Policies

[Nuukov]

Hey all. You may or may not remember me, but I helped design some of the policies (I came up with the ideas and chrome-rome made them a reality).

Of course with there going to be Governments, Ideologies and Government Systems, there is a lot to be thought of, and it will be difficult to think of them all. So I wanted to create this thread for everybody here to share and discuss ideas and thoughts about policies they want in the mod/policies they want changing.

I believe the focus on making policies will happen in a month, but I wanted to create this thread so the ideas could start following earlier. =)

 

[President]

Social policies is one of my favorite things about the Call to Power Project. It's because it's so in-depth and truly is complicated and intellectual. The quantity of different social policies is awesome. Now, I think the next step is to go even a little further. Government, Ideologies, and Government Systems are the partitions right now Why don't we go further and partition the policies so that it would uniquely cover all aspects of society? What I'd think would be something like this.


-The Social Contract

What is the relationship between the government and the people? Is it based on a Constitution (Like the US), an Implication (Like the UK), etc.?

-Structure

The first thing about the government would be the actual structure of it. How is power shared? Is there a unilateral government over the society, or is power shared like in a confederated system or a federated system?

-Head of Government
-Head of State

Right now, we have all these different names for Governments. We have Monarchy, Theology, etc. However, the limit for that is ten. So, I was thinking, realistically, what do all those things mean? What does a Monarchy mean? Well, then you realize that there are types of monarchies. You have like those limited ones and those absolute ones, but then what differentiates a limited monarchy from an absolute one? Then you realize that it depends on the difference between head of state and head of government. A government where the head of state and government is a monarch would be an absolute monarchy A head of state a monarch and a head of government a prime minister would be much like the United Kingdom. Basically, all the combinations between head of state and head of government could give all the possible governments and government systems. Just having them separately as they are now could never give all the possibilities of governments out there.

Of course, there are more things, but this is the approach that I not only think would be efficient, but perfect. I think we need to try doing something that would theoretically be perfect, as in there is nothing more you would be able to do to improve it. For that to happen, basically, all possibilities need to be covered It's really hard to do, but I think the Call to Power Project is the closest to doing it now. There's already so much work put into the social policy system -- so why not improve it even further, if anything. I personally think it's one of the most important things in this project as a history type of player. To perfect it, though, you basically need to delve into political science. In a way, though, just doing these fundamental categories (And all of them don't need ten options each -- just the number there really would be in reality to cover all possibilities) could be much simpler than all the seemingly mutually exclusive choices right now. Head of State and Head of Government could play off each other.

Really, though, a government could be qualified by its Structure, Head of State, and Head of Government. Therefore, with a little more work, (Structure would probably have about 3 options, Head of State and Head of Government 10 or so), the title system could be fixed, if everyone would work on about 100 combinations. The Social Contract usually wouldn't affect government type -- it's a separate thing, so that could be disregarded in terms of titles.

Maybe it could even be like chemistry, where each individual policy gives you certain benefits, but combinations of policies also give you benefits as well that you can't know before trying out. It's possible, because there wouldn't really be too many combinations if everything is as concise and reduced as possible.

 

[3335d]

Social policy trees should definitely be longer. I think that, based on @President's idea, the existing pages should be replaced with the pages of Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary. This would amount to a government structure. In addition, a new (huge) tree of "Government Policy" should be created, containing the areas of economic, social, and foreign policy. All "doctrines" could also be folded into this. These policies would become available as new Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary policies were adopted, and the player could choose three of these Government Policies at the start of the game, a number increasing by two for each Executive, Legislative, or Judiciary tree completed by the player, and three with each era, one per two units of average city population, and more with specific Wonders. A GA could also be expended to give another slot.

It's possible to do this, but difficult.

 

[Nuukov]

The first thing about the government would be the actual structure of it. How is power shared? Is there a unilateral government over the society, or is power shared like in a confederated system or a federated system?

-Head of Government
-Head of State

^I think the way right now that it is structured is that Governments is the generalised form of rule (e.g. Monarchy) - and then Ideology and Systems differentiate what it is. An example might be that your government is Monarchy, and your System is Autocracy, which would then equal an absolute monarchy. It is a bit difficult to explain, but I think what you want we have already, just a bit simpler.
Now with the Head of State and Government etc, I do not know if anyone here played Hearts of Iron 3 - in that game you had a cabinet of ministers and people such as Head of State and Government and of the Army etc, and each person gave some small bonus, I think something similar could be implemented into CCTP. Might be cool.

Maybe it could even be like chemistry, where each individual policy gives you certain benefits, but combinations of policies also give you benefits as well that you can't know before trying out. It's possible, because there wouldn't really be too many combinations if everything is as concise and reduced as possible.

^I really like this idea. At least about combining policies. An example could be Communism. You could have the Communism Government, have Socialism Ideology which would give some bonus, and then you could have Totalitarianism which would give a bonus, OR Representation (I think that is a System? Been a while since I last looked ) and then it would give a different bonus instead of what Totalitarianism would give - to differentiate, one would be Stalinism and the other would be Democratic Socialism. I hope you understand what I mean?

I have shortened your post in my response (to simplify) and made my responses above in the colour red.

But with the 'Social Contract' you might have to explain a bit more, what this system would be in the game (I know what the social contract, but I am not really sure what you mean when you want to fit it into the policies? - If you want, make a thread about it if you wish to go into detail, after all you did say "The Social Contract usually wouldn't affect government type -- it's a separate thing, so that could be disregarded in terms of titles.")

 

[Nuukov]

Social policy trees should definitely be longer. I think that, based on @President's idea, the existing pages should be replaced with the pages of Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary. This would amount to a government structure. In addition, a new (huge) tree of "Government Policy" should be created, containing the areas of economic, social, and foreign policy. All "doctrines" could also be folded into this. These policies would become available as new Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary policies were adopted, and the player could choose three of these Government Policies at the start of the game, a number increasing by two for each Executive, Legislative, or Judiciary tree completed by the player, and three with each era, one per two units of average city population, and more with specific Wonders. A GA could also be expended to give another slot.

It's possible to do this, but difficult.

True. I like the idea, but with policies, you can unlock them all within one tree, unless we changed the way trees work. Because then we would have to have 3-5 separate trees for Foreign Policy, some more separate trees for the economy; and have it that you can only pick one of each, it would get very cluttered.

 

[chrome-rome]

Great discussion guys. Here's what I was thinking of doing:

Each civ would have to have a Government (similar to the way Civ 3/revolution did it); it doesn't make sense having a Government System or Ideology without one. Each of these Governments would emphasize certain things (these can be adjusted by those who know more about how Governments work). Monarchy would be military/wonder based (don't know yet), Theocracy would be faith, Republic would be expansion, Democracy would be happiness/CS (don't know yet), Autocracy would be combat, Communism would be production, Corporate would be gold, Ecotopia would be growth, Technocracy would be science/specialist, and Virtual Democracy would be happiness. There is some overlap (Monarch & Autocracy, (Virtual) Democracy), but this is just an broad view.

The governments would get away from the +x yield to y system, so that they can be useful all game long. Haven't thought of all of the effects yet, but Nuukov (Nuclear Dude) and I brainstormed a while ago and came up with plenty of options. These Governments would essentially define your empire's play style. For the Governments, instead of accumulating culture to further them, they will automatically be enhanced at the turn of a new era (so a new "policy" would be added at Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, etc, etc). This will further keep the Governments more or less equal with each other.

So now the Ideologies and Systems would play in to the Government system. I was at a loss for how to do this, but President's post opened up an avenue that we might want to explore. The idea you presented is very complex, but it might just work. The question here is whether to treat the ideologies as their own policy trees, or if they should be a stand alone bonus. Take Pacifism for example, which improves CS relations. How would it interact with some of the other Governments? Should the effect read something like "If you have a Democratic nation, then...," or should each policy affect some part of the Democracy? And then if you switch to another Government, the bonus would change. The second option is much more extensive, but it would be really hard to find a way to find strike a balance between all of the options. Granted some combinations (Demo-Pacifism) would mesh better than others (Mono-Pacifism).

And finally, how would we distinguish the bonuses between Ideologies and Systems? If they both just boost an aspect of the Government, then they might as well have the same name. Perhaps we could have one that deals with domestic affairs, and another that focuses on foreign interactions?

So yeah, that's what I've been thinking about. But, before we let our imaginations run too wild, we need to make sure this is all possible. Fires, is it with lua?

 

[President]

Maybe one thing that might be agreeable to everyone is to do the combinatorial benefits from my first post. It adds a whole new dimension to it. However, it also means that the policies need to be as reduced as possible without losing any dimension or aspect of political science or comparative governments. In terms of the social contract, yeah, I see what you mean. I didn't think about it, but there really is just two types of social contracts anyways -- implied and explicit, so it doesn't really matter. I do like the idea of Executive, Judicial, and Legislative Branches, though. It might even be more thorough or politically scientifically accurate than my Heads of State/Government thing, but, the question I have is this.

I'm not sure whether there would be enough of a variety of choices for Legislative and Judicial. There would be a lot for Executive, but we really only have the example of the United States and some select, other countries for diversity in Legislative and Judicial. Plus, it might not work for a country like the UK, where the Queen does not technically have any power and therefore is not apart of the checks and balances of government. I like this way of thinking, though. However, as chrome-rome says, it needs to be codable. I do think that the combinatorial benefits would be a good idea, though.

 

[FiresForever]

I got as far as

Each civ would have to have a Government...

At which point i started to drift out . So you want each civ to be given access to 1 policy tree from the Governments? Similar to how the G&K Rome scenario has the policy tree just for the Romans? Or am i way off.

 

[chrome-rome]

@Fires: Lol, that was the good part....

The main points:

• Civs would be required to have a government type at all times
• The governments would grant an extra bonus at the turn of each new era
• The bonuses would move away from the +x yield from y, and instead include things like We Love the King Day last 2x as long
• Ideologies and Systems would interact with the governments, providing different benefits depending on the civs government choice

Everyone else, how would a Cultural victory work? Not just with the system I proposed, but with others. What would be a good goal to strive towards?

 

[3335d]

Maybe one thing that might be agreeable to everyone is to do the combinatorial benefits from my first post. It adds a whole new dimension to it. However, it also means that the policies need to be as reduced as possible without losing any dimension or aspect of political science or comparative governments. In terms of the social contract, yeah, I see what you mean. I didn't think about it, but there really is just two types of social contracts anyways -- implied and explicit, so it doesn't really matter. I do like the idea of Executive, Judicial, and Legislative Branches, though. It might even be more thorough or politically scientifically accurate than my Heads of State/Government thing, but, the question I have is this.

I'm not sure whether there would be enough of a variety of choices for Legislative and Judicial. There would be a lot for Executive, but we really only have the example of the United States and some select, other countries for diversity in Legislative and Judicial. Plus, it might not work for a country like the UK, where the Queen does not technically have any power and therefore is not apart of the checks and balances of government. I like this way of thinking, though. However, as chrome-rome says, it needs to be codable. I do think that the combinatorial benefits would be a good idea, though.

We need not look at only the modern world. Perhaps one's legislature could be a Council of Elders, a Parliament of Nobles, or appointees of the executive. A judiciary could take the form of a jury court, secret police, religious inquisitors, or the executive him/herself. There are literally thousands of possible policies for each, and millions of possible combinations of policies, but we need only include a hundred at most.

 

[FiresForever]

The main points:

• Civs would be required to have a government type at all times
• The governments would grant an extra bonus at the turn of each new era
• The bonuses would move away from the +x yield from y, and instead include things like We Love the King Day last 2x as long
• Ideologies and Systems would interact with the governments, providing different benefits depending on the civs government choice

1,2,4 are definitely possible, if the government type remains the same throughout the game for the players than i don't see too many difficulties. Having the players be able to change their gov during the game would make it a bit harder.

With 3 it depends a lot on the actual effect u want, this one for example seems possible if the lua ChangeWeLoveTheKingDayCounter actually does what i think it does. I think the main ones that are not possible are if you want an effect to occur during combat as there is no good way of interacting with it.

 

[Gilgamesch]

For months i posted this in our main thread. But now we this sub thread i will do it again
Since CiV gets its expansion with religion and spies we really need some special policies for them. I remember the time when fires created the new policie lua stuff, and the religios policies without a choiceable policy.
I mean we need do make some policies to alter the religion and maybe the spies.
Iam not sure what this will be, iam not so creativ this days.


P.S. we maybe need a new thread for making the religios system more compatible with CCTP (i tested some changes and will release them this days when i get time, to overwork them, but i need to translate it into english), also ideas to add new beliefs or to include other religion aspects of other mods.

 

[3335d]

Religions should arise more randomly, but you should have the option of a "state religion" which functions in the existing way. There should be no limit to the number of religions on the planet.

 

[Gilgamesch]

Religions should arise more randomly, but you should have the option of a "state religion" which functions in the existing way. There should be no limit to the number of religions on the planet.

Agreed, but we also need more cool icons for the religions, there are some cool mods outhere who add new religions to the game.

P.S. Maybe we could find a way to get a religion our a pantheon or even a prophet when we ( a civ) found a religios natural wonder at first.

 

[FiresForever]

after a few hours of work i now finally have got all the graphical bugs squished out of the policy trees .

Also @chrome did Leeuw finish those new policy graphics he was working on? i remember him posting some nice ones on the main forum at some point.

 

[Gilgamesch]

Big bumb!!!!


Edit: It looks like you have much more possibilities in the xml and the lua files. Firaxis added nice new collums/reacalled old.
Example the unused secondpantheon in xml could be a nice finisher for the original religions and/or religions/ideologies on the goold old version of the CCTP policies.

 

[Gilgamesch]

Ok we now have the possibility to add new policies to the game.
For this we will need the Advancement Screen mod by Jheral.

Sadly iam unabe to add new collums to this system, but with some luck Horem will be brave enough to do this. He has much more SQL knowledge then me

Once this is done we can talk about complete new policy trees.
We could include the old CCTP policies with overworked effects for BNW.

 

[dinobot386]

I'd like to see the Government policy trees turned into ideologies

 

[Gilgamesch]

I'd like to see the Government policy trees turned into ideologies

I whished the community would help with more suggestion and the offering of help.

Our lua guru is, and stil was FiresForever....

He is the one that created the multiple techtree and policies, when G&K where never released
Also White Rabbit, the UA CCTP functions are all his work, not to speak about maps...


So i cant create a whole new update without his help and time, and yes time is the most im portant thing.

We do this all for free and without any money payment......

So please be patient when the work is going slow , we are humans with our lives, and problems

 

[Gilgamesch]

Bumb

Ok we are working on reactivating some good old policy trees. If all will go well i hope the next major update it will arrive in the next 1-2 weeks.

So its on you to suggest what you would like to see again, and what you wouldnt.

Feel free to post your opinion.