Negative effects of 'progress'

[Loppan Torkel]

The way Civilization pictures the world right now is a road to utopia where each technology makes the world a better place to be. Pollution comes into the game after a while but is fought off pretty easy after a while. The focus on conquest makes the warindustry a positive thing, each newly discovered tech that improves your army is a good thing, right!?

Should there be more focus on the bad things in society, or do we want civ to be an all happy place?

Should we, when we discover Medicin, for example, also have to deal with the effect of drugs in the society? Should we in the modern era deal with an ever increasing upkeep for hospitals - fat people, aging population, accidents? Should we experience lazyness (unwillingness to work cheap - less effective) in civs that have reached some point in science (TV, computers etc)?
I'm not sure myself, what do you think?

 

[DexterJ]

civilization is very much based on the liberal view of society and historical development as almost constant progress through the ages. the point is that whilst this can be viewed as accurate from an economic standpoint (certainly for the west) this is not always true for others, such as morally, for example the 20th century was a particually barbaric one.
Introducing the negative aspects of 'progress' would be interesting, for example, it would allow regression as well as progress (the european dark ages, for example) however, this could lead it to be less enjoyable and much more complicated. Complicated because although good progress is sometimes quite obvious to display in a macro-world simulator (such as increasing industrial production, and advancement in science and technology) the negative side is more small scale (family breakups, drug addiction, suicide and depression) and harder to display in a game such as Civ.

 

[Kayak]

So when you discover television and the internet everyone is happier but less productive because they are all couch potatoes and game addics?

 

[searcheagle]

I agree with the direction this post is going. Right now, there is very little negative aspect to technology. The only real effect is, as Loppan mentioned pollution and causing wonders to go obsolete.

I want to see tech have more of a risk/reward, cost/benefit addition to the tech race. Not only will this make the game more interesting but it will also hinder a civ from running away with the game. Once you get a significant dominace in the game, all opposition folds because all the pieces are coming together. Bad things associated with technology could hold this back.

I can't really think of anything examples of this to add but I agree it should be added.

 

[GoodGame]

I think Civ covers crime (population size vs. happiness) ok, but should probably increase corruption with population size as well.

Pollution may/may not be realistic/playable as is, but it's there.

Terrorism as a kind of random side-effect of war, and poor relations between countries (basically as represented by the facial emotions) could probably be added. Could also trigger wars, and some calamities.

Plurality of Information----someone had a thread "Common Knowledge" a while ago. Something about how information involuntarily spreads internationally.

Antibiotic resistance(?) & More plague. We have had modern and near modern plagues, just not to same proportionality of population as the bubonic plague. The Spanish Influenza of WW1 is a great example.

Energy shortages(?) Oil is supposed to be depleted this century (earlier than later according to some).

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

This sort of feeds in to the whole 'Snowballing' argument or the 'Bigger doesn't necessarily equal Better' argument.
For instance, consider the following:

(A) Nation which covers a large landmass (Lots of Cities): Such a nation will

(a) need a large military to defend its borders and keep order in its outlying 'provinces' (higher costs).
(b) need more 'connective' infrastructure (higher costs).
(c) Will suffer from higher internal instability-especially at the fringes.
(d) More chance of culture from your core cities 'diffusing' before they can reach your outlying areas-this can also contribute to the instability mentioned in (c).
(e) More demand for Finite Strategic Resources.
(f) Transport of goods (food/money and shields) is less efficient.

(B) Nation which has a high population: Such a nation will

(a) Suffer more from overpopulation, pollution, crime and corruption-and possibly also poverty.
(b) Greater demand for Finite Luxury Resources.
(c) Need more food to support your people to avoid starvation-this can mean harsh rationing (happiness cost), or seeking food through trade (monetary cost).
(d) Greater demand for 'material wealth' in the form of shield and food-which must therefore be directed away from other activities such as sustaining population growth and building improvements/units.
(e) High Population cities would need more frequent upgrades of internal 'infrastructure' in order to avoid many of the difficulties described in (a)-(higher costs).

(C) A nation with a very high level of wealth/research: Such a nation will

(a) Wealthy and/or technologically advanced nations will tend to have more 'demanding populations', i.e. they will tend to need more 'consumer goods' to remain content.
(b) Some sections of society will want the fruits of technological success to be applied more 'ruthlessly', wheras other sectors of society might be afraid of rapid advancement, and seek to prevent you applying recent advances.
(c) wealthier societies tend to suffer more from corruption and, to a lesser extent, crime-especially if some cities have wealth that is well below the 'national average'.
(d) high tech improvements and units often have a lesser manpower requirement, thus leading to a potential increase in unemployment-which kind of feeds into (b) to some extent!
(e) nations neighbouring more advanced and/or wealthy nations may become jealous, and demand a slice of the pie (even to the exent of ganging up with other, less powerful, nations!)

The key issue here, though, is that good players CAN manage the vast bulk of these issues-to the extent that their nations can survive, and even THRIVE, in spite of their large size, population or technological/commercial success. Yet having to manage these difficulties helps to curb 'runaway success' whilst allowing more compact and easily managed nations to stay 'on par' with their larger rivals.

Anyway, hope that all makes sense !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[sir_schwick]

The big reason that many civilizations resisted change was that change brought a lot of instability and revolution. Maybe technological advance should increase overall disorder and less government control.

 

[dexters]

The question is, how much of a limiting factor do we want our populations to be in Civ4. Let's take the rioting model as an example, given it is one of the only ways in which the population's actions are reflected back to us.

The population in Civ3 exert pressure on the player throughout most of the game from happiness issues. If they are going to model other population actions, like shirking, growing lazy, more demanding etc. it ought to be clearcut. I don't want to have a smart-ass population AI that slows down work or research behind my back and the game having me to jump through hoops to find a stats page that confirms my suspicions that my population is lazy.

There has to be immediate, clear feedback on this issue. One thing that killed MoO3 (yes, I like to use this game as an example given how much is bombed because of being an overly complex mess) was your advisors and population behaved in a way that left the player unsure of their intentions. There is no clear problem to solve and we don't know how quite to solve it.

Civ's rioting model is simple. The poplation is either happy, content or sad. There's no guesswork.

 

[Hyronymus]

Isn't this something that could be dealt with by Social Engineering too? If you're a large monarchy you may prefer another subtype of the Monarchy class i.e. and perhaps issue a law that forces your people to pay tribute to you once a year, just to make sure your loyalty in the far-away provinces doesn't tumble.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well Dexters, a % based happiness model (one for your empire average and another for each city) would be a very effective and easily verified way of determining your peoples current mood. If, for instance, you notice that your empires happiness has dropped from 60% to 35%, then it is abundantly clear that you have done something recently to cause your population distress. It would be a very quick click to establish the mood of your various factions. Lets say, then, that your labourer faction is the one which is most unhappy. After this, you can either pass your cursor over the 'happiness bar' to reveal how to best make this faction happy, or go to your 'summary screen' to determine what you have done over the last X-turns, to see if you can pinpoint where the problem cropped up. Unlike Civ3's rioting system, which seemed like a Micromanagers utopia, this system will ecnourage player diligence, without being a massive 'click-fest'-because instead of having to individually click on cities to adjust their happiness, most changes to happiness would be achieved through broader social policy changes. Also, I support what you might call a 'transluscent' parameter system. i.e. most of the interactions between player action and in-game results will be immediately clear to the player. However, there may be key points of 'interaction' between social engineering settings which are NOT immediately clear to a player, and can only be worked out through trial and error.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Tom_Bombadil]

I agree, this would add an interesting element to a possible future era. Where civilisations have to choose between expanding their economies and generating more and more pollution or sustaining their economies and utilising green energy.

You could have situation where everyone in the world happily uses green energy or where one protagonist uses polluting technology to fuel their military forcing everyone else to do the same and plunging the world into a toxic, nuke torn apocalyptic future.

 

[sir_schwick]

@dexters

I bought MOOIII yesterday and don't know why everyone is being so mean about it. Its essentially combining every suggestion ever made on this forum and not overcomplicating the MM bit. Viva la MOOIII.

Spoiler MOOIII :

Actually my friend gave it to me out of disgust about a week ago. Wow are you guys on the money, its given me a new perspective on many of these ideas. Just felt like being a sarcastic smartass.

Maybe 'social disruption' could be another type of unhappiness modifier. Imagine the faster your society progresses, the more disruption you have to deal with. This goes for international and other kinds of trade too. THe more movement of ideas/goods/people, the more unhappiness from disruption you have to deal with. It would actually be an excellent curve to early rushing and massive expansion without the proper infrastructure.

 

[Tom_Bombadil]

Yeah, I think some people didn't figure out how to use AI in mooIII and became quite annoyed at having to micro manage everything themselves.

 

[dexters]

There are espects of Civ3 that are like (moo3) too, but most players will do fine without knowing them or the models are simple enough that a rule of thumb and a word of 'strategic advice' from the forums would usually allow players to handle the 'hidden' formulas. But the most important stuff in Civ3 are all laid out pretty clearly for us to see. The only annoyance was the culture flip formula, which I think has been addressed to a reasonable extent and I'm sure Firaxis would never make that mistake again.

Imagine the need to find out empire happiness requires you to know a formula just to take the 1st step of diagnosing the problem. We're not even talking about solutions, which in many cases in Moo3, is nonexistent, such as the research AI being annoying and adjusting my research rates.

 

[sir_schwick]

I mean as simple as the current modifier. In the research/domestic screen you would see the 'disruption' expressed as this(unhappy in town/unhappy in city/unhappy in metro)(ex. 1/2/3). No messy formula(except how research rates, tech trades, and other trade increases this). Of course you could make that a 'general principle' mechanism easily enough.