Civil War & Partizans

[Kristjan]

Originally posted by fezick31

Actually, I remember this happening to me a couple of time as the player.

Yes, it was possible for a human-led empire to split. These occasions were very rare just because humans generally do not lose their capitals.

We aren't going necesarrily for the most player friendly game here...I'll concede that a lot of players wouldn't like this happenig TO them (heck, I wouldn't).

I would. I warmly welcome every change that makes it harder for human to beat computer - providing it is result of general game mechanics, not simple discrimination (math.multiple(AI.cities[i].shields,2)). If civil wars make it considerebaly harder for a single civ to stay together 6000 years, it would be very good.

I have a dream of Apolyton Forums thread with subject:

Highscore!!! My Empire is 2560 years old and still up and running!

However, most of the people here are looking for a higher degree of realism (why else would we debate the historical and cultural siginifigance of the collapse fo the Byzentene Empire), and dynamic empires that grow and shrink are historical - and so are civil wars and independence movements.

The great success of Civilization series is mostly a result of that kind of historical realism. It is the very core of Civilization.

[Grumbold]

I definitely see a market for a civ-like game where empires rise and fall. The Paradox games like Europa Universalis 2 have shown it to be possible, but not as profitable as a mass market game. There's a recent game called Great Invasions that includes empire rise and fall, but its so niche that there are no English Language reviews of it yet.

[fezick31]

Kristjan and sophist,

I'm not debating the presence or preservation of those cultures (Greek culture is one of the strongest on the planet)...what I am debating is whether or not cultures that have been annexed into other empires for hundreds or thousands of years will rise up and overthrow the empire that annexed them. That's what I mean when I say you don't see many historical examples of cultures rising up. I understand they are still there...but look at Greece, or Estonia, or Poland. All of these people lived peacefully as part of the conquering empire. Once that empire grew weak and collapsed, then these regions re-emerged as nations, but not in rebellion. Even Byzantium, greek or not, was part of Rome until Rome grew too weak to hold itself together and the Emperor split it in half (I understand this is a simplified view, but you get the idea).

Compare this with Ireland's opposition to English rule. Or kurdish opposition to Turkish/Iraqi rule. Or Chechnia. These are examples of people who were never happy with foriegn rule and took the first opportunity they had at rebellion.

I guess the real question I am asking is it realistic for a subdued culture to take up arms in rebellion after generations of peaceful coexistence with a conquering people? Afterall, that's what is involved in civil war. If we are talking about re-emrgent culture, then we are talking about a different mod - Civilization Collapse perhaps, but not an internal conflict.

If I'm off my rocker, let me know. I am by no means opposed to being corrected.

(I aplogize if I seem stubborn headed...I don't intend to be difficult - just want to see this done right, as it's feature I missed in Civ 2 & 3)
-F

[fezick31]

by kirstjan:
I would. I warmly welcome every change that makes it harder for human to beat computer - providing it is result of general game mechanics...

Oh, trust, me it would be a cool change...I mean I wouldn't like the occurance. It would mean I wasn't running my civilation very well.

[Kristjan]

Originally posted by fezick31
Even Byzantium, greek or not, was part of Rome until Rome grew too weak to hold itself together and the Emperor split it in half (I understand this is a simplified view, but you get the idea).

Sorry, but its a wrong idea. In these years, dividing empire between several rulers was essentially an administrative act. In 496 nobody thought of it as everlasting splitting of once-mighty empire.

I guess the real question I am asking is it realistic for a subdued culture to take up arms in rebellion after generations of peaceful coexistence with a conquering people? Afterall, that's what is involved in civil war.

Both Poland and Estonia had to fight a war to get their independence. I agree with you that they won only because Russian Empire was itself split in a civil war and was really very weak. But there was a war on both occasions.

Edit: Speaking of breaking up of Russia in 1917-1920, even Finland had a small war of independence. The fact is generally not known and as far as I know, there is still a dispute running wether it was a civil war of Finland or war of independence againts Bolsheviks. But the Red Finns still seem to be little more than some proxy operation of Lenin's regime. Latvia fought a war of independence with the help of Estonians and mainly against German divisions, but they clashed with Russians as well (unfortunately their own national divisions had joined Bolsheviks in 1917). Lithuania fought against both Russia and Poland. There were other nationalist uprisings in all border regions of former Russian Empire, but most of them were not successful.

[Kristjan]

sorry, please remove this post. i could not (got error message).

[fezick31]

I stand corrected (and a little embarressed at my European history knowedge ). So the next question would be what conditions led to these uprisings, and how can they be modeled?

[Kristjan]

Originally posted by fezick31
So the next question would be what conditions led to these uprisings, and how can they be modeled?

1) Weakness of central government (rampant corruption, Anarchy). One civil war / nationalist uprising might well trigger another. That would be very realistic.

2) Strong nationalist movements. The culture of conquered nations was not assimilated and continued growing. Let's call it a "shadow culture". It might well be that some civ advances result in greater amount of "shadow culture" produced all over the empire. So the choice would be develop and risk separatism or remain consolidated but technologically backwards. Quite realistic, I guess.

Overall cultural rating of a civ should consist of several "shadow cultures" of nations it has conquered or peacefully merged. In Civ3 the culture is only preserved (loser will get it back after retaking the city) but in my opinion, it should continue growing in the frame of conquerring empire.

If a China-owned city of 10 has 7 Indians and 3 Chinese and its overall culture value increases by 10 per turn, it should produce 7 Indian and 3 Chinese culture points. But China would still get +10 to its overall cultural rating.

3) Form of government. Outdated civics should provoke unrest (Slavery in Modern Age).

[sophist]

Originally posted by refardeon
You guys do realize that there is already a model of civil unrest and -war in the game, don't you?

It's a model of unrest only. You are quite correct that it's there, but it's too primitive.

Originally posted by refardeon
Honestly, an empire-split would be incredibly unfun to the vast majority of gamers.

I gather that you have not read the entirety of this thread, because that is clearly not what we are talking about. Give us some credit. If someone created a mod that did what we've been discussing and it sucked, well, I for one would readily concede that it sucked and move on.

Originally posted by refardeon
Civilization is not about recreating history, folks. It is about great gameplay. Some people here already said that most players would simply reload if all of a sudden half of their empire has gone missing, or quit the game altogether.

As I've mentioned before, players who do that are also the players who restart if they are losing a war, or if they don't get the Pyramids, or if they have no iron, etc.

Originally posted by refardeon
And if you'd make a rebellion very unlikely to happen as someone else mentioned, you might as well scrap the idea. It just does not fit into the game mechanics well.

You're going to play your games such that your cities rarely, if ever, go into civil disorder, but does that mean the mechanism is useless?

Originally posted by refardeon
The idea was dumped back with Civ2, and honestly, Civ has always been a game of going forward, not going back - and so should we

No, a really awful way of doing it was dumped in Civ2. The fundamental idea is still sound.

Originally posted by fezick31
Kristjan and sophist,

what I am debating is whether or not cultures that have been annexed into other empires for hundreds or thousands of years will rise up and overthrow the empire that annexed them. That's what I mean when I say you don't see many historical examples of cultures rising up.

Fair enough. That sort of thing hasn't happened much. Note, however, that such cultural strength is only one factor in whether a nation re-emerges. There are few, if any, "pure" historical examples where a nation re-emerges due solely to the strength of its culture, but that wouldn't be what we want out of this anyway.

There are still examples, though. Greece emerging from Ottoman rule, Persia from Arab rule, Russia from under the Mongols. You're right that there aren't an enormous number of such pure examples, but we don't want such pure examples anyway.

Originally posted by refardeon
(I aplogize if I seem stubborn headed...I don't intend to be difficult - just want to see this done right, as it's feature I missed in Civ 2 & 3)

I at least don't believe you are being unreasonable.

[Kristjan]

Originally posted by sophist
Note, however, that such cultural strength is only one factor in whether a nation re-emerges. There are few, if any, "pure" historical examples where a nation re-emerges due solely to the strength of its culture, but that wouldn't be what we want out of this anyway.

I would like to point out that term "Culture" in Civilization means something different than "culture" in mainstream language. History does not have many examples of border cities switching sides because in the other side of border someone built Colosseum as well.

Culture in Civ really means INFLUENCE by all ways besides purely "cultural". And actually it would be quite realistic if Courthouses produced culture as well for instance.

I agree with Sophist, but the semantic problem would be gone if we read that national minorities retain some grassroot-level INFLUENCE over their former territories, state structures their members are working in etc.

[sophist]

Yes, I also would have greatly preferred if they used the term "influence" with respect to borders instead of "culture."

[fezick31]

I can see why they chose the term "culture"...influence sounds very political in nature, whereas "culture" represents a more nebulous force generated by your civilization's society. Perhaps Cultural Influence is more appropriate...but I digress, influence works fine.

I like the idea of persistent cultural influence on a city and civilization...especially when it comes to splitting the cultural population of a city (although this opens up a possability for greatly impacting border disputes...) This means, however, that we need to figure out how culture/inflence points would be split. Do you split the points generated by a city improvement according to the population ratio, or do you allow population to add culture/influence just by existing? Also, do new population points go to your ethnicity or to the ethnicity of the city's founder? It would be interesting if instead of starving a city and then rebuilding a population, you literally had to relocate population points (via workers or settler) to gain further influence (although this may lead to micromanagement nightmare).

[sophist]

I've been trying to sort that out also. There might be national culture, ethnic culture, and religious culture. Part of it is that I think it should be possible to capture some culture, but definitely not all of it, and it should be systematic and clear how that works.

[Franklinnoble]

I like the idea of rebellion/civil war, and I think it could work under a few circumstances:

- Cities that you conquered that belonged to a dead civilization secede; this can almost be a random thing, but probably works best if triggered by unhappiness, or perhaps a scientific breakthrough of some sort that triggers an urge for the old civilzation to re-assert itself.

- Your own cities revolt and secede as a factor of unhappines or perhaps religious differences. In fact, I think religion can be a key trigger here - say you're a buddhist nation, and as soon as 30% or more of your cities convert to islam, there is n% chance per turn that they may secede.

Now, I think this needs to be a highly configurable option, because it can be used to a large degree as a difficulty slider. It would be best to see it implemented with sliders for % liklihood that human player has civil war (from 0-?) and similarly for the AI.

Thus, you have a system where you can make it difficult as a human player without crippling the AI, you can put the AI on equal footing, you can turn it on only for the AI, or you can turn it off altogether (or, some variation in between).

[Kristjan]

Originally posted by fezick31
Do you split the points generated by a city improvement according to the population ratio

It is one possibility. BTW, civ3 already has nation-specific happiness feature ("Stop agression against our mother country!").

Using my example of China-owned city of 10 with 3 Chinese and 7 Indians, I would like to introduce an idea of nation-specific improvements as well. Schools for instance - one could have both Chinese Schoolhouse and Indian Schoolhouse in a single city. Indian Schoolhouse would create only Indian culture but also Indian happiness. Without it, the Indian majority would be quite unhappy. If the government wants to make Indians happier, it has to support their culture and tolerate their nationalism. Quite realistic, I suppose.

Some "Ethnical tolerance" civic should limit this kind of tensions.

Also, do new population points go to your ethnicity or to the ethnicity of the city's founder?

In civ3, assimilation of national minorities was unrealistically quick. I would support an idea that new population shares the ethnicity of existing population. It might be done with some random factor. Using the same example, a new citizen might have 3 chances of 10 to have Chinese ethnicity.

you literally had to relocate population points (via workers or settler) to gain further influence (although this may lead to micromanagement nightmare).

Please mind that in Civ3 Conquests, both Settlers and Workers retain their ethnical background.