What government model do we want in Civ 3?

[Naokaukodem]

Originally posted by Dauphin
I want the different government types to represent different playing strategies. When warmongers and peaceful builders have the same government type as their optimals something is wrong.

Each of the more advanced government types should be extremely attractive for a particular strategy route, and the 'one size fits all' governments should be diminished in value.

I think it is already the case in Civ3, look at Democracy that can't fit to a warmonger so much.

[General Ludd]

EU system only with more detailed sliders, perhaps with new sliders apearing with certain techs or events. Also would be good for the sliders to work in a similiar fashion to EU - only able to change them periodically, and events (hopefully events related to what's going on in the game - wars, lost cities, ect..) can change them.


Maybe a sort of social engineering model as well, that can reflect government enforcement/authority and give certain bonuses to the movement of sliders (ie. less likely for a slider to move one way throuhg events, or able to move this slider with more influence, ect...)

[Sandman]

An to Ludd's idea. Presumably some sliders would disappear as well? I mean, an aristocracy-plutocracy slider makes little sense in the modern age.

[Max Sinister]

New sliders with new techs? Maybe instead of that, you could change the range of the sliders. I can't imagine an atheist society in the Stone Age, for example.

[Tiberius]

Classical government model with a touch of SMAC.

Civ is a history game so using classical government types makes sense (Civ1+Civ2+Civ3), but Civ is also about "what if I ruled the world" so we should have some options to model our society in the direction we want it (SMAC).

[Harfang]

SMAC-style! The #1 reason Civ3 always gave me mixed feelings was the ditching of the wonderful social engineering SMAC had introduced.

[Maniac]

Cute. 70% for a SMAC or EU2-like system. I hope Firaxis gets the message: get rid of the current government system!

[Adagio]

Never played EU, but I loved the Social Engineering from SMAC
Why didn't they use that in Civ3? It's clearly much better as the current one...
Even what they had in ctp was better than the current one

[Sava]

I WANT POLICY SLIDERS DAMMIT!

[Adagio]

Could someone post a screenshot on how it's done it EU?

[realpolitic]

Both classical governments and a few sliders sound good.

Look at the differences in real world Democracies:

In America, we have an elcetoral college[yeccch!] and 2 major parties

In most other Democracies, there are parliments - strong multiparty systems

America - High military outlays more interventions than European Democracies

Other Democracies have single payer hospitals (inexpensive socialized medicine)


In many countries racist groups like the KKK and the Nazis have their their ability to demostrate limited by law

In America, if a racist group wants to march it's OK, but they don't - because they know the counter march will be 100x the size.


Communism
Raical differences in application from Stalin to Gobechev

Monarchy:
Some had absolute power
Some had to worry about nobles or peasant revolts: The Magna Carta, The American and French revolutions

Despotism:
Despots have different techniques too:
One of the most unusual techniques I've ever seen a despot do, was when Saddam challenged Bush to a debate right before the invasion of Iraq. Saddam seemed to enjoy in messing with others heads as much as he did killing people.

[Optimizer]

Here are some slider suggestions:

Centralization:
* Centralized (high tax income, low assimilation)
* Decentralized (low tax income, high assimilation)

Economic structure:
* Market economy (many private enterprise workers create city and terrain improvements, focused on happiness and commerce)
* Planned economy (you control all the working population, but you must build everything by yourself)
Set to 100% planned economy before Currency is discovered.

International doctrine:
* Militarism (no war weariness, high drafting, weak diplomacy, no international trade limited, no assimilation)
* Pacifism (high war weariness, no drafting, strong diplomacy, international trade bonus, high assimilation)

Gender roles:
* Patriarchate (high population increase, smaller workforce)
* Equality (no population increase, greater workforce)
Settings above 75% Equality are locked until the discovery of pharmaceuticals, becaause birth control is needed to fully equalise gender roles.

Religious authority:
* Theocratic (religious buildings are strong, academic buildings are weak)
* Secular (religious buildnings are weak, academic buildings are strong)
Settings above 50% secular are unlocked as Philosophy is discovered.

Political freedom:
* Authoritarian (strong military police, high corruption)
* Liberal (weak military police, low corruption)

[Trifna]

Well... here is what I had already written on the subject.
DISCLAIMER: The choices shown here are only an example, which is probably too complex for most players (while it seems complete to me).






I think I can update and resume my way of looking at this:



Goal

The goal is to look at what forms a government and to see how we could bring all this government in a few aspects. The ones I see are "System of values", "Justification of power", "Control system [justice, police...]", "Statecraft", "Administrative structure", "Economic system".




Definitions

- System of values: what forms the core belief for someone's life
- Justification of power: what is the rulers' justification for their power
- Control system: how citizens are controlled (justice, police...)
- Statecraft: who is put to direct the state, which necessarily implies how the state is ruled and its philosophy
- Administrative structure: the way power is divided between the main part the subdivisions
- Economic system: how economy is ruled





Difference with Civ 3 system, and this system's way to look at the problem

The main difference here is that it is about showing what structures and forms the government, not about showing a few possible results to chose from. In other words, it is not about creating categories like "fascism" and "democracy" as in precedent titles, but to show what is forming societies and, of course, someone can bring fascism or representative democracy (or what pleases him) by puting what forms that. ANY society can be built through such a system, in its broad aspects. Everything that forms a government should be there in a simple way.




Example that I brang earlier (updated, and not perfect)

*System of values*
religion - science - nobility [goes from European nobles to Confucius] - individualistic freedom - nationalism

*Justification of power*
theocratic - nationalist - militarily enforced - representativity - self-governance - nobility - technocratic

*Control system*
theocratic - oligarchic - martial - tribal or local - free for all [each locality organized itself as they wish and can]

*Statecraft*
totalitarian [includes king only, pope or else, depending on "justification of power"] - oligarchic [includes king + nobles or whattever else] - moderate democracy [some have more power, like actual democracies] - total democracy

*Administrative structure*
centralized - federation - republic - [Switzerland-like] - decentralized [includes anarchist local self-government, tribal local governance...]

*Economic system*
communism - soft-line communism [not following completely] - wealth state - moderate capitalism - complete capitalism

[Sandman]

On the subject of sliders, I'd like to see sliders that go from '0 to 1', rather than '-1 to 1'. Basically, instead of a land/naval slider, you'd have a land slider and a naval slider.

Land strength doesn't always have to come at the cost of a pitiful navy. Germany before the First World War had an excellent army, and a very good navy. America has the best of both just now.

Similarly, you can be militaristic and still have strong diplomacy and strong trading power. Bismarck's Germany was a mighty land power that also had diplomatic clout.

However, there's a maximum number of points you can spend, so you can't be good at everything. To take Germany yet again, when they started building a navy, they also started losing out diplomatically. In game terms, they lowered their diplomacy slider to raise their naval one.

This system allows the player much more flexibility in customising their civ, rather than strait-jacketing them with unhistorical dichotomies like land/naval, quantity/quality or research/cohesion. Of course, you can still choose to develop your sliders along these lines if you wish.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

sliders would be cool. that way we can have a libertarian govt.