Civil Wars!

[Metaliturtle]

I know some people really didn't like these in Civ 2 unless they happened to the computer, but I thought Civil Wars were awesome, I'd even cheat a barbarian army outside my capital if I was close to winning and wanted to keep playing. Civil Wars were a unique and awesome part of Civ 2 and I would like to see them in Civ 4 with a few changes.

Capturing a capital shouldn't trigger a Civil war, The brits captured Washington in 1812 and The U.S. didn't go into civil war (not right away at least).

So how would one trigger a civil war?

Well the obvious example to me would be to anger a large group of your people.

For example, say you are a Republic and you start a war with someone, fine, but after 50 turns you're still at war, the people nearest that civ dislike being at war with them and revolt en masse.

Similarly, Crazy Communist man keeps sacrificing his citizens to the Gods of production, resulting in a lower class uprising and a very interesting split.

These could even be turned into a "revolutionary" game, where factors such as being across an ocean too early could lead to a revolution by colonists who are sick of getting ruled by a King on another land thousands of miles away.

Revolutions and Civil wars could be turned on and off at the player's discretion.

What do you guys think?

[Vince278]

I always liked the idea of civil wars in Civ. Maybe you can have it determined by corruption (ie. the cities furthest from your capital would be more likely to break away). That is historically accurate in many cases (the American Revolution being one good example).

[Fosse]

Tie happiness to it, and then make the happiness model more complex. As it is now, only gross neglicgence will lead to a city rioting for more than a single turn (if that), but in reality large populations are much harder to control

Enough unhappiness (which can be seen specifically in game terms as dislike for the controling regieme) and you run the risk of parts of the empire fragmenting off.

Making civil wars like this would only work if happiness is harder to control (ie, based on other factors than city size and city improvments).

[Nikolai]

I am all for that Fosse. I would also like(if the features is implemented in a way that makes it possible), an empire with lots of cultures and religions or an empire that has grown too fast without checking its back so to speak regarding its new inhabitants(ancient Greece being a good example), to have a greater risk of entering a civil war.

[anti patriot]

all good ideas!

[sykodude]

I'm all for this. And we really need a better happiness model. While we're at it, I think it would be a good idea to differentiate between citizens who are merely unhappy (who will strike and riot) and those who are actively resisting your rule (who will precipitate a full-blown uprising). Newly conquered peoples who resist your occupation would automatically fall into the second category, instead of just kinda standing around doing nothing like they do now.

[fezick31]

I too miss the civil wars and empire splitting of Civ 2. It seems unrealistic that an empire could grow world spanning and remain stable, even given the technology level of today, let alone some I've seen in Civ 3 that do it before the automobile.

What about a secondary culture system? One of the reasons USA broke from Britain was that they no longer felt they were British, but something unique - Americans. The British fueled this by preventing any industry or British cultural icons from being developed in the colonies.

This could be represented by cities that when founded, automatically generate negative culture (perhaps based on distance from capitol or some other yet to be determined factor). If specific steps are not taken to integrate the city into the mainstream culture of the parent civ, they could ultimately break away.

However, there would need to be a concentration of cities for this to take effect

[fezick31]

Also, what does everyone think about frequency? Should splits happen several times during a games, once or twice, or rarely, say once every 4 or 5 games?

[Vince278]

Should happen everytime the conditions are right. The challenge would be in trying to prevent it.

[Kuciwalker]

There should be a stability value for your empire (I've detailed precisely how it could work several times before in this forum) that, once it goes under a certain value, triggers a catastropic split of your empire into several (up to probably 5-6) smaller empires. If you were very close to that level, you could have "erosion" of your empire - border areas more likely to proclaim independence, etc.

[fezick31]

Originally posted by Vince278
Should happen everytime the conditions are right. The challenge would be in trying to prevent it.

I guess that's what I'm asking, what are the conditions? It could be easy, especially on a huge map, to accidentally make the entire game about keeping your empire together. It could be fun for a scenario, but it could get frustrating for normal play (kinda like the corruption "feature" in Civ3 - good idea, but it turned out to be the entire game sometimes to keep it in check).

[Max Sinister]

@Kuciwalker: It could work like that. Many years before the Roman empire broke apart, it was eroding - legion commanders who declared themselves emperor and started to march to Rome, emperors who didn't do much but defend themselves against these commanders, warlords who declared whole provinces independent...

[Apocalypse]

I think there needs to be more of a difference between a city rebelling and not contributing and a normal city. There needs to be something in between where production is just kinda cut due to some sort of unhappiness. Different from corruption, but kinda like it.

[Epistax]

What if you purposely incited a civil war then reunited the country to eliminate corruption? Works in real life (assuming your army can pull its weight).

[Apocalypse]

Well, that's kinda void considering Corruption looks to be out.