Why not a "darker" version of Civilization? (and other considerations about the game)

[Gigliozzi]

(Careful: this is a very long post, folks.)

Why not a “darker” version of Civilization?

No, I don’t mean turn your brightness and contrast all the way down. (Rim shot.)

I want a Civilization game that has more b@lls.

I’ll grant you that Civilization has come somewhat of a way in terms of incorporating some of our history’s more regrettable elements into the game. You had some “fundamentalism” in Civ2, but the way all the governments were more or less undefined in that game, it didn’t really matter. (And the entire government was altogether scrapped in Civ3. 9/11 proximity, you think?) By the way, does anyone else think that fundamentalism was the best kind of government in Civ2? If you built a crapload of science structures, which I always did and continue to do, you didn’t suffer too much from the technological setback, plus you made a crapload of money, everyone was always happy, and there was no peacemongering senate to prohibit you from kicking a$$ whenever you damn well pleased. It seemed like a no-brainer to me.\

Anyway, in Civ2, the most, let’s call it, “controversial” aspect of the game was the loosely characterized fundamentalism. Civ3 didn’t carry the torch that much farther in that regard. Again, the fundamentalism was removed, but at least you had some fascism in there. (I don’t doubt for a second that the folks at Firaxis got letters about that.) But at the end of the day, fascism sucked as a government. In fact, all governments that didn’t allow you to spend money on projects, I outright avoided all the time. In Civ3, much like in Civ2, enabling Democracy was a substitute for the “Disable War” option in the options menu, so in Civ3, I would just stick with Monarchy. (Could spend dough on projects, AND nobody b!tched about wiping the floor with the other civs.)

As you may have inferred by now, I like my wars in Civ. I mean, come on, who doesn’t? Isn’t one of the many trips of Civilization that of being a ruthless destroyer? I don’t want to get into that old “videogames are outlets for evil inclinations” debate, but you get the idea. Surely, if I were to really inherit the presidency of the United States, I would not rule it as the imperialistc, theocratic police state (yeah, it already is, haha, whatever, you friggin’ Commies) complete with a caste system and a state property economy as I am currently doing in Civilization 4. But just as much as I liked to play doctor or cowboys and Indians when I was a kid, I enjoy playing autocrat in Civilization 4. And I know I’m not the only one.

Yet it seems as if no matter how many appetizing pro-bastard features are introduced in the Civ games, they always turn out being watered down somewhat and not made into the pure tools for terror that they could be. Take Civ4, for example. Yeah, you have Police State as a civ, with the icon of what appears to be a heartless constable representing it. What was it again, you have lower war weariness and more experienced units? Yeah. The end.

Is that supposed to be enough to whet my appetite for a simulated Fourth Reich? (I’m not a Nazi, I’m just making a point, please don’t call me out on this.) The changes from, say, Hereditary Rule to Police State are virtually invisible. Democratic civs continue to be friendly towards me, and every citizen across the board is hella happy and propping up parades for me every lunch break. (Yes, gaudy parades are a defining characteristic of any respectable autocracy, but my citizens seem to really be loving the misery I’m trying to put them through. That kinda kills it, you see.)

Don’t get me wrong. I love the introduction of civics in Civ4, and I think the makers did an acceptable job with them, at least for what could be technically considered (if one discounts SMAC’s social engineering) the first attempt at a feature of the kind in the Civilization series. But if the truth must be told, well, there aren’t too many distinguishing factors among the civics other than some half-a$$ed benefit and/or penalty and an AIM sized avatar. Everyone’s always talking about how to make Civ5 better. I say, do the so-far unprecedented in Civilization: make the governments actually MEAN something. I’m talking a whole world full of differences, because that’s how it has tended to be throughout history after all. The United States and the Soviet Union had far more differences between themselves than simply an extra food shield in irrigated squares and a discount on cottages and granaries.

Getting back to Civ4, so aside from the somewhat unsatisfactory Police State civic (and, similarly, slavery), you had some other “let’s-go-bada$$” elements in the game. We got to kick it with Stalin at least, although some of the less sensitive historical purists such as myself remained a bit disappointed by the chronic omission of Hitler. (That however is a different story, and one for which Germany’s stringent anti-anything-that-even-rhymes-with-Nazi laws are to blame.) See, on that note, it’s not even so much that I would like to play as Hitler myself (I can be my own murderous dictator, thank you very much), as much as I would like to play against him. Same with all the crap I’m saying about more possibilities for brutal regimes. They could be a bundle of fun whether you’re playing as them or against them.

Look at religion. Yeah, it’s in there (much to the initial chagrin of hardcore atheists such as myself, but I will grant you that they’ve ben a major part of history and all of that), but I don’t want to sound too much like one of those “it’s all political correctness’s fault” loudmouths when I say that I’m not too sure how much I care for the whole “no particular characteristics, don’t wanna offend anybody, remember, Firaxis never printed the cartoons” approach to religion the makers took. That whole disclaimer about it in the game manual was rather embarrassing to read. I’m also a little perturbed by Mr. Meier’s seeming double standard – dare I say it, outright hypocrisy. Every effort seems to be made not to offend anyone in the slightest, because you know, these Firaxis guys are decent and open-minded people, of course. Next up, stay tuned as we remorselessly and unabashedly rip on the leader of the free world and, by consequence, on the ONE HUNDRED MILLION AMERICANS who still support him.

Seriously, does anyone else think those sketches were in bad taste? You don’t have to be a Bush supporter to believe that those things were in bad taste. Not to mention, unfunny and unoriginal to a fault.

But I digress.

It all seems to come down to Firaxis not wanting to get too many letters. That’s why they don’t dare toy around with religion, they minimize the brutality of slavery to an avatar, and they shy away from emulating the real life repercussions of oppressive regimes in the game. True, they aren’t the only ones in the videogame community or elsewhere driven by this safety-first ultra-caution, but I always wanted to believe, like I’m sure many of the game’s fans do, that Civilization was a (for the better) different kind of game, a more intellectual and mature one. A game which, by requiring a particular cerebral and strategic effort by its player while involving him/her into a very insightful tour of history featuring some people, places and events which some of us don’t even hear about until college, sets itself aside from the overwhelming majority of videogames out there where it’s all about save the princess, kill the monster, push the right buttons as fast as you can, keep pushing them, press X for turbo, 4 out of 9 Crystals of Love found. In short, by being the way it is, Civilization attracts to it a, dare I say it, more sophisticated audience. Right?

So it might come easy to give Civ credit where credit is due, and of course I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t a fan – yet if Civilization’s audience is so intelligent and so mature, then why do the games continue to be made as if the audience is made up of over-sensitive idiots who’ll get upset over anything?

How many of you would seriously reject a non-family-friendly Civilization game? How many of you, on the other hand, would welcome and embrace a Civilization game that instead allowed for the implementation of intensely brutal and horrifying governments and civics? How many of you would be disgusted by the possibility of taking the role of Kim Jong Il, nuking North Korea’s way into Asian dominion and starving the entire continent? How many of you, on the other hand, would delight in engaging in an epic struggle – a true “clash of civilizations” - between yourselves as the Great Depression-stricken but righteous and humane United States against the incontrollably bloodthirsty Third Reich which has managed to conquer not just Europe, but the entire eastern hemisphere and has successfully exterminated every Jew under its rule? (How’s that for religion in the game?)

Is it just me, or doesn’t all of this sound fifty times more captivating than “How about I trade you spices if you adopt Serfdom, Genghis Khan?”

So what keeps such a new take on Civilization from being born, like a Great Person in Civ4? Is it our own morals? Our own supposed decency? Are we so friggin’ upright that we draw the line for some things even in friggin’ videogames? Hmm, well, let’s look at the game as it is now. You know, even though those troops may not be seen bleeding and make laughably cartoonish noises when they die, at the end of the day, YOU’RE STILL TRYING TO WIPE OUT AN ENTIRE CIVILIZATION. (And wiping out all of them remains the most basic of victory conditions.)

Is it perhaps the limits of game engines? I don’t know, I’m no game developer, but I think it shouldn’t be too impossible to design some of the features I’m about to pitch out here. (Oh, you didn’t think I wasn’t going to lay out some ideas for this “darker” Civ, did you?)

Perhaps most probably, it’s all about the market. After all, Civilization has always been an “E” (“Everyone.” Because “Everyone” begins with an “E,” you see) rated game. Well, you know what I say? I say, maybe it shouldn’t be. Or rather, maybe it shouldn’t just be that. Sure, maybe little Timmy is not yet ready to play a game in which you can gas your own people – but since when are little Timmy and his peers the sultans for whom we specifically tailor everything? So maybe Timmy can go to bed later tonight, after having played his kid-friendly version of Civ (complete with cute smileys to denote citizen happiness and angry red faces to indicate the opposite… I mean, come on, people!) and that’s when we, the gutsier, older folks who just so happen to be running this world, and whose prominence on the videogame market surely can’t be ignored by game developers, pop in that “darker” Civilization game and proceed to transform England into a Talibanesque oligarchy, but with Anglicanism rather than Islam… or play as secular Arabia and fight against this theocratic British empire.

Here’s another thing we should consider. By making way for immoral extremism in this hypothetical game, you are also automatically extending the possibilities for righteousness and enlightenment on the other end of the spectrum. By playing a Civ game in which five out of ten nations are allied rogue states, you are enforcing the moral glory of the other five nations, who are now fighting more devastating and gruesome wars than ever before in the name of goodness and virtue. Take my current Civ4 game I talked about. In a game such as this darker, more realistic one (and you can’t argue that what I’m proposing isn’t inspired by real life civilizations all around, both in the past and in the present), my theocratic, autocratic America would be encouraging my secular and emancipated neighbor – in this case, Catherine of the Russians – to confront me about my human rights abuses and if need be declare war on me (or protect itself from me) in what becomes none other than a heavily polarized battle between good and evil. In short, the presence of possibilities for inhuman governing would boost the drive for justice of other more humane civilizations. Instead, the way Civ4 works, a history of good trading and a couple of technologies I spared her is making sure that universal suffrage and free speech Catherine is one of my biggest fans. Lame.

Now that I’ve done all I can to make a case for this new macabre spin on Civ and hopefully prevent any flame wars (“your just sick gigliozzi!!!”), I can finally go ahead and pitch some ideas for what some of these new governing features might be.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY/HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES – The one that comes to mind first. This one could be incredibly multi-faceted. Segregation. Deportation. GENOCIDE! Yes, I said it. All the people in your civilization are categorized, based on their gender, race, creed, and all those other things you can’t refuse to hire someone based on. You can have your pick of a particular group of people, and do whatever you want to them. Segregate the gays. Put the Confucianists in work camps. Kill all the whites. Sell the mentally ******** as slaves to other nations. Turn all the newly conquered foreigners into sex slaves for the natives.

Imprison dissidents. Imprison sympathizers. Imprison whoever the hell you want, for no real reasons. Execute rebels. Cut off entire areas of the empire from food and resources. Yes, I’m talking about STARVING YOUR POPULACE. Women are not allowed to work or learn. You name it, you can do it. After all, it’s your own people, you can do what you want with them.

PATRIARCHY/MATRIARCHY/GENDER RIGHTS – Men rule completely and women are just objects. Or if you want to, the opposite! That would be pretty damn spiffy, you gotta admit. A nation of Amazons, with a thirst for conquests. Every man is sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor and drained for sperm when reproduction is called for. They are executed whenever they are no longer physically useful or turn out to be infertile. Imagine losing one of your cities to a society like this. Knowing what your own people are going through in there. I doubt that would make you seek a peace treaty anytime soon.

MEDIA CONTROL/CENSORSHIP – The best and worst from every dystopian novel you have ever read. 1984. Fahrenheit 451. Anthem. Brave New World. I’m talking book-burning, demolition of art, massive censorship, false information, hardcore indoctrination and re-education. Speaking of which, what do you think of newspapers and news networks as a game feature in general?

ROGUE STATES – No matter how many civilizations end up being clumped closely together in Civ4 and its predecessors, it seems as if at the end of the day, everyone simply minds its own business. The U.N. Resolutions feature, while mildly interesting, is a joke. Make the civilizations more dependent on a certain global order. Allow for rogue states and superpowers. If I’m a puny civ with inhuman civics and no standing army, I’m getting my a$$ handed to me. But let me develop some nukes, and see the other civs bow before me. As current events are proving, there are more ways of exercising international influence than simply having a noble history and prominent industry. All you need to be is crazy and armed, and people will listen to you. Make the game like this. Have opportunistic civilizations striking deals with rogue states and other civs confronting them instead, paving the way for one hell of an international crisis or world war. I love this.

TERRORISM – Either fight it or be responsible for it. Fund it. Sponsor it. Train for it. You could be a tiny civ flanked by two major superpowers who are always taking advantage of you. Become a hard labor police state and indoctrinate your people (see how it all ties together?). Then, get them to go blow stuff up in the nations that are giving you trouble. Perhaps enlist the help of another puny state desperate for some dignity. Again, this would make the game more fun, because it would allow any kind of civilization, not just the biggest and most sophisticated ones, to have an impact on the game. Or perhaps, you can have an independent terror organization backed by no government in particular spring up here or there with their own agenda. You can choose to join the rest of the civilized world in fighting to eradicate these murderers from the face of the planet – or you can unite with the terrorists instead. Offer them protection and support from your country, in return for a few favors from them.

ANTITHEISM – Why did they omit this in Civ4? Talk about offending. No religion. None of it. All forms of it strictly forbidden. It’s not secularism. It’s antitheism.

LEADER WORSHIP – Indoctrinate your people into believing that you are the ruler they must be not just willing, but glad to die for. Seclude them from the outside world so much that all they will know is the intolerable misery and cruelty under which you subject them – and make them love it. Construct statues and monuments of yourself all over your land. Name everything after you. Make everything about you. Or, just have your subjects obey your every word but secretly loathe you inside. That’s more fun, if you ask me.

These are but a few of my own suggestions. Far from an exhaustive list. We as a species have a bottomless repertoire of atrocities to draw inspiration from. Seems very inappropriate, perhaps even cowardly, to make a game dedicated to the history of man and very conveniently omitting all the “bad” parts.

Please post your own suggestions/feedback/insults. That’s the reason I started this thread I assure you, not just to listen to the sound of my own typing.

But allow me to close by addressing one last issue: a name for this hypothetical game/expansion pack. So far, I’ve referred to it simply as the “darker” Civ, but I do have a few ideas on what it could be titled too. Here are some of them.

CIVILIZATION: DOWNFALL (yeah, it’s a little lame, but it does have a certain… no it doesn’t, it’s just lame)

CIVILIZATION: RISE OF EVIL (same as above)

CIVILIZATION: DARK SHADOWS (bleh, it sounds kinda cool, but it makes no sense, and besides, shadows are always dark anyway, so that’s redundant)

CIVILIZATION: DEATH OF RAINBOWS (okay, it’s stupid, but it’s funny, come on)

CIVILIZATION, OR LACK THEREOF (a somewhat witty one for the pseudo-intellectuals)

CIVILIZATION: DYSTOPIA (this one’s nice. It gets the message across, and uses a fancy word for it, thereby making it seem intelligent)

CIVILIZATION: HIDE THE KIDS! (creative, no, but mighty practical, and gets the disclaimer out of the way immediately)

CIVILIZATION: NAUGHTY, NO-GOOD CIVS (the way your grandmother would title it)

CIVILIZATION: THE DEATH OF HOPE (overly dramatic? Maybe, but it’s got the word “death” in there, which always makes an impact)

CIVILIZATION: THE DEATH OF MICKEY MOUSE (see what I mean? It has nothing to do with Mickey Mouse, but the word “Death” in there still gets to you. Admit it)

CIVILIZATION: GIGLIOZZI’S PERVERTED BRILLIANCE (my personal favorite)

Don’t forget to post your ideas for titles as well.

Go.

 

[Khan Quest]

An entertaining post. Thanks.
I enjoy considering new features as much as anyone else, especially ones that add realism and offer choices, but (you knew the but was coming) I'd like to see the mechanics of implimentation. I suspect Firaxis will just glance over (or maybe glaze over) ideas without the mechanics.
What would be the affects, cost vs. benefit, in game terms of CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, for example? Eliminate rival cultural influence in an area or on a tile? Eliminate religion from a city (or drive it underground)? Suffer a rep hit? Unhappy citizens? Less productive citizens?


CIVILIZATION: OW, STOP IT!
CIVILIZATION: HARSH REALITY
CIVILIZATION: OH, THE HUMANITY!
CIVILIZATION: GOOD VS EVIL
CIVILIZATION: ANYTHING GOES
CIVILIZATION: HOW LONG CAN WE KEEP THIS FRANCHISE GOING?

 

[dh_epic]

For what it's worth, you can raze lots of cities. That's pretty brutal. And people hate you for it.

I agree with you in spirit, but I think there's a lot of logistical problems.

First off, why should someone hate you just because of your government? Why can't a fascist and a liberal be friends? Obviously there's a real world reason for this. But in the game, there is none. Frankly, it kind of bugs me that the AI cares what religion I am, because I don't care about theirs. I think they need to ground these kinds of differences between civilizations in an actual gameplay mechanism, rather than plugging it into the AI for no apparent reason. Easier said than done, though.

Secondly, terrorism is hard to implement. First off, terrorism has never made any significant impact on population, as far as civilization is concerned. 100 people in a subway isn't much, let alone 3000 people in some buildings. The impact of terrorism is to terrorize -- to goad a government into a reaction. Why would anyone react in civilization if terrorism made essentially no impact? Why would you go into a trillion dollars in debt over less than one lost population, and maybe one lost building? Furthermore, where would the terrorists come from? Most of the time they are non-state actors, acting without the authority of governments. Civilization has a hard time with non-state powers: there's no in-game way to describe how the actual government of Afghanistan is held in a tiny stronghold in the north, while an essentially terrorist group has taken the country. Moreover, the smartest thing to do in Civ would be to just nuke the whole thing, let alone invade. Why would you engage in the difficult process of nation building? Again, you can't just implement the real world horrors without thinking about whether the in-game impact will reflect reality.

As for state sponsored terrorism, at least BTS has some espionage for you.

One idea that would be easy, though... I'd like to see an "information" or "culture" civics column. Something that lets you choose between indoctrination, or free speech, or so on. It could replace that silly fruit salad that's the "legal" column. I think that could begin to reflect some of the various repressive ideas throughout history.

 

[GoodGame]

a simple answer: Because then it'd become a planning tool for terrorists and foreign nations.

Maybe you should apply for a job at the State Department or something.

 

[Gigliozzi]

My, you’re a lovely bunch of naysayers, aren’t you?

Is it the norm – perhaps, the rule – on these boards that if someone is to pitch any kind of suggestion for the game, they are mandated to provide the proper coding for it for Firaxis’s benefit? I wasn’t aware. All I was trying to do was speak my mind as a player – not as a computer technician or game developer – about what kind of game I’d like to see, with the sole objective of garnering as many different opinions ON THE IDEAS THEMSELVES as possible and seeing if maybe I was so alone in this universe or not. I would have much preferred answers such as “Yes, I’d be ready to play such a hardcore game, I also think you should be able to do away with militarily inadequate newborns like the Spartans did [which pretty much made sure I wouldn’t root for either side in the movie “300”]” or perhaps even, “Good heavens, what horrors! I actually believe war altogether should be removed in the next installment!" I surely wasn’t expecting this kind of “forget whether it’s interesting or not, it can’t be done, it’s stupid just to think about it, go home, Gigliozzi!” [Exaggerated for dramatic purposes.]

Not that I’m knocking on any of you for having been such tough interlocutors. Quite the contrary, I salute you and thank you, if anything for having bothered to read that entire glob of a post. (I myself started zoning out while in the middle of writing paragraph four.)

Your replies appear to constrict me into defending my propositions, something I shall attempt to do as well as I can. Khan’s primary beef seems to be with what impacts any implementations of the kind would have on gameplay. Epic’s beef can easily be summed up as, “Yeah, I guess, but forget about it, the folks at Firaxis are not that good.” [I stand to be corrected by the two of you on any of these hasty summaries.] And GoodGame’s post, well, I’m actually not too sure about that one, but we’ll get to that too.

Is it really my job, my responsibility – or rather, our responsibility as the Civ4 gaming community, to graduate in computer science from MIT before we even dare to consider ourselves worthy enough to speak our minds about how we would better enjoy the game? True, many on these forums are quite literate in informatics, as if I even have to make that point what with the showers of jaw-dropping modpacks regularly raining our way, but you’d have to be kidding me if you told me that only the insights and creative notions of said specialists is taken into account by game developers – Firaxis or anyone else – while the crummy slips poured into the suggestion box by casual gamers (but Civ loyalists) such as myself are scattered to the winds like ashes.

Point to the matter is, my responsibilities hit the border once I shell out that money. After that, I can run my mouth about the game as much as I want, and unless my demands are overly outlandish (“female leaderheads must be able to perform rl oral on player”), I should be at least granted an audience by anyone who cares the slightest about me pulling out that wallet again in the future. If I had any sophisticated understanding of game designing, I’d be programming my own games and competing directly with Firaxis. But I don’t, and I don’t much care to possess that knowledge anytime I soon – but I still care to play the products of those who do, and I honestly respect and admire their efforts. And as much as it is in a game developer’s interest to make a large number of users happy, it is as much in his interest to work hard at developing new game engines that will sedate an ever-spoiled brat of a market. So far, it seems to have progressed steadily. When Pong was all the rage, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just the computer-savvy who thought, “yeah, but there’s gotta be more to this… it would be so awesome if I could play a game where I was a yellow ball and went around eating featureless smaller balls while being hotly pursued by multi-colored specters!” And had it been the non-computer-savvy exclusively to desire such groundbreaking innovations whereas the computer-savvy had no such wish, I doubt Namco would have sat idly about and shamelessly ignored the fantasies of whoever wasn’t a sworn devotee to the Church of Programming Knowledge.

Think of it as a screenwriter versus a producer/director. While it may be wise for the former to have some understanding of the cans and can’ts of film production before sitting at that typewriter, nothing should keep him from penning the best kind of story that he can, no matter how it could ultimately be brought to the screen, if it even could. His job is to maximize the creative possibilities as much as his right-brain mind knows how. Once he hands in that script to the left-brain cinematographer, the latter will take it from there. Whatever can be done will be, and whatever can’t won’t – for the moment. If you’re able to see in movies today the stunning digital recreation of a long-lost ocean liner hardly anyone has a good picture of anymore, or writhe in terror as a supposed undead humanoid very graphically – and realistically - tears an unfortunate victim’s brains into shreds with its teeth, it’s because of sleep-missing envelope-pushing technicians working in the film industry – who might probably not have polished the art of cinematography as well, or as soon, as they did if it hadn’t been for liberal arts majors who know squat about graphic design or poultry that might be made to look like guts – but who surely do know how to invent a story.

So there. That’s my thorough retort to your “you’re dreaming, bud” assault. If ever you were even on such an offensive to begin with. Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I misread you. Maybe it was your wording. On that note, Epic, allow me to point out that you’ve got your transparencies out of order when you write, “100 people in a subway isn't much, let alone 3000 people in some buildings.” In this case, the expression “let alone” would have to precede a statistic of lesser value than the one outlined in the first clause in order to get the point across. It’s okay. One time, on a report for class no less, I mistakenly wrote, and I quote, “Deciphering the Sanskrit cuneiforms was a laborious task, and interpreting the intended stories was relatively easy as well.” A far more unpardonable act of grammatical treason.

As far as how I personally might think the features I proposed could be worked so as to have an engaging impact on gameplay, well, I doubt it would be very difficult for me or anyone else, if given enough time (and a handsome salary by Take 2), to come up with some clever ideas, let alone interpret what the Sanskrit stories mean. I suppose I could extemporize right here right now if it’ll get you to take me more seriously (“Seriouslier”).

Let’s start with the crimes against humanity and human rights abuses, and that which usually comes to mind first in regard to them: hard labor and mass murder. While I do like Khan’s idea of cultural eradication (which would, in recently conquered cities, effectively prevent any city-flipping or production sluggishness due to citizen expatriation), I can also envision a monetary impact. Take mass murder, or, for the kiddies, deportation. If you have more people in your empire to care for, you have to spend more money for them. True, if you have more citizens, that can also lead to more wealth, but perhaps the game could generate some random figures which would indicate, among other things, how much money and work is contributed on average by the different sub-cultures in your empire, and you could then decide to act on those figures in any way you see fit. If this sounds too indecent to you, well, that’s the whole point. In a case where a particular group of people – say, immigrants, or super-foreign (therefore, unhappy and unproductive) natives of conquered cities – is shown to be a bit of, or quite of, a drag on the city/empire’s prosperity, the most efficient way to cut costs is to cut heads, or maroon them on a desert island. Sure, your production might decrease given the reduction of would-be contributors, but the money you save on it, you can spend on anything else you’d like: hurrying production (which can make up for the lost hammers) or technological investment. In a real world comparison, this is exactly how the leaderships of many third world countries get fat with wealth while their impoverished subjects starve to death. They pocket the money that is supposed to go to their peoples (these are typically charitable contributions that come from without) and buy fancy cars and filmmaking equipment with it (see “Kim Jong Il”).

Mobilizing your nation into hatred for a particular group of people could also succeed in fueling nationalist sentiment – which in return might feasibly boost culture and production (citizens enthusiastically cherishing the glorious grandeur of the country they proudly work hard for). Need I even bother to cite Nazi Germany as an example? And on the subject of Nazi Germany, you might very well argue that part of the reason Deutschland den Deutschen held its ground for such a long time during the war was because the country’s “undesirables” were forcibly made to toil gratis manufacturing the very weaponry that was designed to harm their eventual liberators. I see a “hard labor” civic doing wonders for your hammers at “low upkeep” – the only drawback being the possible hostility and protest of any humane civs you might be neighbors with, if not your own people, whom you might have spoiled for years with liberal civics before you decided to go whipmaster on their a$$es.

The various creeds/ethnicities of people you would abuse would not be marked by any particular differences among them (after all, like religion, we don’t want to offend anybody), but they could be ways to relate to other civs who might share your hatred for that particular group (much like in Civ4, where you get along much better with civs of your same religion). See, all I’ve done is recycle the current religious engine of the game into a concept of identity politics. I foresee no party-pooping logistical complications, at the most simply an exercise in lazy revision. (“[Name of technology]: First to discover gets to kill all the Kurds.”)

Of course, the brutalities do not necessarily need to be group-specific. You could go right ahead and turn the shackles on just about everyone in your empire. It’s not that difficult to compute, if you think about it. “You work your a$$ off to finish this granary/discover fission/wrap it up on that railroad, or I’ll kill you and your whole family.” Talk about hurrying production.

For the record, I will only bother to brainstorm about advantages, at least for the moment. Not only do I not wish to make this post more interminable than it already is, but perhaps such omissions will prompt the rest of you to come up with your own ideas for penalties. For heaven’s sake, can’t I get just one more poster to join me in this diabolical think-tank? Go eat your milk and cookies, you queasy idealists.

"For what it's worth, you can raze lots of cities. That's pretty brutal. And people hate you for it."

True, the ways of imperialistic savagery are innumerable in the game. It’s that last sentence I take objection to. “People hate you for it.” Hmm. Which people? Yes, the people you just took over, but nobody expects them to behave any differently, and as our current Iraqi engagement is proving, garrisoning occupied cities with as many troops as possible achieves quite the opposite of keeping their citizens in line. But we’re talking about actually razing here. Does anyone within your empire really hate you when you do that? The “give peace a chance” crowd typically makes up a small to moderate fraction of your overall populace. If the U.S.-led coalition burned all of Baghdad to the ground tomorrow, don’t you think that even the conservatives in this country (America, that is… no ethnocentrism there, hehe) would be so totally, like, outraged? I know I would be, and though far from being a conservative, I actually continue to support the intervention. Give the pro-war crowd some credit, whether it be about this war or any other. It might be able to count a large number of illogically and dangerously gung-ho armchair generals among its ranks, but even the Weekly Standard isn’t running cover stories like, “JUST BOMB THE F@#% OUT OF EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING! HOOAH! OPERATION IRAQI CLEARANCE SALE: EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!”

Point is, not nearly enough of your own people hate you in the game when you start wiping everyone off the map. Perhaps that should be revised.

"[W]hy should someone hate you just because of your government? Why can't a fascist and a liberal be friends?"

Because if the liberal is really a liberal in the humanist sense of the word, he/she will not much condone the fascist’s deliberate destruction of human life. Needless to say, Ron Paul and Michael Scheuer are both paleoconservatives.

Okay, so you’re religiously tolerant. I applaud you. But I’m not too surprised that Saladin takes a different view. Besides, don’t you make more money if more people on the map are with you theologically? That might explain why debt-ridden Mao is so keen on getting you to adopt Islam. (Seriously, by making religion nondescript in the game, Firaxis couldn’t have butchered historical accuracy more if they had tried. I know part of the game’s fun is to rewrite history and all, but it’s one thing to traverse a creatively altered timeline, quite another to find oneself in a randomly reborn alien one.)

If you don’t harbor rancor for other civs based on their religion or civics, what is it exactly that might bring you to consider any kind of warfare? Whim? Expansionism? Competition for resources? All, I would say, very selfish and medieval motivations for bloodshed. Therefore, you of all people should be the first to embrace CIVILIZATION: LET’S GET REAL HERE, Mr. Epic!

For the series “I want to behave differently in a videogame than I do in real life,” I might as well say that any opportunities for ideological conflict that Firaxis sees fit to imprint on gameplay is quite welcomed by me. We have all greeted the in-game introduction of religion and civics with fanfare and confetti because these features are finally able to grant us a kind of personalization for our civilizations which had been absent in previous installments. It makes for much more enjoyable (and replayable) gameplay if we see that there’s far more to distinguish us from other civs than simply leaderhead and color.

"Why would anyone react in civilization if terrorism made essentially no impact? Why would you go into a trillion dollars in debt over less than one lost population, and maybe one lost building?"

At the risk of igniting what I would deem a mutually unwanted flame war, I'd like to go out on a questionable limb and amicably accuse you of not using your head.

a) Citizen unrest.
b) Exponential downfall.

Consider happiness. For lack of a better term, that is. The correct word for it should be, “brick-sh!tt!ng anxiety.” If just about every new citizen after the sixth makes a scene about it being “just too crowded!” [then move to Philadelphia, you anti-social moron, I just founded it not three tiles from where you’re currently b!tch!ng], you can imagine what a gasket they could blow if three thousand of their countrymen were to suddenly go up in flames [not to mention a granary they all spent 26 turns building] and you weren’t doing a damn thing about it. And unless we’re up against some mysteriously listless extremists, there’s little reason to believe they’d stop at just “one lost population” or “maybe one lost building” as you put it. With a success rate of one population and one building every five turns, you would lose one ENTIRE small city every thirty turns. Is that still “essentially no impact?” Think those cute yellow smiley faces would continue to largely outnumber the red moodies, who are now far less concerned with “It’s just too crowded!” and far more furious about “WE COULD BLOW UP ANY MINUTE, AND WHAT THE F@#% ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT, KING GIGLIOZZI?!?!?!” Not to mention that the terrorist group responsible would certainly grow in strength very rapidly and effortlessly were there nobody in the way to oppose it, to the point where now they’re strong enough to take out TWO population and TWO buildings every THREE or TWO turns.

And just wait until they get their hands on some nukes. Oh boy…

"Furthermore, where would the terrorists come from? Most of the time they are non-state actors, acting without the authority of governments. Civilization has a hard time with non-state powers."

Oh, you mean like barbarians, and animals? Firaxis seems to have gotten those down to a tee so far.

In this hypothetical game, terrorist groups could be kick-started into being by any number of reasons. For one thing, they could be randomly generated “events” of the kind BtS brought us. However, it would be more interesting if they could, after all, slowly but surely develop as splinter groups within a nation in particular. Perhaps it could be the rash abandonment of a particularly fiery civic that would convince a reactionary cadre of traditionalists to take up arms and fight the good fight. Or better yet, it could be the general, unbalanced extremism (as opposed to balanced extremism, you see) of the current world order that would unwittingly fuel the fuming dissatisfactions of the marginal dissidents worldwide. For example, suppose just about every civ has adopted free market – BOOM (literally), an intercontinental militant anti-capitalist faction starts blowing up banks and economic wonders left and right in the name of universal socialism.

As I have already suggested before, civilizations would be able to decide whether to fight the terrorists or sponsor them. If you choose to fight them, you are in essence fighting for the right to continue running your empire the way you see fit. If you choose to sponsor them, well you obviously get a break from them, along with their employable services, but be ready to face the wrath of the other civs, you rogue state, you. But hey, now that I think of it, sure, you could come right out, adopt all the civics the terrorists want you to, and tell the whole world who your new friends are, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to maybe slip the group some cash behind the curtains while playing avowed enemy to terror everywhere on the world stage.

"[A] simple answer: Because then it'd become a planning tool for terrorists and foreign nations."

Just about the most amusing suggestion I’ve read so far. I can almost hear those plans being discussed. (“Sheik bin Laden, if we can cut off the American convoy near these Hills/Grasslands instead of by the river, we get a +25% defense bonus AND gain access to the rice crop!”) In truth, I don’t think a terrorism-supported Civilization would aid al-Qaeda’s tactical expediency any more than Duke Nukem has transformed a jihadist army of rock-slingers into heat-packing professional marksmen. Having said this, if we were to actually succeed in getting bin Laden hooked on Civ, that would be the headline of the century. Now there’s a guy I’d like to multiplayer with.

Your serve.

 

[Khan Quest]

Please take no offense - again I say, your posts are interesting and entertaining. And let me add have good, fresh ideas. - but plain ideas, no matter how well written, IMNSHO, are a dime a dozen. I don't know, but I'd guess Firaxis has plenty of general ideas (and again, I do like yours), and would be more interested in such ideas would affect game play.

And just because a couple of engineering types like me and dh_epic (at least I think he his) want to see you refine your ideas into something workable, should not discourage you from posting good ideas.

 

[gabyregistrado]

Gigliozzi, I really agree with you, there should be a darker version of civilization, It´d be really amusing to play a game like that. But the only way you´ll get it is making your own MOD. I think that the market is much more inclined to the "politically correct" game. Not because of people enjoying them better, but because daddy is the one that has the money and "no, I´m not going to buy you that horrific game all newspapers say it makes mini-bin Ladens". Right in "GoodGame" you have the way of rush-not knowing kind of thinking people that conforms the biggest market sales.

PD: If I have lot´s of spelling errors I´m sorry, because I´m from Argentina and I don´t really write much in English... I read a lot though.

 

[dh_epic]

I'm glad you have a thick skin. My criticism isn't to knock you down and make you go away, but get more concrete in your suggestions. (And I appreciate the grammar lesson.)

To meet your movie analogy, it's kind of like the person who says "that's so unrealistic... why doesn't the bad guy just kill the hero now, when he has the chance?" The answer is because the movie would be over in 30 minutes. You don't have to be Steven Spielberg to see an idea that won't work. Of course, if you explained what the last 90 minutes of the movie would look like with the hero dead, you might have something.

So... my real criticism is that I see your suggestions as accomplishing very little by themselves. These aren't technical criticisms so much as basic questions about "why would a player do that?" or "doesn't that screw up the entire game?"

For example, pocketing the money of your empire. The point of Civilization is to conquer the world (or, at the very least, win the Space Race). How does being a corrupt leader get you to that end? The answer is it doesn't. It's a neat idea, and I'd like to see you develop it. So when I say your idea is incomplete, that's an invitation for you to complete it.

For example, "let's have world wars between fascists, liberals, and communists" begs the question of why you'd rather fight someone based on their civics. The game rewards you for staying above the fray as much as possible. And if you do go to war, you'd be foolish to fight 4 people at once, let alone on the basis of their civic choices. How do you encourage the player to do something that's actually against their self-interest?

Re: civil unrest for razing cities. Razing cities cities is pretty much a necessity if you want to conquer the world. Keeping every city would absolutely devastate your maintenance costs. I grant you that it's realistic for savagery and barbarism on the battlefield to be reflected at home. But it's easy to see that a high punishment for razing will make world conquest impossible. Now, of course, I also think it's unrealistic to allow players to conquer the world. But that's the entire point of Civilization, for better or for worse. Following this idea to its conclusion destroys conquest victory. Without conquest victory, how do you win?

I still think you exaggerate the impact of terrorism. If people got outraged every time 3000 people died -- a plot that took at least 10 years to hatch and that was almost thwarted by our intelligence agencies anyway -- why isn't there the same political will to do something about all of these?

Number of deaths for leading causes of death:

Heart disease: 652,486

Cancer: 553,888

Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,074

Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 121,987

Accidents (unintentional injuries): 112,012

Diabetes: 73,138

Alzheimer's disease: 65,965

Influenza/Pneumonia: 59,664

Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 42,480

Septicemia: 33,373

3000 deaths in 10 years is nothing compared to heart disease. But you'll never see someone swept into power because of their promise to reduce heart disease by 0.05% per year. People would flip out if you banned fast food. But the same people would eagerly let the government tap their phone to prevent a truly insignificant number of deaths. It's irrational, but yeah, I guess it's realistic. It's also been realistic for the Aztecs to worship the arrival of the Spanish, for Egyptians to believe that locusts were divine punishment, and for Europeans to avoid sailing out too far lest they fall off the edge of the world. The question is why you'd want to make citizens so irrational in the game. If the people are irrational, then the player has to respond irrationally to keep them happy. A huge unhappiness penalty for a small amount of death will essentially take control away from the player. More over, it will force the player into a losing strategy.

There's one suggestion that seems pretty easy to meet, though: Hard labor, and mobilization. We have a few hard labor civics already: slavery and serfdom. Civilization 3 also had a mobilization mode, but you mobilized yourself against a nation rather than an ethnicity. Civ 4 accomplishes some of this with Nationalism and Police State, which are both more war-friendly civics. Honestly, I think a lot could be accomplished with graphics. A little blood when you slave-rush a building. Some citizens getting beat with billy clubs when you run police state. All the same, some more fascist type civics would be fun, and would be pretty easy to add.

 

[gabyregistrado]

I think that the things that would amuse ME the most of Gigliozzi´s suggestions are -like he said earlier- the personalization of each civilization. At least in my game experience I always get tired of the game the moment all civs seem alike; in which ALL have free speech, Emancipation, etc; and all is peace and love and you only have to wait for winning the space race.
With more variations in which each civilizations behave It wold be easier to make you believe you´re fighting against another civ and not the computer.
Resuming, with more complexion, which can be achieved reflecting the real world, It would be easier to make the game experience more real. The same thing that happens in a movie, the better and more believable the history is the more you get to identify with the things that happen in it.
And dh_epic: yes, graphics help, but telling things through reactions in gameplay is much more enjoyable.

 

[Spitefire]

If i may suggest something to help the Thread starter with some of the ideas.

A system for Custom goverment instead of a few highly generic civics have a system of laws where turn 1 finds your 1 city empire aka city state with only one law to start with Absolute power (name of all laws both active and inactive can be changeable) this law would grant the ruler (you) the right to put in place any new law you wished and the penalty for this law would be a function that would lower the number of laws that can be in place without incurring a buracracy penalty (you are the dictator and have not yet done much by way of delegateing work loads yet) the laws would come in 2 forms custom build (made from scratch) and laws gain by technology/events and later by minority/majority groups in your empire if you allow your people any political freedom otherwise resistance would only show you in the form of armed conflict.

The system would work as fallows
each new law you make has a upside and a downside so for example, i make a new law to help control my population say for every 4 units in the city one person is kept under control thats the upside (for me) now the downside could be +5% military unit cost (that would be the equivalant of me raiseing the pay of my soilders for enforceing my rule seeing as i have the money) this is just an example the amount of gold needed could be higher or lower for balance purposes another option i could use is instead of paying them more (+5% military cost) the penalty could be -1 food for every 4 units (this might be thought of as allowing the troops to pilliage food from anyone who gets out of line).
The basic idea would be to allow the player to use the combonation of any 2 statistics in game 1 posotive 1 negetive to make your nation any form you can imagine from a highly productive tenological utopia type to a culturely desolate oppresive backward backwater slave state,
another portion of this little system would be a buracracy feature there would be a limit based on certain factors to how many laws you could have in place at any one time if you go over this limit then the negative factors would begin to grow stronger example might be (your present limit of laws is 10 but you have 14 in effect so that processed food law you have implemented +1 food for +1 sickness is now +1 food for +1.4 sickness so long as your are over your limit).

Your limit of laws would be based off of technology, goverment form, (chooseing to be a little less of a dictator and delegateing some responceability to others) and the overall skill level of your nation/education/research points output (giveing a good reason to continue crankeing up technology after all techs are finish if the game still runs into the end of tech problem).

I would hope for any change that would make the game more realistic in an intelligent way. (some might intentionally or unintentionally make a game realisticly unrealistic and in doing so discredit the fun factor invloved in playing a game that is more real).

I would ask that if anything here needs further explaining please do ask.

 

[lovett]

why should someone hate you just because of your government? Why can't a fascist and a liberal be friends? Obviously there's a real world reason for this. But in the game, there is none.

May I suggest something?

If theres no incentive not to like somebody, make one.
In the context of the OP's ideas, there can quite realistically be significant incentive for a liberal nation not to get along with an authoritarian one.
Namely political pressure from within the liberal state; fairly easily represented by a happiness hit. Amount of unhappiness could would depend both on how different the two states are, and the amount of trade/co-operation between the two goverments. Large values in both points would create angry faces
In reality, this symbolizes popular pressure, which is probably the main cause of the condemnation or human rights abuses.
It also adds a handy reason for animosity between different systems to develop

 

[Party]

Wow.... long posts!
But I agree entirely that Civ deserves to be "darker".

 

[Silence101]

Nice thread - big fan of a darker type of Civ experience. I've had some similar ideas... inquisitors and such. I wish Firaxis would move in a darker direction. Right now, they seem to taking lessons from Nintendo.

 

[Levgre]

I think you could get some enjoyment from playing a civ multiplayer game with strong role playing.

 

[obliterate]

Holy... HTF can you write so much?! 3,300 words in each post! I haven't ever written half of that, not even in an essay!

 

[Party]

Holy... HTF can you write so much?! 3,300 words in each post! I haven't ever written half of that, not even in an essay!

Meh, on one of my other forums I wrote that much, and it was just total jiberish. linky

 

[dh_epic]

May I suggest something?

If theres no incentive not to like somebody, make one.
In the context of the OP's ideas, there can quite realistically be significant incentive for a liberal nation not to get along with an authoritarian one.
Namely political pressure from within the liberal state; fairly easily represented by a happiness hit. Amount of unhappiness could would depend both on how different the two states are, and the amount of trade/co-operation between the two goverments. Large values in both points would create angry faces
In reality, this symbolizes popular pressure, which is probably the main cause of the condemnation or human rights abuses.
It also adds a handy reason for animosity between different systems to develop

This is a GREAT idea and it's the kind of place I hoped the original poster would go. I think I scared him away though. My first point is that it's not enough to say "make it darker". You have to explain what feature you would like to see. But then, my real point was to have a discussion about what features could make the game darker.

I like long posts. I like being devil's advocate even more.

 

[The D Man]

CIVILIZATION: HIDE THE KIDS!

Oh God! THey killed Kenny!

 

[Larklight]

hehe! I feel really evil now, but if you want an incentive to be "somewhat nasty", why not have some new victory conditions? Like building the third reich, engulfing the world in the dictatorship of the proletariat, or liberating the world?

Maybe even have them arising as the game progresses. So Marx turns up, and all of a sudden you're offered the choice to adopt marxism as an aim. You're offered the aim of killing every single tibetian on the planet. Enslave the jews.typos

More international backstabbing would be good too: get rid of this whole 'no crossing boarders, no war for 10 turns' thing. Tear up the Treaty, cross the Rubicon!

Global recession?

 

[Gudinsdiv]

In fact, liberal and facist governments DID get along. Recall that the US politely looked the other way while Hitler aided Franco in the Spanish Civil War, replacing objection with psuedo-Machiavellian excuses for why American oil interests ranked above and beyond the liberty of the Spanish people.

I like the fact that the governments seem similar--because they are!

The grittiness you ask for is alreadt there. If what you need is a more graphic representation, that's something else.
Remember in Civ 2 when you could poison the water? I do miss that option. In fact, not have spies (and diplomats) earlier in the game is an issue in Civ 4.

What I would like to see is a strong splinter function. That is, when there are x-amount of unhappy people, OR an abrupt rise in population, OR, a sudden and violent decline, why shouldn't the AI generate a new, independent settler. Or at least have an AI prompt come up, saying, "We the Ravennians(or whomever) are leaving the empire for...) and they pop up elsewhere. The idea is that history is the rolling over of civilizations through each epoch, not the stale advancement of a handful. There should be much more variety, much more elbow room--which could lead to that bloodthirsty edge you want.
I do agree that it could be darker. Why, for instance, does slavery disappear in the early stages, when the leading democracy used it as a springboard for it's first 75 years IN FACT, and ignored it in a more sinister form for another 75 years--and you said democracy and fascism shouldn't get along!