Should you be able to change Social Policies?

[SuperJay]

No, changing social policies is completely unhistorical and does not add anything to gameplay!

For the historical part:
It's not like people throughout history ever changed their views on anything. All societies that used to have aristocracy or other right-by-blood laws, or who used to hold slaves or considering their leader to be a son of god still have aristocracy, slavery and divine rulers.

And for the gameplay part:
Adding more choices to the player just makes the game too confusing. You should need to pass kindergarten to be able to play Civilization.

It's true! Nothing has ever really changed in any nation or culture over thousands of years, so it only makes sense that Social Policies are rigid and fixed for the entire game. And as you so rightly point out, giving players options and choices in their games is only going to make things more difficult and confusing, and I for one don't want to bother with that sort of headache-inducing thought process.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

JLoZeppeli:

I was kind of aware that the Roman Republic was of that nature, but what does that matter? Would you have been able to establish a similar structure in, say, the Siamese Kingdom? I mean, let's say that you introduce the concept and everyone was amenable. Do you really think that a Roman Republic would have worked given otherwise Siamese cultural mores and practices?

I went to the Magna Carta because there is a traceable progression from that event to the eventual establishment of representation in England. I'm pretty sure that at least some English aristocrats were well aware of the Roman Republic and its practices during their time. Could a King have implemented it, even if he wanted to? I seriously doubt that.

Ok now are you speaking only for England, when some posts before you were assuming Magna Charta as the main point of democracy progression in recent history...

Very good to change the subject when someone put you in a corner, are you a politican in your country? I'm actually praising you, good dialectic, maybe in the past you were pupil of Cicero...

The point is that modern western democracy have only one real father: the Enlightment and what came after....

Magna Charta was a a sort of great grandfather, and the Roman Republic an ancestor...

But assuming that, we can say that revolution and changes in governament type happened often in history, the only thing to remember is: an advanced cultural civilization scrap some old governament systems, and switch between the modern ones. In fact, even in modern eras, some not much cultural advanced countries struggle in the lap of obsolete systems...

In the end, civics are storical, but need to became obsolete whene the civilization enter a new era, in the way of the wonders, and their slots may be substituted with a new one...

That's the truly governament system, or civics, that Civ V needs, maybe alongside social politics..

 

[Roxlimn]

JLoZeppeli:

Hehe. Well, it wasn't really important to my point whether or not the Magna Carta directly influenced representation in the entire Western World. The point is that particular governments can only be established when the right social mores and traditions are present, and are thus a reflection of the culture and society of the people.

Still not sure about your obsolete Civics idea. I mean, autocracy is supposedly not a modern idea and it's not supposed to work, but China isn't doing quite so bad, is it? We laugh at the thought of a modern theocratic state, but what about the Vatican? Isn't that kind of like that?

I'm not sure it would be correct to say that certain governments just become obsolete once a people became "advanced," enough. I mean, the Romans had their Republic, but their successor states devolved into monarchial autocratic rule, did they not? Wasn't Europe supposed to be "past that" at that point?

 

[DiabolicX]

I (I, as in me, personal opinion, not we, not the people, not us, not us hardcores, not us adults, not fanatics) hate the game and even I think that the mechanics regarding social policies should stay the way they are.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

JLoZeppeli:

Hehe. Well, it wasn't really important to my point whether or not the Magna Carta directly influenced representation in the entire Western World. The point is that particular governments can only be established when the right social mores and traditions are present, and are thus a reflection of the culture and society of the people.

Still not sure about your obsolete Civics idea. I mean, autocracy is supposedly not a modern idea and it's not supposed to work, but China isn't doing quite so bad, is it? We laugh at the thought of a modern theocratic state, but what about the Vatican? Isn't that kind of like that?

I'm not sure it would be correct to say that certain governments just become obsolete once a people became "advanced," enough. I mean, the Romans had their Republic, but their successor states devolved into monarchial autocratic rule, did they not? Wasn't Europe supposed to be "past that" at that point?

Autocracy is not modern? I think the most autocratic countries were in the past century for sure: Germany under nazism, Italy and Spain under fascism and nazionalism, Russia under communism, and some timeafter those China, Cuba, Corea, Vietnam and Sud Americas militar governaments, the colonels in Greece... You are making confusion between modern autocracy and the absolutism. They are two similar concepts, but diverge by the philosophy at the bases... Absolutism came from religion and ancient lineage system, modern autocracy was first theorized by people like Hegel, in the way of Statalism. So from that base the hegelian left leads by Marx and Feuerbach theorized communism, and the hegelian right theorized nationalism, as you can see in some ways in Nietszche (but his was not a political theory), Rosenberg, Evola and some others...

 

[Roxlimn]

I confess that I'm not entirely sure exactly how they differ in implementation. To my mind, the Chinese were receptive to autocratic rule because they've been under absolute rule for so long in their history, and it had worked relatively well for them for most of that history.

The way the philosophy underpinnings were reasoned out may have been different, but how would that be relevant to an Independent Farmer out in the middle of Guangzhou?

 

[Soro]

No, changing social policies is completely unhistorical and does not add anything to gameplay!

For the historical part:
It's not like people throughout history ever changed their views on anything. All societies that used to have aristocracy or other right-by-blood laws, or who used to hold slaves or considering their leader to be a son of god still have aristocracy, slavery and divine rulers.

And for the gameplay part:
Adding more choices to the player just makes the game too confusing. You should need to pass kindergarten to be able to play Civilization.

I'm guessing...parody, in the form of sarcasm.

 

[Cywil]

No, changing social policies is completely unhistorical and does not add anything to gameplay!

For the historical part:
It's not like people throughout history ever changed their views on anything. All societies that used to have aristocracy or other right-by-blood laws, or who used to hold slaves or considering their leader to be a son of god still have aristocracy, slavery and divine rulers.

Agreed

 

[JLoZeppeli]

I confess that I'm not entirely sure exactly how they differ in implementation. To my mind, the Chinese were receptive to autocratic rule because they've been under absolute rule for so long in their history, and it had worked relatively well for them for most of that history.

The way the philosophy underpinnings were reasoned out may have been different, but how would that be relevant to an Independent Farmer out in the middle of Guangzhou?

I think that to an independent farmer nothing can change even between monarchy and democracy, too far away....

But it's different in the economic factors.Statism tends to a rationalization of production, government control over business, reinvest the proceeds in the company that priduzione rpduce and upgrading of the infrastructure that underpin economic development.
The monarchical absolutism is instead pyramidal in the distribution of the proceeds, which is not reinvested, but generally accumulated (and often squandered, but this is a human factor), only the enlightened monarchies of the '700 were beginning to see greater interest in a open structure to the transformation of capital obtained from work in productive development.

So for a farmer even seemingly does not change anything in his daily life, but what about the economy that revolves around the proceeds of his work, it changes almost everything: infrastructure to improve production and transport, development of new techniques and products for cultivation, etc. ..

@Cywil, i think he was sarcastic...

 

[Roxlimn]

I'm not sure I understand how this relates to the independent farms systems of China. What I mean here is that those farms are meant to be self-sustaining, and more or less independent. Whatever yields they produced outside the taxed sustainable amount was automatically reinvested into the farms.

Since the economic model was largely retained through the transfer from absolute rule to autocratic rule, what difference would that have made?

Establishment of a true democracy would be different because it's diametrically opposed to the independent farm status in some ways. In particular, true democracy demands the active participation of the supposedly independent farmers in national politics, and that means that politicians on the national level are incentivized to woo them for support. Once that relationship gets going, those farmers cease to be truly independent.