new civics article

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Cataphract887
if you played smac,you would know that a choice like wealth or knowledge is simply flat out better than power even if you have to pay 200 gold\EC for it.

Esp the advanced SE choices. Those simply rock. Though there doesn't seem to be anything in "civics" that remembles those.

[Martinus]

In gameplay terms that's not really different from just having newer civics options that make older options with the same function obsolete.

Option a: research & build a "better vassalage" small wonder that makes vassalage better. If your'e in a situation in which vassalage is a good choice this gives you an advantage but you have to pay a cost in terms of researching it and then building it (if vassalage isn't a good choice for you right not it might be utterly useless, though).

Option b: research & switch to a "superior vassalage" civic that's called "nationhood" (or something else) that does the same thing as vassalage but better. Just as with option a, if your'e in a situation in which vassalage would be a good choice then this gives you an advantage at a cost (researching it + going through a revolution to switch civics), but if vassalage isn't good in this situation then its replacement probably woun't either.

Yeah, but since we have only 5 civics per each category, option "a" means you effectively get 5 viable civics at a given time (i.e. near the end game), while option (b) means you only get 2 or 3.

For this reason, option (a) is superior.

[Martinus]

Only if you so completely stretch the meanings of these terms so that they have no relationship with their historical counterparts. In which case, why even give them those names at all? One might as well say the spearman is really a guerilla with a machine gun & grenades when he takes out a tank, it's essentially the same arguement. China's military is a modern military, it is not organized along vassal lines at all. There are no lords or vassals pleding obediance to the lords in the military. Noth Korea doesn't have serfdom, it has a stalinist centrally planned economy with all the labor abuses that typically go along with it. Serfdom is a system in which agricultural laborers are attached to the land owned by a lord, aren't allowed to leave, and are effectively half slaves of the lord. Serfs have to perform services for the lord, give him a portion of their crops, can usually be traded (along with the land) by a lord and face other forms of exploitation. This is very different from the kind of oppression that exists in North Korea. You might be able to argue that North Korea has slavery, but countries don't really practice serfdom anymore. The industrial revolution rendered it obsolete. Your arguement essentially comes down to the claim that human social & political systems haven't changed very much since the earlier days of civilization, which is obviously absurd. The dominant forms of social & political organization 3,000 years ago are not the same as the dominant ones now, and the game should reflect that.

You clearly do not understand the meaning of the word "vassalage".

It's not synonymous to feudalism or serfdom (if you paid attention, you would see that there is a separate civics called Serfdom). As for feudalism, it would, in the terms of the civics, be a system that combines serfdom, vassalage and hereditary monarchy.

Vassalage on its own simply means that power relationships are build on personal loyalties between a superior and an underling, instead of a broader loyalty to the state - such power relations are pretty common in countries ruled by a junta or a party, like Saddam's Iraq - these people are by no means loyal to the nation, they are loyal to their immediate superiors.

As a side note calling Nationhood an "upgrade" to "Vassalage is completely misguided, since the history of medieval Europe is about struggle between two concepts, with the Nation state emerging victorious.

[sophist]

I think you're being overly harsh with RJC. He's not saying you should have civics options for A that are A1 < A2 < A3 < A4 < A5. Instead, he's saying there should be options A1a, A2a, and A3a available from very early in the game. At some point, you discover A1b, which is clearly superior to A1a, though not clearly superior to A2a or A3a. Then later, you discover A2b, which trumps A2a, and A3b, which is unequivocally better than A3a. At every stage, you have several different options in a particular category that are suited to different uses, with one not uniformly superior to the others. It just so happens that those change over time.

He made an analogy to techs and units in Civ3 that appears to have been misunderstood. In the Ancient Era, you have Swordsman, Spearman, Horseman, and Catapult. None of those units is superior to any of the others; they have different uses. Later, you have Medieval Infantry, Pikeman, Knight, and Trebuchet. Again, none of those is superior to any of the others, but Medieval Infantry > Swordsman, Pikeman > Spearman, Knight > Horseman, and Trebuchet > Catapult. It goes on like that.

It's pretty clear that they are not doing this with Civ4. There are simply not enough Civics slots for it. I think you would need at minimum 3 choices that are active at a given time, and you'd need a minimum of 3 phases of advancement through the game. After all, what republic meant to the Romans is not what it meant to the French revolutionaries in 1792 and it's not what it means today. I don't know if this degree of flexibility and progression would necessarily improve the game, but I don't believe that you are properly evaluating RJC's suggestion.