Ordinances: The Vote

[thescaryworker]

EDIT: please scroll down to the current topic

One of a few things that have been brought up many times are ordinances. Heres how I see ordinances should work:

-There are CAPITOL CITIES, which are founded by large settlers (cost more pop & sheilds)
capitol cities allow other settlers to settle the land around it in a 10-20 tile radius
capitol cities have decreased corruption
capitol radiuses do not extend accross seas or oceans (but they do accros coast)
capitols may not be built within the radius of another capitol
-There are 3 types of ordinances:
Nationwide (No Child Labor, You can't eat pork)
Regionwide (Legalized Gambling, Death Penalty)
City (Curfew, Kid's Athletic Programs)
-However, you do not need to select the same ordinace in each city:
There is an option that you can choose to make these changes for just this city, region only, and all cities.

 

[sealman]

These seems to me to be more akin to playing a simcity game than civ. at least in my opinion. However, we do not know how the new civics model will work which might enable somesort of empirewide law making.

Until I see what Civics has to offer, i got to vote no.

 

[sealman]

Double post

 

[GeneralZed]

I wouldnt vote for it, cause it wouldnt effect the game much, probably this country would be less dictatorshiped and have more happy citizens. But it's too much into detail and like sealman said, it would look like a sim city game...

 

[Lockesdonkey]

what's wrong with simcity?

 

[sealman]

what's wrong with simcity?

Nothing really, but this Civ not Simcity. Why try to turn a sucessful game from one genre into a hybrid of two??

 

[searcheagle]

what's wrong with simcity?

What's wrong with this aspect of SimCity in civ is that you have 100-200 cities at least. In SimCity, there is only one city to manage. So managing that many cities would be extraordinarily difficult.

I would be for a where laws (or in the words of this post-ordinances) are enacted on a national level or a province level (if that system is included). These would only concern important and unusual laws such as:

• Asylum seekers-allow them or prohibit them

• Emigrants-can you leave?

• Immigration-can you come?

This allows for differentiation of civ from whatever the basic government type is.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

Again, I see nothing wrong with the idea of national laws, at least.

Secong, if you think that in SimCity you have one city to manage you're dead wrong, if your talking SC4. In SC4 you can-read, have to-manage several interdependent cities. THink of it as managing a metropolitan area. Pretty nasty once the area pop hits a million.

 

[dexters]

I don't disapprove of the idea but the scale of these laws (i don't want to call them ordinances as they sound like Sim City) have to match the scale of the Civ.

A bit of social engineering might be interesting where you could pass laws covering everything from how free you want your markets to be, and how much free speech you want your population to have.

Actually, these could all be done with sliders and you just adjust them. Again, there's always a tendency to try and pull Civ into a direction that makes it more like a SimCity or whatever. It always happens, I don't know why. But Civ really is Civ, and impoving it doesnt always mean we should complicate it with more micromanagement.

 

[Elrohir]

A certain amount of micromanagement in government would be good. It would add a new aspect to the game.

I don't know about having individual laws for each city. Wouldn't that take humongous amounts of time to set? I mean if you only have 50 cities, and there's 25-50 laws for each one, your talking some serious time to just sit there and check boxes. I don't know how fun that would be. It would be better if it was an advisor screen or something, "Law Advisor" or "Chief Justice" or "Parliament" or whatever, where you selected what laws you wanted from there. (Or could simply ignore it completely)

 

[Hyronymus]

The social engineering part was something many people liked about SMAC. For a non-futuristic game as Civ4 though you won't have to go that far as SMAC perhaps. It could be nice to have some 'laws' to your ability after you studied a certain tech. Small example: you studied Socialism and with it comes the law that allows women to vote i.e.. You can switch it on with as a result a happier population. If you think voting for women was the worst thing happened to mankind since Napoleon found his Waterloo you can always neglect it.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

Anyway, someone said why make it a hybrid or somesuch. Ever heard of hybrid vigor?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

As Rhialto puts it-'in Civ, you are the Gestalt of your nation'. A view I agree with, up to a point. With that in mind, introducing individual laws seems to go against the grain of the gestalt idea. Social Engineering, OTOH, represents the movement of your 'entire' society along certain broad social trends-especially if you have sufficient 'parameters'. Of course, all societies are mixed, with a broad range of interest groups-which is why I also support the ideas of 'Factions' and 'Influence'. Changing SE settings can upset the vested interests of certain influential factions, thus forcing the player to choose between gradual change (slow, but less disruptive) or radical reform (faster, but riskier). The latter will often occur either after, or because of, a revolution resulting in governmental change-which might reflect the kinds of changes seen in 18th century France or 20th century Russia.
Hope that makes sense.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[GoodGame]

GALCIV uses something like "ordinances". They represent a sort of UN vote, with voting coming from the equivalent of cultural influence. Since they're completely random, they're a little pointless, but since they tend to slight some players for others, winning a good one is useful (and a reason to accumulate culture).

I wouldn't apply it to domestic politics, since like Aussie_Lurker is saying---it'd be detail out of scope with the rest of the game. Maybe for international politics? But then that's what all the agreements are for.

 

[sir_schwick]

Personally I want to see civ move away from the 'capital' centric models that made past Civ games easier to program.

Also, I would like to see the ability to consolidate multiple cities into larger and larger metropolitan units as time passes. This would make it so you were managin only marginally more 'city entities' in the end game then about the 1/4 mark.

If those two go into play, this whole system is really good since it allows you to adjust per region.

 

[dexters]

Since they're completely random, they're a little pointless, but since they tend to slight some players for others, winning a good one is useful (and a reason to accumulate culture).

That was the reason the instances of resource disappearing was toned down significantly after the patching started on Vanilla Civ3. Most players hated the randomity of it and how one random roll of the dice could work against one faction or another.

there's also been the issue of culture flips, which upset many people because they get no warning and can't do anything about it.

Random, unpredictable and unmeasurable events like mass revolutions, rioting and the like which affects a major aspect of the player's game probably won't make it into Civ4 as the community has already stated very clearly they don't want it.

 

[dh_epic]

I actually think edicts and ordinances are a neat idea.

I'm not sure if your mechanism is the right way though.

I like how Galactic Civilizations works, actually, for the "United Planets". Every few turns there's a random resolution. Or Galactic Civilizations, there's sometimes a random crisis on a planet with three choices to pick from. It would be cool if every 20 turns, you get a random edict to decide on for Civ 4. The edict has several choices, each with a different set of effects.

The edict would have a role playing element, but when it gets right down to it the effects are cold numbers. For example, it might be:

"There are certain plants in your kingdom, sire, that are becoming popular. But the effects of these plants make people unproductive, and sometimes even violent. What shall we do?"

A: Criminalize the plant and send the people back to work. (-3 Happiness, -1 Freedom, +1 Productivity)
B: Let people decide for themselves. (+3 Happiness, +1 Freedom, -2 Productivity)
C: Nationalize the plant and sell it safely. (+1 Happiness, +1 Economy)
D: Make everyone enjoy the plant! (+5 Happiness, -3 Freedom)

Every 20 or 40 turns or so it would draw up one of these edicts randomly. The pool of edicts would be determined by your technology level. When you discover a new technology, a few new edicts that come from it might get added to the lottery, so to speak.

Anyway, I'm rambling. I hope that makes sense.

 

[dexters]

I actually think edicts and ordinances are a neat idea.

I'm not sure if your mechanism is the right way though.

I like how Galactic Civilizations works, actually, for the "United Planets". Every few turns there's a random resolution. Or Galactic Civilizations, there's sometimes a random crisis on a planet with three choices to pick from. It would be cool if every 20 turns, you get a random edict to decide on for Civ 4. The edict has several choices, each with a different set of effects.

The edict would have a role playing element, but when it gets right down to it the effects are cold numbers. For example, it might be:

Every 20 or 40 turns or so it would draw up one of these edicts randomly. The pool of edicts would be determined by your technology level. When you discover a new technology, a few new edicts that come from it might get added to the lottery, so to speak.

Anyway, I'm rambling. I hope that makes sense.

It shouldn't be random and there shouldn't be fancy names. It only confuses the player about what they are actually doing. Simplify is a good word here.

MoO3 has a decidely complicated and totally byzantine tech tree that even a person like me couldn't be bothered to unravel, because advances come randomly and you never know what you're getting next.

The social engineering aspect if it goes in, will probably work best if its worked out along an axis of extremes and players can decide either through a slider or a stated preference over time to move their civilization in one direction or another.

 

[sir_schwick]

Actually, dh, I was hoping that maybe that would be part of your governmental evolution. Often times in history, at least English history, major legal changes were the result of challenges by the immediate subjects of the king. I think you should get important crises such as,

Spoiler EXAMPLE A :

"The nobility demands the right to form a representative body that must approve taxes and property law."

A) Execute the petitioners. This causes a civil war where the quantity and quality of rebel units is based upon the affluence of the cities. Rich and powerful cities will breed huge armies of top notch troops.
B) Grant partial tax and property concessions. This puts a restriction of 50% on Taxes. However some of the more radical nobility are still pissed and will create some unhappiness and increased corruption.
C) Grant limited representative body, but maintain ultimate vote. Restriction of 50% on Taxes, WW increases, and increased desire for such petitions in future. No happiness problems among the nobility.
D) Enable gentry a full legislative body. Restriction of 50% on Taxes, much more WW active, also cities will make demands for unit or improvement construction. Ignoring these will create unhappiness. Also vastly increases increases populous desires for representation.

 

[dh_epic]

Randomness isn't complicated. If the developers create 200 different edicts / ordinances / issues, presenting them with all of them is too much. If the developers create 10 edicts that you go through every single time, it kind of reduces the dynamism and impact of the issue. I'm just saying the developers create a pool, and every 20 turns the user has to deal with a random issue based on where their civilization is.

Sir Schwick made the leap I was going to make myself. Glad to know someone's on the same wavelength. The idea is that in the middle ages, you deal with middle ages type issues that help define the direction of your nation by the industrial age. The end result isn't just a bunch of bonuses and penalties, but a sense that you're really in charge of shaping the values and standards of your empire as time passes.