Vox Populi: The Internal Politics mod

[ArbitraryGuy]

Vox Populi: The Internal Politics Mod
Development Thread

Here’s something I’ve been working on for a while. Unlike most of my other mods, this one has a definite chance of being completed this month. Anybody that wishes to contribute ideas or code to this mod, please feel free to do so here…

Goal

This mod will add a missing dimension to the epic game: internal politics. It will attempt to add this dimension with a goal of parsimony in mind, i.e. adding simple components that blend well with the existing game rather than taking existing game components away.

In effect, this mod adds a “civic synergizing” component. Running combinations of civics preferred by your people will bring you bonuses. Running civics opposed by your people will bring you penalties.

New Concepts

Stability
A political stability rating of 0 to 5 will be a measure of how well a civilization’s civic choices conform to the vox populi (voice of the people). Higher stability will bring bonuses and lower stability will bring penalties… and perhaps eventually revolution.

Ideology
Various ideologies will represent the various wishes of your different citizens. Ideologies will have preferred civics and civics to which they are opposed to, different for each ideology. Ideologies spawn nationally depending upon different factors, detailed below.

Vox Populi
The majority ideology of your citizens will be the measuring stick against which your civics choices are compared. If your civics choices “jive” with the vox populi, your stability will increase. If your civics choices are opposed by the vox populi ideology, your stability will decrease.

A few new civics
Currently, a few new civics choices will be added (one to each civics category). This shouldn’t change things very much. The new additions are currently Proletarian Dictatorship (government), Human Rights (legal), Welfare State (economy), and State Atheism (religion).

A slight change will be made to the labor category. Emancipation will be removed (Human Rights will have similar effects) and Wage Labor and Unionism will be added instead.

Mechanics
The political system will only be activated once a civilization discovers Nationalism (representing a general historical trend of religion becoming less important for stability and national politics become more important).

Ideologies will spawn in cities linked to different events such as random spawn based on buildings, angry citizens, illness, specialists, war, etc, as long as certain tech requirements are met (e.g. the Fascism ideology can only spawn if fascism is discovered).

The vox populi will simply be determined by the ideology with the greatest sum of followers, weighted by city size.

Base stability will be 3. For every two preferred civics of the vox populi run by a civilization, the stability rating will increase by 1. For every opposed civic run by a civilization, the stability rating will decrease by 1.

See below for a rough draft of ideologies, their preferred and opposed civics, and their linked technologies. Keep in mind this is preliminary. All comments are appreciated. I tried to include each civic, but was not always sucessful. A couple are kind of streches (e.g. Fundamentalism preferring Caste System). Some ideologies don't have a prefered civic in each category, which is okay. There are only three opposed civics for each ideology.

For example, lets say the majority ideology (vox populi) in a civilization is Liberalism. Suppose the civilization is running Universal Sufferage, Free Speech, Caste System, Mercantilism, and Organized Religion. Then, the stability would be 4 (base 3 plus 1 for running two preferred civics). If the civilization had a revolution and adopted Wage Labor and Free Religion, stability would increase to 5 (base 3 plus 2 for running four preferred civics).

Another example, lets say the vox populi is Communism in a civilization. Suppose the civilization is running Representation, Bureaucracy, Unionism, Free Markets, and Theocracy. The stability would be 2 (base 3 plus 1 for running two preferred civics minus 2 for running two opposed civics). If the civilization had a revolution and adopted Wage Labor in place of Unionism stability would drop to 0 (base 3 plus 0 for running no couples of preferred civics minus 3 for running three opposed civics).

Stability levels will have effects something like the following (again, this is a rough draft):

0: - 30% gold commerce modifier, + 30% war weariness modifier, chance of revolution that might change civics to reflect the preferences of vox populi
1: - 20% gold income modifier, +20% war weariness modifier
2: -10% gold income modifier, +10% war weariness modifier
3: no effects
4: +10% gold income modifier, -10% war weariness modifier
5: +20% gold income modifier, -20% war weariness modifer

The gold commerce modifier can be seen as bonus tax revenues for political stability. The war weariness modifier can be seen as a bonus for support of government actions.

Please, any comments, complaints, questions, or concerns are welcome. Balance will be important. especially in stability bonuses and penalties (I don't want them to be too game-breaking).

This mod is my priority right now, I will get it done.

 

[Ambreville]

Sounds pretty good. Will you be able to use military or police somehow to "crush dissent"? In history, the use of force and/or good police work had often balanced out an unkind vox populi, increasing the political stability of an otherwise questionable regime. There is also the question of relying on the Official Religion to keep people in line with secular rule.

EDIT

There is also the power of great Prestige counterbalancing a negative vox populi.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

Sounds pretty good. Will you be able to use military or police somehow to "crush dissent"? In history, the use of force and/or good police work had often balanced out an unkind vox populi, increasing the political stability of an otherwise questionable regime. There is also the question of relying on the Official Religion to keep people in line with secular rule.

EDIT

There is also the power of great Prestige counterbalancing a negative vox populi.

Interesting points.

Perhaps a new spy mission that allows one to add or subtract an ideology to a city? Or a new unit, the Polititian, that could do this?

Religion will still be available to keep your people happy. Perhaps having a state religion should give a +1 stability bonus, no matter what the dominant ideology is?

 

[Ambreville]

Perhaps a new spy mission that allows one to add or subtract an ideology to a city? Or a new unit, the Polititian, that could do this?

Religion will still be available to keep your people happy. Perhaps having a state religion should give a +1 stability bonus, no matter what the dominant ideology is?

Yes to both of the above. That's a start.

Here a re some examples of what I was talking about:

An empire ruled by Timur the Lame... what do you think the effect of a unfriendly vox populi might have on his rule?

A Medieval European monarchy w/Divine Right -- the effect of the Church was usually enough to completely negate anything such as a vox populi.

France 1650's -- under Louis XIV, more than prestige itself, it was clearly his "secret police" that prevented any shenanigans inside his realm (ditto under Richelieu, Napoleon I, etc). This prestige provoked economic/social woes that eventually brought the collapse of French monarchy...

Again France, 1850 -- under Napoleon III, it was very much prestige and commercial prosperity that kept the regime popular (despite very serious social problems). Both factors went bye-bye with the war of 1870 against Prussia, along with the France's Second Empire altogether.

You can just imagine the political instability of a nation whose regimes went from Absolute Monarchy to a Republic, to an Empire, back to a not-so Absolute Monarchy, to another Republic, the Second Empire, and more Republics in a matter of 100 years...

Despite these woes, these regimes did earn some temporary stability for one reason or another that often had nothing to do with "la voix du peuple".

 

[Ambreville]

I noticed that you are giving some commerce benefits for a stable regime -- which is OK, however, bear in mind that a regime can become popular BECAUSE there is prosperity. I can be the other way around.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

Despite these woes, these regimes did earn some temporary stability for one reason or another that often had nothing to do with "la voix du peuple".

True, true... but parsimony is a goal of this mod. I want to try and keep things simple. Yes, this mod will be an over-simplification of internal politics, but Civilization is an over-simplification of history.

I noticed that you are giving some commerce benefits for a stable regime -- which is OK, however, bear in mind that a regime can become popular BECAUSE there is prosperity. I can be the other way around.

It's not a commerce modifier, but rather a gold commerce modifier, i.e. gold income modifier (changed the first post to make it more clear).

It's true that prosperity leads to stability and stability leads to prosperity. I could think of a couple of ways to model this, however, it's important to avoid a game-breaking snowballing effect of the following scenarios:
1) prosperity --> stability --> more prosperity
2) bad times --> instability --> worse times

We don't want any downward or any upward spirals, so we have to be careful with any "feedback" mechanisms.

Thanks for your thoughts and feedback, Amberville

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

Perhaps the police station, as a building, can stop the spread of dissenting views?

 

[dh_epic]

If parsimony is one of your goals, I might mention that the preferred/opposed matrix seems complicated. Unnecessarily so. I would either axe the "opposed" row completely, or try to distill the number of preferences/oppositions for each ideology down to a nice round number: 3 or 4.

Great idea for a mod. I hope you stick with it!

 

[Leif]

I believe the matrix is a generally good idea, however it seems everyone likes to gang up on proletarian dictatorship. Five oppose it.

I would prefer to see more civic options, with possibly more techs, I don't know if Socialism should become available at the same time as Communism, being as Communism is a branch of Socialism.

I miss your huge range of civic options, but I could live with just one new per category.

 

[dh_epic]

I think it's a little redundant to have each faction love one civic and hate another. Do Communists really hate wage labor more than they hate serfdom? Do fundamentalists really prefer bureaucracies to religious-nationalism, religious-feudalism, or even religious-humanism -- isn't it enough to say they just hate various forms of free expression?

I think this would resolve some of the redundancies and improve flavor anyway. Fundamentalists might not be that opposed to a 'proletarian dictatorship', if you're familiar with Liberation Theology. The overwhelming preference for wage labor could be replaced with something more labor agnostic, adding to simplicity while removing redundancy.

Anyway, it's food for thought.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

A simpler option, that I had originally planned (I think this is what you're saying, dh_epic), would be that each ideology has a preferred civic in each categories. You would get a stability boost (1 or 2) for running a preferred civic and a stability hit for running anything else. I origionally canned it in favor of preferred and opposed because I thought it (preferred or else) narrowed players' choices too much. Perhaps it might be better in terms of simplicity and flavor? It also removes the wacky combos, as you dh_epic points out.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

I miss your huge range of civic options, but I could live with just one new per category.

The last time I mulled over rehashing the civics options for the epic game, I ran into a lot of redundancy. So, here, I'm just adding a new option to each category.

 

[dh_epic]

Yeah, I think you can do a lot with just the "preferred". Even so, some categories can be agnostic. (e.g.: I don't think fascists have any specific religious viewpoint, and might be compatible with organized religion, theocracy, or no religion at all.)

"Opposed" might add some flavor, but really doesn't do much. Most players are going to be playing hard for victory anyway, so it's unlikely someone would be running civics that aren't maximizing the benefit of their ideology. That said, in areas where no preference is obvious, an 'opposition' might be better than nothing at all. (e.g.: it's not clear that fundamentalists would prefer a bureaucracy to some form of religious-nationalism, but it IS clear they'd oppose free expression).

 

[Dom Pedro II]

An alternative option to the preferred/opposed route would be to add new tags in the XML for a point system for Civics like so:

<IdeologyPreferences>
   <IdeologyPreference>
     <IdeologyType>IDEOLOGY_FASCISM</IdeologyType>
     <iPreference>-10</iPreference>
   </IdeologyPreference>
</IdeologyPreferences>

So this would work like the flavor system and create degrees of opposition to particular civics choices. So you might have values of 0 for a number of ideologies regarding different civics, some you might have a moderate reaction, and then others you might have a very strong reaction either for or against.

So Communists might get a -10 from Free Market, but only a -2 from Wage Labor, for example. Then you can simply add up all the values and get an overall stance of the ideology regarding your government... So if all the other values were 0, Communists would have a -12 attitude towards your government if you were running those two civics.

 

[Verenti]

I think your ideology chart is slightly lacking in scope.

Please allow me to include my "two cents" in this discussion:

Firstly, I think there should be multiple prefered civic per Ideology. For instance, I believe the Conservatives should prefer both Representation and Hereditary Rule. Likewise, Liberals should prefer Universal Sufferage and Representation. Any conservative in an Absolute Monarchy (which is what Hereditary Rule really represents) isn't going to support the government more if it became a Constitutional Monarchy. Indeed, Being Conservatives they would most likely raise quite a hubub over the whole affair.

Secondly, You have quite a modern slant on the subject, mostly weighed towards the Struggle between Capitalism and Communism. As far as Political Ideologies go, Communism came rather late to the table. I think Conservative should more strongly reflect the early 19th Century Model (Pro: Representation, Nationalism, Caste System, Mercantilism, Organised Relgion
Against: Universal Sufferage, Free Religion, Free Market). Also it feels like Ideology like "Fundamentalism" which isn't really even an ideology, and could most neatly fit under Reactionary, was simply added to pick up some civics which had no ideologies to represent them. Having multiple prefered civics, and prehaps multiple dispised civics, per catagory under Ideology would allow you to make some ideologies broader, which could allow for the removal of ideologies like Fundamentalism.

A minor third issue being that Prolitariat Dictatorship government, is actually not added intentionally ("Communism" gov't was intended by the design team to be represented by Police State in addition to State Property.)

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hey Arbitrary Guy, this Mod of yours is fairly similar to the one I am currently working on-albiet yours has MUCH greater depth & choice. My Ideologies work like religions &/or Corporations, & actually limit what Civics you can choose. I must say your system is MUCH better!!!

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

I know there's no absence of ideas to make this system work... but after Aussie mentioned the point that he liked the "preferred civic" model rather than the "limit civics" model, I had a small realization. Mainly, rewards and penalties are often more fun than hard limits. That's to generalize from what Aussie was saying.

But why have a complicated matrix? I know you said a goal of this mod was parsimony. The truth is, players are always looking to maximize their rewards. It's just not intelligent to run civics that conflict with each other when you can run civics that have synergy.

So ideologies should simply create synergies with civics they like. If there is no synergy -- or even negative synergy -- players will not benefit from running inappropriate civics, and thus it will be rare to run civics that do not match up with an ideology.

For example, Conservatism:

* Bonus from running a state religion (traditional values)
* Bonus from running a free market (low taxes)
* Penalty from running a bureaucracy (small government)

There's lots of side effects of that. Not only are conservatives going to run free markets, but you're just not going to maximize the benefits from conservative-environmentalism or conservative-mercantilism or conservative-communism. Any conservative is essentially handicapping themselves compared to any other player of any other ideology trying to make it work to its full benefit.

Go a step further. What if the penalty from bureaucratic-conservatism is 25% less trade route revenue? Then you're really hitting them where it hurts, and they're getting no synergy from the free market. Or, what if the benefit from religious-conservatism is less unhappiness from the draft? Then you've killed two birds with one stone, encouraging religious-conservatism, but also conservative-nationalism, in order to get the most out of that ideology.

It's the same thing with a Reactionary ideology. Hereditary Rule under a Reactionary ideology would offer a bonus. If that bonus were "additional happiness from religion", then they would definitely take advantage of religious civics. If that bonus were "no unhappiness penalty from labor column", then they would gain less benefit from emancipation and unionization than other ideologies.

I hope I'm making sense. I know it's a significant deviation from what you were working on.

 

[NormBac]

I've just finished playing a bunch of games using the latest beta release. This is my first try at the community patch and Vox Poupuli,

I managed to win one of each victory type.

Overall, I like it. It adds levels of complexity that are interesting, But if balance is what you're trying to achieve, I think you still have some tweaking to do.

In regular Civ, I generally play at the emperor level, but I had to drop down to Prince, partly because of the unfamiliarity with the game, but also to the general increase in difficulty (not necessarily a bad thing).

I think the Ai is WAY too aggressive in this game. Even when I was trying to play peacefully, I was in constant wars that were started by the other civs. When I tried to play at the emperor level, the AI had such a unit advantage it was ridiculous. At one point I had a civ down to just a few units only to find a half dozen units suddenly appear.

So recommendation #1: tone down the AI's aggressiveness. I don't know how many times I was back-stabbed in this series of games

The science victory took forever (2155 (time victory disabled)). (#2: make the science victory reachable a bit earlier.)

The cultural victory was simple (1843) much easier than regular Civ. #3: That could be a bit harder.

The diplomatic victory was a surprise. I didn't think I had enough votes but won.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[vincentz]

You joined 3 years ago, to post your first post 3 days ago, on a thread that died almost 9 years ago on a mod that probably havent been developed on in those 9 years (the last time the dev of the mod logged in was 4 years ago).

What is thy purpose Necromancer?