What kind of Government System would you like to see in Civ 7

[Lord Lakely]

Alpha Centauri used a system of social engineering. Basically, you would unlock new policies as you made your way through the tech tree. The tech tree in SMAC was semi-random, so you could often get your rewards in a different order every game, which means you would run different policies in the early game.

Each policy would have a category (Politics, Economics, Values and Future Government) and you could only run one policy from each category at any given time (so up to four, out of a total of 12 policies total).

Policies would influence your diplomacy, as each faction has a favourite civic that they'll always run and at least one shunned civic they disapprove of. Completely different government styles do not get along.

Now here's the ringer: every policy came with a flat bonus to something (Research, Economics, Growth, etc) and a drawback, usually -2 in another field. Penalties were way more punitive than bonuses were, so taking any policy to gain an advantage meant you would hamstring yourself in a certain field.

Focus on Research? Fine, but you're now prone to security risks thanks to the -2 you're taking in Espionage.
Focus on Warfare? Fine, your units are stronger and your bases are better defended, but that's taking up so many resources you'll struggle with producing anything else
Focus on Economics? Fine, you will be wealthy beyond belief, but the social inequality you'll create by garnering all that wealth for yourself will result in massive civil unrest.
Focus on industry? Fine, you can produce anything, but the planet will suffer for it (a huge deal in SMAC since the Planet was a living, hostile entity)

This worked because each faction automatically had a few hard-coded modifiers in their social engineering. The econ faction always had +1 in Economy by default, and -1 in Support (higher maintenance costs.), regardless of policies.

It's a tad simplistic for what Civ does nowadays, but it's a good place to start. Creating a perfect, balanced goverment where everyone is happy is a pipe dream. Every decision has conesequences good or bad, and certain combinations may help you in a pinch but wreck you longterm, while others break even with minimal bonuses. To be ethical is to slow down your progress compared to those who choose not to be, but to be cruel results in an unstable domestic or environmental situations that are catastrophic if you cannot convert them into a win soon.

Whatever system Firaxis has planned, I'm hoping it will be where the government decisions are meaningful, and shape what the rest of the game looks like. The Policy Card system didn't have that outside of the Dark Age cards, specifically.

I will ALSO accept a return of policy trees though.

 

[Xur]

I would prefer a unique government tree for each era. Every choice should also exclude at least 2 options. You should not be guaranteed to fill out a tree every era.

When the next era starts, the old government system bonuses transfer to some kind of stability/culture/happiness system. It slowly disappears over this era as you fill in a new tree.

Potentially giving a more interesting way of entering golden ages and dark ages.

No cards please. I hate cards in pc games.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Actually, Civ II (and maybe also I and/or III?) did this. And. It. Was. Awful.

If you were a democracy, whenever your enemy would ask for peace, your parliament would overrule you if you refused, and forced peace anyway. Have fun trying to run a military campaign.

And no, "democracies don't want war" isn't an argument. Like, just look at what the USA has been doing the past century.

I strongly disagree about the first sentence. I thought having meaningful differences in government types added to the game added to the game.

 

[Acepox]

Alpha Centauri used a system of social engineering. Basically, you would unlock new policies as you made your way through the tech tree. The tech tree in SMAC was semi-random, so you could often get your rewards in a different order every game, which means you would run different policies in the early game.

Each policy would have a category (Politics, Economics, Values and Future Government) and you could only run one policy from each category at any given time (so up to four, out of a total of 12 policies total).

Policies would influence your diplomacy, as each faction has a favourite civic that they'll always run and at least one shunned civic they disapprove of. Completely different government styles do not get along.

Now here's the ringer: every policy came with a flat bonus to something (Research, Economics, Growth, etc) and a drawback, usually -2 in another field. Penalties were way more punitive than bonuses were, so taking any policy to gain an advantage meant you would hamstring yourself in a certain field.

Focus on Research? Fine, but you're now prone to security risks thanks to the -2 you're taking in Espionage.
Focus on Warfare? Fine, your units are stronger and your bases are better defended, but that's taking up so many resources you'll struggle with producing anything else
Focus on Economics? Fine, you will be wealthy beyond belief, but the social inequality you'll create by garnering all that wealth for yourself will result in massive civil unrest.
Focus on industry? Fine, you can produce anything, but the planet will suffer for it (a huge deal in SMAC since the Planet was a living, hostile entity)

This worked because each faction automatically had a few hard-coded modifiers in their social engineering. The econ faction always had +1 in Economy by default, and -1 in Support (higher maintenance costs.), regardless of policies.

It's a tad simplistic for what Civ does nowadays, but it's a good place to start. Creating a perfect, balanced goverment where everyone is happy is a pipe dream. Every decision has conesequences good or bad, and certain combinations may help you in a pinch but wreck you longterm, while others break even with minimal bonuses. To be ethical is to slow down your progress compared to those who choose not to be, but to be cruel results in an unstable domestic or environmental situations that are catastrophic if you cannot convert them into a win soon.

Whatever system Firaxis has planned, I'm hoping it will be where the government decisions are meaningful, and shape what the rest of the game looks like. The Policy Card system didn't have that outside of the Dark Age cards, specifically.

I will ALSO accept a return of policy trees though.

I like this.

Thomas Sowell said it pretty well and concisely: there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

You should be able to switch policies around pretty easily, but they should always have drawbacks, as if all policies were designed like the Dark age policies of Civ 6. Such that it feels you're actually making a choice and not just minmaxxing.

There should be governments that are more long-term but can be changed at a greater cost. If you're a small country, it may be good to go for a unitary democracy, whereas a large multicultural empire may do better with a federal autocracy.

 

[OzzyKP]

I agree also about trade offs and how great the SMAC system was.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I like this.

Thomas Sowell said it pretty well and concisely: there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

You should be able to switch policies around pretty easily, but they should always have drawbacks, as if all policies were designed like the Dark age policies of Civ 6. Such that it feels you're actually making a choice and not just minmaxxing.

There should be governments that are more long-term but can be changed at a greater cost. If you're a small country, it may be good to go for a unitary democracy, whereas a large multicultural empire may do better with a federal autocracy.

Precisely. In my games, I often just end up running the same policy cards every time and never swap them out again. There's two reasons for that.

The first is the UI. I often forget to swap out policies because you can only do that when a civic completes or when you pay gold (is this a trade-off? Mali would like to have a word with you), and the buttons that you need to press don't stand out enough.

The second is that there's no downside to being lazy. You can run the Builders Have +2 Charges policy all game as soon as you unlock it at Feudalism. The same with Scripture because of how strong a faith econ is, and Conscription.

There's no reason to run anything else except for when you're going to war, which I very rarely do.

And even if you don't run any of these policies you're still going to casually win on King or below.

The advantages you're getting are great, but there are no real stakes. It's just a matter of how many policy slots you can collect, and that grows stale over time.

 

[UWHabs]

Precisely. In my games, I often just end up running the same policy cards every time and never swap them out again. There's two reasons for that.

The first is the UI. I often forget to swap out policies because you can only do that when a civic completes or when you pay gold (is this a trade-off? Mali would like to have a word with you), and the buttons that you need to press don't stand out enough.

The second is that there's no downside to being lazy. You can run the Builders Have +2 Charges policy all game as soon as you unlock it at Feudalism. The same with Scripture because of how strong a faith econ is, and Conscription.

There's no reason to run anything else except for when you're going to war, which I very rarely do.

And even if you don't run any of these policies you're still going to casually win on King or below.

The advantages you're getting are great, but there are no real stakes. It's just a matter of how many policy slots you can collect, and that grows stale over time.

I don't think there's necessarily a problem if the design leads to a "lazy" choice. If your empire wants to run Serfdom and Rationalism for the entire game, because those fit your empire, that's not necessarily a problem.

I think the "problem" for me is that the civ 6 system was too flexible - there is no downside to running Rationalism the entire game other than not being able to run something else. And if you wanted something else, you can temporarily move in and out of the systems at will. Now, granted, the good part of 6 is that there were lots of good cards to use, so you did often run into cases where you might have too many cards you "want" to run vs space available for them, so you did have some tough calls. And other than Serfdom (because builder charges are too good), I would say that game to game, I would often choose different card setups, depending on my empire setup and needs. Some games run heavily into holy sites, other times campuses.

The parts of the civ 6 system that I liked the most is that at the high level for each government, that actually did have a serious impact on what you can run, because they gave different policy slots. The balance isn't always there, true, but it's nice to kind of be like "well, I would like to run this government, but for me, I would really like another military policy slot, so maybe I should choose this other one".

But maybe with the civ 6 system, I think you really could use a few more cases like the Tier 3 governments, where certain policy cards are only available in one government type. Or alternately, maybe the way the policy trees were laid out if it gave you some more strict choices. Like, say it was set up so that you could only run one of the "+100% district adjacency" cards at a time in any government, at least there you have a choice. And if you add in a more permanent change, so that maybe you can only change that decision when you change governments, or only once per era, for example?

That would get even more interesting if you started to add in some other decision points. Like maybe you get a choice between +100% district adjacency for campuses or you can get +1 adjacency for all districts (to get back to some of the old "wide vs tall" debates in a certain way of thinking).

I don't know how many distinct tiers of options you'd have to have to have in there to give you a proper balance in the game. But something where you have choices and decisions to make that shape the way you build out.

 

[Krajzen]

Lack of tradeoffs, risks and penalties is one of my ten trillion problems with civ6 design - I lack motivation when you give me sandbox with little challenge, no strong emotions and satisfaction, no "fun struggle" (unless you bluntly stupidly enforce it with Deity difficulty).

You can't unlock certain levels of fun strategic choices and strong emotions if the only loss for most of the game is opportunity cost between choosing bonuses (or even worse, sandbox approach "eh all paths are equally viable")

 

[ldvhl]

Add me to the list of people who support an Alpha Centauri-style government system.

And whatever it is, stop calling Anarchy a lack of a political system. Anarchy should be more like what the Makhnovshchina had.

 

[Glassmage]

I don't understand why people want the mix and match government card play. The reason that Humankind failed was because there is no attachment to your civilization identity -- anything can be changed. Same with Civ6, one day I am all about trading civ and the next day I can switch to be warlike WTH.

Civ5 had the best government with unchanging policy trees, except with Ideologies at the late game for understandable reason with culture wars between civs. When I play Portugal, I can choose to be tall trading empire (Tradition, Commerce, Freedom) or oppressive colonizer (Honor, Exploration, Autocracy). BUT I can't just decide on a whim to switch my whole civ identity out of nowhere. Giving people too much flexibility in their choices would make the game not unique anymore...

 

[vorlon_mi]

Quick overview of Civ4, for those who didn't play it: The government always had 5 slots, no more, no less. A starting civic was active in each slot, with new civics unlocked as you researched techs or traded for them. Only one civic could ever be active in each slot. Changing from (say) Hereditary Rule to Representation would incur a few turns of anarchy, where your cities would not really produce anything. You could still order your units around, but not see new units/buildings produced. The player could change more than one civic at the same time, for a longer period of anarchy. For example, changing the "Religion" civic from Organized Religion to Theocracy AND changing the "Legal" civic from Bureaucracy to Vasselage would be a great preparation for war, as both changes will result in more experienced units being produced. Each civic in each category also had different maintenance costs (in gold), so that was a tradeoff as well. More details here: https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/civilopedia/civics/

Visually, they didn't look like cards, though in many senses they were. What I especially liked about this system is that it resulted in changes in my empire *on the map*, not just in my head. If one plans for a strong Bureaucracy capital. one would make different improvements to the terrain around the capital. But switching out of "Buro" into (say) Free Speech for boost to culture and gold economy would mean that other cities would need to start being developed differently. Switching from Free Market to State Property meant that some farm improvements might be replaced by workshops. That's why I voted for Civ4 in the poll.

While I acknowledge @Glassmage 's point about a continuous evolution, a sense of one's past choices in Civ5, I didn't see the same impact of the policy trees *on the map.* Other than the bonus for only building 4 cities, that is. I personally prefer choices and tradeoffs (both Civ4 and Civ6) over unchanging policy trtees. Those choices were represented differently in Civ3 (one of my favorites), where the player had sliders to explicitly change how commerce was allocated between science/luxury/gold. Even though my government stayed Republic, I could dramatically change my focus to emphasize research (in peacetime), emphasize cash (to buy units in war time), or emphasize happiness. I don't view it so much as changing my civ's identity as more responding to the situation. In Civ5, if I've avoided the Honor policy tree, I could find myself unprepared for war and without a real means of response; each successive policy to be adopted requires more and more culture. As I said, I perfer choices and tradeoffs.

 

[Leyrann]

Add me to the list of people who support an Alpha Centauri-style government system.

And whatever it is, stop calling Anarchy a lack of a political system. Anarchy should be more like what the Makhnovshchina had.

Anarchy, according to dictionary.com:

1. a state of society without government or law.
2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control
3. lack of obedience to an authority; insubordination
4. confusion and disorder

That's the full list of definitions. Of course, the first two are the most relevant to the topic at hand.

And, well, I do not see how I am supposed to see this as anything but "anarchy is the lack of a political system".

 

[ldvhl]

Anarchy, according to dictionary.com:

1. a state of society without government or law.
2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control
3. lack of obedience to an authority; insubordination
4. confusion and disorder

That's the full list of definitions. Of course, the first two are the most relevant to the topic at hand.

And, well, I do not see how I am supposed to see this as anything but "anarchy is the lack of a political system".

Now try reading an actual source of anarchist political thought.

 

[Krajzen]

Now try reading an actual source of anarchist political thought.

Few people care about anarchist political thought, especially when designing massively mainstream video game played by grandmas, tired parents and their teenage kids, where things ought to be very simple. Every ideology is going to end up consisting of like four sentences of flavour text and three bonuses to hammers and happy faces*. Everything which cannot be contained in a mousover tooltip is going to be left out. How do we summarise Makhnovshchina in a tooltip format?

* - I actually hope that govs in civ7 are going to be more "actively" different than that, so for example choosing between several degrees of free market or lack of it impacts the way we control pops and get yields, but given Civ scale it would still have to be something that can explained in like 5 sentences max.

 

[ldvhl]

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I don't think anyone looks at the anarchy system in Civ4 and thinks of the Anarchist political movement

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

View attachment 695750

The first line mentions "stateless societies where individuals organize themselves without government coercion." If that doesn't mean a nation without government, I don't know what does?

 

[ldvhl]

/sigh

 

[ldvhl]

I don't think anyone looks at the anarchy system in Civ4 and thinks of the Anarchist political movement

Fair, but I wish the games wouldn't equate anarchy with revolutionary periods.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I like the Civ 6 card system but it's certainly not perfect. Civ 6 introduced districts which are permanent civ defining choices imho.