What should the Civ VII political system be like?

[vorlon_mi]

1) How often (on average) do you think the ideal is for switching civics ? (How many turns between switching)

It would be interesting (in theory) if how often you could change policies was based on the communication infrastructure of your civ. A one city civ could change every turn, a two city civ connected by a roads or water could change every two turns.

Civ3 had something like this, where the turns of anarchy incurred when switching governments increased with the number of cities in your empire. It's been too long since I played Civ4 to say for certain, but I know the period of anarchy when switching civics also varied (when one is not in a golden age).

 

[Evie]

As promised, my more detailed Political System take. Please note that ideologies are handled in their own separate system (see the Creed thread) and that the Civics are meant to be combined to represent specific government forms. Ref

Civics and Governments: the political model

This is the second part of my design thinking on a potential civ games. It is meant to be read in conjunction with my Creeds, Religions and Ideologies thread, as the two approaches are meant to be part of the same game, and to interact. After all, it would not be much of an ideological (or, for that matter, religious) system if it didn’t have an impact on how you run your civilization. It is largely inspired by the Civ IV political model.

1.Government and Spheres. The government of a civilization consists of a number of spheres such as Economy, Labor, Society, Politics, Law, Administration (this is not a final list but examples of what the spheres could be) representing. Each of those spheres offer a number of options (Civics) for the civilization to chose from. All of those spheres should exist from the game start, though not all options would be available then. As a general rule, each

2.Civics. The basic unit of the political system is the civic: a policy or aspect of your society or government that Each civic belong to a given sphere, and a civilization can only chose one Civic from each sphere at any given time. At game start, only one default Sphere is available ; further sphere become available to research. While there should be general pressure to adopt later civics as the game evolve, every civic should have a situation where it is the right gameplay choice.

3. Default Civics and Nomadic Play. The default game civics should grant bonuses to civilization that do not yet own their first city (or when founding their first city after the first few turns of the game). This serves both to enable a limited form of the much-requested “Neolithic” gameplay, and help alleviate bad start by making it easier for players to relocate away from a bad starting location, while at the same time ensuring that the Default civics are both beneficial in the right situation yet not something you want to keep as the game progresses.

4. Early Civics, Exploration and Expansion. The Early-game civics should be geared toward helping grow and develop early cities and empires, and guide that growth in a specific direction. Bonuses that enable population growth, settlement and improvement constructions should be common. About half the total civics in every sphere (minus the default one) should be early (that is, available before the middle of the Medieval era) ; this could be two civics but three strikes me as the better number (if only because BuchiTaton sold me on to his Agrarian-Pastoral-Maritime early economic civics model!)

5. Late Civics, Consolidation and Exploitation. Later-game civics should instead be geared toward getting the most out of an established empire and turning the growth of the early game toward achieving victory. The benefits should be limited with a less developed empire, but become increasingly powerful the more spread out or developed your empire is. The number of later civics should be about equal to the number of earlier ones.

6. Creeds (Ideologies, Religions) and Civics. While ideologies are not civics, ideologies (part of the Creed system) do interact with Civics. Specifically, certain Religion or Ideology beliefs may require you to adopt certain civics, or not adopt certain civics. If you fail to honor that belief, you acquire the Heretic status.

7. Heresy and Schisms. Being a heretic means that, as far as your citizens and neighbors are concerned, you no longer are a member of your ideology or religion. They will act as if you were a believer in a different ideology or religion, and neighbors may wage wars on you, and cities revolt against you and declare independence or join rival empires. You can end the heretic status either by fixing your civics, or by initiating a schism in your ideology or religion (in which case you will really be part of a different religion). In the later case, the beliefs of your new ideology or religion of course will no longer prohibit the chosen civics.

8. Fervor. Fervor is a new yield, representing people’s enthusiasm and dedication to your culture, religion and ideology. It functions largely like Faith in that it is generated, accumulated, and can be spent to pay for effects, including changing Civics, but it has elements of older Civ games’ version of culture as well as Civ VI’s loyalty: a city with higher fervor output per turn cause citizens in nearby cities with lower fervor input to slowly convert to the first city’s religion or ideology, which may lead that city to revolt and become a free city or join a different empire.

9. Civics Cost. Each Civic has a certain adoption cost. The total cost in Fervor of changing civics is determined by the total cost of the civic you are changing to and the one you are changing from, modified by factors like empire size, golden age, dark age, and how many other civic changes you have made recently.

10. Anarchy and Civic Changes. Anarchy is not guaranteed when changing civics ; rather, it is a chance that increase the more costly your civic changes are (largely depending on a ratio of how much fervor you are generating per turn vs how much fervor you are paying to change your civic). The only situations where Anarchy is guaranteed is if you have changed civics already in the last ten turns (in which case the Anarchy will last at least one turn, plus a number of additional turns equal to 5 – the number of turns since you last changed civics), or when changing civic to a civic that is against your ideology.

11. No More Civic Research. This should be self-evident given the changes to Fervor and the fact that Civics is now the name for a completely different thing, but there is no Civic tech tree to research. All research goes back to one Tech Tree, researched with one currency, although different Technologies may belong to different Fields and receive research bonuses from different sources.

 

[luca 83]

As promised, my more detailed Political System take. Please note that ideologies are handled in their own separate system (see the Creed thread) and that the Civics are meant to be combined to represent specific government forms. Ref

Civics and Governments: the political model

This is the second part of my design thinking on a potential civ games. It is meant to be read in conjunction with my Creeds, Religions and Ideologies thread, as the two approaches are meant to be part of the same game, and to interact. After all, it would not be much of an ideological (or, for that matter, religious) system if it didn’t have an impact on how you run your civilization. It is largely inspired by the Civ IV political model.

1.Government and Spheres. The government of a civilization consists of a number of spheres such as Economy, Labor, Society, Politics, Law, Administration (this is not a final list but examples of what the spheres could be) representing. Each of those spheres offer a number of options (Civics) for the civilization to chose from. All of those spheres should exist from the game start, though not all options would be available then. As a general rule, each

2.Civics. The basic unit of the political system is the civic: a policy or aspect of your society or government that Each civic belong to a given sphere, and a civilization can only chose one Civic from each sphere at any given time. At game start, only one default Sphere is available ; further sphere become available to research. While there should be general pressure to adopt later civics as the game evolve, every civic should have a situation where it is the right gameplay choice.

3. Default Civics and Nomadic Play. The default game civics should grant bonuses to civilization that do not yet own their first city (or when founding their first city after the first few turns of the game). This serves both to enable a limited form of the much-requested “Neolithic” gameplay, and help alleviate bad start by making it easier for players to relocate away from a bad starting location, while at the same time ensuring that the Default civics are both beneficial in the right situation yet not something you want to keep as the game progresses.

4. Early Civics, Exploration and Expansion. The Early-game civics should be geared toward helping grow and develop early cities and empires, and guide that growth in a specific direction. Bonuses that enable population growth, settlement and improvement constructions should be common. About half the total civics in every sphere (minus the default one) should be early (that is, available before the middle of the Medieval era) ; this could be two civics but three strikes me as the better number (if only because BuchiTaton sold me on to his Agrarian-Pastoral-Maritime early economic civics model!)

5. Late Civics, Consolidation and Exploitation. Later-game civics should instead be geared toward getting the most out of an established empire and turning the growth of the early game toward achieving victory. The benefits should be limited with a less developed empire, but become increasingly powerful the more spread out or developed your empire is. The number of later civics should be about equal to the number of earlier ones.

6. Creeds (Ideologies, Religions) and Civics. While ideologies are not civics, ideologies (part of the Creed system) do interact with Civics. Specifically, certain Religion or Ideology beliefs may require you to adopt certain civics, or not adopt certain civics. If you fail to honor that belief, you acquire the Heretic status.

7. Heresy and Schisms. Being a heretic means that, as far as your citizens and neighbors are concerned, you no longer are a member of your ideology or religion. They will act as if you were a believer in a different ideology or religion, and neighbors may wage wars on you, and cities revolt against you and declare independence or join rival empires. You can end the heretic status either by fixing your civics, or by initiating a schism in your ideology or religion (in which case you will really be part of a different religion). In the later case, the beliefs of your new ideology or religion of course will no longer prohibit the chosen civics.

8. Fervor. Fervor is a new yield, representing people’s enthusiasm and dedication to your culture, religion and ideology. It functions largely like Faith in that it is generated, accumulated, and can be spent to pay for effects, including changing Civics, but it has elements of older Civ games’ version of culture as well as Civ VI’s loyalty: a city with higher fervor output per turn cause citizens in nearby cities with lower fervor input to slowly convert to the first city’s religion or ideology, which may lead that city to revolt and become a free city or join a different empire.

9. Civics Cost. Each Civic has a certain adoption cost. The total cost in Fervor of changing civics is determined by the total cost of the civic you are changing to and the one you are changing from, modified by factors like empire size, golden age, dark age, and how many other civic changes you have made recently.

10. Anarchy and Civic Changes. Anarchy is not guaranteed when changing civics ; rather, it is a chance that increase the more costly your civic changes are (largely depending on a ratio of how much fervor you are generating per turn vs how much fervor you are paying to change your civic). The only situations where Anarchy is guaranteed is if you have changed civics already in the last ten turns (in which case the Anarchy will last at least one turn, plus a number of additional turns equal to 5 – the number of turns since you last changed civics), or when changing civic to a civic that is against your ideology.

11. No More Civic Research. This should be self-evident given the changes to Fervor and the fact that Civics is now the name for a completely different thing, but there is no Civic tech tree to research. All research goes back to one Tech Tree, researched with one currency, although different Technologies may belong to different Fields and receive research bonuses from different sources.

In your idea of goverment boxes how is ideology organized? How does it harmonize with the government? What influences does it have on citizens? What about kings and prime ministers?

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Civ3 had something like this, where the turns of anarchy incurred when switching governments increased with the number of cities in your empire. It's been too long since I played Civ4 to say for certain, but I know the period of anarchy when switching civics also varied (when one is not in a golden age).

I was thinking about how often you could change policies, not governments, as a way of represent some kind of "propagation" time for policies to take effect. Of course when turns are 50 years something taking multiple turns is a game-play abstraction.
Come to think of it I think there was a anarchy period in Civ 2.

 

[luca 83]

As promised, my more detailed Political System take. Please note that ideologies are handled in their own separate system (see the Creed thread) and that the Civics are meant to be combined to represent specific government forms. Ref

Civics and Governments: the political model

This is the second part of my design thinking on a potential civ games. It is meant to be read in conjunction with my Creeds, Religions and Ideologies thread, as the two approaches are meant to be part of the same game, and to interact. After all, it would not be much of an ideological (or, for that matter, religious) system if it didn’t have an impact on how you run your civilization. It is largely inspired by the Civ IV political model.

1.Government and Spheres. The government of a civilization consists of a number of spheres such as Economy, Labor, Society, Politics, Law, Administration (this is not a final list but examples of what the spheres could be) representing. Each of those spheres offer a number of options (Civics) for the civilization to chose from. All of those spheres should exist from the game start, though not all options would be available then. As a general rule, each

2.Civics. The basic unit of the political system is the civic: a policy or aspect of your society or government that Each civic belong to a given sphere, and a civilization can only chose one Civic from each sphere at any given time. At game start, only one default Sphere is available ; further sphere become available to research. While there should be general pressure to adopt later civics as the game evolve, every civic should have a situation where it is the right gameplay choice.

3. Default Civics and Nomadic Play. The default game civics should grant bonuses to civilization that do not yet own their first city (or when founding their first city after the first few turns of the game). This serves both to enable a limited form of the much-requested “Neolithic” gameplay, and help alleviate bad start by making it easier for players to relocate away from a bad starting location, while at the same time ensuring that the Default civics are both beneficial in the right situation yet not something you want to keep as the game progresses.

4. Early Civics, Exploration and Expansion. The Early-game civics should be geared toward helping grow and develop early cities and empires, and guide that growth in a specific direction. Bonuses that enable population growth, settlement and improvement constructions should be common. About half the total civics in every sphere (minus the default one) should be early (that is, available before the middle of the Medieval era) ; this could be two civics but three strikes me as the better number (if only because BuchiTaton sold me on to his Agrarian-Pastoral-Maritime early economic civics model!)

5. Late Civics, Consolidation and Exploitation. Later-game civics should instead be geared toward getting the most out of an established empire and turning the growth of the early game toward achieving victory. The benefits should be limited with a less developed empire, but become increasingly powerful the more spread out or developed your empire is. The number of later civics should be about equal to the number of earlier ones.

6. Creeds (Ideologies, Religions) and Civics. While ideologies are not civics, ideologies (part of the Creed system) do interact with Civics. Specifically, certain Religion or Ideology beliefs may require you to adopt certain civics, or not adopt certain civics. If you fail to honor that belief, you acquire the Heretic status.

7. Heresy and Schisms. Being a heretic means that, as far as your citizens and neighbors are concerned, you no longer are a member of your ideology or religion. They will act as if you were a believer in a different ideology or religion, and neighbors may wage wars on you, and cities revolt against you and declare independence or join rival empires. You can end the heretic status either by fixing your civics, or by initiating a schism in your ideology or religion (in which case you will really be part of a different religion). In the later case, the beliefs of your new ideology or religion of course will no longer prohibit the chosen civics.

8. Fervor. Fervor is a new yield, representing people’s enthusiasm and dedication to your culture, religion and ideology. It functions largely like Faith in that it is generated, accumulated, and can be spent to pay for effects, including changing Civics, but it has elements of older Civ games’ version of culture as well as Civ VI’s loyalty: a city with higher fervor output per turn cause citizens in nearby cities with lower fervor input to slowly convert to the first city’s religion or ideology, which may lead that city to revolt and become a free city or join a different empire.

9. Civics Cost. Each Civic has a certain adoption cost. The total cost in Fervor of changing civics is determined by the total cost of the civic you are changing to and the one you are changing from, modified by factors like empire size, golden age, dark age, and how many other civic changes you have made recently.

10. Anarchy and Civic Changes. Anarchy is not guaranteed when changing civics ; rather, it is a chance that increase the more costly your civic changes are (largely depending on a ratio of how much fervor you are generating per turn vs how much fervor you are paying to change your civic). The only situations where Anarchy is guaranteed is if you have changed civics already in the last ten turns (in which case the Anarchy will last at least one turn, plus a number of additional turns equal to 5 – the number of turns since you last changed civics), or when changing civic to a civic that is against your ideology.

11. No More Civic Research. This should be self-evident given the changes to Fervor and the fact that Civics is now the name for a completely different thing, but there is no Civic tech tree to research. All research goes back to one Tech Tree, researched with one currency, although different Technologies may belong to different Fields and receive research bonuses from different sources.

you be more specific in the political and economic part?Can

 

[Evie]

@luca 83 , please read the whole post before replying. Specifically, this sentence:

It is meant to be read in conjunction with my Creeds, Religions and Ideologies thread, as the two approaches are meant to be part of the same game, and to interact

(and the matching ideology thread)
and this part:

6. Creeds (Ideologies, Religions) and Civics. While ideologies are not civics, ideologies (part of the Creed system) do interact with Civics. Specifically, certain Religion or Ideology beliefs may require you to adopt certain civics, or not adopt certain civics. If you fail to honor that belief, you acquire the Heretic status.

and this part:

7. Heresy and Schisms. Being a heretic means that, as far as your citizens and neighbors are concerned, you no longer are a member of your ideology or religion. They will act as if you were a believer in a different ideology or religion, and neighbors may wage wars on you, and cities revolt against you and declare independence or join rival empires. You can end the heretic status either by fixing your civics, or by initiating a schism in your ideology or religion (in which case you will really be part of a different religion). In the later case, the beliefs of your new ideology or religion of course will no longer prohibit the chosen civics.

This is where the ideologies are and how they interact with the civics system.

you be more specific in the political and economic part?Can

Not in the post you quoted, because the point of that post is to outline the general working of the system, not to get bogged down in the different civics that would be in it. Determining the exact civics is much less important than determining how the system work, so that's where I've been focusing.

I have some ideas but they're largely work in progress. The economic options I have in mind right now lean toward Hunter-Gatherer as the default option, Agrarian, Pastoral and Maritime as early game options, and State Property, Free Market and some sort of Robber Barons/Corporatist/Military Industrial/Socialism-for-the-Rich, civics where I've been toying with many names for the late game. And no, State property is not limited to communist ideology, because communists were not, in fact, the only ones to use that idea. It may not even be discovered with the Communism technology.

I did strongly consider Mercantilism, but at the end of the day, Mercantilism would be a third economic civics that want to center on trade routes (along with Maritime and Free Market), which from a design perspective would be quite limiting. Having no trade-based civic until the renaissance was not an option, and neither was skipping the dominant worldwide economic model of the XXIst century, so Mercantilism lost out.

 

[luca 83]

There should be limits in the choice of government : you cannot be a communist and simultaneously a theocracy , be a democracy and have slavery

 

[Evie]

The Athenians invented democracy, they had slavery.
The United States are the most famous modern democracy. They had slavery for a century.

The idea that you can't have slavery in a democracy is *spectacular* in the sheer scale of how wrong you are.

 

[luca 83]

The Athenians invented democracy, they had slavery.
The United States are the most famous modern democracy. They had slavery for a century.

The idea that you can't have slavery in a democracy is *spectacular* in the sheer scale of how wrong you are.

A Modern
democracy should not have slavery , a representative democracy on a census basis can have it two Ancient Rome was not a modern democracy but a closed oligarchy of landowners and a possibly middle class knights . What I mean is that there is a limilimite to shuffling governments simplest example you can't be monarchist and have state ownership, be liberal and have a theocracy

 

[pokiehl]

What I mean is that there is a limilimite to shuffling governments simplest example you can't be monarchist and have state ownership, be liberal and have a theocracy

Why?

 

[Marla_Singer]

The Athenians invented democracy, they had slavery.
The United States are the most famous modern democracy. They had slavery for a century.

The idea that you can't have slavery in a democracy is *spectacular* in the sheer scale of how wrong you are.

It is the idea of equal rights which is incompatible with slavery. I think that's what @luca 83 meant. Shortly after the French revolutionaries declared all men free and equal in rights, it triggered abolition of slavery in Saint-Domingue. It's true there's never been an "equal rights" civic or policy in Civilization games, but that would actually make sense as it's true that birth privileges were progressively abolished in most Western democracies.

 

[luca 83]

Why?

Because a liberal tends to a policy of religious political tolerance and economic free trade .so the dictatorship is not credible to be a right - left dictator and to be liberal, that is, to promote the free market, a liberal tends to have as little state as possible and fewer rules

 

[pokiehl]

Because a liberal tends to a policy of religious political tolerance and economic free trade .so the dictatorship is not credible to be a right - left dictator and to be liberal, that is, to promote the free market, a liberal tends to have as little state as possible and fewer rules

So in other words, your argument is an appeal to realism? “It didn’t occur that way in history so it shouldn’t occur that way in the game.”

That isn’t a very compelling argument to me. This line of thinking would lead to a tedious, boring, predictable game.

 

[Evie]

Emancipation would be the equivalent to an equal rights civics, and in Civ IV, (and in my loose idea), Emancipation is a labour civics, same as Slavery, so automatically exclusive to one another (and emancipation in Civ IV even give penalties to civs that still have slavery).

Also, no, State Property should not block monarchies. State property is just that: the state owns the means of production. The idea that it means your civ had adopted Communist ideology is just your delusion. There are no ideologies in Civ IV, and none of the civics represent and ideology,

Your obsessive criticism of a system you refuse to understand is wearing very, very thin.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Note that in what appear to have been the prototype God-King monarchies among the Hittite neighbors (Lukka Lands) in Anatolia and in Minoan Crete the palaces (Beyce Sultan and Knossos the two prime examples) seem to have been Distribution centers for goods of all kinds, including food. So the 'Monarchy' also owned, or at least controlled, the means of Production and Food as well.

Note also that among polities as apparently different as the Feudal monarchies of the early Medieval Europe and the Achaemenid Persian state, the Shah/King legally owned all land, the basic source of wealth, and allotted it to various retainers and feudal dependencies. They effectively controlled it all, especially as their 'gifts' became effectively hereditary, but the legal basis of the systems was that the King owned everything of importance.

 

[luca 83]

Note that in what appear to have been the prototype God-King monarchies among the Hittite neighbors (Lukka Lands) in Anatolia and in Minoan Crete the palaces (Beyce Sultan and Knossos the two prime examples) seem to have been Distribution centers for goods of all kinds, including food. So the 'Monarchy' also owned, or at least controlled, the means of Production and Food as well.

Note also that among polities as apparently different as the Feudal monarchies of the early Medieval Europe and the Achaemenid Persian state, the Shah/King legally owned all land, the basic source of wealth, and allotted it to various retainers and feudal dependencies. They effectively controlled it all, especially as their 'gifts' became effectively hereditary, but the legal basis of the systems was that the King owned everything of importance.

Communism is a conceptualized system of government in which resources and production facilities are the property of the entire society rather than individuals. In a communist society, labor is shared equally as well, and the benefits of labor are distributed according to need. Under such a system, all people would be equal, without class stratification.

Although the basic idea of communism has existed since the time of Plato, modern communism is identified with the system of government described by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto. They believed that capitalistic systems, in which the rich upper class prospered through the exploitation of the powerless lower class, were bound to destroy themselves. At this point, the poor would rebel against their former oppressors and form a classless society. This prophecy has never come true, and countries that have attempted to base their governments on communism have ultimately failed to achieve the For the last time communism there is also the symbol and referred to Marxism Leninismonon nothing with the Hittites or the feudal medieval system that did not deny private property , but the king held the land or a part there were small peasants and distributed it to the vassals described by Marx and Engels.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

@luca 83, if you are going to slap my post up as a 'quote' at least have the intellectual honesty to refer to it in your reply: I said nothing about Communism or communism, or Marx, or Engels, or Lenin. I was referring to @Evie's previous post regarding State ownership of property, not the utter failure of government and economics that is modern Communism.

And parenthetically, the difference between the personified State represented by the ancient God-Kings and the depersonalized State envisioned by Marx does not make any difference at all to either the 'small peasants' under the former or the State Farm workers, their modern equivalents, under the latter.

 

[Evie]

We all know what communism is, Luca.

What everyone else except you ALSO know is that the Civic, "State Property", does NOT equate to communism.

 

[luca 83]

State ownership is a product of Marxism - communism, it has nothing to do with the ownership of the ancient era, and not whether it is compatible with monarchy and with a monarchical system of any kind

 

[luca 83]

We all know what communism is, Luca.

What everyone else except you ALSO know is that the Civic, "State Property", does NOT equate to communism.

Communism technology : hammer and sickle symbol : government owned civ IV does not refer to communism? No... Noooo