{The List -} Government & Social Engineering

[lajzar]

That's a nice list, but can you point to some specific game effects that all those options would have? It's all very well saying I have a religious democracy with a socialist economy and martial law, but it's hard to envision what game effect that would have. That's my constructive criticism bit. Also, you need to determine a real penaluty for changing government. SMAC/AX had a token money payment which was no penalty at all.

In favour of Civ1/2/3 style archetypes: Some of those combinations just don't make sense together, such as representative theocracy. Some of them might reasonably be expected to give different bonuses in specific combinations. This also makes it hard to mod effectively.

From a modder's point of view, social engineering is to government as the unit workshop is to units. It forces you into whatever archetypes and terminology the game designer decided are relevant, and it leaves the overall options very open.

[Fosse]

The effects would be similar to SMAC, of course.

A list of attributes could be come up with to mirror SMAC's Efficiency, Support, Police, Planet, etc. The names of the list would be tweaked to reflect the subject of the game.

Each attribute has a scale of, say, -5 to 5. Each integer in between has a different effect on the empire. Each Goverment choice modifies one or more of those attributes.

It worked in SMAC, it would work in Civ 4. Effects would be military police limits, war weariness levels, research rate, Intelligence (how well can they spy vs. how well do you spy), Industry (build times), Commerce rates, environmental impact, corruption, and so on.

In response to the argument that "some combonations make no sense." Yeah, that's true. But it also doesn't make sense for EVERY single democracy to be EXACTLY the same. Or for Democracy to go hand in hand with capitalism, or Monarchy with military police (benevolent kings, anyone?).


And a system like that (using any combonation of the many values suggested in this thread) doesn't have to be detrimental to modders. Want a new government type? Okay, go into the editor and decide what it does to commerce, to industry, to war weariness, etc. Just like in Civ 3 now. The difference is that each value in this case has enough latitude within it to make for many meaningfully different choices. If you try to create more governments in Civ 3 you wind up with only the tiniest differences (It's Republic, but with worse corruption! Ohh! What about a communism with a trade bonus? Ahh!)
Besides, you wouldn't USE the combonations that don't make sense. But in SMAC, with only 9 real choices for most of the game, you had some real choices. You could be an efficient democracy that loved war, or that loved money. Both had very different ways of playing. You could be totalitarian, but run a free market that forces you to keep your troops at home. A fundamentalist might decide being rich is more important than being powerful. There were LOTS of meaningful choices, as oppposed to about six in the Civ series (less really, since often the game comes down to one "correct" government. Like Republic is to many of the top players today).

Regarding a penalty for switching values... yeah, the gold in SMAC only mattered in the early game, if at all. Perhaps making the switch cost a percentage of your total commerce per turn(gold and science averaged over five turns, to prevent exploits like removing all of your workers from their squares on the turn you switch). The gold payment isn't the most logical, of course, but it's a balance issue really.

You could also have different penalties for different categories. Changing goverments might result in something similart to Civ 3's anarchy. Changing economic systems might require a huge amount of gold (so you could get "stuck" in a bad economic system!), changing Civ values (religion, freedom, military strength, whatever) might cause five turns of increased unrest.

Real penalties that make sense.

[lajzar]

Hmm, you appear to be working on the assumption that I think the existing 5-6 government types as they are is sufficient. No way. They are barely adequate. My first choice is for a CTP approach to governments, but mkore so. Drop some of the wackier SF governments (unless we are doing a futuristic option), and broaden the amount of historical govs.

I don't have time to work on this fully right now (gotta get ready for work), but I'll have a go at working up both sets (CTP style and SMAC style) later, and let me know what you think, k?

As one basic eample of where your ideas could be improved, the capitalism/communism economic contrast didn't even make sense to anyone before 1800 or so. But before that, there were still many economic models to choose from. And there are quite a few models within capitalism.

You might want to look up the original set of suggestions sent to Firaxis for civ3.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

As I've said above, I think that a COMPROMISE between SMAC and Civ3 would work best! That is to say that you have a number of Government 'Templates' (oh and, BTW, I agreee that we, at LEAST, need more Government Types, especiallh in the early game )-for want of a better word-which delineate how your society operates under 'Ideal Conditions'. The areas of deliniation would be those described by Fosse, such as Spy Abilities, Corruption Levels, Worker Hurry methods, War Weariness and the like. That is NOT the end of the story, though.
The ability to define which groups in your society have the greatest influence on your policies, throughout history, would be fantastic. Also, the ability to really SET TAXES properly, and define who pays less and who pays more, would also be great. Also, no matter what system they adopt, the player should RARELY get the ability to change the government on a whim! It should be your people who tell YOU when they want change, and to what kind of Government. You can ignore them, of course, but with dire consequences (such as Anarchy, Revolt and CW)! If you change to something they don't like, they should be able to demand that you change BACK!!! Thats what I really want, is that sense that you are dealing with real people-not just passive observers. I admit that culture, war weariness and national identity have gone a long way towards creating that impression, but I still feel that MORE work needs to be done-in the ways I've described in my previous posts!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Kuciwalker]

About the various forms of democracy... you know what the difference between a democracy like France (left-leaning) and America (right-leaning)? The lux slider. The leftist democracy would have a higher lux percent ("luxuries" referring to health care and stuff).

[Fosse]

Originally posted by skywalker
you know what the difference between a democracy like France (left-leaning) and America (right-leaning)? The lux slider. The leftist democracy would have a higher lux percent ("luxuries" referring to health care and stuff).

Forgive me if that's a bit too "abstracted" for my tastes. Honestly, that sounds like a justification of a limited system rather than an attempt to represent different types of goverments.

Regarding Lajzar: I played CtP, but don't completely recall how its governments functioned, so I might be a bit off. What I do remember was: MORE differences between them (instead of the, what is it, four or five differences between Civ governements ?(some of which are simply flags and some very granular scales))

I wasn't assuming that you thought Civ 3's current spread of governments were enough, but you were right to point out that my post didn't show that. I will still maintain though, that the ability to choose small differences under one form of government makes more sense than switching to a new one. The more governments that are in the game, the smaller proportion of them that will actually be used. After all, most Civ 3 players have one or two favorites; if you like Republic you stay in it all the time, or if you're a Monarchy fan you stay in it... all the time. Adding Feudalism and Fascism didn't really add moer viable choices, it just increased the number of unused ones (And if you like those ones, you probably stopped using another).

With SE style you really can (and probably should) use several configurations per game. This is also more realistic than switching goverment "kits" outright.

I'll look forward to your proposal though.

Aussie: I like your ideas about expanding on an SE system, with various taxes and what have you. I woul also like to see "laws" you can choose to enact that would have very mild pros and cons (perhaps making the scale of attributes more like -20 - 20, so SE choices could have effects of four or five, and laws of one or two). These wouldn't need to be overly involved. For example: Selecting "Welfare Program" would cost you so much gold per turn (based on population size), make some poor happy, and some rich unhappy. Or choosing "Environmental Controls" would reduce pollution and income.

The one thing I don't like is the idea that you can't change governments when you want to, or that the people could change it for you. I think that having higher costs for changing, like I talked about above, would help out with frequent switches that were possible in SMAC. But I'd be frustrated if my people wanted to be one thing when I wanted to be another. That would remove some fun for me.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hey Fosse ! As you know I didn't say that you COULDN'T change when you want to-it's just that if you change to a government people DON'T want, or change out of a government your people are very content with, then you should face some VERY dire consequences-such as longer than normal periods of anarchy (up to 3x as long), revolt or , for the truly instransigent, outright civil war! This way, it shows the player that these are people's LIVES he's playing with, and there will be consequences to his actions! It might also help limit this whole Communism/Monarchy=war; Republic/Democracy=Peace-it just makes the game too predictable!!!
What should decide what government you have are things like:
A ranking of preferred/shunned governments for each Civ!! If you change from a less preferred to a more preferred gov type, then the people are less likely to try and thwart the change (it is also more likely that the people will TELL you to change to a more preferred gov type!)
The preferred/shunned Government type of the most influential factions in your Civ should ALSO be a factor. For instance, lets say that you are in a Theocratic Government, with a VERY influential Religious faction. If you try and change to a Modern Republic/Democracy, then they will try and fight you on it (Current day Iran, anyone? ), and might even take some cities with them to form a new, breakaway nation!

[Fosse]

True, but unless Civ 3 comes with an incredible social model, I don't see how this idea would be anything other than frustrating.

To be clear, I agree with what you want, but just see it as being so far beyond what Civ 4 will probably offer that it's hard for me to get excited about it. I like the idea, though.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Fosse
Forgive me if that's a bit too "abstracted" for my tastes. Honestly, that sounds like a justification of a limited system rather than an attempt to represent different types of goverments.

It's completely accurate. No even minor revolution would be required to go from a rightist democracy to a leftist one, and the decision to do so derives directly from the happiness of the people with the current system (if people are unhappy, you increase luxuries) and in that way is an almost perfect simulation of "democracy" in this instance. It isn't even really an abstraction - it's essentially the IRL difference. It even simulates the slower economy that results, by decreasing funds available for taxes and science.

[lajzar]

One idea that will be in my governments proposal is that there will be two mechanisms for changing government. Revolution is the same. In addition, there will be a "Transition" option. You pay a large sum of money, and 1-4 turns later, your government changes to a closely related type. The exact choice of government in a transition is made when you pay, there is no period of anarchy, and the available choices depend on teh previous government. For example, a monarchy can transition to a feudalist government, but could not transition to a communist government.

[Plotinus]

[SIZE=1] What is autarky? And how come you didnt add Feudalism, Ancient asia (All the people are servants of the govern - eg. Egypt) and slave-based classical age economy (eg. rome)

Autarky is when a country is completely economically self-sufficient (handy if you're planning on going to war with anyone). Germany's defeat in 1918 was partly due to all its imports getting stopped, and Hitler was terribly keen to make the country self-sufficient in the 1930s so that it wouldn't happen again.

I notice that *you* forgot constitutional monarchy, such as that "enjoyed" by us in the UK...

[QuixotesGhost]

"Factional Influence" sounds a LOT like the "Ethos" system origanally proposed for MOO3 but was scrapped sometime during the project.

The Ethos System is described in detail here:http://moo3.quicksilver.com/official/religion02.html

I personally think its an awesome idea, one of the best I've ever heard for a MOO, Civ, SMAC, type game

[Trifna]

Wasn't the ethos system pretty complicated for what it gave? I mean... all the rest of Civ 3 isn't half as deep (with the complexity that follows) as this. I think that a society can be explained completely (all its general aspects) more simply than that.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Part I


OK, I just thought it might be a good idea to explain some of the concepts within my ideas for Governments and SE.
First up, Societal Influence is an abstracted confluence of the proportional population of that faction and its 'Political Clout'. It can 'theoretically range from 0-100% (but almost NEVER will!) Influence affects several things, namely:
i) Revenue derived from taxation.
ii) AI Governor Choices for a city's Build Queue.
iii) What Improvements you build; techs you research; Government you have and Laws you pass!
Secondly the 'Factions' are the various groups which make up any given society. They are:

1) Labourers. The ordinary working people, whose 'influence' is based on the amount of production in each city, the # of SPECIFIC production enhancing improvements you have and the # of operational mines you have. It's also increased by the number of strategic resources you possess, and how many Civil Engineers and Workers you have.

2) Farmers. The people on the land, whose influence is based on the amount of food each city produces/turn. The # of Agricultural/Expansionist Improvements, and the # of worked, irrigated fields you have. It’s also boosted by bonus resources such as cattle, wheat, grapes and the like.

3) Wealthy Elite. The rich and, in some cases, the Nobility. Based on the number of luxuries you currently possess, the number of commerce points you have, and the number of Wealth Generating Improvements (marketplaces, Banks, Stock Exchanges). Also increased by how many entertainers you have, and if you have precious metals and/or gems as bonus resources.

4) Merchants/Administrati. Those who keep the books, gather up the money and keep the internal and external trade links going. Their influence is defined by the number of commercial improvements, the number of ‘tax specialists’, the number of cities connected to your internal trade network, and the number of active trade deals you have going.

5) Law enforcement. Your Police and Judiciary. There influence is simply based on the number of corruption reducing improvements you currently have, the number of police specialists, and the number of ‘laws’ that are currently active.

6) Organised Crime. Speaks for itself. Influence is increased by the amount of corruption in your empire. Also increased if you have a ‘Black Market’, and by the number of Contraband resources you possess, or are currently trading.

7) Industrialists. These don’t appear until after you discover ‘Steam Power’. Their influence is increased according to the number Production Improvements and strategic resources that you possess.

8) Religious: Again, speaks for itself. Their influence is obviously based on the number of religious improvements that you have in your empire. It also grows according to your cultural strength.

9) Environmentalists. This faction doesn’t appear until the discovery of Ecology. There influence is based on the number of recycling plants/Solar plants etc. you have. Also increased by the amount of pollution you have in your empire.

Of course, your Civ Traits (Industrious, Commercial, militaristic etc) will also effect the BASE Influence of the various factions. As I will explain later!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Az]

bump

I really like Odin's proposals to social engineering, btw.

T_A_L:

I don't fully understand your new proposal. Do you suggest that governments should branch out with time?

Also, your idea for classes is nice, but retains the same classes throughout the game, which is false.