Liberal and Conservative Democracies

[realpolitic]

There is much leway in Democracies, a great difference between Europe and America, and I would like to implement them in civ4.

Liberal: European
Egaliarian - Universal Health Care & Inexpensive Colleges


Conservative: America
Libertarian to Military - "My country right or wrong"

The type could be eigther picked by player
or computer

By computer - starts as a liberal democracy - as a reaction to all the more elitist forms of government, then would shift[without anarchy] as a backlash to too much production of that government's specially ie building too many Universities, could cause a shift to a conservative democracy.

Liberal Democracies have cheaper builds for libraies, Universities Hospitals etc

Conservative Democracies favor building of units, marketplaces, banks and prisons.

[Trifna]

erm... is this due to political factors, or economic factors? Any democracy could decide to be more/less centralized, more/less economically liberalist, and so on.

Also, did it got more conservator or less liberal, or did it more or less sticked to initial tendancies? These things are not too simple. And it's even less simple if you try to extend your thinking to anything more recent, instead of sticking to what is older.

I agree there are serious differences between present systems though.

[Nikolai]

If it should be implemented, it should be up to the player to decide.

[Modo44]

This is exactly why a SMAC-like model is the way to go. In there, you can engineer your own government, as happens in real life. I don't think there are two "democracies" in the world, that have the exact same political, or economical ways. It's only a name, under which every country understands, and does, something different.

For Civ purposes, there was always only one Democracy. But, you still had Republic, which allows more wars.

[petermarkab]

None of the above. Modo's implication that there are a mulitude of democracies is correct, and is something easily simulated with a SMAC model.

[patcon]

I like the idea of differentaiting between types of democracies, in later stages of the game. But rather than calling them "liberal" and "conservative", which implies a basically political difference, it might be better to call the types "socialist democracy" and "capitalist democracy".

When available
Socialist Democracy (SD) would become available after building Universal Sufferage (which should be a small wonder).
Capitalist Democracy (CD) would become available after building Wall Street (which is already a small wonder).
BOTH require the tech "Democracy", but you nefer had to actually be a Democracy.

Transition period
There should be a transition period when switching to/from SD or CD. If switching from regular Democracy, then one or two turns of decreased production (50%?) and only normal Democracy benefits, but NOT anarchy. If switchinging from SD to CD, or vice versa, then the above effects last two to four turns. (Religious civs automatically get the shorter transition period; other civs get random periods, but weighted toward the shorter periods) If switching from any other government type the usual upheaval period ensues.

City improvement cost effects
SD would get decreased build costs and increased maintenance costs for social-needs-based improvements (hospitals, libraries, universities, others?) to reflect the use of tax money from the general treasury to build and maintain these facilities.
CD would get decreased build costs and increased maintenance costs for commerce/indutrial-based improvements (banks, factories, harbors, others?) to reflect the use of tax-break policies to encourage the building of these facilities.

City improvement effectiveness effects
Would certain improvements be better/worse under SD or CD? (still thinking about this)

Trade effects
Would SD or CD get better/worse terms for certain kinds of trades? (still thinking about this)

Diplomacy effects
Would other civs be more/less likely to make certain kinds of diplomatic agreements with SD or CD? (still thinking about this)

War weariness effects
Would citizens of SD or CD be more/less accepting of wars? Could we differentiate between wars of acquisition and wars of liberation? (still thinking about this)

Research effects
Would certain types of research be easier for SD or CD? (still thinking about this) I really would like to see tech advances have different costs based on the government type doing the research, in general.

Other effects
???????

[Aramis]

As the game is now (and I can't see the general concept of government changing much in cIV), one democracy is fine. As is one monarchy, communism, etc., all of which, in the real world, have many as many different shadings as nations that use them.
Maybe the SMAC idea is better, but barring that, I voted for 1 democracy only.
. . . that, and there wasn't a banana option . . .

[Max Sinister]

Socialist democracies shouls also get cheaper child-care centers, kinder gartens or whatever institutions for pre-school kids you can think of. France (which isn't really socialist, but has a tradition of the state caring for everything) has Europe's best supply with child-care. Thus, other than many European states, France has a pretty good birthrate and so has to care less about social security in the future.

[realpolitic]

Originally posted by Modo44
For Civ purposes, there was always only one Democracy. But, you still had Republic, which allows more wars.

3C3 made it unreasonable to switch to Republic, I hope that if there is only one type of Democracy then Republic will be viable in the later game in Civ4.

Socialist Democracy - a viable idea. However, one of the things that has made America so far to the right is the concept of Corporate Personhood, which happened a century after its founding: the XIVth Amendment says all persons have equal protection under the law, in 1886, a Supreme Court clerk in Southern Pacific Railroads Vs. Santa Clara said corporations have full protection as persons. (Except that corporations have billions of dollars and live forever, so they have an advantage over real people. ) The clerk was the former CEO of Southern Pacific. When America was founded, all 13 colonies had enacted strong controls on companies.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by realpolitic
There is much leway in Democracies, a great difference between Europe and America, and I would like to implement them in civ4.

Liberal: European
Egaliarian - Universal Health Care & Inexpensive Colleges


Conservative: America
Libertarian to Military - "My country right or wrong"

The type could be eigther picked by player
or computer

By computer - starts as a liberal democracy - as a reaction to all the more elitist forms of government, then would shift[without anarchy] as a backlash to too much production of that government's specially ie building too many Universities, could cause a shift to a conservative democracy.

Liberal Democracies have cheaper builds for libraies, Universities Hospitals etc

Conservative Democracies favor building of units, marketplaces, banks and prisons.

You could implement something like with Social Engineering like SMAC has.

The player would choose 1 option from each category:

political category: despotism / monarchy / republic / democracy

economic category: slavery / barter / mixed econ / free market / planned

social category: liberal / moderate / conservative

That way you could lots of different kinds of governments. If you wanted a government like the US, you could pick republic / free market / socially moderate. If you wanted France, you'd pick republic / mixed econ / socially liberal. If you wanted to USSR, you'd pick despotism / planned / socially conservative.

[Adagio]

They should implement the SMAC model for governments, that would take care of this problem

[realpolitic]

On this thread and others there is lots of support for SMACs model, and it certainly has merit. It would definately add to the game. The diplomat's "social category" is important in this, if only because that's what a nation would label itself as, but there should be a "communist" category, because many of the people thought they were building something new - moving towards a "classless society". Unfortunately, they used an authoritarian structure that became self-perpetuating.

[realpolitic]

I've come to realize that the SMAC model is better. Since the invasion of Iraq, I was quite active on the net, this made me more aware of the differences between the European and American ideas of Democracy.

After I logged up, I picked up the paper, and read about the Iraqi elections, and I realized that if a democracy happened there, it would be quite different than either. There are quite a few differences in the real world I hadn't considered:


Wimar Republic: Gave Hitler a 42% plurality
Modern Germany: Passionately anti-war; against anything that remotely resembles the past such as - early ban on GMO research
Italy: had a new parlement about once a year for 30 years following WWII
Israel: All Citizens subject to draft & military recall until 54

Clearly there are more than 2 types of Democracy

[Max Sinister]

Israel is a special case. Since they are surrounded by enemies (though the relation to Egypt has improved since the beginning), they have to, if they want to survive.

I'm for sliders - with sliders, we can create as many types of democracy (and dictature too) as we want.

[lajzar]

I just recently purchased Victoria, which uses the EU2 engine for governments (ie lots of sliders). I'm not sure if it is the game engine in general of teh government model specifically, but I was somewhat underwhelmed by it. I don't like (but can accept) something SMAC-esque, but I think a sliders based model would fall flat.

[realpolitic]

I agree. I've played ctp2 quite a bit, and it was easy to get used to 3 sliders. Certainly 4 would be OK, if they each had 4 possiblities, that would be 4x4x4x4 = 256 combinations, more than enough (this is, after all a simulation). If need be, a fifth would be fine, IMHO, but not more. Not all 4 or 5 sliders should be available until certain techs are researched.

[Peter_hamelech]

I do like the idea of chosing between two different kinds of democracies... But can we, in addation, implement the system of vasal states (a custom in ancient roman, greek, persian times aswell in the middle ages), and unions in which member states can vote a chairman-state (as in the holy roman empire)?

I also would like to see Israel as a new added state in the sequel of civilization. Not because of my own preference , but because the actions of the Israeli empire has influenced history as it is to day, and still.

[realpolitic]

I like vassal states too, but it seems like in civ3, I usually was better off conquring a nation than creating a vassal sate. I'd like it to become a more viable strategy in civ4.