Advanced Governments

[Deornwulf]

After playing SMAC and CTP2, I was dissappointed by the step backward to only 5 government models offered in Civ III. The simplistic functions of the governments only allow for a change in military support, use of militia, a tile bonus for gold production, a tile penalty for food production, and the controversial levels of corruption. It becomes pointless to attempt to add any other governments via the editor or mod since the differences become negligible or end up creating an uber-government.

Government needs to play a larger role within the scope of the game. There should be advanced forms of each government type. The democracy of the Greeks hardly resembles what we call democracy today. Communism as was practiced in Russia was not exactly what Marx had in mind.

Some possible added functions for government could include

1. The separation of waste (shields) and corruption (gold) as levels affected by government choice. Ancient despots may have had rampant corruption by some of them were quite productive in terms of industrial output.
2. Special units for certain governments.
3. Special improvements for certain governments.
4. Size of cities, number of cities, and distance from capital.
5. Empire wide bonuses/penalties to production.
6. Empire wide bonuses to happiness/unhappiness.
7. Empire wide bonuses to food production.
8. Bonuses/penalties on researching certain advances (Advances would need to be categorized).
9. Bonuses/penalties to the effectiveness of city improvements.
10. Bonuses/penalties to pollution.
11. Special actions to be used in trade and/or diplomacy(like "broker peace deal")

By adding new functions, more government models become possible without the danger of any one of them being the "perfect" government for every situation.

[Libertarian]

I'd like to see a libertarian government.

[ZenCTP]

Perils of Libertarian government

I'm afraid a Libertarian government type would probably violate Deornwulf's closing comment .

[sophist]

Yeah, I thought the SMAC governments were really cool. That game had a lot more... imagination than this one, despite its flaws.

Originally posted by Libertarian
I'd like to see a libertarian government.

How would that work? I foresee a quick drop in commerce simply because in civ3 commerce means gov't tax revenues. People would get unhappy more quickly due to large cities. I could see a production bonus, though.

I'd like to see this maybe melded with a crypto-anarchist type of government. Perhaps enabled by an Internet technology (or simply with Internet as precursor).

[Cavalier_13]

Originally posted by Libertarian
I'd like to see a libertarian government.

Is that the government type that has huge propaganda to make itself look perfect when in reality it is flawed?

Cavalier

[david101]

Is that the government type that has huge propaganda to make itself look perfect when in reality it is flawed?

nah, that's capitalism, an economic system.

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Libertarian
I'd like to see a libertarian government.

In Civ terms, a Libertarian government would mean:

Tax rate 0 because "all tax is theft".
Science rate 0 (since it is really just a percentage of tax revenues spent on research, and "all tax is theft"). All your science points would come from scientists (see below).
Buildings would not cost you anything to maintain, because they would not belong to the government.
You would have no military units, but any tile your citizens were working would defend itself like a Civ2 Guerilla unit and your city would defend itself like a stack of them (equal to the number of specialist citizens) - because everybody would be packing.
You would have no control over what tile your workers worked, what type (if any) of specialist your citizens became, or what tech to research next or what your cities built. Those who choose to become scientists would generate science points despite science rate = 0.
You would have no control over resource trading - your citizens working the tiles containing them would represent the private owners and they'd sell to the highest bidder.

It would be great to live under Libertarianism in real life, but I can't see it being much fun to "rule" a Libertarian government in a Civ-type game.

Actually, the same goes for this theoretical "true communism" people bring up all the time, which is in fact anarcho-sydicalism. It would probably be modelled as above, except every place it says "private" substitute "communal", and you would not be there to see it because, as the embodiment of the state, you would have "withered away".

[N. Machiavelli]

Originally posted by david101


nah, that's capitalism, an economic system.

You seem to have it confused with Liberalism, a system of delusion. As personified by the lovible antics of Ralph Nader and the Green party.

[The Eliminator]

Before today's "liberals" hijacked the term liberal, and forced real liberals to call themselves libertarians.

If you could have a libertarian government in Civ, there would be absolutely no corruption, and the "government" per se would not have gold and science, but instead your citizens would have it all - which in Civ terms would mean that *you* would benefit from it all. I agree though, it wouldn't be good for the game because you would get at least 10 techs per turn. The game would be over shortly after you revolted to libertarian.

Even further, you would have to choose between Friedman's Libertarianism or Boaz's Libertarianism - and that hack Boaz puts religion into everything.

[squeeze truck]

Originally posted by Barnacle Bill



It would be great to live under Libertarianism in real life, but I can't see it being much fun to "rule" a Libertarian government in a Civ-type game.

Don't forget that food output (and worker productivity) would drop, because half the agricultural tiles would be growing pot.

[squeeze truck]

Thoughts on government

Since we're all daydreaming about realistic (or "fun to play") governments, here is what I would like to see.

1. Discard all current government types.

2. Include a "government screen" that will let you build your own government in a modular fashion. Available modules will be determined by tech level, civ, or whatever. Each module has an "effect" on the workings of the society, most of which will be benificial. Each module will require money to maintain.

Modules can include:

A royal family
A legislature
A judiciary
A military
A police force
A cabal of religious elders
A tax-collection service
A board of education
The polpulace (representing democratic elections)
etc.

Most modules would be required to be present in the government to function. For example, if you don't have a military module, you can't pay soldiers and have to rely on militia. No education board means libraries and universities can't be maintained.
Each new unit or library would increase this modules annual budget.

Next, organize the modules into a tree, to determine which module controls which. Position in the tree determines the ammount of political influence of said module. This could provide enormous flexibility in designing government types.

So a democracy, for example, might have one or two popularly elected legislatures at the top. So all the bonuses associated with the populace and legislatures would be most strongly felt.
(higher popularity, happier citizens, higher war-weariness, etc.)
All other modules would be dependent on one or the other legislature modules, and their bonuses would be diminished or non-existant.

Some more possible examples:

*Soviet Communism

Premier
|
Party controlled Legislature
| |
Police Military
|
School System

Since the population does not elect this legislature, it can ignore annoying popular opinion that might hinder the state's ability to make war. Since the Military and Police are near the top, civil unrest is very low and the military is large and well-trained.


*Fundamentalism

Religious_Elders
| |
Education Judiciary


Since the Elders are running this government, this civ recieves a huge boost to culture, and can produce religious structures at a lower cost. It is also very popular with religious citizens, meaning a boost to happiness (so long as the government follows God's laws). Strong and well-funded Education and Judicial departments mean that all citizens can read the holy books, and divine justice is dispensed quickly and efficiently.


It would be possible to have 30-40 such governmental bereaus that could be organized any thousands of ways, so every player can tune his government to suit his personality and playing style.

[xane]

So a democracy, for example, might have one or two popularly elected legislatures at the top

Actually that's a "republic", a "democracy" has no elected representatives as all elections would be directly from the population.

However, I think your idea is a good one, but you have to consider that there would be a transistion state if you wanted to change any one part. For example, eliminating or re-introducing a monarchy doesn't always work smoothly and often requires spending a few years in anarchy or despotism.

[Libertarian]

Inasmuch as the (only) role of government in Libertaria is to secure the rights of its citizens using whatever defensive and retaliatory force necessary, and inasmuch as the entire Constitution of Libertaria consists of a single statement, "Every citizen shall be guaranteed freedom from coercion", and inasmuch as all citizens are volunteers who have freely and willfully consented to be governed — I see a libertarian government in Civ3 manifesting something like this:

• No corruption, since government has no power to offer special privilege in exhange for monetary consideration (there is no legislation).
• All military units and buildings would be gratis, since that is the sole outlay from citizens' contract fees.
• Economic improvements and techs would be half-price, since the noncoercive free-market would ensure constant economic activity.
• Luxury resource happiness factors are double, since citizens are free to pursue their own happiness in their own way.
• Aggressive war would result in immediate revolt in every city, while defensive war would result in immediate WLTK days in every city.

Those are a few things.

[Barnacle Bill]

squeeze truck:

Your idea is similar in principle (if not in execution) to how it works in EU2. There are a series of sliders covering different aspects of your regime - how centralized, how socially stratified, how economically free, religiously tolerant, etc... There are 10 possible settings on each slider. Every country starts with some particular setting based on where they were historically at that date (EU2 starts much later thab Civ - 1419AD). The settings have very real affects in-game regarding income, stability, effectiveness of different parts of your military, etc... and tend to be trade-offs. You can basically change 1 slider 1 step every 10 years. Additionally, EU2 uses a powerful event scripting language which, among other things, can change these sliders outside the normal opportunity to manually adjust them. Some events are random, some set, and some dependent on other events. Some events offer you a choice - choose "a" and your stability goes down because the noblity is pissed, choose "b" to dodge the stability hit and your society gets more socially stratified & less centralized (in that period, centralization didn't mean how modern Americans take it - big government vs individual freedom - but rather a modern state vs feudal quasi-anarchy). So, while government types with names a la Civ don't exist, there is effectively a very large array of custom governments possible.

Libertarian:

Your description is somewhat at odds with my understanding of Libertarianism per L. Neil Smith, etc... My understanding is that the one rule is "No one may initiate force against another", and it applies to the government, too. Therefore, the government may not acquire anything except by voluntary donation, not demand any services whatsoever. Nor would the government have any monopoly on courts, public works, etc... as all these would be privately owned. I suppose the government could get a business loan and create these things and charge user fees to those who choose to use them, but it would be on an equal footing with private companies and would in effect be just another corporation. If you wanted a regular military, you'd have to either use the profits from those non-monopolistic government businesses or hold a telethon, raffle off F-16 rides, whatever. Not so far fetched, I suppose, much of the stock in China's privatized arms industry is owned by the Peoples Liberation Army and the profits from overseas arms sales go into the military budget. So, as the government, in a Civ-type game you would basically have no control over anything unless the game somehow modelled a non-coercive funding scheme (like postulating x% of the total commerce gets spent on tickets for the government's lottery and y% of that is used for paying out jackpots so what's left is your income).

Classical Liberalism is not exactly the same thing as modern Libertarianism, though. Kissing cousins, maybe. Instead of the "non-initiation of force" rule, it was based on the ideas that (a) every individual possesses certain "natural rights", (b) the purpose of government is to protect those rights, so it can't violate them, and (c) the only limitations on those rights are those necessary to protect the rights of others. That's the theory. In practical terms, it means at a minimum that taxes are OK as long as all the revenue is spent on things the government needs to perform its function of protecting the rights of the governed - i.e. taxes for defense, police, courts & corrections are OK, taxes for redistribution of income, social safety nets, middle class entitlements, corporate welfare, regulating business on various pretexts, or even "infrastructure" (except as needed by the military, police, courts & corrections) are not OK. A number of things besides taxes which are anathema to Libertarians would be OK under Classical Liberalism - mandatory military service (active or reserve), jury duty, the ancient Anglo-Saxon duty to participate in the "hue & cry" (in essence, mandatory posse duty), mandatory possession of the means to perform those mandatory duties (like militia laws mandating the arms which each citizen must supply at his own expense), possibly even public funding of education and mandatory attendance.

A Classical Liberal government is more readily modelled in Civ3 than Libertarianism, since it can at least do some things Civ governments do. However, in Civ3, since the government under all forms controls the means of production and pays maintenance on factories and controls where/how every citizen works, all the governments in Civ as currently programmed are different flavors of Socialism. The government controls everything - the only thing at issue is who controls the government: a Dictator under Despotism, a King under Monarchy, an elected (perhaps indirectly elected) legislature (or upper-class Oligarchy, depending on your interpretation) under Republic, an oligarchy made up of Communist Party members under Communism or the majority of adult citizens under Democracy.

[The Eliminator]

In a nutshell, Libertarian governments have one responsibility - to protect their people. This is done through courts (enforcement of contracts), police (prevention of others from damaging your property, rights, etc.), and protection from outside threats (other countries) by way of a professional army - absolutely no conscription, as conscription is coercion.

The government basically enforces the "rules" by which we choose to play by.

-------------------
From xane,
"Actually that's a "republic", a "democracy" has no elected representatives as all
elections would be directly from the population."

Ever hear of Parliamentary Democracy??