Where's the emoticon that shows a smilie pouring a glass of scotch and rubbing his temples in confusion?
Hmmm, my feeling is to stick to the old "KIS" approach (Keep It Simple)-within reason of course.
Isn't it Keep It Simple, Stupid?
A simple defining of factions might go:
Workers (Farmers, Labourers); Professionals (Artisans, Bureaucrats); Military; State Clergy; Minority Clergy; The Elite (The "ruling classes"-dependent on era); The Intelligentsia (Scientists, teachers, artists).
Well, I was planning on adding a number of new specialists to represent these basic groups. I was planning to make it so that working particular tiles would give particular citizens. So you could have every farm produce one Farm specialist in that city, each Mine produce on Laborer, etc.
I was planning, in addition to the Merchant, Scientist, Priest:
Farmers - from Farms obviously
Laborers - (from Mines, Factories & other Industrial buildings)
Professionals - (basically representing Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers)
Students - (from Universities, but could be renamed to Scholars and lumped with Teachers for example)
Bureaucrat
Possible additions I'm on the fence about:
Slaves and Peasants - this would be a contrast to Farmers who would be considered free citizens, and these two would only exist under certain civics.
Criminals
Police
Now, some of these would give what I would call direct penalties and bonuses like the existing specialists, but others would exist purely for demographic purposes and affect the strength of Factions as well as Civics (I added the ability for certain Civics to give +/- for every instance of a particular specialist).
Some additional, overlapping factions might be Free Marketeers/Protectionists; Fundamentalists/Moderates; Nationalists/Internationalists; Hawks/Doves; Environmentalists/Industrialists, Liberal/Authoritarian; Left Wing/Right Wing.
To be fair, I definitely think my Ideology Mod (when I get around to it) could fit in with such a system, as the ideologies running in a certain city and the ideology your state runs will define the strength of various "factions" and "sub-factions".
An example of an event linked to one of the sub-factions might go something like this:
Well, maybe I should give my ideas for factions and that might make my goals a bit more clear:
Central Religious Authority - comes in when you set a state religion. Prefers religion-friendly civics. A civic like Theocracy will vastly expand it's power.
Military Order - this appears after you've gone to war for the first time. They are usually friendly toward the Central Religious Authority and the player.
Noble - These will be the biggest threats to the player's power in the early game. They have no ideological leaning. They just want your job. Their is one noble faction per city.
Guild - the Guild comes in relatively early and is strengthened by your civilizations' access to resources and certain production buildings. The Guild will lose power and eventually be made obsolete with Corporation.
Secret Police - the Secret Police appears only under certain gov't types.
Army - this represents the institution of the Army rather than the individual units although its power is based on how many military units you have in play. Depending on the civilization you build and the internal struggles you encounter, the Army may play a very limited role in national politics or a very big one. Either way, you want them on your side.
Labor Union - the Labor Union comes in late in the game. They favor protectionist economic policies.
Corporation - I developed this one prior to BtS, but I think it still has merit. You would, of course, have to have a corporation before this faction would appear.
Conservative Party - the Conservative Party has some preferences about civics, but their attitude is based largely on maintaining the status quo whatever that may be.
Liberal Party - the Liberal Party has some general preferences too, but to some degree they will chafe under whatever civics happen to be in place and will pressure for a new set of civics.
Communist Party - the Communist Party has a very particular set of civics it wants in place.
Fascist Party - the Fascist Party basically is the right-wing version of the Communists... very specific civics goals.
The nice thing about having Faction Types is that it's vague enough that modders can base them on purely ideological grounds or more based on social/political roles as I have done.
.
