What governments is CIV III going to have?

[Solver]

But there could well be more. Anyway, I want more future in the game.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Dalgetti
err ... I am confused ... so there is no social engineering ?

No social engineering. Mixing and matching social engineering ideas was OK in SMAC-style "test-tube societys", far away in a strange solarsystem. But it would be wrong to implement that in Civ-3 as well. Its too close. Too many opposing viewpoints. Also, history isnt over yet either. So any present SE-viewpoints on (for example) capitalism as the one-and-only savior "golden calf", can feel old & obsolete very quickly.

Balancing the excisting six Civ-3 government-types (despotism, monarchy, republic, nationalism, communism and democracy) its hard enough at it is, without complicate it further with SE-style mix & match values/ideas. I hope they emphesize gameplay and game-balance before 100% realism (whatever the latter is).

anyway , isn't nationalism a politically correct word for Nazism?

Not necessarily. Look at the Israelis - they seems pretty nationalistic, but one could hardly call them nazis.

Seriously speaking, I think its safe to say that both "nationalism" and "communism" in Civ-3, is represented its idealistic heyday (but still brutal) appearance, assuming that the majority slice of your civ-people actually supports your dictatorial government-choice.

Like 1930 italian fascism, or like 1935 german nazism. If you feel that above is too controversial you can also choose to picture Civ-nationalism as an non-specific hive-style society: Total law & order control, fanatic youth-indoctrination, total cooperation (and with quite big support amongst most people), but no indeviduality and no respect for indevidual human lifes, of course.

[Sabre2th]

Originally posted by Dalgetti
isn't nationalism a politically correct word for Nazism?

na·tion·al·ism (nsh-n-lzm, nshn-)
n.
1. Devotion to the interests or culture of one's nation.

2. The belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals.

3. Aspirations for national independence in a country under foreign domination.

[korn469]

No social engineering. Mixing and matching social engineering ideas was OK in SMAC-style "test-tube societys", far away in a strange solarsystem. But it would be wrong to implement that in Civ-3 as well. Its too close. Too many opposing viewpoints. Also, history isnt over yet either. So any present SE-viewpoints on (for example) capitalism as the one-and-only savior "golden calf", can feel old & obsolete very quickly.

ok ralf you continue your long history of contradicting yourself to prove a rather bad point...that the government system is superior to the SE...which is wrong

civ3 should have a full range of options that include government styles, economic systems, etc...civ3 needed to build upon the SE system and refine and improve its ideas, there should have been as much improvement in SE from SMAC to civ3 as what there was in trade from civ2 to civ3...instead civ3 regresses, it falls back from the high water mark that SE was in representing societies

let me take this point by point

*mixing and matching is exactly what happens in real life...you cannot divide governments into seven things and say that is how it is
*to say that since SE can represent hundreds of government forms that there and that not a single one of them is correct because of too many viewpoints makes any argument about your perfect seven governments moot...firaxis will have to set an arbitrary number on both the governments and SE, neither of those numbers will be completely correct and each will have points that both support the numbers firaxis assigns and rejects those same numbers
*the history isn't over argument is irrelevant...civ3 is a game about history that is over...otherwise civ3 might as well include intergalactic starcrusiers and supernova missiles because to quote you "history isn't over yet"
*about view points changing...history isn't changing just our interpretation of it is...this argument also says that since we might reinterpret history that we can't use the government either because those views will "old & obsolete very quickly"

Balancing the excisting six Civ-3 government-types (despotism, monarchy, republic, nationalism, communism and democracy) its hard enough at it is, without complicate it further with SE-style mix & match values/ideas. I hope they emphesize gameplay and game-balance before 100% realism (whatever the latter is).

once again your government system fails you ralf

SE is superior to the government system because it is easier to balance...impossible you say?

using the government system each government has to be balanced when it is compared to other governments...so that means you have to balance six governments at once

with SE you only have to balance three independent factors at once, free market compared to planned economies compared to green economies in SMAC...so if it is at least twice as difficult to balance the government system

basically in civ3 governments are just as much mix and match as what SE is...switch to fundy to fight, demo to research...it is the exact same principle but not as refined as SE

i have two points and a conclusion

*the government system is inferior in every single way to SE
*since virtually every aspect of civ3 is improving, SE needed to be improved to match the quality of the rest of the game
*therefore by using the government system firaxis made that the weakest part of the game and the part most in need of an overhaul

the government system isn't balanced, it offers few choices, very few strategies exist for it, it isn't realistic, it isn't fun, it isn't emersive, it is even more arbitrary than SE, it is more likely to be reinterpreted than SE, it is the bane of civ3, it is the ugly smelly vile cancer that needs to be cut out by firaxis before it kills the entire game

p.s. i hate the civ2 government system
p.p.s. SE is ten times better

Seriously speaking, I think its safe to say that both "nationalism" and "communism" in Civ-3, is represented its idealistic heyday (but still brutal) appearance, assuming that the majority slice of your civ-people actually supports your dictatorial government-choice.

nationalism isn't a big brother dictatorship...nationalism is the force that binds a certain group together and it is what breaks empires apart...austria-hungry, the USSR, yugoslavia to name a few

Sabre2th your definition is right on the mark...nationalism shouldn't be the firaxis implementation of a nazi dictatorship

while nationalism was a force hitler exploited, france was also nationalistic and they didn't have a brutal dictatorship (till germany conquered them) nor did they try to gas an entire ethnic group

nationalism is probably the number one reason that the united states lost the vietnam war

to me having nationalism as a type of government shows the overall weakness of the government system...nationalism should be an SE choice not a complete definition of a government...because both federal republics (like the usa) and centrally controlled police states (like nazi germany) can both be very nationalistic

[Zealot]

Originally posted by Dalgetti
anyway , isn't nationalism a politically correct word for Nazism?

Well, Nazism stands for National Socialism. It's pretty much like Mussolini's Fascism.

[korn469]

Available later in the game, Nationalism is analogous to the ideology of early nineteenth century Europe. Think Napoleon here. To switch to Nationalism your culture rating must be quite high. The benefit of Nationalism is that you can mobilize your economy for war or peace. Mobilizing for war halves the cost of all military units and improvements, but doubles all others. Once mobilized for war, you must select an enemy. You cannot switch out of a wartime economy until the war ends.

that is from the pc.ign article...it doesn't exactly sound like national socialism to me

[Mister Pleasant]

Hey Sabre2th, before you "shudder" at CTP2, let me just say that CTP2+MedMod2 is the standard by which Civ3 will be judged - and that's a tough nut to crack.

As for Civ3's choice of governements, well, I think the CTP series took the standard civ model for governments as far as it can be taken. I would have much prefered Social Engineering. But instead we'll get a substandard version of CTP2's gov system.

As for the future govs in CTP, I'd say we live in a Corporate Republic here in the USA - making CR a contemporary government. Ergo, it should be in Civ3. I'd point out that Technocracy and Direct Democracy might not be so outre either.

Wish Civ3 was a bit less conservative. (If it is a conservative sequel, will it be a compasionately conservative sequel? The George W. Bush of the Civ genre?) Hope Firaxis leaves open room to add govs in a text file or whatever.

[Sabre2th]

Mister Pleasant: I have played CTP and CTP2 extensively, both with MedMod and without. While I think MedMod2 made it a much better game, I prefer the original civ style to Craptivision's approach. Let me shudder if I want to.

[Mister Pleasant]

Out of curiosity, Sabre2th, what about the CTP series's approach did you object to? My major objection to CTP was that lackivision essentially released a development platform and called it a game. Of course, my major objection to Firaxis (ala SMAC) was that it was nigh impossible to modify in truly interesting ways. Again, I hope Civ3 allows us to add governments. (Hear that Firaxis?)

[Sabre2th]

I don't really know how to say it. I guess it was just the whole "feel" of the game.

[Sabre2th]

Also - I'm almost 100% sure governments will be editable in civ3. Firaxis has said that just about everything will be available through the editors.

[lockstep]

civ3 should have a full range of options that include government styles, economic systems, etc...civ3 needed to build upon the SE system and refine and improve its ideas, there should have been as much improvement in SE from SMAC to civ3 as what there was in trade from civ2 to civ3...instead civ3 regresses, it falls back from the high water mark that SE was in representing societies

Korn469, while Social Engineering felt like 'SciFi' in a way for me and Firaxis may have decided not to include it in Civ3 because of similar reasons, I have to agree to your argumentation. I still feel uneasy when envisioning societies like 'Demo/Green/Knowledge' in Civ, but SE offers far more interesting choices then the Civ governments. (And isn´t good gameplay exactly about that?)

nationalism should be an SE choice not a complete definition of a government

It may be foolish but I´m still hoping that 'Nationalism' is some kind of ordinance, edict or whatever you´d like to name it. And no, I can´t recall that Firaxis confirmed Nationalism as a government.

[tniem]

Originally posted by lockstep
korn469, while Social Engineering felt like 'SciFi' in a way for me and Firaxis may have decided not to include it in Civ3 because of similar reasons, I have to agree to your argumentation. I still feel uneasy when envisioning societies like 'Demo/Green/Knowledge' in Civ,

You wouldn't need choices of the SMAC scifi variety, instead you would have choices that would make sense for our history so far on earth. Examples of this would be:

Representation: King or Dictatorship / Republic / True Democracy (equal say on all issues)

Economy: Serfs / Mercantilism / Capitalism / Planned

Belief: Religion / Freedom / Nationalistic

You would then pick and choose.

Monarchy would be King, Serf, Religion. U.S. Democracy would be Republic, Capitalism, Freedom. Soviet Communism would be Dictatorship, Planned, and Nationalistic. They would all fit plus you would have so many more options.

[korn469]

here are a few more

governments

anarchy
absolute monarch
constitutional monarch
despotism
direct democracy
fuedal lord
ogliarchy
representative democracy (republic)
theocracy
totalitarian

economic systems

barter
communism
fuedalism
laize-fair market
mercantalism
regulated market
socialism

ideology

imperialism
isolationism
marxisms
capitalism
fundamentalism
nationalism

then you could throw in a couple decree/mandates/edicts/ordinances per choice

so you could have three or four categories with a few choices in each (a default choice and then three others)

each category would have a few decrees (but you could only have one decree in effect at once)

for example:

totalitarian you could choose between secret police (spies double the military's police ability) forced labor/labor camps (increased productivity but more unhappy people) or nothing

then certain ones would have special effects, like a republic would have a senate etc

that is how i'd love to see the SE system evolve

[Maniac]

A small response...

Indeed. I agree with korn469. It really isn’t so hard to create some abstract SE choices that can be applied to the entire time span of human civilization. It can be done with four categories, just as in SMAC. In fact, I am creating a SMAC scenario using these categories and it works pretty fine.

The first category is Political Structure. All empires in history have that, a political structure. The choices could range from Centralist over Federal to Confederate. All centralist empires in history try to have higher control over their populace through police and the military, and try to convert their citizens to their culture. However, this tactic tended to provoke a lot of resistance in large empires, such as the Persian, thus creating more unhappy citizens due to your number of cities. Also, if you lack the technology for good communication and transportation, such an empire becomes very inefficient, which became the downfall of the Soviet Union. The same counts for confederate, but then in reverse; they can support larger empires, but at the cost of culture promotion and citizen control.

The second category is Political or Intellectual Freedom. Empires can be very tolerant and promote political liberalism (a term that has its origin in the 18th century, but one that can be applied to all history). This makes citizens happier and increases your research, but lessens the control over your citizens. On the other side you have totalitarian ‘SMAC Police State’ and fanatic religious ‘SMAC fundamentalism’ empires, which both try to gain control over your citizens, with a mix of physical punishment and mental indoctrination. Needless to say, this brainwashing reduces your research speed.

After the two political categories come two similar economic categories, of which the first one is Economic Structure. This determines how large economic unions are compared to political unions.

If you have few communication and transportation technology, your economic unions will probably be smaller, or at most equal, to your political union (or in other words, your empire). This system can be called Manorialist. This system doesn’t harvest the full economic and production capacity of your empire, and as a consequence has serious penalties.
When better commmunication and transportation technology came available the size of the economic union could expand, even beyond the size of your empire. Then states adopted several tactics, ranging from a closed protectionist system to an open trading system. Protectionist systems protects your own economy and culture, so you could say this makes your own citizens happier, but it reduces the flow of better technology to your country, reducing tech advancement. The opposite counts for an open system. It increases tech advancement and economic development, but your citizens are less protected, and they become unhappy. This last thing can be observed in anti-globalization protests...

The fourth and last category is Economic Freedom. If there is few economic freedom, in other words, if almost everything is planned by the state, you have a communist economy. Unless it’s badly organized, such as the USSR did with their Centralist structure, it should increase production. Of course it reduces economic innovation practically to nil, reducing technological development. The other extreme is laissez-faire free market. This seriously increases your research, but you only control a fraction of your production.

Optionally, one could also include a ‘Values’ category, with values such as Environmentalism, Wellfare, Power, Knowledge, Wealth, etcetera, etcetera, but those are actually just further extentions of the style the player is playing anyway.

And to make the thing perfectly complete, one could, besides a SMAC-like Social Engineering system, also include the Social Interaction system of the Joker. Last time I heard of him (a year ago, I think), he should be working on FreeCiv.

I think with these categories you can roughly represent every political and economic system and empire in all history.
Just to name a few:
Feudalism: Totalitarian confederate manorialist planned, controlled by land nobles
Fascism: Totalitarian centralist? Protectionist free market, controlled by military?
USSR: Totalitarian centralist protectionist planned, controlled by I don’t know, the party, the military
Many modern Western countries: Democratic open free market

Those are all pretty modern examples, but it also applies to ancient empires. So would Athens certainly be on the democratic side of the political freedom scale. Note that democracy doesn’t refer here to ‘everyone voting’, but rather political liberalism. Egypt with its strong religious component would be totalitarian. Note again that ‘totalitarian’ doesn’t refer to ‘one person ruling’. Surely dictators can follow and have followed a liberal course. As have people democratically elected to be totalitarian (Hitler is a fine example, or all modern right conservative parties for that matter).

I don’t have enough historical knowledge to know which states were centralist and which were confederate, but I think this is the category of which is most obvious that it can be applied to all of history.

All of Europe was manorialist during the Dark Ages, and I guess every empire which grew too large for its technological level. Protectionism is as old as civilization, though again I can’t name an ancient example. A historian present? European renaissance mercantilism is a perfect example though. I have no idea about Open. But really, every empire that traded with its neighours falls under one of these categories.

Greek and Phoenician cities were certainly free market with all their traders. And the earliest civilized Mesopotamian villages were rather collectivist. Communism is as old as humanity.


Of course SE isn’t going to be in Civ3, but I hope I convinced some people, Ralf for example, SE can be applied on earth’s history, and not only in SMAC test-tube systems. After all, all states in history were kind of ‘test-tubes’. Through natural selection the best system for each time and place survived. I say, time and place, because the best system changes seen the circumstances. So indeed, now we think of free market as the best system, because it brings us technological progress. In other times, when we just need to survive, or bring our infrastructure to an already existing technological level, we will see Planned as the best system. I just want to say that, although our point of view of a certain system can change, the effects of that system will never change. This in response to your comment:

So any present SE-viewpoints on (for example) capitalism as the one-and-only savior "golden calf", can feel old & obsolete very quickly.

Signing off,
M@ni@c