How would you impliment social classes in civ4?

[Heraclitus]

Want to hear your ideas.

[wodan11]

Define "social classes".

[rah]

Well you already have soldiers, workers, city population, specialists, great people, and the ruler. What else do you need?

[Blaupanzer]

Excepting the player, who is a god-like class member; the system has three classes: great people, most everyone else, and slaves. No political or economic middle class ever emerges. The legislatures have no initiative power and no veto (as implemented in earlier versions). These latter were meant to be indicative of a middle class with property ownership and a voting franchise. Not present in Civ 4, but could be developed modeled on older versions.

As to economic classes, the only indication the player has is that he/she owns everything. Therefore, everyone else is just a pawn. In RL, this situation leads to periodic disruptive revolts of the peasants, bourgeoisie, and industrial labor sorts. In the game, not reflected. Slaves will revolt if the civic is used, but that is more than a little contrived.

[Heraclitus]

Mind you guys I am working on a rather radical mod of civ, so don't be afriad to put out interesting and really "out there" suggestions.


I have toyed with making the player's civ more powerfull than the AI civs but giving him less control over it. In this way the game is less about we Arabs vs. the world and more Alexander the Great vs. the people, Pericles and the Persians. Either of these can be an ally against the other but the rigid division of "my" civ and "their" civ goes away.


An example of this is my current struggle to impliment effective governors and political forces. I have already a place in system where you get a efficency penalty for every city over one in which "you" control production (this varies with civcs). If you give the task to governors that are loyal you can command them like Civ4 city automation and get a bonus. If you choose the best possible governor (who is by my code basically the alternative leader of your civ) for the job your bonus on production, culture, gold in the city is nearly 50% and you don't pay any maitenance! But the city may not say yours unless you keep good realtions with your rival...lesser governors can also revolt or just wait there looking for an opportunity to betray you... so loyalty is important if you want stability.

[-Jrabbit]

Off the top of my head (and as a true non-expert in IV)...

Seems like there could be two middle classes within the current structure -- citizens and specialists. Redfaces could be seen as degrading control over those classes. Maybe the presence of redfaces could affect the efficiency of specialists?

You could also associate certain techs with the rise of the middle class -- shopkeepers (grocers) and tradesmen (metal workers), for instance. Perhaps construction workers for infrastructure could figure in -- esp. in the later game, as these tasks were generally handled by slaves or indentured underclasses through most of history. Seems like it would be important to keep in mind that there was no true middle class until pretty late in the game.

Just throwing some random thoughts out there, which is about all I'm good for...

[Lord Avalon]

Would it be possible to add another Great Person? A Great Governor, which you could settle in a city to keep it loyal and add bonuses to hammers and maybe gold, and reduce maintenance.

I am thinking of MOO, where some leaders were military, others were administrative.

Of course then you'd have to figure out what would generate GGv pts.

[Dinner]

Well you already have soldiers, workers, city population, specialists, great people, and the ruler. What else do you need?

That's my line of thinking.

[Kaosium]

I always thought of the specialists as my 'middle class.' It starts small, but when things start really rocking economically it's much more important than my resource-gatherers working the fields and mines.

[Dinner]

If you make the game to complicated then fewer people will want to play it.

[Heraclitus]

If you make the game to complicated then fewer people will want to play it.

I am making a mod not civ5. If you dont like the mod dont play it when its released

[Blaupanzer]

I am making a mod not civ5.

City loyalty is not a reflection of classes, but of cultural and administrative binding. Spies could work internally to assure loyalty with a penalty (negative loyalty points) if caught. ("You don't trust me," they cry. "Just being sure in the name of security," you answer.)

Suspect you'd need an internal measure of relative loyalty of the chief governor, the other governors, your citizens, citizens of yours marked as some other culture (say in a captured Persian city). Then you'd need a mechanism (loyalty points?) to affect these within your state and within your neighbor states, with rewards for good implementation and punishments (secession revolts) for bad implementation. All this would also need to be viewable on some screen. With guilds would come an addition to each city: labor orgs, with banking would come legislatures who absorb loyalty points and have veto power on spending expanded to veto power on war/demand for peace at Constitution, spending controls (would have to be defined) with Democracy. Also with Democracy would come the relative independence of all governors, not just the chief one. Each of these would require and would be susceptable to loyalty point spending. Mass media leads to spending our loyalty points on the fourth estate, but we can create a propaganda bureau to really increase the points available. Here I've used the legislature and other governors to represent an emerging middle class with a voting franchise. Just thinkin'.

[Heraclitus]

I want social classes to determine the power of political factions, since class is the only relevant one civ4 dosent give us. The other two are religion and nationality.

[-Jrabbit]

I like the idea of political factions within a city and/or civ, esp. in populist government civics. For instance, it could be used to mediate the advantage of early Republic.

[rah]

it could be used to mediate the advantage of early Republic.

What the heck does that even mean?