Social Engineering vs Civics

[Urban Ranger]

For those who don't know, SE (social engineering) is something in Alpha Centauri that's similar to civics in Civ 4.

For those who haven't played Alpha Centauri let me explain it a little. Each faction ("civ") has a rating on a set of settings, such as "Planet" (environmental consciousness), "Research," "Efficiency," "Growth," etc. Each SE choice gives you modifiers in these settings. For example, "Knowledge" gives you a higher rating in "Research," but a lower rating in "Probe," which makes you easier to be spied upon.

Some tech advances remove the penalties from one or more SE choices.

I still like the SE system more because you get both bonuses and penalities, making decisions more difficult. In Civ 4 there are no built-in penalties to the civic choices other than the upkeep cost.

So, which system do you prefer?

[Chaos Theory]

Nitpick: no techs directly alter SE choices in Alpha Centauri, but two projects do, and a couple of factions can ignore some penalties.

[johnmcd]

I like non financial penalties much more than financial, though that is partly because the financial are so difficult to get to grips with, the formulas for their calculation are hardly instinctive.

[Urban Ranger]

For example, slavery should have one or more penalties, probably some kind of production penalty (say, -20%) for everything you build or a cap of how much f/h/c you could have on each tile.

[Zoid]

AC-like SE

[Son of David]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
For example, slavery should have one or more penalties, probably some kind of production penalty (say, -20%) for everything you build or a cap of how much f/h/c you could have on each tile.

Why? What was historically less productive about slavery-employing empires and nations in the past?

I think the disadvantage to the civic is inbuilt. I.e. its only use is to allow you to sacrifice population to build things. But when you sacrifice population you lose the extra gold, research, hammers etc associated with working tiles and having specialists.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Son of David
Why? What was historically less productive about slavery-employing empires and nations in the past?

Oh, come now. Do you really hold that a slave was as productive as a freeman?

[Guynemer]

AC. Though Civ4 is a massive improvement over Civ3 in this regard.

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Oh, come now. Do you really hold that a slave was as productive as a freeman?

If he was forced to be productive...

[Overcast32]

I like the Civics more...

That being said, I do agree I prefer the results (numbers) that social engineering gave. If engineered right some of the factions could run with no negative numbers - depending on what they got to start.

Yeah, I have to agree - there's no downside to slavery. I'm not sure I agree with "productivity" in regards to slaves - afterall, according to the history most widely accepted, even the Egyptian Pyramids were built on the backs of slaves. Slaves are as productive as their masters can get them to be. There's no doubt the happiness should take a significant hit though.

Productivity of slavery - in the short term, may be higher, but after time it has to wane some, as happiness drops so does health. When health drops, productivity must suffer.

I'd like to see a mix of Civics and the Social Engineering - from a game mechanics point of view, I agree the SE was much better.

The only things I like about Civics more - is more choices, I like the Anarchy for a few turns too, it adds a nice touch to the game. I know there was a cost associated with SE changes in AC, but the Anarchy is a bit cooler.

I think I'd like to see a bit less cost involved and more impact on your civ (like unhappiness, lost commerce, etc). As it stands right now, it's too easy to offset the cost penalty. Most of the time - but I guess it depends on how a person does with Commerce too.

[JackRudd]

Re: Social Engineering vs Civics

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I still like the SE system more because you get both bonuses and penalities, making decisions more difficult. In Civ 4 there are no built-in penalties to the civic choices other than the upkeep cost.

There certainly are built-in penalties. The penalty for running State Property, for example, is that you don't get one free specialist per city, you don't get one extra trade route per city, and you don't get +6 Health per city and +1 happiness for each jungle or forest square in the city's radius.

That is, the penalties for running Civ 4 civics are mostly opportunity costs.

[Locutus]

As I remember SE, it was mostly about detailed policy making, comparatively minor internal policy decisions (a little more economic freedom here, a little more attention to the environment there). Civ deals with the big picture, large ideological decisions such as slavery, free religion, hereditary rule, free market economy, etc. On a conceptual level, civics are much more suited for a grand historic strategy game like Civ.

As for effects tied to such civics, it's been shown that players generally don't like punishments. We have golden ages rather than dark ages because testing showed dark ages weren't fun. Similarly many negative or part-negative civics were tried during Civ4's developments, but people didn't like it. Of course you'll always find a hard-core audience that will like punishment (anyone playing on Emperor or Deity for example ) but the casual gamer that is the vast majority of Firaxis's audience typically doesn't. And as JackRudd says, the cost of civics is that you only get to choose one out of 5 distinctly different effects, so you miss out on 2 or 3 good options per category.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Oh, come now. Do you really hold that a slave was as productive as a freeman?

Obviously. A free man doesn't work 24/7 at zero pay.

It's no coincidence that the Industrial Revolution only happened once slavery and serfdom had been abolished (in Europe), despite the fact that a lot of requisite technology for it had been around for some time (coke fuel, water power), in some cases even since Roman times (steam engine). Only in the mid/late 18th century did human labour become so expensive that primitive machines could compete with it.

Originally posted by Overcast32
according to the history most widely accepted, even the Egyptian Pyramids were built on the backs of slaves.

If by 'most widely accepted' you mean Biblical propaganda and Hollywood myth, yeah then they were built by slaves. If you mean actual science (by renowned egyptologists like Lehner and Hawass), then quite the opposite is the case, the pyramids are widely accepted to have been built by skilled workers and conscripted peasants, not slaves.

[Solver]

As I remember SE, it was mostly about detailed policy making, comparatively minor internal policy decisions (a little more economic freedom here, a little more attention to the environment there). Civ deals with the big picture, large ideological decisions such as slavery, free religion, hereditary rule, free market economy, etc. On a conceptual level, civics are much more suited for a grand historic strategy game like Civ.

Actually the SMAC civics were also quite fundamental and big-picture. For Government, you chose between Democracy, Police State or Fundamentalism, for Economics between Green, Planned or Free Market.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Oh, come now. Do you really hold that a slave was as productive as a freeman?

In terms of production per acre, or especally in terms of production per doller, slave-based economies were fairly efficent in a pre-industrial agracultrual society. For example, pre-civil war southern united states was probably the most cost-effective producer of raw agracultural products such as cotten and tobacco in the world at the time; after the civil war, the south couldn't really compete as well with places like India.

On the other hand, a slave-based economy should produce a lot less commerce then a free society; societies like that tend to be much less creative as far as scientific development go, and have much less free-market based growth.

[timbrom]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Oh, come now. Do you really hold that a slave was as productive as a freeman?

Depends on what you mean by productive. Per unit cost, it is/was cheaper to use slaves in some fields (if you'll pardon the pun). The best way to "penalise" the use of slavery is simply to follow history. Have an "abolish slavery" Wonder and then anyone still using thereafter gradually (exponentially?) loses good will with other civilizations until, at the end, you get trade embargoes, border closures and finally war.