Civil War & Partizans

[James]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
A number of Australian civ-fans (myself included) are going to try and put together an in-game script for determining a chance of a civ-split if certain trigger conditions are met (such as loss of a capital or changing civics). Of course, the ACTUAL chance-if any-of it happening will depend on such things as happy/unhappy, culture, distance from capital and # of cities.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

This sounds perfect. Where do I sign up?

[nbarclay]

In my view, for civil wars to be a good part of the game, there would have to be an interplay involving civics choices that help push the war. For example, certain types of trade policies benefit the home country but get colonies upset. The U.S. Civil War was driven by major regional economic differences, largely in the form of radically different attitudes about slavery (which was far more profitable in the South than in the North) but also in regard to the issue of tariffs (with the indisutrialized North favoring high ones and the agricultural South favoring lower ones). Theocracy could reasonably lead to uprisings in cities where the vast majority of people are of a religion other than the state religion. Couple that with warnings about what policies are causing unrest in what places and players would have a choice of whether to keep their policies and risk a revolt or change their policies in order to satisfy the dissenters.

I'm not sure how much of that could be added to Civ 4 after the fact because the civics choices are designed to be balanced without particular choices creating such dangers. But the idea might be interesting if it can be implemented well.

Another interesting possibility would be a way for a player to deliberately grant independence to pieces of his empire, perhaps with the newly independent nations controlled by AIs but joining into a team with the parent civ. If that could be tied into team-based victory conditions, it could be an interesting alternative to trying to rule the entire world directly. But it should only be possible to spin off a daughter civilization if a significant majority of its people - say, 2/3 - either are of the same nationality as the parent civilization or have lived under its rule for long enough to view themselves as part of the empire. I don't know whether Civ 4 will be moddable enough to add something like that, but it would be an interesting feature if it would be possible.

[sophist]

I think people misunderstand the random aspect. What's random isn't if a secession/rebellion/civil war happens, nor approximately when it happens, but precisely when. If you let things slide too far, you may end up in a situation where you can know that some part of your empire will rebel in the next 5 turns. You don't know in which turn it will happen, but you know that it will to a pretty good degree of precision, and to which cities.

A way to do it that I would be comfortable with is something like a popup at the start of your turn saying something like:

An emissary from the People's Revolution of Syracuse demands that you cease the war with Greece and establish Buddhism as the state religion, or they shall lead a rebellion in Syracuse, Halicarnassus, and Epirus. What shall we do?

( ) We must do as they demand.
( ) Whatever, they are worthless. We don't need them.
( ) Send his head back to them and mobilize the army!

If you accede to their demands, the rebellion is averted. If you ignore them, they secede peacefully, with the new nation potentially being automatically an ally. The third option does not prevent the secession, but it does create a state of war between you and the other nation, and also could trigger whatever alliances you may have. And if you send in the storm troopers... well, they might still secede, and you've started a civil war, but you can get your cities back, and purge the disloyal citizens.

Perhaps there could be a multiple popups leading up to this as the situation degrades.

Code yellow: "Sire, a delegation of citizens from Syracuse have presented a petition..."

Code orange: "A group calling itself the People's Revolution of Syracuse is agitating for...."

Code red: as above.

[ChaotikVisions]

Hmm, theres tons of ways to implement civil wars with civics/religion being high on the list, the only big issue would seem to be creating civs on the fly and the civilization limit. As for partizans, that would seem easier to add in from what i've heard of the scripting. Base it off if player has X tech(nationlism) and population size, then spawn the units. I'd personally love both of them being part of any of my games in Civ4.

[sabrewolf]

great idea and a potential nice feature.

i would not call it civil war, except if you go in and get them back. more of a "independence movement".

this could either mean
- growing power colonies that decide to split off only if your nation is already powerful enough. something like the US some 200 years ago. maybe this can be "motivated and supported" by another civ (in that case france)

- unpleased with state religion (eg. kashmir in india) or civics (northern nigeria, east timor, etc)

- cultural/spiritual closeness to another nation. this is already implemented via whatever is left of the culture flip

- feeling ignored: if you do not spend effort to improve a city or it is suffering from miserable health or so.


all of these situations could lead to splitting of a nation and would not be undeserved as one can always see it coming and try to do something against it

[sophist]

Ditto. That's why I've been using "secession" and "rebellion." "Independence movement" is also good. Then there's the good old "unrest and instability." War should not be an inevitability in this case. I'd even argue that the significant majority of cases would not involve war; you'd be more likely to send in the storm troopers, capitulate to their demands, or let them go their merry way. If it was properly implemented, I mean.

[Wittlich]

Did any one else notice that 2KGames placed a link to this thread in their "community" link on their site?

http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/community.htm

It looks like even 2KGames has taken notice of the interest involving civil wars!

[Ninot]

Its a list of most recent posts. I dont think it reflects much. I'll make a thread about Banana preferences, watch it get listed.

[Simplicity]

Civil wars are annoying. Having cities go into unrest simply because you didn't notice they were going to expand (and so you needed one Elvis) is annoying. It's all unnecessarily punishing to the player.

The average player does not jump for joy when half of their empire crumbles. They just quit.

[Wittlich]

Originally posted by Ninot
Its a list of most recent posts. I dont think it reflects much. I'll make a thread about Banana preferences, watch it get listed.

Well, other threads have been started since I've posted my observation, and this thread is still listed on 2KGames site....so I'm really thinking that 2KGames picks and chooses what links they want to have listed...of course they could only update their listing every couple of days. I will have to keep an eye on their site and see if it changes.

[MarkG]

the list is NOT automatically updated. it's someone choosing threads and linking to them....

i think it's probably a 2K Webmaster (reasonably) thinking "civil wars, cool, let's add a link to that" rather than Sid thinking "wow what an amazing idea, lets see if more people like it, hey kid, link this up!"

[Wittlich]

I concur Markos. I was just stating that "someone" at 2KGames found this thread interesting enough to place it in their link - which I myself consider as a good sign.

[normana400]

I like your idea about the ability to conquer cites and then recast sets of them as allied nations. This would be similar to historic puppet states like 1930's Manchuria, Napoleanic Mexico, Vichy France, or the former Eastern Germany. There would be a strategy in this in that you could conquer cities and recast them as puppet states in situations where keeping the cities in your empire would overstrech your resources. Having these puppet states would allow you to create a buffer between large opponents, allow the cities in the puppet state to buildup faster (because their cities are close to their capital), and potentially help expand your culture there (for perhaps eventual permenant occupation). Given that they are puppet states, you could still move your forces in there as normal. With this setup you could program in a risk that if you didn't keep forces in the puppet state or provide them with benefical trade that they could break away their allegience or conspire against you.

Originally posted by sophist

I won't disagree with this statement, but I will point out several assumptions it makes that are not necessarily valid. First of all, it's not necessarily half. It might be half, but it's more likely to be a couple of cities.

Secondly, it wouldn't be sudden; civil wars Civ1 style are silly and not what is intended. It should be more like the real world, where civil war breaks out after a long period of tension and barely restrained hostility due to economic, ethnic, religious, and political pressures.

Thirdly, why does this branch have to become an enemy? We've been told that in Civ4, it may be in your best interest to give away a city because it could be unprofitable. Perhaps you have three cities that are unprofitable for various reasons that overlap with real-life drivers for secession. Rather than those being foisted off onto an existing nation, they are spun-off into their own entity. In some ways, that nation could be more likely to be an ally, in the way that Australia and Canada are close with the UK. An actual war would only happen if some set of cities seceded and the parent civilization wanted to reassert control. If you're ok with letting them go, there's no war.


That a city is consistently unhappy is sufficient warning of secession risk. Secession will only happen because of specific causes that you will be well aware of in the turns leading up to the actual secession.


Again, I think this is redundant. What I would prefer instead is a way to negotiate with the seceding region to try to bring them back into the fold peacefully. We're probably talking about the same thing, only I prefer the drastic steps to happen after formal secession rather than before. Perhaps there's an intermediate step between "part of your empire" and "independent nation." Well, actually, there is; you have one or more cities in a chronic state of revolt. That's your warning. That's your chance to prevent the civil war. That's also your chance to accelerate it by proactively granting independence.


That's far too broad a generalization to be supported. Reloads won't help because secessions will be deterministic. The AI won't become a pushover due to the fragmentation of the empire, either. Such fragmentation is most likely to happen to nations that are already weak in some way. In addition, the fragments could still be allied as described above. Also, since mindless expansion isn't the optimal strategy in Civ4, AI weakness doesn't mean that it would be profitable for the player to try to take advantage. Furthermore, the fragments could just as easily be picked up by another AI rather than the player. And finally, neutering the game due to AI limitations is bad, bad, bad game design.

[Templar504]

Howdy jsut joined in anticipation of CIV IV coming out and on the topic of civil wars I ahve this to say. Im not a programer (even though im going to college to become one) and I cant make mods for my games im just wondering whats so wrong with civil wars? I mean yeah most people will be like ok back to whatever time I saved, but as for me and the other people I like em they give a sort of fun aspect ot the game. I mean I remember when I played civ 2 on the European map and my empire was all of western Europ agianst 2 other huge emipres. (this is also on deity no I didnt beat it as you will see) I like an idiot didnt protect my capital and boom paratrooper in my capital and I was SOL. It was fun though I cant remmeber having so much fun with a game. I mean for those of you working on a mod to make civil wars possible agian thank you so much. I will love to hear from you once you make one because shmos like me cant make em ourselves.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by MarkG
the list is NOT automatically updated. it's someone choosing threads and linking to them....

i think it's probably a 2K Webmaster (reasonably) thinking "civil wars, cool, let's add a link to that" rather than Sid thinking "wow what an amazing idea, lets see if more people like it, hey kid, link this up!"

I blame Trip