Terrorism/Counter-Terrorism

[Icmancin]

Civilizaiton should have another aspect of modern life: terrorism. It affects everyone of us in some way and has affected history greatly. The idea I propose is simple.


Let's say (in this fictional game) Rome is occupied by Russia. The citizens of former Rome are very angered by this and now have started a rebellion. The rebellion has captured Veii and the rebel forces are quickly expanding. But soon come the T-34s and Rome is eliminated yet again. So the populace resorts to terrorism.

In Moscow, a group of armed Roman agents captures a bank. On your computer screen a popup occurs. It states: Roman terrorists have captured a bank in Moscow! They want 250 Gold and a free passage out of the city. If you do not give them 250 gold within 3 turns they will destroy the bank!

Option One: Pay the Gold, let the hostages go!
Option Two: We do not bow to terrorists.

If you select option one you lose the Gold and the terrorists leave, plain and simple. But your reputation is damaged (ie. you are a coward) ad the terrorists will continue to screw with you even more. Now if you select option two your reputation stays the same, or even gets better as you are a strong willed country. This gives you options to retaliate.

You can give the money within the three turns and suffer the penalties of option one. Or you can use Counter-Terror tactics on the. If you have a captured building you can send in your cities garrison to get rid of the Terrorists. Selecting a unit in a 'Terrorized City' would allow the option to 'Perform Counter-Terror Measures.' Now this is where it gets kinky.

A standard Land unit could use this. What would happen is a random calculaiton of the success. The type of unit, the amount of time it's spent in the city and how long it has been fortified all factor in. This also lets in a Counter-Terrorism promotion that give a +50% Bonus when conducting Counter-terror Measures. The possibilities include:

Success and termination of the threat.
Success but damage taken on the Counter-Terror Unit
Failure and loss of the Counter-Terror Unit and Captured Facility
Failure and loss of the Captured Facility

In our fictional story, Russia has called in a marine Unit with the Counter-Terror Promotion. The Marines successfully clear out the terrorists and earn Russia a temporary reputation bonus with all allies and neutrals. Allies and pro-Romans suffer a reputation loss. If Russia had used, sya just the Marines, the Marines would have lost and the Bank destroyed. The Marines would have survived but the Bank would have been lost.


What do you think of this? Good? Bad? Nuts? It owuld allow for a lot of possibilities. You could have Agents trained to do this against another country that you disliked even. I think it would be an exciting expansion to Civ4.

 

[Mewtarthio]

The gold, I presume, would go to Rome? There'd have to be more than random numbers involved. Also, given the scope of a single turn, three turns is far too long. You should have to perform counter-terrorism on the same turn. Lastly, is it really realistic to expect that terrorists could completely destroy a major city structure, or that they could escape with their ransom?

 

[Edgecrusher]

I think its too much and too sensitive to alot of people right now.

 

[Mewtarthio]

There are also several wars going on right now, but wars are not excluded from the game.

 

[dh_epic]

Honestly, for all the hype about terrorism, the actual impact in real life is pretty negligable. Every year, there are literally one hundred times more deaths from car crashes than there are from terrorist attacks (ideologically motivated attacks on civilians). However, terrorism tends to have more swing than car crashes around election time.

Truthfully, terrorism is probably best modelled with maintainance costs. You pay a steady maintainance fee to cities that give you more problems -- which would probably include car crashes and the occasional terrorist attack. This is also in line with terrorists, since their goal isn't to dominate a country like conventional warfare, but disrupt (even bankrupt) a nation until it is forced to change its ways.

 

[Edgecrusher]

Isnt the Spy basically a Terrorist?

You pay her to go and sabotage production and cause general mayhem in the surrounding terrain. (which is what a terrorist is)

 

[dh_epic]

Definitely a form of terrorism -- the kind that's sponsored by one state to disrupt a rival state. (But there's also a lot of terrorism that grows because of state neglect, and can attack their homeland or other nations in the world.)

 

[Mewtarthio]

Edgecrusher makes a good point. If you want terrorism that badly, try asking for a new Spy mod.

dh_epic, I have to disagree with you about terrorism's impact. America probably wouldn't be involved in these wars right now had it not been for terrorism, for instance.

 

[dh_epic]

dh_epic, I have to disagree with you about terrorism's impact. America probably wouldn't be involved in these wars right now had it not been for terrorism, for instance.

Every year, there are literally one hundred times more deaths from car crashes than there are from terrorist attacks (ideologically motivated attacks on civilians). However, terrorism tends to have more swing than car crashes around election time.

That's my point. Who would you declare war on to stop those car crashes?

 

[Mewtarthio]

That's my point. Who would you declare war on to stop those car crashes?

I'm not quite sure I understand you. I'm saying that terrorism is more important than car crashes, regardless of statistics, because you would declare war in response to a terror attack.

 

[dh_epic]

"Would" is a subjective statement. England didn't declare war on anybody after they were bombed. Neither did Spain. Because there's nobody to declare war on.

What about Timothy McVeigh? Who did we declare war on there? Most terrorist acts aren't enacted by an official government, so there's almost always no one to declare war on.

 

[Mewtarthio]

What about the war in Afghanistan? Not to mention the increased overall paranoia caused by terrorism.

 

[zapple]

I think an interesting way to model Afghanistan is if there is a way to defeat a civilization, not having conquered all its cities, and leaving the remainder as barbarian cities (or new civ fragments, rather as Civ 1 offered if one took their capital, but a majority of its remaining cities remained defended).

Therefore the US's 2003 war against Afganistan would be closer to the existing engine of one Civ going against a Barbarian City and Barbarian Units (albeit in the Modern Era with modern technologies for both sides). The 'liberated' cities can also fall into the Civ4: Warlords "vassal state" mold, perhaps?

 

[zapple]

Civ has dabbled with 'asymmetrical' units for some time now - and the closest I think makes sense is the CivII "Spy" or "Fanatic" or "Assassin" units.

As for the engine of rebellion you describe, that is more or less implicitly covered by the Unhappy/Discontent cities newly conquered, and the length of their pacification (also requiring serious investment in rebuilding, as well as a military garrison that can't otherwise continue the war, perhaps).

One idea I posed earlier for Civ IV is to allow a losing Civ to choose to "disband" units - who would essentially become guerilla fighters mixed in with the civilian population, and have the effect of: 1-2 more rounds of disrule/disbanded unit, and all conquering forces cannot heal in that city.

Strategically, this gives the losing Civ a space of time to keep a strong opponent busy, buying time to bring in a liberating army from some distance.

---

Frankly, a Terrorist Unit or Promotion is unlikely to achieve much. Perhaps a single-infrastructure targeting, like the Spy unit - but to maintain game balance it would have to be more or less interchangable and limited like the Spy.

 

[Kissamies]

Can't help but to think that the original poster wants 4 terrorist and ct units who earn money by killing each other and then can buy one of the 50 different brands of machine guns. Seriously, though Civ doesn't have that level of detail. On the level civ has, maintenance cost, unhappy citizens and resistance are suitable abstractions to cover terrorism among other things. One thing I can think of would be giving other countries an option to fund unhappy citizens and resisters somehow.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Personally, I think terrorism can be easily represented by just a few things.

1) An ability to destroy terrain improvements and buildings.

2) An attack which sacrifices the unit in return for either (a) a -1 happiness or (b) a -1 health (or even both). However, such penalties should only last for around 5-6 turns, meaning you would have to conduct multiple attacks on the same city to get any useful benefit-unless said city was border-line to begin with.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

Not to mention the increased overall paranoia caused by terrorism.

The terrorists, because of their resources, simply CANNOT conquer a city or even kill any population of consequence (I know that's a cold thing to say, but really, one THOUSAND times as many people die from smoking every year).

The paranoia is exactly what terrorism intends to cause. 30 people dead at a train station is still less to pay in human life than an accidental train wreck... but it attracts way more attention. They intend to provoke a REACTION out of people. And the reaction the terrorists want are either 1: to force their target to withdraw from a contested area, or 2: to draw the target into a long and expensive war that they ultimately cannot win. Sometimes a combination of two.

Hence why maintainance costs are probably the best way to model terrorism. Eventually, the maintainance costs of holding Iraq become so great that nobody can justify spending $250 million a day to be there... or even if the cost is justifiable and necessary, it's no longer affordable. Either way, the terrorists succeed by messing with our economic resources.

What about the war in Afghanistan?

The war in Afghanistan is actually a special case. The official government of Afghanistan was relatively democratic. But they were effectively overthrown -- pushed back into a tiny area in the north of the country. The nation was thus controlled by the Taliban.

The kind of terrorism they financed and encouraged is effectively simulated by the Spy unit, IMO. Afghanistan is overthrown by a bunch of evil dudes who decide to conduct an "espionage mission". They blew up the World Trade Center to mess with our economy. They succeeded. 3000 people isn't much of a blip on the radar for a nation of 300 million, but a recession is pretty damn significant.

 

[Commander Bello]

At first, I was going to argue in the same way as the others:
Doesn't fit to the scale of Civilization, where's the point and so on.

Yet, after thinking about it a bit more, I have to change my mind.

Under certain circumstances - this means, enhancing the game by some settings - I would see this proposal as a valid way to bring more action into the game.

First, such terroristic acts should be able to be induced by foreign nations. You spend a certain amount of gold and there is the chance (let's say, 50%) that such a terroristic action takes place in the country you have chosen.
If they got rid of the "terrorists", there would be a certain probability (could be based on a combination of civics and buildings like Scotland Yard) that your influence is discovered. The latter of course leads to a diplo malus - bigger with the nation concerned, less with the "neutral" nations. If the "terrorists" would succeed, the chance that your influence gets discovered would be significantly less.
If they don't get rid of the "terrorists", than you achieve to harm their infrastructure at low costs.
Obviously, the same things could happen to you - that is, an AI nation could induce things like this in your country as well.

There would be the need to introduce some modificators for the odds of performing such acts, preventing them and for the chance to detect who caused them, of course.
A "successful" terroristic act could drop the happiness in the city concerned. If more cities would be harmed by such acts over a certain period of time, the happiness in your whole nation could drop to some extent - up to the point where you would have to react by changing civics, putting more troops into your cities or whatever.

At the end of the day, it could introduce some kind of "unconventional warfare" into the game, where nations with "free speech" and "free religion" could be more prone to such actions as Theocracies or "police state" nations, for instance.