Secession

[expeliarmus]

Hi. I don't know if there's already a thread about this, because there are so many pages...
Anyway, here's my suggestion: I think in Civ IV there should be a feature like secession. For example, if a city is not happy in its current nation, the people in that city should be able to become independent and create a new free nation.
That would add more reality to the game, wouldn't it?

 

[mastertyguy]

There is about 200 threads about it, named civil wars, revolution, revolt, secession, etc. I think it is going to be in the game. So many suggestion...

 

[Iron Clad]

Yea this falls along the lines of civil war. But I don't think a nation would give up a city without a fight.

 

[Hyena]

I really like this idea.... I better go read the other threads.

 

[sealman]

I dislike this idea the first time I saw it and still do. People moan and whine abou tone city culture flips. Think culture flips on a grand scale.

 

[Rohirrim]

Especially when you're playing the Dutch. Damn! Those people are hard to please.

 

[Commander Bello]

I dislike this idea the first time I saw it and still do. People moan and whine abou tone city culture flips. Think culture flips on a grand scale.

I am absolutely with sealman.
Where is the fun in being forced into a war which cuts off your maritim trade route and makes you loose three cities at the other edges of your empire?

Additionally, it would cause massive micromanagement, since you would be forced to check with all your cities every turn for the slightest indication about a coming revolution. Turn after turn after turn....

Or, you would have advisors who point out to this danger. But then they would have to it that early, that it could easily become tedious and boring...

After all, secession / civil war / revolution / new nation / independence wars and whatever it may be called is one of the least desirable additions to the game.
At least, I have never read any description, which sounded like it being fun--- of course, except if it would happen to my neighbour.... And I guess, this is the very point in all this proposals.

 

[dh_epic]

It doesn't have to be poorly implemented, Commander Bello. The problem with culture flips wasn't that they happened but how they happened -- seemingly random, without warning.

Not to mention that pursuing culture wasn't a winning strategy compared to warmongering. Warmongers would ignore culture and pursue a winning strategy, and so it's no surprise that those who pursued culture could do little more than be a nuisance.

- They could improve the interface, so you wouldn't have to check your cities every turn. You would know well in advance that it's coming. The information could be obvious.
- They could make it provokable, so even if an empire was stable, you could come along, and tip the scales.
- You could decide how much risk you're willing to live with. Some will be especially cautious. Others will take their chances.
- They could make it recoverable, if they implement minor civilizations that are capable of surrender, as in the American Civil War.

It would require a certain amount of balancing. But what it would allow is for people to exploit a lack of unity and leverage their own unity -- rather than simply putting armies up against each other. It would also keep the late game interesting by making it possible for a huge empire to crumble, even large chunks of territory to change hands -- rather than individual cities.

That's even before you talk about realism.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I think Civil War would solve two major problems (albiet very closely related problems) in one fell stroke!

Problem 1 is that success is measured by QUANTITY-not QUALITY. That is, a nation with a sprawling empire of scores of cities will always be stronger-economically and militarily-than a nice little compact nation of just a dozen or so cities.

Problem 2 is that the success from Problem 1 feeds into itself. i.e. success via expansion feeds yet more expansion, thus more success-and so on and so forth. The much hated 'Snowball Effect'.

So, how does Civil War solve these two problems. Well it solves the first one by requiring an expansionist civ to sink more of his resources into securing and stabilising cities out towards his/her frontier, whilst the non-expansionist civ can focus his/her resources on building yet more industrial/commercial/scientific and cultural improvements-as well as generating the population to use them.
This of course leads to the solution to problem 2. That troops and resources used to keep the empire stable must be taken out of those resources that may have otherwise been used to capture yet more territory-thus de-coupling success from further success. Expansion is still a viable strategy, it just means that each phase of expansion must be punctuated by a period of consolidation-if the players want to keep hold of their gains.

As DH_Epic pointed out. If Civil Wars are modelled in a way that is reasonably predictable, and ultimately preventable (and can be provoked in others) then I think it can add a fantastic new dimension to the game-especially if its used to replace the ridiculous Culture Flip system-which ultimately made no sense anyway.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

I think the key with any new feature is balance. It has to occur in a sensible way. I can't say that about culture flips right now -- when you can lose 8 of your units seemingly without warning, and it doesn't take much to get that city back, culture flips ARE a nuisance.

I think culture needs to be rethought first before they can tackle harder problems like secession -- or even religion.

 

[sealman]

- They could improve the interface, so you wouldn't have to check your cities every turn. You would know well in advance that it's coming. The information could be obvious.

Then what is the point? If you know it is coming, you just prevent it.

- They could make it provokable, so even if an empire was stable, you could come along, and tip the scales.

Yes they could, but if the devlopers follow then same path with espionage missions, it would be so expensive to try to tip the scales and only the real rich civs could even think about pulling it off on a strong opponent.

If it is done well and balanced, without extensive micro-management, without me thinking of culture flips on a grand scale, I may like the new feature. But until then, I will not like it.

Everyone comments on how it makes the game more realistic. However, this is a game and making it fun should come before making it realistic.

 

[Drakan]

Check this thread with all the current topics and wishlists for Civ IV Expeliarmus:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=84849&page=1

 

[dh_epic]

Yeah, I'm not one to use realism as the reason to justify a feature. I do use it as a reason to nix a feature, though.

There's Nothing Wrong with "Preventable"

There are lots of things in Civ that are completely preventable. You can prevent an opponent from taking a city, or breaking a critical road, or prevent your empire from going bankrupt, or prevent your city from starving, or from falling into civil disorder. Some of these are easier to prevent than others.

Does that fact mean these preventable problems should be removed from the game? Of course not. They exist not to penalize the player, but as negative reinforcement, to encourage the player to play differently. Don't blow all your money. Build larger networks of roads. Have a strong military. Build temples. Pay for luxuries.

Of course, it takes at least an intermediate player to do all of these things at the same time, even if you add "keep your empire unified". And slightly better than intermediate players might start to take risks. "I'll blow all my money, I'll just try to get by with 3 gold for now." Or "I'll just have the one road for now. Right now, I need to irrigate." Or "Sure my people are getting unhappy, but I need to invest in science."

And once an opponent comes along, they can suddenly be kicking themselves. "I should have reinforced that road!" "I should have kept some emergency gold to rush production!"

I would imagine secession to be the same way. Easy to prevent. Something you might take a few risks with. And something where if you took too many risks, you might find a set of bad circumstances forcing you into a tough situation.

Not to mention that I think it should be easy to recover. If you can mow them down with your army relatively quickly, the rest of the cities should fall to you automatically. (That is if your military isn't already spread too thin, and there's no opponent who hates you enough to offer a protectorate to the new nation.)

No Micromanagement

I don't imagine it as something that requires a lot of micromanagement. The horror story is it's a lot like civil disorder combined with culture flipping. You're checking every one of your cities every turn to ensure that your happiness scales don't break a threshhold, and your culture isn't too impoverished.

In reality, I imagine secession being a replacement for civil disorder and culture flipping. One unhappy city won't flip. One culturally impoverished city won't flip. One city with both won't flip -- it may just have lowered productivity. Secession would only happen if there is an entire region (3 cities or more?) that is both culturally improverished and unhappy. The cities would have to collectively pass a threshhold to seccede.

Moreover, I think this should be obvious from the overhead map. Instead of a little "civil disorder" fist flicking on when it's already happened, you should see ratings on your cities, from Blue meaning "We love you" to Red meaning "We hate you". These would happen gradually. You might be able to live with Green -- "we like you", or even yellow "we're getting by".

There's no micromanagement involved. You're not doing anything on a turn to turn basis. You address the crisis when you feel like it's starting to get out of hand -- and with the regular channels of cultural improvements or happiness improvements. And it's easy to see how close you are to a crisis.

Big Picture

I do think that this ties into a lot of other things. I think you'd need to improve culture so there are more intermediate payoffs to pursuing it than just "cultural victory" and "city flips". That way culture seems less like a nuisance and more like a real strategy that you'd want to pursue. (Consider Cultural great leaders, culture enabled improvements and wonders, and so on...)

I also think you'd need to improve espionage to not depend on large lump sums but small amounts of constant investment. That way it becomes a real strategy you pursue, rather than a split second decision. Not to mention that I think other factors like culture and your respect around the world should have an impact in your ability to recruit spies. (e.g.: If foreigners like you, it's easier to attract spies.)

But hey, I'm talking a lot to convince somebody who is highly skeptical. There are those who have faith. Not necessarily because they know how it will work, but they believe that it CAN work, if implemented well.

The key to a complex strategy game is a hell of a lot of balancing.

 

[sealman]

dh_epic:

I am not skeptical that it can be done correctly, I am skeptical that it WILL be done correctly. I stated something in an earlier thread that I thought your ideas (or at least I think that they are yours) were the best I read on these forums.

However, you can call me a pessemist here, but I think as the deadline for release comes due and the feature is not quite complete, there will be a band-aid fix that makes the whole process a nightmare. As far as I am concerned, this feature is not really needed and trying to get it to work properly would hurt the whole package. In my view, why fix what ain't broke?

 

[dh_epic]

Yeah, I think you'll find some agreement from me there.

I think Civil Wars can only be done properly if it has a certain number of features already preceding it. Improved Culture, Minor Civilizations, and a complete rethinking of culture flips, civil disorder, and espionage. It's a large undertaking.

And I know that a lot of technical type people tend to be reductionists than holists. They'd tend to see each feature in a vacuum first, and then try to balance it later, rather than seeing it as part of a greater system right from the start.

I guess the good news and bad news is that there's been no announcement (yet) about secession or civil wars. Maybe this one's better work for the modders.

 

[mastertyguy]

If that's still not enough, you can enslave any racial group of your choice, incite holy wars, and commit crimes against humanity without regret. And if a rebellion starts to overthrow your regime, there's always the reset switch.

Nothing else to say.

 

[NP300]

If implemented right secession can stop the snowball effect and make small empires more viable (especially if combined with a cut for trading middlemen).

Think about it, a big empire might be forced to spend more military resources patrolling its own empire to stop secessionist movements. The probability of secession would depend on the number of foreign ctiizens, religion, happiness, war weariness, the size of your empire, and the number of other secessionist movements. For instance, if you suddenly have a secession in a certain city, the odds would increase that you would get another secession in a nearby city.

Sealman raises the point that culture flips can be annoying. That's true. But why are they annoying? It is because your city flips to an enemy civ and you cannot get it back without going to war with that civ. That is annoying and unrealistic. But if instead of flipping to another civ, your city became its own civ, then you could send military units to retake your city.

Thus, these flips would not be so annoying because you could retake the city without a major war. The main effect would be to force a larger empire to spend more resources maintaining internal security. During a war, the situation could get very dangerous for a large empire that does not have the secessionist movements under control. During war with an enemy you could find a city seceding where you have no units nearby. The seceding cities could also opt to join a civ you are at war with or make alliances with it.

If this is implemeted right, then the main downside to a larger empire would be keeping secessionist sentiments under control. The game could warn you beforehand with something like "Our agents report that a secessionist movement may attempt a revolt soon in city X". Once one city secedes, there would be a higher chance that nearby unhappy cities would also secede and join the seceding city. The second city would simply join the same "civ" as that of the first seceding city (think of the confederate states). Thus, a rebellion that is not put down quickly could become a challenge to your power. If it were to happen during a war with an AI civ the results could be disastrous.

This could also be implemented differently from a culture flip. In cities with secessionist sentiments, your garrisoned military units might lose hitpoints due to guerrilla attacks. The secessionist movement might get free guerrilla-type units popping up every once in a while. If their guerrilla units manage to defeat your units and take a city then they become a "civ". This way your cities would not automatically flip but would only do so after some fighting which you would have a chance to win.

I think this would be a good replacement for corruption as the main check on large empires. Then each civ could have a list of names for seceding civs. The USA would have the Confederate states. Britain could have the USA as a seceding civ. Russia could have Ukraine. Rome could have Byzantium, France and Spain. I doubt they would implement it this way due to extra artwork but it would be the ideal way. Alternatively they could give them generic artwork but I don't think they would do this either.