Social welfare better implemented?

[Tomice]

In Civ 4, you had the ability to increase happiness due to culture, but it felt more like "entertaining" your people than a proper implementation of social welfare into the game.

Since old-age pensions, free schools and healthcare, poverty aid and such has been a big topic in the last 150 years at least (it originated earlier, however) I would love to see it implemented somehow.

The civ4 concept of "culture" is a somewhat clumsy mixture of different aspects, it would be great to make it more comparable to real life!

Culture did keep people content, and it did impress people, strenghtening the position of a state and eventually even made people move to a state with superior culture. But it was migration of individuals rather than regions which changed their side. And most important, culture (literature, phylosophy, arts,...) helped develop new social concepts.

So culture could be a form of research for social techs, while the civ4 beakers remain in place for weapon and industry techs. Furthermore, culture could make your neighbours citizens move to your cities, giving growth in addition to the growth from food and health.

Social welfare would be there mostly to create happiness in your bigger lategame cities.

What do you think about this?

 

[xmen510]

Interesting ideas there.

 

[Tomice]

One more thought:

If we continue the idea of having social advancement through culture and technological advancement through research, fighting against (stronger) foes could speed up your miltary teching.
New weapons were often designed on engineers desks, but even more were created through experience on the battlefield.

 

[Cyc]

I think using some process like this would be a good step in making the overall game more enjoyable. Having a feature like this that worked in the background, but would report to the player during the game, would move the game in the direction of improving the AI for the better.

It's ideas like this, if developed, that would keep me coming back. A process such as this doesn't seem to have different mechanics than most of the other features in the game. Comparable to Cultural Conversion, but at a slower rate (bit by bit) that also affected happiness. Great idea.

EDIT: The above was for the first thought. Working in points for battling more advanced military hardware would require a lot more.

 

[Kissamies]

Good ideas there. I'll grab the welfare part of it and run away with it: Thinking in Civ IV terms, the simplest way to implement this would be a some kind of civic, or a new kind of slider, like the existing science/culture/epsionage ones, that becomes available when you discover some social tech. I'd prefer latter, and it'd probably fit Civ V better anyways.

So this welfare slider would probably mainly represent free schooling, health care, poverty aid and pensions, increasing both happiness and health (maybe focus on health more since culture covers happiness). To really be effective with it, the city should have appropriate buildings, like hospitals and universities. The obvious downside would be that the more funds you put on this area, the less you have to spend on other areas.

 

[Tomice]

I thought it's more realistic than happiness and health through imported gold and beef...

Although ressoures were a good concept, it's not all in real life.

 

[Grawss]

Only if they allow me to whip the ones who are able to but refuse to work.

 

[Kissamies]

Yeah, when the safety net becomes a hammock. There should probably be a some sort of point of dimishing returns on the welfare slider. Go over it and start losing hammers and maybe the maintenance costs rise due to all the bureaucracy. How high that point is might be dependent of how much culture the city is generating, or of some similar factor. Getting too complicated for Civ, I guess.

 

[Magma]

I support this movement.

Should they be like decisions in EU3? ;o

 

[Tomice]

Well, there are no returns for an excess in happy faces, just costs!

But your argumentation reminds me this game is made by capitalist americans - No wonder they don't care about welfare!

 

[Woodreaux]

Well, there are no returns for an excess in happy faces, just costs!

In Civ IV there's no consistent return, but excess do increase the chance for "We love the leader day", which gives free maintenance for that city that turn. For me the real return is to put the whip away and let that city keep on growing.

 

[civ_king]

The slider should boost output of other stuff, an educated workforce boosts productivity and science, also increases profit (higher productivity=more exports=more cash), government paying artists boosts culture

 

[Kissamies]

Yeah, realistically it should give some boosts across the board, but from gameplay perspective that's too messy. Gameplaywise it would be neater to have one primary stat it boosts; I'd say health. Could also have weaker secondary effect on happy faces or reducing unhappy faces with mechanisms similar to war weariness reduction.

Culture and science sliders could always be intepreted partially as giving art grants and funding education as well as research projects.

 

[Camikaze]

This idea ties in with the idea of internal stability in a Civ. An enhanced focus on happiness, with an improved representation on it, and other factors such as ethnicity (if this were to be implemented alongside culture, which could lead to a drastic improvement in the capabilities of both as game features), all contributing to the stability of your empire, with the prospect of civil war or secession or city defection or strikes if you fail to meet necessary requirements, would make for a great improvement to the game, which really seems to be lacking in actual empire management for an empire management game.

 

[tom2050]

I left a msg based off what another user mentioned in Social Policies (gov't discussion) thread, which was taken to mean governments... but I'm not sure if Social Policies are governments in Civ 5, unless the dev's have stated so. Their actual meaning, is much more like what you have stated in your OP, being things such as welfare. So if this is so, then they have indeed implemented this into the game already!

 

[Cyc]

Maybe. But I seriously doubt the ideas developing in this thread are implemented in Civ5 yet. This is one of the more interesting threads here, in my opinion. Aside from the redneck comments about welfare, the implications of a game wide cultural enhancement relating to the heritage of your nation can be developed into a great improvement for the game. At least it can be a feature to be considered.

 

[tom2050]

Maybe. But I seriously doubt the ideas developing in this thread are implemented in Civ5 yet.

They may be already; everything listed here is an example of a Social Policy. Here's a list:

Social policies wouldn't translate to government forms.
Examples of social policies are:

emancipation
free speech
freedom of religion
minimum wage
social security
national health insurance
trias politica
universal suffrage

Other social policies per Wikipedia:

welfare
Unemployment
Pensions
Healthcare
Family Policy
Social housing, care, and exclusion
Education
Crime and Criminal justice
Labour regulation

Therefore, unless they have specifically stated something about Social Policies, which I am unsure of... these are possibilities that are currently in the game.

 

[Schmieds]

Maybe a social welfare civic? Would be a little broad, but it could give lots of happiness bonuses and such and have high upkeep.

Don't think it'll happen in Civ5, though.

 

[kivanc]

good ideas here. but could be bad for a warmonger if it increases the need for more city-buildings.
maybe already existing city-buildings give extras to suggested parameters like unemployment, so no new building type we have to build.

in civ4, we already waste too many hammers on city-buildings. it would't be a problem if you were able to train units in your barracks at the same time when you were building a courthouse.