{The List -} Government & Social Engineering

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I actually agree that, like the faces in the current city screen, the classes I mentioned SHOULD change through time. But I think it's mostly about names-like nobility/aristocracy vs the wealthy elite in later eras.
Anyway, the main point of my proposal is that your government choice determines the OVERALL influence of each faction in your society (so democracy gives your people more influence than feudal), as well as determining whose influence rises and whose falls (like nobility getting greater influence under monarchy and Feudalism).
You can adjust these influences yourself, however, either directly through the slide bar, or indirectly via the buildings your construct and the like. Each government, though, will have a max and minimum influence which each faction is capable of having-no matter HOW much you try to change it!
Hope this clarifies things.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Government Departments and Agencies

New Government Agencies Model

Instead of using Wonders to model concepts such as a CIA in your Civ, I propose a new and better way to model this by introducing a new Government Agencies Model into Civ IV. I'm not suggesting taking "Wonders of the World" completely out of the game; I'm only suggesting that some Wonders could be better represented in the game if modeled as government agencies.

Government Departments
First of all, all government agencies should organized by department. Civ IV should include such departments as:

1. Department of Defense
2. Department of Justice
3. Department of Commerce
4. Department of Homeland Security

The above are just examples.

Government Agencies
Under each department lie your goverment agencies, the workhorses of all your government activity within your civilization. They include such agencies as:

1. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)
2. FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
3. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
4. Army
5. Navy
6. Air Force
7. Marines
8. Coast Guard

Note that the above are again just examples.

Government Agency Technologies
There are literally dozens and dozens of government agencies in the game, but when you first begin a new game only a few will be available to the player, but only a few are needed in the beginning of the game. In order have more agencies the player needs to first discover certain technologies, such as the Espionage technology in order to have a CIA (for example).

Government Agency Funding
You can change the funding for each agency as you see fit, however each agency requires a minimum amount of funding in order to function, but if you use the minimum funding for an agency you will only get minimum results from that agency. In order for an agency to have a larger impact on your Civ you need to increase the funding to a more desirable level.

Spending
Having too much funding for your agencies or too many agencies in operation, however, can be very expensive and you may spend your civilization into debt if you are not careful. You must balance funding and turn on on what government agencies you need after first determining the needs of your Civ at the time.

Micromanagement
However, since managing government agencies can be a tedious process and is a form of micromanagement, it is strongly recommended that (unless you want to spend hours and hours micromanaging your Civ on your own) you use the AI to help manage this for you. You can, however, only have partial AI management for this feature by checking off which agencies you'd rather manage on your own.

That's my two cents on that.

[Az]

Just a question here:

do you want me to include some entire models in the opening post, and not just summaries, and remarks? I can do that.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

[Arrian]

I liked Stefu's idea on page1 - relatively simple, but deeper than CivIII.

-Arrian

[ThePlagueRat]

I liked that one too... basically a govt.system and a econ.system. Plain and easy, but kinda realistic nevertheless. And for the detailed engineering choices, there could be optionbuttons such as SMAC, or sliders such as they used in EU2. An example:

state: religious <------o-> secularized,
pluralism: centralised <-o-----> decentralized,
ownership: private <---o---> state,
civil/voting rights: the elite <-----o-> all citizens,
etc.

- The government type and economic type could also put some max and min on these sliders, as well as a default value for easy management.

e.g. a theocracy option would limit secularized value considerably, and socialist economy option would limit private ownership somewhat. Combined with communism it would totally disable private owership and set slider to the right pos. Or if you like it you can create a social-democracy instead, and just get a centralization limit for democratic option. Just tailor it after your own taste!

[K.J.H.]

Originally posted by Azazel
Personally, I think that science rates are completely unrealistic. Did you know that we actually use only some 2 percent of our output on science?

Education is science too.

[Maniac]

I see many people in this thread like the idea of SMAC-like Social Engineering combined with EU2-like sliders.
Just for the record I thought I'd post my own variance (a slight adaptation of something I'm using in a SMAC mod) of such a SMAC/EU2-like system, with several sliders on different politics/economics/society issues. Those sliders would have a number of possible position, with the central position being neutral, and they'd become more extreme once you move them to the left or right.

Liberal/Open/Innovative <-> Conservative/Closed/Narrowminded Society Values

Liberal/Open/Innovative:
Faster research.
Military units used for police duty are less effective or ineffective.
Espionage missions by other civs against you have a higher chance of success, and they cost less.
Population of another culture/religion/whatever-concept-will-be-used than your state culture/religion are happier than standard.
Population of another culture/religion are converted to your state culture/religion slower or not at all.
<->
Conservative/Closed/Narrowminded:
Slower research.
Military units used for police duty are more effective.
Espionage missions by other civs against you have a lower chance of success, and they cost more.
Population of another culture/religion/whatever-concept-will-be-used than your state culture/religion are less happy than standard.
Population of another culture/religion are converted faster to your state culture/religion.


Decentralized/(Con)federal <-> Centralized/Unitary State Structure

Decentralized/(Con)federal:
Equal and less corruption/inefficiency/whatever-concept-is-used everywhere.
Less control over tax/science/luxuries allocations.
Espionage missions by other civs against you have a higher chance of success, and they cost less.
Population of another culture/religion/whatever-concept-will-be-used than your state culture/religion are happier than standard.
Population of another culture/religion are converted to your state culture/religion slower or not at all.
<->
Centralized/Unitary:
Less corruption/inefficiency near your civilization's core and/or in cities with a large majority of state religion/culture population.
More corruption/inefficiency the further away from your civilization's core and/or in cities with a large majority of another religion/culture population.
More control over tax/science/luxuries allocations.
Espionage missions by other civs against you have a lower chance of success, and they cost more.
Population of another culture/religion/whatever-concept-will-be-used than your state culture/religion are less happy than standard.
Population of another culture/religion are converted faster to your state culture/religion.


Free Market/Private Ownership <-> Collectivist Economy

Free Market/Private Ownership:
Economy bonus.
Industry/Production penalty.
Less or no units are supported for free.
Less control over tax/science/luxuries allocations.
<->
Collectivist:
Economy penalty.
Industry/Production bonus.
More units are supported for free.
More control over tax/science/luxuries allocations.


Free Trade <-> Protectionist Foreign Trade Policy

Free Trade:
Science bonus.
Trade/Economy bonus.
Less tolls and tarriffs from trade routes passing through your territory (if the concept of trade routes actually running over the map is included).
Unhappier people.
Industry/Production penalty.
<->
Protectionist:
Science penalty.
Trade/Economy penalty.
More tolls and tariffs from trade routes passing through your territory (if the concept of trade routes actually running over the map is included).
Happier people.
Industry/Production bonus.


Nomad/Expansionist/Colonist <-> Sedentary/Urban Lifestyle

Nomad/Expansionist/Colonist:
Morale/Experience/Whatever-concept-is-used bonus.
More units are supported for free.
Combat bonus against barbarians, pirates etcetera.
Military units and settlers cost less to produce.
Economy and/or production penalty.
<->
Sedentary/Urban:
Morale/Experience/Whatever-concept-is-used penalty.
Less or no units are supported for free.
Combat penalty against barbarians, pirates etcetera.
Military units and settlers cost more to produce.
Economy and/or production bonus.

[GePap]

DP

[GePap]

The problem with governments as they are structured in Civ is that the political and economic system are combined.

A social engineering system allows these to be separated, more diverse ways to play, would be more historically accurate (there were certainly more than just 6 ways to govern in the history of the world), and could be used to differentiate between civs more drastically than just with UU's and traits.

[K.J.H.]

Originally posted by Maniac
I see many people in this thread like the idea of SMAC-like Social Engineering combined with EU2-like sliders.

I'm not a fan of sliders, because, like another user said before in this topic, players will use very average settings. You will get very boring governments then. That's maybe very realistic ( ) but it won't play very exciting.

SMAC-like buttons are more interesting because the decisions you'll have to make are more difficult than with sliders.

[Fosse]

I agree with K.J.H.'s point, but I would like to point out that what we're looking for isn't necessarily 100 options between one extreme and another.

We want MORE options. This might mean more Social Engineering categories, or more choices per category. Preferably both. But each choice MUST come with specific and real pros and cons, to prevent the "best" way from being anything more than the opinions of players.

I don't care if there are sliders for social values. They should exist for tax rates (and be smooth-sliding, not 10,20,30, etc), but because the difference between 34% Civil rights and 35% Civil Rights is too abstract to even make sense, they don't need to extend to everything.

[The diplomat]

I'd like to see government specific units and government specific city improvements/wonders. I think that would make government a lot more interesting.

Now, I don't want to see tv evangelists units, but I think there are interesting historical units that could be used for each government.

One way to implement government specific city improvements would be to have the player build the city improvement in order to switch governments. Instead of going through anarchy and then switching to a new government, a player would build the government specific city improvement in the capital, when the city improvement is done, it would replace your previous government specific city improvement and the government would change to the new one. Obviously, the build cost of the government city improvement would be done so that switching times were reasonable.

For example, you start with a palace and despotism. You build a senate in your capital, when the senate is done, your palace would change to a senate and you would be a republic instead of despotism.

Each government specific city improvement would reduce corruption.

Anarchy would occur if you lose your government city improvement. This could happen in several ways:
- your capital is captured before you have time to move it to another city.
- severe unrest in your capital could destroy your special city improvement (random destruction of a city improvement).
- an enemy performs a spy mission to sabotage a city improvement (a very difficult mission to succeed).

This would implement anarchy in a much more interesting way. It would create interesting strategies. A player could throw another empire into anarchy by quickly capturing their capital or by destroying the special city improvement through a spy mission (a very difficult spy mission to acheive).

-------------------

Regarding SE, a way to implement governments and SE at the same time would be to have governments give the player "points" that they could spend to buy a SE choice.

------------------

In conclusion,

My model would work the following way:
a player would switch governments by building the appropriate government building which would reduce corruption. The player could also build government specific units which would provide certain benefits. Players would gain empire bonuses by using their government points to buy SE choices that they want.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

First up, I like your ideas The Diplomat, but I definitely hope that what you are referring to is a Government Specific Small Wonder-rather than an improvement.
I always liked, in civ2, how you could only move your capital if you were able to pay an exhorbitant amount of money-and that is how I feel it should be in cIV! However, as 'The Diplomat' suggested, if you lose you gov-specific Wonder, then your new capital should obviously act at a penalty until it can rebuild it somewhere else.
For example: lets say that civil war is in the game, and losing your capital gives a huge boost to the chance of said Civil War. Your capital (and its gov specific Wonder) is on the verge of capture by the enemy-thus threatening to plunge your civ into total chaos. Your domestic advisor pops up to warn you of this possibility, and asks if you wish to move your 'seat of government' to '________' (next largest city), for a cost of Xgp. This cost would represent the effort needed to smuggle all of your MP's and civil servants-not to mention all of their documents-to a safer place. If the seat of government is moved, then when the enemy captures your 'Capital', then it will still spark a period of difficulty-in the form of increased waste, corruption and possible revolt-and can still produce a chance of CW, but not as great as if you had lost your government AS WELL! Once you have rebuilt your gov specific Small Wonder, then all of these difficulties are overcome.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
First up, I like your ideas The Diplomat, but I definitely hope that what you are referring to is a Government Specific Small Wonder-rather than an improvement.
I always liked, in civ2, how you could only move your capital if you were able to pay an exhorbitant amount of money-and that is how I feel it should be in cIV! However, as 'The Diplomat' suggested, if you lose you gov-specific Wonder, then your new capital should obviously act at a penalty until it can rebuild it somewhere else.
For example: lets say that civil war is in the game, and losing your capital gives a huge boost to the chance of said Civil War. Your capital (and its gov specific Wonder) is on the verge of capture by the enemy-thus threatening to plunge your civ into total chaos. Your domestic advisor pops up to warn you of this possibility, and asks if you wish to move your 'seat of government' to '________' (next largest city), for a cost of Xgp. This cost would represent the effort needed to smuggle all of your MP's and civil servants-not to mention all of their documents-to a safer place. If the seat of government is moved, then when the enemy captures your 'Capital', then it will still spark a period of difficulty-in the form of increased waste, corruption and possible revolt-and can still produce a chance of CW, but not as great as if you had lost your government AS WELL! Once you have rebuilt your gov specific Small Wonder, then all of these difficulties are overcome.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

It would indeed be a government small wonder.

You seem to understand my idea pretty well.