RFC:I Civics

[kairob]

OK, I am trying to change all of the civs, which is turning out to be very, very hard, so I decided to do something simple on the mod to get my confidence up before continuing. I figured civics should be reasonably straight forward. I think that civics should be a little different to reflect the later setting but still mainly the same as RFC, so I am going to use RFC as a base and then make changes and additions to that. So here are what I thought needs changing; comments and criticism welcome. Also, if anyone else thinks other civics are out of place feel free to make a suggestion.

(btw, some of these ideas are inspired or copied from other suggestions to RFC in the main forum. )

1) Pacifism - I want to swap this for some form of Atheism, or leader cult. I thought it could keep the extra great people (like all the scientists and stuff Russia had) but swap the '+1 gold per military unit' for something like 'no state religion, +3 per religion in city'. (nb. This represents peoples anger at the oppression of their religion, not public discontent with religion.)

2) Environmentalism - I want to replace this with a mixed economy, this would represent everything from the Third Way right through Keynesian economics to the German social market economy. I want this to be quite a good economy for large, developed nations as this is the current economic system of the EU and Europe (the richest area of the globe) as well as being the economic system under which the USA used between the American Civil War and WWII, during which time it rose to become the richest nation on earth.

I thought +3 Health (free health care, NHS etc...) +1 from libraries, universities (state paid education), broadcast towers (BBC) and mass transit. If this is overpowered then we could add +25% corporation costs but if this is underpowered then we could add -25% corporation costs. I am not sure what corporation costs represent but I can only imagine it is money leaving the country (in which case Free Market should increase corp costs and environmentalism decrease it). In light of this I am pretty sure I could make an argument justifying whichever helps gameplay more.

3) Police State should give 1 free spy IMHO, to make it seem like a better combo with Nationalism and to encourage people to take it. I also intend to boost its stability benefits for both this reason and for realism.

4) I am also thinking about either adding 1 civic to each category or else replacing the top civic in each category with something more useful later down the list; this would make HR, Vassalage, Slavery, etc... the 'basic' civic at the top.

If we do this then I am open to suggestions about what civics should be added to each category.



EDIT: Here is the current civic list as per the discussion on this thread, I have put the new civics in italics.. This is subject to change.

[U]Government[/U]		[U]National Values[/U]		[U]Social Structure[/U]	[U]Economic[/U]		[U]Religous[/U]		[U]Expansion[/U]
[I]Theocracy[/I]		[I]Order[/I]			Serfdom			[I]Corporatism[/I]		Organised Religion	Subjugation	
Hereditary Rule		[I]Wealth[/I]			Slavery			Mercantilism		Theocracy		Viceroyality
Representation		[I]Liberty[/I]			Caste System		Free Market		[I]Tolerance[/I]		Resettlement
Police State		[I]Power[/I]			[I]Indoctrination[/I]		State Property		[I]Atheism[/I]			[I]Federalism[/I]
Universal Suffrage	[I]Equality[/I]		[I]Emancipation[/I]		[I]Mixed Economy[/I]		[I]Secularism[/I]		Commonwealth

 

[BurnEmDown]

I really like 4. I hate it how the top civics aren't really civics, just placeholders until other civics are available. Though if you do that you should perhaps keep the Economic civcs as they are and just make Decentralisation give some small bonuses too, since I'd really hate beign stuck with mercantilism until I can switch to other civics (of the entire 2nd row it's the only civic with a penalty, all the others have only bonuses).
Also keep in mind that you'd have to rewrite the stability penalties for the combinations of civics and also when they go "obsolete" (like the penalties for using slavery or despotism after knowing democracy).

 

[ZachScape]

Three months ago, on a large piece of paper, I outlined my ideas for an UAP (unofficial expansion pack): Colonization. This was around the time LoR came out and we were brainstorming ideas for Antiquity. Now I think I have a couple ideas for civics straight from that paper; modified for RFI

Slave Trade: workers build improvements 50% faster. Farms yield +1 food, + 1 gold +1 anger. Also, there is a probable chance for a random event that could plummet your stability, and a possibility of civil war in at most half of your cities. If you get this message:
-Your people are demanding emancipation
1. Slavery shall not be tolerated! Issue an Emancipation Proclamation immediately! (50~75% chance for civil war (block of independents, or in the US case, the CSA.))
-[no] (2 turns of anarchy, +1 unhappiness in all cities for every 3 workers owned. Suffer a chance of this message to reappear) (a bit harsh? The benefits of slavery outweigh this though, right?

Unions: +50 or 100% cottage, hamlet, village growth rate. Factories: +1 gold, +1 production. Chance of strike (1 turn)

Mercantilism (changed): no foreign trade routes, vassals = +2 gold per turn. Colonies*= +1 gold per improvement and increased border tension, increased rate of piracy.
------
*May be hard to code the following:
Colonists: 3/4 cost of settler, 2 movement; unlike the settler, it does not use food for production. Can build colonies
Colonies: has a name, can build harbor, market, walls, watchtower, explorer, worker; only 2 squares of culture (colony tile and one adjacent tile); 3/4 maintenence costs of a city.

New trait: Colonist
+1 culture tile for colony
3/4 colonist cost
1/2 market cost
------

Additional ideas from paper:

-Great Explorer:
2 movement, ignores terrain movement costs
Can attach to explorers and caravels, like a great general
Can found a city, named after them (Like Verrazonis or Hudsonia, for example)
Can enter rival territory
Can not start a golden age or bulb a technology
Can spawn from villagers/number of explorers and caravels built, random events.

New Leaders: Teddy Roosevelt (only one that applies to this mod)



BTW: This UXP had 2 new civs (Phoenecia and Srivijaya), 4 new leaders, 5 new world wonders, 1 new religion (Olympian), 2 new resources, 2 new national wonders, and an all new currency system. Never got around to think of new units, techs, and buildings. I probably would have had 5 new units, 2 new buildings, and 3 new techs (one spawning a Great Explorer for the first to discover).

 

[kairob]

Slave Trade - Isn't this represented fine by slavery?

Unions - Not sure if you mean this to be a Labour or Economic civic. Assuming you mean a Labour civic then I am on the fence about it, my main objection is that with the Emancipation civic being in the game it might imply that Trade Unions stop people being free?

 

[Steb]

Perhaps the Labour civics should be redone. I don't like how Emancipation is the only "moral" option. Especially if your mod is focused on the modern period, then there is less need for serfdom or castes. Everyone would just turn to emancipation early and by 1900 the whole Labour category would have become obsolete.

The alternative could be opposed to unions, some kind of free market for jobs, where the boss decides all (I lack a word for it). Increases productivity, but not happiness, and Great Depressions hit harder?

Scrap Tribalism and Emancipation and have Serfdom-Slavery-Castes-Job market (what an ugly name)-Unions.

 

[dagriggstar]

Just some basic ideas...

Government

Dependence (Designed for small, new vassal state civs)
- +2 trade routes with civ you are vassal state of
- +1 from cottages, hamlet (not villages or towns)
- +1 for every 4 pop. in a city

Legal

Unionism (Works well as long as you don't switch your production too much. Need to specialise your cities)
- +1 for factories
- +25% production
- Switching production between categories (eg unit prod. to building, building to wonder, etc) costs

Economic

Protectionism (For say an England when your large cities have libraries, markets and the like while your colonies don't. This way you take full advantage of those buildings which you don't have elsewhere)
- +1 in 3 largest cities
- 3 largest cities gain +100% trade yield
- Only 3 largest cities can have foreign trade routes

Mixed (Why does it need a fancy name ?)
- +1 per corporation in a city (since corporations don't like gov. intervention)
- No reccession risk
- Need something positive here...

Religion

As suggested - Aethism

I'd keep Pacifism but change to operate more like post WWII Japan. More production but more war wariness...

yea...

 

[kairob]

@ Labour Unions...
The seems to be a lot of people wanting this, but rather a lot of confusion around them. Labour unions exist in the same economies that have a 'Free Market for Jobs' and I don't think they should be a civic because of this. They are a part of the Free Market and I think it would be better to just have a tech called 'Unions' that gave a happiness with factories or something trivial like that.

@ dagriggstar

Dependence (Designed for small, new vassal state civs)
- +2 trade routes with civ you are vassal state of
- +1 from cottages, hamlet (not villages or towns)
- +1 for every 4 pop. in a city

An interesting idea, I prefer the name Puppet State though

Protectionism....

Protectionism is already in the game as Mercantilism

Mixed (Why does it need a fancy name ?)
- +1 per corporation in a city (since corporations don't like gov. intervention)
- No reccession risk
- Need something positive here...

The corporations might not like it, but if the population does it shouldn't cause

---------------

Lastly, a question. What are the corporation costs meant to represent? Is the government the owner of these companies and this is their operation cost or does it represent the money leaving your economy to enter foreign hands?

 

[Panopticon]

Here is some work I did on a similar idea in the past.

GOVERNMENT

Monarchy: HR civic.
Theocracy: +2 happiness for state religion
Police State: Police State civic.
Federation: ?
Democracy: ?

NATIONAL VALUES

Order: ?
Glory: XP
Liberty: Culture, Conscription
Wealth: +Town gold
Equality: +1 happiness

LABOR

Serfdom: Serfdom civic.
Aristocracy: Caste System civic - production part.
Oligarchy: Caste System civic - great people part.
Subjugation: Weaker version of Slavery civic.
Trade Unions: ?

ECONOMIC

Agrarianism: Bonus from farms
Mercantilism: Mercantilism civic.
Free Market : Free Market civic.
State Property: State Property civic.
Welfare State: +++ health OR external happiness malus like Emancipation civic OR allows immigration

RELIGIOUS

Organised Religion: OR civic.
Fundamentalism: Theocracy civic.
Pluralism: Pacifism civic.
Atheism: No state religion, cheaper maintenance costs
Secularism: Free Religion civic.

EXPANSION

Consolidation: ?
Conquest: Imperialism civic.
Extraction: Hurts colonies but helps domestic cities.
Resettlement: Resettlement civic.
Commonwealth: Commonwealth civic.

Some of these are a bit unusual. Theocracy is separated from Fundamentalism because they can exist separately. Extraction is the model of colonisation that involved small corps of colonial administrators governing over a native population rather than wholesale resettlement of citizens from the metropole (which is obviously modelled by Resettlement). "Liberty" is a value more like Nationalism than Liberalism.

 

[kairob]

Some interesting ideas there and some weird ones, although they are generally slightly underpowered. This can be easily tweeked if the idea is good. I'll go through each category below;

Your government ideas are okay, but the standard government choices, in my opinion, are already pretty good, so sweeping changes are unecessary. However, if we do ditch the top civic in each category we could do with a new one and both Theocracy and Federation make interesting choices (as would Constitutional Monarchy).

Your national values ideas are a little 'out there', particularly Liberty giving conscription and Wealth being an extremely watered down version of free speech.

I like your economic ideas a lot better. Swapping the redundant civic for Agrarianism (which was used by many underdeveloped nations) and swapping Environmentalism for Welfare State. I think the effects from Welfare State need to be pretty good, but with a high maintenance cost.

Your religious ideas are also good, but I don't think we should fiddle too much with the expansion civics. They seem very well balanced at the moment.

 

[Mekajiki]

I don't like the idea of Democracy being the "best" either. Universal Suffrage is fine, but Democracy doesn't really represent anything as there are no real democracies in the world today.

 

[Steb]

@ Labour Unions...
The seems to be a lot of people wanting this, but rather a lot of confusion around them. Labour unions exist in the same economies that have a 'Free Market for Jobs' and I don't think they should be a civic because of this. They are a part of the Free Market and I think it would be better to just have a tech called 'Unions' that gave a happiness with factories or something trivial like that.

Fair enough. I don't mind taking unions out altogether. I just think that emancipation as the ultimate civic is a bit... boring. That said, it represents very well the abolion of slavery or caste system, which have been a big issue in the USA, India, etc.

I like Panopticon's Religion and Economy ideas a lot. But let me say that I believe Environmentalism, or something similar, should be in the game, especially if it goes until 2050. Welfare State is better for the Economy category, but we could put ecology somewhere else. It could be placed in the Justice or Labour one, but being an alternative to Emancipation or Free Speech wouldn't make any sense... Maybe, then, it should just be represented by techs/buildings.

As for Government, Hereditary Rule, Police State and Universal Suffrage should definitely stay. Replace Despotism and Representation (which is what, anyway? a democracy where not everyone has the right to vote?) with anything you fancy. Theocracy does not strike me as particularly significant, but could be interesting. Federation and Constitutional Monarchy would be cool too, and fit civs like Canada and Australia. (Except that they do not mean an absence of Universal Suffrage, which could be considered as a Republican system.)

 

[Cethegus]

USA's a Federation, though. Though I support including it in the civics section, there would be essentially no difference between modern America and future European Union if we were to put that in the Government section. Especially since America has a longer history of being one.

It would be better off in the Legal civic row. I'm fairly certain it won't be included in the mod anymore, but a Federal dictatorship should be just as possible as a Federal democracy. Actually, it should be an Expansion civic if there is to be one. (No negative stability from number of cities/+1 stability for each city controlled? Maybe that would be too powerful.)

 

[kairob]

I agree a federation is more a legal network than a system of organising who is in charge.

 

[Bonci]

It would be better off in the Legal civic row. I'm fairly certain it won't be included in the mod anymore, but a Federal dictatorship should be just as possible as a Federal democracy.

USSR

 

[Panopticon]

Bear in mind that I've proposed these as labels and I didn't do any work on the benefits themselves. I don't think some of my ideas above should be included in a mod, like Federation, which indeed isn't a government civic. You also can't easily implement it in a fun or useful way. Instead that slot should be something representing the imperfect representative governments of the 18th and 19th century. Nowadays my ideas for the civics would be Monarchy, Theocracy, Police State, Electorate and Universal Suffrage. In this mod Monarchy should be the default while Theocracy should be available early on, with the next three civs becoming active in that order. Electorate versus Universal Suffrage is the contrast between two forms of democracy that have been most used by countries in the period beginning in 1800.

I do think that a lot of the civic names need to be changed. For instance, Imperialism is the point of the mod, so you can't really name a civic after it, especially one that benefits countries like Germany more than countries like the UK. I also think that the Legal civics need change because they make no sense (in what sense do Nationalism, Bureaucracy and Free Speech clash?), and the Labor civics need change because they are currently not sensible in a mod that specialises in Europe from the post-1500 period. I would change each Legal civic to a thematic National Value civic and introduce different Labor civics.

 

[kairob]

Some good ideas there Panopticon. Not sure what to do with labour though, maybe just one more could be added to give another option to Caste System during imperialism. I know little of the social structure during this period though, so that might not work out...

National values I have a better idea of though, all we need to do is go through historic states of the period and see what values they had. Wealth (Spanish Empire, Modern day America), Expansion (British Empire, Russian Empire), Liberty (Revolutionary France, Early America), Conservatism/Isolationism/Order (Far East, Dictatorships), Prolatariate Rule/Revolution/Communism (USSR and other Communist states).

The last 2 might not work and could be replaced but I like the first 2.

 

[BurnEmDown]

I think Serfdom should be something that represents the middle ages, which most countries (besides Russia and maybe some others not in Europe) should hurry to switch out of it to something more "enlightened".
So serfdom could stay 50% worker speed, which will benefit Russia with it's vast lands and undeveloped nations.
Next civic should represent maybe the start of colonialism and influencing colonies outside of your civ's continent. Maybe something like slavery, except instead of rushing a building it will send the removed population to a random overseas city, so civs like England, Spain, Netherlands and France will find it useful while Russia and non-colonizers will prefer to stay in their wold Serf-like ways.
Next civic could represent the renaissance, I don't know the name for a civic like this but it should work like Caste System, allowing Scientists, Artists and Merchants (?), and maybe another small bonus (tho I wouldn't want to just copy off of CS).
Next should represent the Industrial Revolution, giving hammers to cities with buildings like Factory and Coal Plant, and increasing cottage growth rate.
Next is obviously Communism, in the sense that the government is responsible for the people's jobs. It should incur some unhappiness and reduce great people birth rate but give production bonuses to tiles with the right improvements (improved by the hard working Russian empire's workers ).
What do you guys think?

 

[Steb]

National values I have a better idea of though, all we need to do is go through historic states of the period and see what values they had. Wealth (Spanish Empire, Modern day America), Expansion (British Empire, Russian Empire), Liberty (Revolutionary France, Early America), Conservatism/Isolationism/Order (Far East, Dictatorships), Prolatariate Rule/Revolution/Communism (USSR and other Communist states).

Communism being based on the equality of all classes and people, Equality should be the national value associated with it (and it can be associated with other things as well).

I'm not sure I like Expansion, as there is already an Expansion category. And try to say it in a sentence like "We want a free/wealthy/equal society" and it doesn't feel right. Not sure about the penultimate one either.

If you're going to include national values, I have to restate my support to Environment, as it does fit as a value that some modern countries kind of have, and that could be more and more important in the near future.

The rest is quite good. (I'm realizing now that "the rest" is just Liberty and Wealth, two obvious ones...)

 

[civ_king]

How about Atheism also has a x% (x=# of religions) chance per city of removing a religion?

 

[BurnEmDown]

Equality could be more linked to socialism, and while combined with Police State, Atheism, and other civics would create a "communistic" country.
However a nation can be socialist without being Communist, so it shouldn't give a minus that would otherwise fit other civics (like PS). I think Equality is a very good civic idea, it should compete in the later are with Liberty, as these really are values modern countries need to balance, and some focus on one while some focus on the other. I think they should both give only bonuses, but entirely different ones.