Civil war/rebellion?

[Matthevv]

The Civ3 civil unrest is quite a bore, because it is totally predictable, and just requires you to open up the city and make an entertainer to resolve it (or tweak the happiness slider). In other words its just a tedious administrative task. So I'm not sad to see that go. I won't even discuss the culture flipping nonsense, the sooner that is buried the better!

The "Rome Total War" game though has an excellent rebellion model. Its a probabalistic thing, so you can never be totally certain whether a city might rebel, though you can affect the likelihood according to temples, food, and garrison strength. If it rebels you can either send a diplomat to bribe it back, or an army to repress it. Depending on your preference you can leave the likelihood of rebellion high, saving money on building temples and stuff but keep an army handy to clear up any disorder that occurs, or you can keep everybody happy. I find this model is a good addition to the enjoyment of the game, as it makes it more difficult as your empire gets larger, to keep all your cities in order, while still keeping armies available to expand (though I have noticed that a few resounding military victories has an effect of reducing the probability of rebellions).

I think any civil war model would be better as an option, though, as there are some types of Civ player that might not enjoy it.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

That was what I was thinking of. The ratio of unhappy citizens to total citizens equals the % chance that a city riot will break out-how much damage the riots cause dependant on the number of unhappy citizens.
In addition, each unhappy citizen also gives a % chance of the city secceding-modified by factors like garrison size and strength, city rioting, distance from capital, number of cities in the nation, # of resistors and/or foreign citizens and city culture and health levels.
The point is that, as you mentioned, the probablistic nature of rioting and civil war means that you can't merely micromanage it away, but have to attempt broad policy changes to decrease unhappiness.
Anyway, just a thought.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[sophist]

Imagine that each citizen has a "loyalty" rating that you could see. Loyalty would be a function of their ethnicity; their religion; their happiness level; how nationalistic your social engineering is; the strength of your culture; the distance from the capital; whether the city was founded by your civ, acquired peacefully, or conquered; how enlightened your civ is; what bad things you've done in recent history; health; how wealthy they are; how many military units there are in the area (and whose they are); and some other factors that people have mentioned.

You could look at each city and see how loyal its citizens are. If there are some very disloyal citizens, there may be riots as the loyal and disloyal fight each other or the disloyal commit acts of violence to gain independence. If there are many very disloyal citizens, there may be rebellion (either to join another civ or to go independent). If there are some moderately disloyal citizens, nothing will happen. If there are a few very disloyal citizens and many disloyal citizens, nothing will happen, but the situation is fragile; you could provoke rebellion by changing a policy, declaring war on someone those citizens are sympathetic to, using martial law, etc., another city in your empire going into rebellion, a nearby city in someone else's empire going into rebellion (think French Revolution just a short time after the American Revolution, or the wars of independence in South America), or the city could be easily subverted.

Loyalty would be a function of more than just bread and circuses. The citizens remember what you've done. If you haven't been keeping them content over the long term, they'll stab you in the back the minute you turn around. Jacking up the luxuries may buy you some time, but it doesn't build any long term loyalty. On the other hand, if you've been good to them for a long time, anyone who tries to take them from you will find it hard to keep them. I think it should be like previous rebellions and civ3 culture flipping in that the whole city should go, as opposed to spawning guerrillas. Unlike culture flipping, though, you will always be able to tell how close you are to losing a city, so it's not something that happens out of the blue. You'll always know exactly how far you're pushing it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I guess I can kind of see why civil war was taken out. Who would be their "leader" if you had a civ with only one? Would you be facing off against yourself (your twin, perhaps? ) Bringing in a non-selected city to be that civ always struck me as strange.

They could make it an option for games, but then again, a lot of coding for something that maybe they think most people won't even think about using.

[sophist]

Doesn't seem too complicated to me (of course). I mean, they're doing all those happiness, ethnicity, distance, etc. calculations as it is; combining them would just add a few lines. And we certainly want to keep the ability to subvert cities.

As far as picking a leader goes, the rebelling cities would either join another civ, recreate a defeated one, or spawn a new one. In the first case, there's no issue. In the second case, they can either use the leader they had before or (I think this is better) use the second leader for that civ (if there is one). In the third case, the game just picks some available, unused civ and whatever leader it has. It's pretty trivial.

[GeoModder]

Or simply becomes 'barbaric'.

Way easier for the game.

[Ninot]

Originally posted by sophist
As far as picking a leader goes, the rebelling cities would either join another civ, recreate a defeated one, or spawn a new one. In the first case, there's no issue. In the second case, they can either use the leader they had before or (I think this is better) use the second leader for that civ (if there is one). In the third case, the game just picks some available, unused civ and whatever leader it has. It's pretty trivial.

i wouldn't be against a generic civ. Like Barbarians, but capable of everything any other civ can do. Just don't give the civ a unique unit, or make it a copy of another civ, but with some random name. Having a text file with civil-war civ names would be very easy to implement.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yeah, that's a good suggest, Ninot. I don't want to see respawn civs. It's silly to be the, say, Americans and in a civil war, the Chinese come up. WTF? Civil War civs could be interesting, but then again, I'm sure they want to keep other civs for future expansion packs.

Just a city list perhaps and a 'barbarian' leader pic for negotiations screen.

But still, make it an option.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Yeah, that's a good suggest, Ninot. I don't want to see respawn civs. It's silly to be the, say, Americans and in a civil war, the Chinese come up. WTF?
...
Just a city list perhaps and a 'barbarian' leader pic for negotiations screen.

But still, make it an option.

It would be trivial to tell it which civs can spawn which others, although it might not be as obvious as you think. The Dutch became independent of the Spanish, after all. I'd be willing to forego the "spawn a new civ" part, though, and restrict it to joining an existing civ or the rebirth of a civ that you conquered (and owned that city), like how Persia emerged again from being under the Arabs, or how Byzantium was basically a Greek empire that forked off from Rome (even though they called themselves Roman).

I don't like having a group of "real civs" and a group of barbarians. That seems kind of judgmental, especially since in many cases, the lines aren't nearly so clearly drawn. After all, the Mongols were barbarians initially, but they became an empire and they're a civ in the game. The Goths were barbarians, but they became the Franks and the various German nations, and they're in the game as both French (sort of) and Germans. Ditto for the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes becoming England, or (some) Slavs becoming Russia, etc.

Making it an option would be a poor choice. This would be pretty fundamental to game play. You keep your people happy and your empire manageable in size in order to avoid revolution. Eliminate the possibility of revolution and there's no counterweight. I also think that people are too willing to make something an option rather than really focus on making it good. I think they or we can come up with a mechanism that satisfies both of us with enough effort.

[Ninot]

I think it would have to be an option, and not mandatory.

Many people have made many fine points on why Civil Wars are undesireable to a Civ game. They cannot simply be ignored.

But I just hope its in the game at all.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Well, in the Civil War Model I suggested at Civfanatics, I had the equations Denominator determined by the Difficulty setting of the game (with an option of setting it in the editor too). So, if playing a Chieftan game, the Denominator would be a 0, meaning that Civil War is not possible. Warlord would be 1 etc etc. Making Civil Wars harder to prevent as you play at ever harder levels-though never truly crippling.
Another point, though, is that Civil Wars should only have a chance to occur when triggered by certain events-such as starting/ending wars, changing religions, changing civics settings and high-level unrest.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Ninot
I think it would have to be an option, and not mandatory.

Many people have made many fine points on why Civil Wars are undesireable to a Civ game. They cannot simply be ignored.

But I just hope its in the game at all.

I guess I haven't seen any of those fine points, then. The only issue I thought was serious was unpredictability, and that can be addressed through several different mechanisms.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by sophist
It would be trivial to tell it which civs can spawn which others, although it might not be as obvious as you think. The Dutch became independent of the Spanish, after all. I'd be willing to forego the "spawn a new civ" part, though, and restrict it to joining an existing civ or the rebirth of a civ that you conquered (and owned that city), like how Persia emerged again from being under the Arabs, or how Byzantium was basically a Greek empire that forked off from Rome (even though they called themselves Roman).

The Dutch and Spanish are from the same continent. As for rebirth of a civ, what if you haven't conquered any? If you don't conquer a civ does that mean no civil war?

I don't like having a group of "real civs" and a group of barbarians. That seems kind of judgmental, especially since in many cases, the lines aren't nearly so clearly drawn. After all, the Mongols were barbarians initially, but they became an empire and they're a civ in the game. The Goths were barbarians, but they became the Franks and the various German nations, and they're in the game as both French (sort of) and Germans. Ditto for the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes becoming England, or (some) Slavs becoming Russia, etc.

Having 'barbarians' is the only way, IMO, of having a civil war if you haven't conquered anyone else. That's why you call them generic barbarians and not name them as something else. Therefore no civ is tarred with that name.

Making it an option would be a poor choice. This would be pretty fundamental to game play. You keep your people happy and your empire manageable in size in order to avoid revolution. Eliminate the possibility of revolution and there's no counterweight. I also think that people are too willing to make something an option rather than really focus on making it good. I think they or we can come up with a mechanism that satisfies both of us with enough effort.

It HAS to be an option. So many people hate it, it would be a big source of contention and I'd imagine some players would try to code it out themselves (with the game being so customizable). I'd rather have a stable game with and without the civil war option.

The counterweight is less benefits from your city. No shield are produced and no food. If it goes on for too long, they may join another civ.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
As for rebirth of a civ, what if you haven't conquered any? If you don't conquer a civ does that mean no civil war?

That's a good point. I guess a civ appearing out of nowhere would have to stay in then.

I still don't understand why you think it would be such a big deal, though. I think it would make sense to people. If you grow too slowly, you become militarily weak, don't have good tech, etc. If you grow too fast, though, you risk collapsing under your own weight. If you're a little too big, you get inefficient. If you're a lot too big, you split. It seems to me to be a less annoying way to limit growth than making half your cities useless from corruption or having a hard cap on the number of cities or other mechanisms for achieving this result. Just mention the dot-com crash in 2000 and people will get it ;-).

[sophist]

To put it another way, you only risk a fatal fall if you climb too high. If you only climb a little bit, you may still fall, but only a little ways and you just get a bump on the head. If you stay on the ground, you don't fall at all, but you don't see the stars, either.