to focus on harvesting. In diplomacy, you can get overruled over what alliances you form, or what wars you fight.

Considering the doubtable decision-making capabilities of the AI, might this be a bit dangerous? Of course, it would be possible to make a point-system or some other benefit-weighing system, but such systems would have to be advanced enough to consider not only short-term benefits but also long-term effects, for matters like city improvements and treaties/wars generally consider long-term consequences more than short-term advantages.

Of course, these problems concern the AI, rather than the actual idea here, so just having a better AI in this regard would solve the problem.

 

[Albow]

I think that an annoying no seeing AI senate is just like in Civ 1 ... I remember being very annoyed by said Senate ... as long as there was a way to get around them (but at a risk) that might work, or perhaps you would be allowed to spend money on propaganda, so the people want war, put pressure on senate to cave to your demands! cool muhahahahahaaaa

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, first up T-P, when have you EVER known human society to put long term interests ahead of short term gain? I feel that we would do a 'realistic' Civ democracy a disservice if we didn't have the 'people' within it acting selfishly ! That is NOT to say, though, that I want it to act IRRATIONALLY-like the senate did in Civ2 (a great idea in principle, but marred in application).

In a nutshell, I feel that the BASE chance of a particular social faction 'interfering' in your decisions would be equal to your 'sufferage' rate+ the 'influence' of each particular faction. So, for instance, if you have a sufferage of 5, and your mercantile faction currently has an 'influence' of 40%, then this faction has a 65% chance of either demanding you do something, trying to override a decision you have made (in the case of a diplomatic agreement) or changing your decision mid-turn (in the case of terrain and city improvements). Of course, you CAN override them, but their happiness will drop everytime you do it. Also, the ACTUAL chance that a faction will interfere will be influenced by a number of weighting factors, such as the current traits of your civ; will it increase or decrease the factions influence; will it improve or worsen an area of interest to THEM; the culture group, government type or religion of another nation you seek to deal with and the like. Also, the check would not be made EVERY time you made a decision, but how often it happened in a turn would also be effected by your sufferage level-and most especially when you do something for the VERY FIRST TIME!!! Obviously, at the end of the day, game-balance would

Lastly, there should be a system for setting up SECRET diplomatic arrangements. Doing so might actually require the investment of money and/or intelligence points, but if you do this, then neither your people nor any other nations will know of this diplomatic deal. Of course, there IS a chance that your people will learn about it, and a chance it can be discovered via espionage commited by other nations. This could lead to very serious consequences amongst your people, but leaves an avenue open for you to do diplomatic deals with nations they would rather not have you dealing with !
Anyway, I hope that makes sense !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[sir_schwick]

Thank you for the comment synergy, however I do borrow a lot of my inspiration from the fine posters of this board. Some of that inspiration includes an idea I saw on cultural developement. Another poster was sugggesting that part of reserach, at least culturally, should be one-way. That means you have to keep certain concepts and not be able to integrate others. The base of cultural concepts that build up over time determine whether certain governments, advantages, etc. would or could be utilized.

I think that the idea of decresing the power of the oligarchy should apply to all societies, not just democratic or republic. Monarchies throughout the middle ages had to struggle to maintain their power. The Magna Charta was an example of the reduction of central monarchial oligarchy. Over time your people would demand different htings. Refusal could cause open resistance, unhappiness, or get them to shut up.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, consider this in-game example:

Your civ is democratic, and has a sufferage rating of 7 (or 35%). You have been at war with another civ for the last 10 years, but now they have come to you seeking peace in return for gpt, access to wines and a new tech. Now, for the vast majority of your civs factions (e.g. scientists, merchants, farmers and labourers) this deal will improve their lot, so it doesn't really make much sense for them to stop it from happening (i.e. if you accept it, then the 'chance' of interference will be heavily weighted DOWN). Your military faction, however, does NOT want peace, and so their chance is weighted up. If this gives them a sufficiently high chance of interference, then they might well block the peace deal. You can override the block, but this will make your military faction unhappy-putting you one step closer to a military coup!
If you turned DOWN the deal, though, then there is a VERY good chance that at least one of the other factions would have gone behind your back and signed the deal you declined.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Trade-peror]

when have you EVER known human society to put long term interests ahead of short term gain? I feel that we would do a 'realistic' Civ democracy a disservice if we didn't have the 'people' within it acting selfishly

Ah, I forgot that this thread is about more realistic democracies . In that case, I imagine that democracy could indeed be a dangerous government game-wise, and should come with incredible benefits to counter this constraint. Also, propaganda should be an especially important tool .

 

[Albow]

Nice one Trade-peror ...

Yes, agree that internal power play should be a feature, esp in a democracy where the whole concept is that the 'people' (or 'the man' in some cases) has a big say in what is going on.

PS Aussie, where are you getting the 7 = 35% thingy, or is this in another one of your threads or just an 'example' number plucked from the air?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

It was pretty much just a 'plucked out of the air' thing, and would need to be tweaked for gameplay purposes. It is based on the assumption, though, that you have a sufferage setting from 0 (absolutism) to 10 (Pure Democracy), and that each number in between equals a 5% increase in the chance of 'interference'. Hence the 7=35% (i.e. 7*5=35%).

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Kayak]

Ah, I forgot that this thread is about more realistic democracies . In that case, I imagine that democracy could indeed be a dangerous government game-wise, and should come with incredible benefits to counter this constraint. Also, propaganda should be an especially important tool .

This is what I was thinking in my first response to the idea. Most players want the absolute control of a dictatorship and the benefits of a democracy. If Demo is changed (and I think it should be) so that you have less control, then govts like communism should be changed as well. Off topic here but my idea would be to slowly decrease the production and economic output of the communist govt over time.

Without great benefits, no one will put up with hassle of constantly MMing factions in you civ.

@Aussie_Lurker. about point 3; I may be falling into the perrenial trap of a US citizen but, I usually assume that all peoples preffered government would be some type of democracy given they have enough historical and world knowledge. In this case the preffered govt ought to change over time as peoples perspectives change.

 

[rhialto]

I think a good way to limit democracy would be to limit your available choices while still giving you full control with those ones left to you. For example, civ2 only presented about 50% of the techs theoretically available to you to research. What if communism got to choose between 60% and democroacy 30%?

 

[sir_schwick]

That would be an interesting option for research in general, with different factors affecting what you could and could not look into next.

I think for govts cultural foundations should be important. Certain good cultural foundations might make democracy harder or make you more phobic to non-democracies, etc.

 

[Kayak]

I think a good way to limit democracy would be to limit your available choices while still giving you full control with those ones left to you. For example, civ2 only presented about 50% of the techs theoretically available to you to research. What if communism got to choose between 60% and democroacy 30%?

Why would you limit the techs that a democracy could research more that a communist goverment?

 

[rhialto]

Because with a democracy, the direction is less controllable by the government. This is of course more than made up by the fact that the democracy will research faster. All of them will of course eventually be available.