Changing culture model

[Inverse Icarus]

i just think it should more abstract, that you shouldn't have direct control over your "sliders". you don't just go out one day and say "screw this democratic free trade monotheism, i'm turning into a planned economy tolitarian athiest state" in a second just for the benefits.

if you want to stick with sliders, there should be penalities for changing them, such as a minor form of anarchy or something like that, loss of production, whatever.

in my system though, you'd have all those "sliders", but they wouldn't be directly editable by you, you would use edicts and your game process to control them. and an edict wouldn't be like "go commie? YES / NO", they would be far more subtle and slow moving.

again, everything you do should impact your nation somehow. in my dream game, theres so much to customize, you could form whatever government you wanted to indirectly, over a longer period of time.

say, for example, you re-district your provinces into smaller "states", and raise the taxes in the urban areas, etc. you'd be encouraging some form of migration in your people, and your government would slowly change. enough turns of this happening, and your rural population would boom, you would get more food, and become more agricultural of a civ.

should this imapct the tech tree? hell, that would be fun!

[The diplomat]

I would suggest every increment would cost gold per cities or unrest per city. (the per city factor would mean higher costs for larger empires) So if the player tried to make too sudden a change, there would serious costs. The player should have to do things in small changes.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by The diplomat
Why not both?

You could have the player be able to move sliders, and also have your civ's culture move the sliders. Like in reality, it would sometimes be a struggle between what the leader wants and what the people want.

Well, you can't have both because your will to move a slider nullifies any influence the game has on them.

For example, let's say putting many temples and cathedrals in cities makes your empire religious. That works. If you could change it with a slider, however, it doesn't matter what you build because you can just make your empire nonreligious again with the slider in defiance of your improvements. I too like moderation in things, especially civ, but I am uncertain how the slider and the improvements could each simultaneously be cause and effect.

Something that came up when I wrote this was its effect on government. You can't have a liberal despotism, for example, because despotism is by definition autocratic. It might be an interesting idea to have revolutions be instigated by drastic "slider" change, instead of a player arranging them.

[Inverse Icarus]

if you wanted to to both, which sounds interesting, but i'd probably be opposed to, you could do it so the choices alter your nation slowly, but steadily, while using the slider would have drastic effects on your nation / the people. it would be like the government directly going against the will of the people. in the long run, the government would either win out and force the citizens to adapt, of the empire would fall apart, and revery back to the original numbers (ie, a slider rollback). could be fun.

[Trifna]

Perhaps an hybrid system could exist:
sliders with notices next to the sliders saying what is implied by moving the slider.

For exemple, you have a slider and next to its middle you have "Representative democracy with strong corporative influence", or "70% wealth to 10% elite".

[Cyclotron]

I don't think sliders are necessary. It sounds more interesting to me if your actions control these aspects, and sudden changes can cause unrest or revolutions. Thus, if you've made very self-serving and nationalistic foreign policy decisions, you will cultivate a nationalist state (with the bonuses and penalties thereof), and if you suddenly depart significantly from that policy you will incur the popular wrath. Same thing with suddenly building multitudinous amounts of temples and cathedrals where there were none before.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
I don't think sliders are necessary. It sounds more interesting to me if your actions control these aspects, and sudden changes can cause unrest or revolutions. Thus, if you've made very self-serving and nationalistic foreign policy decisions, you will cultivate a nationalist state (with the bonuses and penalties thereof), and if you suddenly depart significantly from that policy you will incur the popular wrath. Same thing with suddenly building multitudinous amounts of temples and cathedrals where there were none before.

neither do i, personally, but it's an interesting mix it takes away from the "god game" aspect, where you cant just say "hey, we're a dictatorship now!", but it leaves enough of it left where you can say "hey, i'm going to try and push my people into a communism!" and basically see if it works out. the sliders would just be one method of tryig to change your people.

remember ww2 germany. the majority of germany weren't nazis, but the nazi's ruled. a guy came up with a tolitarian state, and threw it out there, and enough people grabbed on, and the rest didnt really resist all that much.

the sliders would be like a "militarilry forced revolution", and would be represented as such. a major change would be chaotic to your empire for a time, while smaller slider changes would impact you far less. of course, changing your society in the other, non-slider ways would result in NO problems.

interesting.

[Cyclotron]

Well, I was visualizing that that change would be accomplished by game actions, so a slider would be uneccesary. I can see that a slider is an option and it probably isn't a bad idea, but it seems overly complicated to me to have both actions and a slider used to change population dynamics.

[Trifna]

Well let's see it this way: what you already have makes it more "natural" to be somewhere on the slider. For exemple, it's alot harder to be feudalistic and totalitarian with a very good education. Simply.

Then, you may move your sliders, which are basically how you try to bring the whole thing to be.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
Well, I was visualizing that that change would be accomplished by game actions, so a slider would be uneccesary. I can see that a slider is an option and it probably isn't a bad idea, but it seems overly complicated to me to have both actions and a slider used to change population dynamics.

they would be changed by game actions, and that would effect, to abstract it, the "sliders of the people", ie: how your society feels about every issue on the sliders. that means, that there is a way your people like it, a way your society has evolved, but that you can force your people into a different system entirely. albeit, they might not be exactly happy with your decision, but you could essentially "speed up" your development into a socialist society, or "degrade" your empire back to it's tolitarian roots.

as i've said above, it kind of interesting in that it gives you less impact than most other civ games, but gives you enough to make it feel like you're still in charge of the nation. it's like you're the leader of a ruling elite. the general populus will evolve in it's own way, with your guidance. if temples get constructed, your nation will become more religious, and that would somehow inpact your civ's attributes, as well as the main slider (the one you can edit), and "the people's ideal" slider. the main slider would change to match the people's slider, unless you lock the slider.

[Panag]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
Should we have the sliders impacting the civilization, or the civilization impacting the sliders?

What I mean is, perhaps the most interesting way to accrue bonuses, for say, nationalism would not be to push around a nationalism slider, but to have your foreign policy actions push that slider about according to your game actions.

hi ,

, why not

but can this be done

have a nice day

[Sandman]

Some interesting ideas in this thread, here's my take.

I do agree that there should be unique civ traits that you can take to customise your civ, but I am very much opposed to bland, cookie-cutter traits like 'militaristic' or 'innovative'.

Have real traits, like 'warrior nobility', 'horse-based pastoralism', 'professional armed forces', 'mercenary armed forces', 'conscripted armed forces', 'fanatical fighting spirit', 'religious zeal', 'enemy of civ X', 'specialists in unit X', 'specialists in terrain X' and so on, instead of simply 'militaristic'.

I also think that rather than simply accumulating cultural traits, or setting sliders to a preferred position and leaving them there, it should be the norm to be constantly updating and changing your cultural traits. For example, in the 'enemy of civ X' trait, this could be removed without penalty if you had been at peace with that civ for some time. Or if you hadn't been at war for some time, the warrior nobility would have become weak and easy to remove, perhaps to be replaced with 'merchant nobility' or something more useful whilst under peace.

If you have a revolution, it should be possible to quickly change many of your cultural traits and replace them, as the old dominant classes are eradicated and replaced.

[:) Smiley]

Traits ought also differ from city to city.

[Trifna]

Perhaps, but we better have a system that covers the general stuff before getting into how we can apply secundary cultural stuff...

[Sirotnikov]

Ok, so how about this then.

There are sliders but they all start out at the middle.

Slowly, while progressing in your game, options to move them arise:

1) You've discovered philosophy. 1 option in the economy, 2 options in the politics, and 1 option in religion, unlock themselves.

2) Each option has certain bonuses but also create certain costs. For instance, going from totalitarianism to democracy can improve your economy and science, but they loosen your absolute control of economy and science (instead of specific research and a controlled sum of money, you get to choose only a field of research you can fun, and the money influx is random, with the maximum being obviously very high). Furthermore it nullifies martial law, and moves some people from content to the fringes - happy or angry.


Furthermore, while accesssible, several moves of the slider, can only be reached if you fullfil predemands.

That is, to be able to change to religious, you need to build temples / churches in 70% of your cities.

On another note - when playing and you have many churches, the game would offer you to go religious, and explain it's benefits and drawbacks.


I actually like a lot the possibility of changes to the empire being tied down to things beyond the tech tree - you also need to build X amount of certain buildings, or units.

Or - to be peacefull, you must not have war with over 1 neighbour.


And yes, I support that when you move the sliders too much (or too many sliders) in a short period, certain riots will ensue that can cause things ranging from minor dicontent to anarchy.