{The List -} Government & Social Engineering

[Cras]

Originally posted by Jamski
I'd like a chance for any government change to trigger a civil war, depending on general happiness levels, state of war, tax rate and how severe that change is. Changing from Democracy to Communism in the middle of a war with high unrest (because of war weariness) should be about a 75% chance. In a civil war you would get a pop-up saying "side with the rebels(new government) or side with the old guard (stay with the same gov) You would then have to bring some of your cities back into the empire. Rebel cities should keep your culture for x turns, and slowly become a new nation.

-Jam

I like this, but I would add that civl war is not only triggered in time when the government is overhauled. If you are a leader that completley neglects the infrastructure or public happiness, then I think there should be a movement to unseat your rule.

[Kirastos]

I don't know if this is the right list to post this, but I have a word to say about corruption. OK the idea is nice, but I think that the designers exagerated a bit on that part in Civ 3.
It was absolutely impossible to sustain a great empire, all the cities at the periphery of my empire would stagnate for centuries because all of their production shields were swallowed by corruption but one.
We don't have that kind of problem in any of the other Civs (well not to that extent).
We could keep it this way of course, but we should have a chance to mend things. For example having a "federation" type of state would help better control over outlying cities, or the possibility to build several palaces, etc... what's the use of having a huge empire if you can't use it's potential ?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Fosse
I agree that things like rations and work day being on a central government screen (but NOT city by city, as in CtP.... micromangement nightmare). I would leave out rations, actually, except perhaps as an option in totalitarian states.

But I picture a number of possible "laws" that could be passed, such as work day, minimum wages, yes/no to slavery (which could be made internationally illegal in UN! SO if you do it after that, watch out!), tax rates... all kinds of things.

yay... a spreadsheet game a la moo3

[DarkCloud]

Government changes should generally not be up to the player. I think that when the people want a change in the government (based on social advancement, stability, happiness, culture, etc...) then there should be a popup saying that a revolution is stirring. Now you could attempt to supress this revolution by some means (military police, entertainers, luxuries), or you could just ignore it.

Loraizel- I think that perhaps, that's one of the best ideas I have heard so far in this thread!

It's fun... it's challenging... it doesn't really ruin the player's control of the game and it increases immersion! I like it!

[Az]

List edited.

Kirastos: I very much agree with you.

Personally, I think that empire management ability should be influenced much less by the type of government, and much more by information technology available to the player. a fully fledged ancient age democracy would suffer from very similar problems as the monrachy, While an ultra-modern autocracy may be rather streamlined.

[Trifna]

I also think that technology should change alot of things here... some techs can bring happiness, while some can do just the opposite if you keep certain political settings. Technology may bring its advantage for rulers, but it doesn't always does so...

[Az]

yeah, technology should change society and government much more than just the individual government techs ( though those will still be powerful! )

[Az]

a bump for the glory of the empire.

[Zevico]

Kirastos--definitely a good idea. Yet how to implement it without being overpowered-that's the problem. I think that in order to plan all these Civ ideas properly, we need to have a good grasp of the fundamentals of the game's design (not the actual programming). Otherwise all of this is really a waste of time for the most part--all we can do is ask for something very generalistic about the game to be improved, not the more specific things everyone is talking about now. So, I would suggest that we ask Firaxis to give out what the general "gist" of the game's design will be, and then from there things that are more specific which are suggested by us would have a much greater effect on the game. Otherwise we'll be left with what we had with the "Future Civ3 Game Ideas" Forum-lots of talk and little else.

[Trebuchet]

I wholeheartedly agree with the person who brought in the ministers idea (Stefan? Something like that...). It would work well, I think, with an idea I had.

Instead of the Forbidden Palace, have a new improvement called County Seat (or something along those lines). They should be limited to one per five cities or soemthing, sort of like an army, and reduce corruption similar to a FP. Eliminate Courthouse. Now, you'll have several County Seats in your civ once it gets to a decent size. When created, the game would give you a default minister, sort of like choosing the name/title of your civ's ruler, it would pull the name from a list somewhere and add the appropriate title, so you'd have American Governors, Persian Satraps, Roman Proconsuls, Japanese Daimyos and whatnot. Under autocratic governments, you can choose some traits and fire such underlings whenever you want, like the other poster said, but under democracies/republics they'll be elected every so often, and under feudalism they'd come with some random assortment of traits you can't change as long as you were under Feudalism, to represent the semi-independence of the nobility.

If you let regional unhappiness get too extreme, that region could rebel. It would be nice but probably unweildly from a game production pov if you had a preset list of 'rebel civs' for each civ, like Great Leaders currently have instituted, so that an American rebel civ would be called Confederate, etc. Maybe they could just use a directional name (so a region that rebels west of Paris becomes West France).

That would be fun... and make you keep a close eye on the happiness meter. You'd also want to be ready to jump in and support the breakaway faction if an AI civ gets embroiled in a civil war.

[TheBirdMan]

I would like to have some "natural lines" of development in government and society. Changing from one to another in the same "lines" causes little or no loss of production/science/happiness, but changes between lines should cause trouble.

There should be some benefits and some negative elements for each line fx "business should allow a higher profit in trade, religious extra bonus for temples, better morale in combat if there was a priest(or whatever) present in a battle.... pls fill in yourself.

I have played a little with names for the governments, but I am sure some could come up with better names for some of my suggestions:

0 GOVERNMENT_ANARCHY

1 GOVERNMENT_TRIBAL_CHIEF
2 GOVERNMENT_ANCIENT_CITY_STATE
3 NO GOVERNMENT KINGDOM
4 NO GOVERNMENT EMPIRE
5 GOVERNMENT_SHAMANISM
6 NO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

1 GOVERNMENT_TYRANNY
2 GOVERNMENT_CITY_STATE
3 GOVERNMENT_ANCIENT_KINGDOM
4 GOVERNMENT_ANCIENT_EMPIRE
5 GOVERNMENT_THEOCRACY
6 NO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

1 GOVERNMENT_FEUDALISM
2 GOVERNMENT_BUREAUCRACY
3 GOVERNMENT_ENLIGHTED_MONARCHY
4 GOVERNMENT_MEDIEVAL_EMPIRE
5 GOVERNMENT_MONOTHEISM
6 NO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

1 GOVERNMENT_PEOPLES_REPUBLIC (a lá Paris in the mid 1800.
2 GOVERNMENT_REPUBLIC
3 GOVERNMENT_ENLIGHTED_MONARCHY (no changes)
4 GOVERNMENT_WORLD_EMPIRE
5 GOVERNMENT_FUNDAMENTALISM
6 GOVERNMENT_DEMOCRACY

1 GOVERNMENT_COMMUNISM
2 GOVERNMENT_FACISM (police state)
3 GOVERNMENT_CONSTITUAL_MONARCHY
4 GOVERNMENT_WORLD_CORPORATION
5 GOVERNMENT_FUNDAMENTALISM (no changes)
6 GOVERNMENT_DEMOCRACY (no changes)

1 GOVERNMENT_COMMUNISM (no changes)
2 GOVERNMENT_ONEPARTY_STATE
3 GOVERNMENT_CONSTITUAL_MONARCHY (no changes)
4 GOVERNMENT_WORLD_CORPORATION
5 GOVERNMENT_ECOTOPIA
6 GOVERNMENT_VIRTUAL_DEMOCRACY

1 GOVERNMENT_PLANETARY_EMPIRE
2 GOVERNMENT_ONEPARTY_STATE (no changes)
3 GOVERNMENT_VIRTUAL_REPUBLIC
4 GOVERNMENT_THECNOCRACY
5 GOVERNMENT_ECOTOPIA (no changes)
6 GOVERNMENT_VIRTUAL_DEMOCRACY

[Kuciwalker]

That's way too many govs.

[Jamski]

Its only 6 govs, which improve with tech, if I understand it correctly.

I really like the idea of leaders that can be assigned to regions, like the planetary and ship leaders in MoO2. I like the fact that som of them could rebel too

-Jam

[realpolitic]

Originally posted by Fosse
You make a good point. In fact, I have always wanted this decrease in value, and increase in amounts. It allows for more distinction in tiles that way.

With Civ 3 we get tiles with 0 shileds, 1 shield, 2 or 3 shileds. Why not make it 10, 20 and 30, so that we can have more terrains with real differences in productive capability?

Good point Roman, and I think that it is the way to go.

Good plan for extending the game, global warming could slowly degrade the biosphere as in subSaharan Africa.

[POTUS]

I agree with that, but, of course, everything would cost more.