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

[Arcaian]

Maybe the best way to go about it would be to have the two be separate components in a game?
Anarchy could be a civilization with no government in place, starting from the beginning of the game, while Anarchism could be a modern ideology choice?

I honestly don't think there's a great way to represent anarchism as an option in a game like Civilization - fundamental parts of the design of the game clash with anarchism. Civ is very much about the Great Men Of History, and has a bunch of mechanics that seem to assume a degree of hierarchy present in the civilization being represented. If they really wanted to put anarchism into Civ, I do think there are interesting ways to combine anarchism and 4x design - but they'd require significant changes to the game, and I don't think anyone would want that. It's sort of like the situation with classical Greece as a civ, but scaled up by an order of magnitude - it's a little strange to try and combine a civ that (outside of Alexander) is most well known for city states, fierce independence, and internal division with a game series that assumes you have a single point of decision-making happening. With Greece I think we can mostly just not think about it, maybe think about how we're not making decisions as a leader of a united Greece but as something of a spirit that represents the collective Greek civilization's priorities (despite also technically playing Gorgo/Pericles), but scaling that up to anarchism would be an even worse version of that tension, in my opinion. I might be biased here though - I much preferred civ 5's ideologies (that were decently differentiated) versus civ 6's t3 governments, as it always felt strange to me that you could change between communism/fascism/liberal democracy and not have a meaningful difference in actual gameplay. I guess if one is using the civ 6 t3 government model, you're encouraged enough to avoid thinking about what it means to be communist with Serfdom and Laissez-Faire slotted, so you might be able to get away with it

I think just search-replacing anarchy with turmoil would be a fix that goes unnoticed by 95% of the userbase, and the remaining 5% would find it either the same or better, with no meaningful downsides that I see, and a super easy implementation.

 

[GeneralZift]

I was about to say "isn't anarchy a governing style that implies there is no government and a lack of any cohesion?" But I felt the aura of a politics-history major breathing down my back about to explain what it actually means

 

[Arcaian]

I'm afraid I'm a chemist rather than a PolSci major, but I've already been getting into the weeds for too long in this thread, I don't think it's worth much more of anyone's time

 

[Leyrann]

I fail to see why that is of any importance

Because it makes your entire argument that it's not a valid term for the thing it describes completely invalid.

It's not an attempt to undermine the anarchist movement. It's not an attempt to redefine what anarchy means.

It's simply the term that is normally applied to a society whose governing structure is in chaos.

 

[Kjimmet]

The more I read this conversation, the more I think the anarchist movement made a mistake by calling themselves anarchists. If they called themselves literally anything else this conversation wouldn't exist, and they wouldn't be conflated with the original definition making them sound more extreme than they actually are.

 

[Leyrann]

The more I read this conversation, the more I think the anarchist movement made a mistake by calling themselves anarchists. If they called themselves literally anything else this conversation wouldn't exist, and they wouldn't be conflated with the original definition making them sound more extreme than they actually are.

The more I participate in it, the more I think the same.

 

[Arent11]

If one wants historical examples for this sort of thing, anarchist Ukraine (often called Makhnovshchina) lasted for four years during the Russian civil war, with a population of up to 7 million people living in a fairly anarchist society; the area was routinely attacked by both the White and Red armies, but did manage to hold their own in the conflict

I'm pretty sure there were local families, mayors or informal leaders that upheld some sort of punishment for criminals, social care and basic defense. Similar to wild west.

Calling such societies "frontier", "tribal" or "primitive" would be fitting. Calling it anarchy is IMHO just confusing.

You could argue that a complete anarchy doesn't exist & is only a theoretical state. THAT would be an argument to use another term for the civil war period between governments in civ. Because, strictly speaking, even during a civil war there is some local organization.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

I honestly don't think there's a great way to represent anarchism as an option in a game like Civilization - fundamental parts of the design of the game clash with anarchism. Civ is very much about the Great Men Of History, and has a bunch of mechanics that seem to assume a degree of hierarchy present in the civilization being represented. If they really wanted to put anarchism into Civ, I do think there are interesting ways to combine anarchism and 4x design - but they'd require significant changes to the game, and I don't think anyone would want that. It's sort of like the situation with classical Greece as a civ, but scaled up by an order of magnitude - it's a little strange to try and combine a civ that (outside of Alexander) is most well known for city states, fierce independence, and internal division with a game series that assumes you have a single point of decision-making happening. With Greece I think we can mostly just not think about it, maybe think about how we're not making decisions as a leader of a united Greece but as something of a spirit that represents the collective Greek civilization's priorities (despite also technically playing Gorgo/Pericles), but scaling that up to anarchism would be an even worse version of that tension, in my opinion. I might be biased here though - I much preferred civ 5's ideologies (that were decently differentiated) versus civ 6's t3 governments, as it always felt strange to me that you could change between communism/fascism/liberal democracy and not have a meaningful difference in actual gameplay. I guess if one is using the civ 6 t3 government model, you're encouraged enough to avoid thinking about what it means to be communist with Serfdom and Laissez-Faire slotted, so you might be able to get away with it

I think just search-replacing anarchy with turmoil would be a fix that goes unnoticed by 95% of the userbase, and the remaining 5% would find it either the same or better, with no meaningful downsides that I see, and a super easy implementation.

One thing I think adds to the confusion, is that it's not all that clear who you're exactly playing as. The text of the game may refer to you the player as whatever leader you picked, but the mechanics of the game don't really reflect that. For one, the game doesn't really feature fail-states associated with real life heads of state; you cannot get a game over from being murdered, dethroned, voted out or coerced to find a replacement; you live as long as the nation and the nation lives as long as you. Similarly, I don't think it's the state itself you're playing as, either; otherwise, a new constitution would also just result in a game over.

The things you do as the player, represents the actions of lots and lots of different people, both within and without the state apparatus, which makes me think that it's most apt to say that you're really playing as the people and/or spirit of the nation. But again, that's according to the mechanics of the game, and that comes in conflict with the text of the game, which loudly proclaims you're playing specifically as Lincoln or Gandhi or Suleiman. Those are faces, and faces what sells, according to conventional wisdom. The collective consciousness of a civilization/culture/nation-state does not have a face, not in the same way.

Anyway, I like to imagine, when switching government forms, what I'm doing is that I'm brainwashing specific individuals throughout the empire to perform specific tasks at specific occasions & specific places, that that each spawns a butterfly effect, congealing into one, cohesive socio-cultural force that brings about the reform/revolution. It may or may not sound rather tyrannical, but I do think this lens is useful to look at the game with, both as a player and as a developer. What this would mean, is that more democratic forms of government should lend the player more autocracy, rather than less, since in those forms, you play to some degree as The Collective Will Of The People, and anarchism would paradoxically make the people analogous, if not outright identical, to a literal hivemind

 

[Arcaian]

The more I read this conversation, the more I think the anarchist movement made a mistake by calling themselves anarchists. If they called themselves literally anything else this conversation wouldn't exist, and they wouldn't be conflated with the original definition making them sound more extreme than they actually are.

Many anarchists today feel the same From what I've read, at the time the movement was growing in popularity, anarchism and anarchy very quickly became more associated with the political ideology more-so than other definitions, so it wasn't a major issue at the time. There was quite some time where saying "I'm an anarchist" wouldn't be more unusual than "I'm a communist" or "I'm a socialist"; my understanding is that this primarily changed after the assassination of President McKinley by an anarchist, wherein the English-language media made a very big deal out of the ideology, and the meaning of the word started shifting back towards the original definition in the popular consciousness. The Haymarket Affair also played a role there a decade or so earlier, but given that the evidence against the anarchists was light and it ended up a major part of the story of how we got the eight hour working day, it had a lesser impact here. There also were many other words for the group of ideologies - if there's one thing anarchists are known for it's probably bombs, but the second thing would be disagreements about very specific phrasings/jargon. Nowadays, the major alternative that has survived is "libertarian socialist", which you will still see in some uses, but then you inevitably get into arguments about the meaning of socialism too. More specific labels (anarchosocialist, anarchosydnicalist, etc) do also exist that tend to be less directly associated with the term anarchy due to the second half of the term being the unique identifier, but they're not necessarily reflective of the broad tradition of the ideology. Other terms for anarchist have been subverted by other political groups (e.g. libertarian without any qualifiers) or gained a reputation just as bad as anarchist, if not worse.

 

[Arcaian]

I'm pretty sure there were local families, mayors or informal leaders that upheld some sort of punishment for criminals, social care and basic defense. Similar to wild west.

Calling such societies "frontier", "tribal" or "primitive" would be fitting. Calling it anarchy is IMHO just confusing.

You could argue that a complete anarchy doesn't exist & is only a theoretical state. THAT would be an argument to use another term for the civil war period between governments in civ. Because, strictly speaking, even during a civil war there is some local organization.

I really don't think that a discussion about this on the Civ 7 forums is going to be the place that breaks new ground on a centuries-old discussion. I disagree with your perspective - I think there are entirely ways to protect a community without needing to appoint leaders with hierarchical authority - but if you want to see the anarchist argument for these perspectives, I'd highly encourage you to read the copy of Anarchy Works I linked before - it's not illegal or a dodgy website, the author uploaded it there for free access from anyone interested.

 

[Shirotora Kenshin]

I like Civ5 Style the most. It really was fun.

 

[Arcaian]

Because it makes your entire argument that it's not a valid term for the thing it describes completely invalid.

It's not an attempt to undermine the anarchist movement. It's not an attempt to redefine what anarchy means.

It's simply the term that is normally applied to a society whose governing structure is in chaos.

I truly don't know how many ways I can say that I'm not arguing that it is invalid to use the word anarchy to mean turmoil. It's a valid use of the term, it's just a frustrating one for anarchists, and plenty of good alternatives to the term exist.

If a tiktok that created a new definition of the term 'liberal' went viral tomorrow, so viral that by the end of the year that definition is in the dictionaries, it's in widespread use, it's the dominant usage of the term, it's not intentionally political but it's using the rough meaning of liberal ideology (take your pick of classic liberalism or the way we use the word liberal more often today) in an inverted way that ends up frustrating liberals, I would find it counter-productive to use that definition in a game of Civ. It might be the dominant term, but an alternative could easily be used, it would increase clarity to use the alternative, and it would be less frustrating for a proportion of the users playing the game. If it turned out that this usage is actually a historical usage that had been present prior to the development of liberal ideology but died out, I would make the same argument. If it was a historical usage that maintained its usage throughout the preceding centuries but was eclipsed in popularity by the current usage until this tiktok goes viral tomorrow, I would make the same argument. I fundamentally don't see what aspect of my argument is connected at all to time; it is connected to clarity, to treating ideologies as consistently as possible, and truthfully from a sense of unfairness and frustration for the consistent way an ideology I find quite interesting is portrayed in pop history.

Either way, I feel I've said all there is to be said here, and perhaps a bit beyond that. I've attempted to make as clear as possible that my argument is not connected to "anarchy = turmoil" somehow being an incorrect association despite it being the most common association of the term. Any further discussion seems unlikely to be productive, and certainly it has already gone well off-topic for the thread we're in. I'd love it if a civ 7 dev search-replaced anarchy with turmoil still, though I don't expect it to happen. I do find the history of anarchism and its perception interesting, so if people want to continue that aspect of the discussion, feel free to make a thread somewhere that is more appropriate for discussion and ping me/message me. Thanks everyone for reading my perspective either way, a frustrating amount of communities would dog-pile someone at the mere mention of anarchism as a political ideology

 

[KayAU]

I really didn't like Civ 6's system. It was just unimmersive busywork, with nonsense like swapping out a card for one turn to buy a bunch of workers. Civ 5 didn't really have a government system, just a bonus tree. I like bonus trees though. Wouldn't mind one in Civ 7.

That said, I voted for Civ 4, I think that's the best we've had in the main line of Civ games. Alpha Centauri had a better one though. Civ 4's system, if I recall correctly, is more or less a simpler version of what SMAC had.

 

[Leyrann]

I truly don't know how many ways I can say that I'm not arguing that it is invalid to use the word anarchy to mean turmoil. It's a valid use of the term, it's just a frustrating one for anarchists, and plenty of good alternatives to the term exist.

It's a frustrating one for anarchists because they stubbornly continue trying to change the meaning when everyone else just keeps using the normal one, so forgive me for not being too sympathetic to them.

And I haven't seen any good alternatives suggested in this thread. Only broader (and thus less useful) terms. It's like proposing that we call cities "settlements" instead. Except even less sensible because I can actually think of arguments other than 'I want the word to mean something different' in favor of that.

 

[Arent11]

I really don't think that a discussion about this on the Civ 7 forums is going to be the place that breaks new ground on a centuries-old discussion. I disagree with your perspective - I think there are entirely ways to protect a community without needing to appoint leaders with hierarchical authority - but if you want to see the anarchist argument for these perspectives, I'd highly encourage you to read the copy of Anarchy Works I linked before - it's not illegal or a dodgy website, the author uploaded it there for free access from anyone interested.

This is just about defining fitting & clearly understandable words for a topic or concept.

The period of unrest between governments could be called "anarchy", "civil war", "unrest", "revolution". The absence of an advanced government could be called "frontier", "tribal", "primitive". All of these terms are perfectly fine.

Contrarily, calling tribal, mostly lawless or potentially non-hierarchical government systems "anarchic" is highly confusing. Just call it "customs" based, "frontier", "tribal" or non-hierarchical. Or invent a completely new name.

Then no one will be confused & everyone will know what you're talking about.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

I really didn't like Civ 6's system. It was just unimmersive busywork, with nonsense like swapping out a card for one turn to buy a bunch of workers. Civ 5 didn't really have a government system, just a bonus tree. I like bonus trees though. Wouldn't mind one in Civ 7.

That said, I voted for Civ 4, I think that's the best we've had in the main line of Civ games. Alpha Centauri had a better one though. Civ 4's system, if I recall correctly, is more or less a simpler version of what SMAC had.

It was the other way around, if only slightly: one less branch and one choice less in each branch

 

[UWHabs]

It was the other way around, if only slightly: one less branch and one choice less in each branch
View attachment 696155

AC and CIV 4 are similar in that they have multiple options, and in each one you can pick a choice. So it's more of a mix and match of options. But yeah, the AC system was great in that each group wasn't like purely isolated - they interacted with each other. it was always a balance, trying to decide whether you tried to push some of the bonuses up to the big plus zones to get a massive boost, while not having too many negatives come in.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I really didn't like Civ 6's system. It was just unimmersive busywork, with nonsense like swapping out a card for one turn to buy a bunch of workers. Civ 5 didn't really have a government system, just a bonus tree. I like bonus trees though. Wouldn't mind one in Civ 7.

That said, I voted for Civ 4, I think that's the best we've had in the main line of Civ games. Alpha Centauri had a better one though. Civ 4's system, if I recall correctly, is more or less a simpler version of what SMAC had.

I’d like to see a mix of mechanics from 3 and 5 returning myself

 

[KayAU]

AC and CIV 4 are similar in that they have multiple options, and in each one you can pick a choice. So it's more of a mix and match of options. But yeah, the AC system was great in that each group wasn't like purely isolated - they interacted with each other. it was always a balance, trying to decide whether you tried to push some of the bonuses up to the big plus zones to get a massive boost, while not having too many negatives come in.

Yeah, it's the interaction I was thinking about. The 10 society "stats" were very impactful, and you would indeed need to balance them, often compensating for the negatives of one with the other. Each faction had a set of base stats which made this play somewhat differently for each, and the stats could be impacted by wonders, or even by buildings locally. Each choice had a very clear meaning and flavour, which again impacted your relationships with other factions, who usually had strong feelings about one or more of your choices. Something like
"Planned Economy
+ 2 Growth
+ 1 Industry
- 2 Efficiency"
...both is and feels a lot more meaningful than something like
"Ilkum
+ 30% production towards Builders".

This is something I generally dislike about Civ 6: there are a lot of choices (well over 100 of those policy cards for example), but it tends to add micro-management rather than depth or flavour.

 

[GeneralZift]

Yeah, it's the interaction I was thinking about. The 10 society "stats" were very impactful, and you would indeed need to balance them, often compensating for the negatives of one with the other. Each faction had a set of base stats which made this play somewhat differently for each, and the stats could be impacted by wonders, or even by buildings locally. Each choice had a very clear meaning and flavour, which again impacted your relationships with other factions, who usually had strong feelings about one or more of your choices. Something like
"Planned Economy
+ 2 Growth
+ 1 Industry
- 2 Efficiency"
...both is and feels a lot more meaningful than something like
"Ilkum
+ 30% production towards Builders".

This is something I generally dislike about Civ 6: there are a lot of choices (well over 100 of those policy cards for example), but it tends to add micro-management rather than depth or flavour.

It doesn't appear very meaningful to me.
The latter is straight to the point and simple. What does the former even mean?