Civics make no sense

[SeferKoheleth]

Anyone else here bothered at how many civics make no historical sense? In previous civ games, the government choices generally reflected historical truths -- more trade in democracies, but also more war weariness etc.

While the complicated civics system is an improvement, the civic bonuses generally don't reflect anything real or historical.

Several flaws, among them:
1) Representation comes way too late (ignoring the early Roman and Greek republics) especially because the early Republics (like pre-20th century US) did not have universal suffrage -- slaves and women couldn't vote. I also don't see why it gives 3 beakers per scientist or 3 happy people in ONLY the 3 biggest cities. Republics have benefits in small cities too.

2) Universal suffrage REDUCES science and happiness compared to Representation. Anyone figure that out?

3) Mercantilism is a viable economic system, generally superior to free market in most games. Huh? Mercantilist economies were HORRIBLE economies. Mercantilism also coincided (rather than being separate from) serfdom.

4) State property adds food to wind/watermills. Sorry, but the communist regimes I remember weren't exactly agracultural and environmental paradises. What state property SHOULD do is make it easier to rush projects, or give you 100% on a build wealth, culture or science. State property is an inferior economic system overall, but does permit highly specific targetting of specific regime-set goals (i.e. Soviet space program & nuclear program).

5) Pacifism doubles great person growth? I don't recall Switzerland producing too many Nobel prize winners.

And my big one:

You function as an all-powerful dictator no matter what. You can build anything, research anything, make peace or war without any check from your people. Remember in Civ 2 when the Senate would make peace behind your back??? In Civ 4, whether you are a despot running slavery or a President with universal suffrage, it makes no difference.

[Dr,ape]

Try and play a demo game...

[acheron]

Read the civilopedia entry about State Property and the Communism tech. They sound almost disappointed that it, you know, doesn't work in real life. So it's not surprising that the game effect is a bit different from reality.

I disagree about Merchantilism being better than Free Market in game.. unless you're always at war with everyone and don't have foreign trade routes anyway, I guess.

Overall.. it's an interesting choice by the designers (to use these civics instead of predefined governments). One thing I noticed about this that's different from SMAC's social engineering choices (which I did like a lot) is that almost all of the civics have no downside apart from upkeep (Merchantilism being the main exception.), it's just a choice of which "upsides" you want. Whereas the SMAC choices were always a choice of upsides and downsides (more research/more vulnerable to spies, etc.). Same with the leaders, now that I think of it. (The only downside to an Industrious/Financial leader is that they're not Philosophical or whatever, there's no actual disadvantage.)

My big "realism" problem is that you can switch from, say, emancipation to serfdom or universal suffrage to police state withouy any penalties. I can see your people having no problem with hereditary rule at first, but once they've had universal suffrage they should be reluctant to switch back. (Imagine if a modern day democracy tried to switch back to having a monarch with actual power, or reinstituted lords and vassals.) But then, I don't actually have any problem with that as far as the game goes -- if the game is *too* realistic it's not going to be any fun.

[Tiberius]

Re: Civics make no sense

Originally posted by SeferKoheleth
4) State property adds food to wind/watermills. Sorry, but the communist regimes I remember weren't exactly agracultural and environmental paradises. What state property SHOULD do is make it easier to rush projects, or give you 100% on a build wealth, culture or science. State property is an inferior economic system overall, but does permit highly specific targetting of specific regime-set goals (i.e. Soviet space program & nuclear program).

I agree 100% on this one. I would actually make more sense to have less food from terrain improvements, but at least not more. Communists regimes were terrible at planning how much food or generally goods are needed for the population.

Building terrain improvements and great projects easier/faster makes much more sense.

For me who lived in communism as a kid and teenager, and had to stand in endless queues to get basic food such as milk, sugar or bread (and I could only dream about chocolate!), it is almost insulting to see what are young kids learning from this game about communisn: that it gives you more food.

I really don't want to go into discussions about what an ideal communism should be or why the real life one didn't work as it was supposed to and so on. However, all other other civics are more or less depicting real life civics, so why should comunism be an imaginary one? This is a history simulation game, not a SF.

That being said, I accept the state property civic as it is; or, actually, to be more precise, I just ignore it.
However, what SeferKoheleth says makes much more sense than the implemented version (and probably would make state property stronger than it is right now; I am not sure though whether this would be good or not, since I never use it).

[apostatedogfish]

I LIKE the idea of civics a lot, but like those of you posted, I think the choices are bit unrealistic and don't do much to improve the idea of government in the game.

I fail to see why being able to rush-buy units and improvements wouldn't be a labor or economic civic's property.

I fail to see why police state wouldn't give you martial law benefits like Monarchy, or why that would be Hereditary Rule's primary quality.

I fail to see why communism gives food advantages as it does.

The small amount of anarchy between switches makes it too easy to flop back and forth to exploit some civics properties when an opportunity arises. There ought to be harsher periods of anarchy when switching from more "liberal" civics back to older civics, for example.

If emancipation makes other nations unhappy if they don't have it, wouldn't Free Speech and Universal Suffrage do the same? It stands to reason. Democracy has spread in the same way that Abolition of Slavery has.

[Sirian]

Re: Civics make no sense

Originally posted by SeferKoheleth
Anyone else here bothered at how many civics make no historical sense?

Not me, and I contributed to where we ended up for nearly every civic in the game.

They are balanced to PLAY WELL. History came second, though we tried not to fudge things too much.

Civ4 is meant first and foremost to be fun to play; also to be balanced for single and mutliplayer, and to have a gameplay shelf life measured in YEARS.

Gameplay came first. It's that simple. I realize that displeases some, but it was Soren's design priority and I supported it 100%.


- Sirian

[Sava]

I am annoyed because some of the civics don't really much offer much incentive at all.

They should give better bonuses IMO.

[Dracon II]

This sounds like fertile ground for modders. Maybe someone should make a mod that allows those who wish to use the old Government system in previous versions? But I haven't played the game yet... so I don't know how it would affect gameplay.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: Re: Civics make no sense

Originally posted by Sirian
Not me, and I contributed to where we ended up for nearly every civic in the game.

They are balanced to PLAY WELL. History came second, though we tried not to fudge things too much.

Civ4 is meant first and foremost to be fun to play; also to be balanced for single and mutliplayer, and to have a gameplay shelf life measured in YEARS.

Gameplay came first. It's that simple. I realize that displeases some, but it was Soren's design priority and I supported it 100%.


- Sirian

I see how they're balanced, and it makes sense; it's just when I try and connect the words to the bonuses, and there's this "wait, why?" effect.

[Drachasor]

Actually, I've noticed the representation is not always better for science.

I'd also say that Mercantilism wasn't a "horrible" economic system. It is quite inferior to the free market in a global sense, but not always inferior in every way on a local. One thing mercantile economies do is that they can greatly encourage the development of industries within a country (assuming the country has the power and resources to power this development). Britain used this quite effectively historically. Spain used mercantilism only to stifle trade and not to develop its own industries. Such differences caused Britain to become THE global power for quite some time.

That said, in one game I found that my science was better under a free market and universal sufferage than it was under mercantilism and/or representation. I'm not quite sure why (especially the universal sufferage/representation angle), but that's how it was. Hmm, what is the civic maintainance of those options? Maybe it was from that. Representation is at least low and Sufferage is none, right?

In any case, the civics usefulness is not always as clear cut as it might seem. I'd also not that UniS's rush-buy ability can more than make up for any other short-coming as it can be used to quickly make many cities go from sub-par to world-class. I've effectively turned my science rate to 0 for 2-10 turns for this express purpose (it can pay off in the end if you have a lot of conquered cities to set up).

-Drachasor

PS. As far as the other, more blatant, innaccuracies...pushaw, why even have State Property/Communism if just makes your Civ worse? And shouldn't the represenative governments actually take a lot of control away from you? Afterall, you are acting like a dictator for the entire game. The current implementation does make the game more fun and interesting however.

[SeferKoheleth]

Here's my (brief) attempt to create suggestions for "realism" modders for politics & economics (I'll get to the others later):

Political System:

Monarchy -- +100% barbarians; military units stop unhappiness.

Republic (i.e. slaves & women don't vote) -- lower maintanence costs, +10% science, small chance of the Senate vetoing war/peace decisions.

Police State -- +35% unit production, military units stop unhappiness, +100% chance of barbarian uprisings, high maintenance, increased chance of cities "culture flipping" away.

Democracy/Universal Suffrage -- low maintanence costs, +20 science, +20% culture, chance of Senate vetoing war/peace decisions, research decisions, production decisions (chance decreases with happiness)

Economic System:
Serfdom/Mercantilism: no foreign trade, +10% income

Free Market: +1 trade per square with at least 2 trade; +2 trade per square with at least 5 trade; increases unhealthiness; +20% Great People points

Welfare State: +1 trade per square with at least 4 trade; decreased unhappiness

Communism: reduced cost for rushing production, build culture, wealth, and science at 100% (not 50%), increased unhappiness

[Strudo]

Originally posted by SeferKoheleth
Monarchy -- +100% barbarians; military units stop unhappiness.

I don't understand when people say military units stop unhappyness?? Do the soldiers point guns at people's heads and say "Be happy or I'll shoot!"? I would think a more real view would be that military units cause unhappyness, but cities can't revolt. Or maybe all people work, unhappy or not, but the ones who would be unhappy work at half capacity.

[WolfEyes]

I don't understand when people say military units stop unhappyness?? Do the soldiers point guns at people's heads and say "Be happy or I'll shoot!"? I would think a more real view would be that military units cause unhappyness, but cities can't revolt. Or maybe all people work, unhappy or not, but the ones who would be unhappy work at half capacity.

Military units increasing happiness is more a reflection of the citizens feeling more secure knowing that there are troops around to protect them. In fact, I've noticed that NOT having any troops in a city will CAUSE unhappiness

[RadeonZero]

Some of you are complaining a lot about state property but all states (even USA) own more or less companies (USA: the postal service and a few more)

For me who lived in communism as a kid and teenager, and had to stand in endless queues to get basic food such as milk, sugar or bread (and I could only dream about chocolate!),

That could be true if you're more than 40 years old, because nowadays, even in Cuba (a very poor country) they have chocolate.

By the way: all states practice (more or less) protectionism nowadays (USA vs EU - steel war, USA & EU vs China - textile war) so, free market don't exist really.

[Tiberius]

In 1989 (end of communism in eastern europe) I was 18, so do the math. Not that it matters.

Like I said, I accept the civics as they are because they are probably tweaked to insure a balanced game.

Although I have doubts how well balanced they are. I end up using the same 3 or 4 civics all the time and ignore the others. This is either a sign that some are better than the others or maybe it's just a question of style and I other styles would require other civics. I don't know, but are there really no other balanced civics that make sense?