Civil War Discussion

[Velociryx]

My thoughts on Civs and Civil War:

First, *outstanding* topic of discussion, and truly something that is missing from the current Civ-model.

Second, I think it could quite nicely tie into the Protectorate notion mentioned on the "Disenchanted" thread, thus, Civil Wars could fall into two categories:

1) General unhappiness/Culturally diverse civs with clearly divided population groups (ie - the western half of my civ, formerly cities of France, stand a MUCH higher chance of breaking away than my core).

2) A semi-Autonomous Protectorate, long tired of the burdensome taxes I'm imposing on them tries to gain their independence. (13 Colonies).

In either case, the breakaways would need the following stuff to mount a reasonable chance for succeeding:

A) A prominant leader (bobbing head) all their own
B) Outside assistance - The breakaway state should *immediately* use whatever resources are necessary to get a MPP with one or more of my current rivals, and the nearer to the action and larger, the better!
C) The breakaway state should have special rules governing terms of peace with the state they broke from (and in all liklihood, they would rather be absorbed fully by their MPP allies than be absorbed back into my fold--else they'd not have broken away in the first place).
D) Relaxed rules for using conscription/draft for X-number of turns so they can mount a credible military to back up their bid for independence, along with special "revloter status" construction costs on new units for a like number of turns (as the upstarts scramble and scrounge any and all available resources to fight off the Evil Empire)
E) Special "Revolter" status units that get a combat bonus when defending their homeland, but suffer penalties (or at least no bonuses) when counter-attacking into the territory of their former masters.


Hmmm....come to think of it, one thing that'd really be cool if they were to implement/bring back Civil Wars is to have a "Time Warp" option for players to play. The game actually starts somewhere in the Industrial Age, and the player gets control of a rebel faction, trying to stand against a well-established Empire...now THAT'D be cool!

-=Vel=-

[Grrr]

Hmmm....come to think of it, one thing that'd really be cool if they were to implement/bring back Civil Wars is to have a "Time Warp" option for players to play. The game actually starts somewhere in the Industrial Age, and the player gets control of a rebel faction, trying to stand against a well-established Empire...now THAT'D be cool!

That should be easy enough to create in a scenario, however, I see the bobbing head to be the biggest nuisance!

[Captain]

Have a look here for a quick step by step of how you could "be the rebel".

civil war & domestic politics - recapturing the throne

It's near the bottom. Second one I wrote there.

Basically the idea is that there's a chance your civ could revolt and you won't be in control of the resulting gov. You'll be a lone rebel unit running around trying to regain support and retake your throne.

Of course, in that thread, I don't know how the %chance of recapturing throne would work yet. Just that you need to get back to the capital and then you get a chance to recapture.


Grrr!!:

True, but isn't this making a "Standard Cookie Cutter Template".

Not sure what you mean. My sig is just me complaining about genetically hardcoded unique civ attributes that you start with, instead of your civ gaining those attributes based on the way you choose to play. I never play with UUs or civ attributes.

I just threw in the not-a-full-fledged AI because there might be too many AI's in the game for Firaxis to handle. Of course, it'd be better with a fully functioning one. That was just a compromise for simplicity. Maybe that's a bad idea though?

Velo:

D) Relaxed rules for using conscription/draft for X-number of turns so they can mount a credible military to back up their bid for independence, along with special "revloter status" construction costs on new units for a like number of turns (as the upstarts scramble and scrounge any and all available resources to fight off the Evil Empire)

Yes! That a great idea. Why not "instantly" recruit a few conscripts/regular for defense though? That civ wouldn't have its turn yet so there's no immediate threat, just the quesiton of whethr you can take it back quickly.

) Special "Revolter" status units that get a combat bonus when defending their homeland, but suffer penalties (or at least no bonuses) when counter-attacking into the territory of their former masters.

Gotta disagree with this one - rebels usually aren't much more organized than the former authorities. They usually have support of some of the military so their garrisons would join them already. No need for special extra powerful defensive units. Losing half your army, that's hard enough without entrenching the sides. The military gains (of both sides) at the start of rebellions are usually a bit of back and forth til things settle down or until one side gains the real upper hand.

Plus, since it's enemy territory, you don't get movement bonuses. could be a long war if you've only got infantry.

Besides, you want some chance of recovering your country. Not all civil wars ended in a permanent split (US, France, Russia, England, China... all rejoined).

[Grrr]

Originally posted by Captain
Grrr!!:
Not sure what you mean. My sig is just me complaining about genetically hardcoded unique civ attributes that you start with, instead of your civ gaining those attributes based on the way you choose to play. I never play with UUs or civ attributes.

I just threw in the not-a-full-fledged AI because there might be too many AI's in the game for Firaxis to handle. Of course, it'd be better with a fully functioning one. That was just a compromise for simplicity. Maybe that's a bad idea though?

Bad idea, well that's kind of what I meant. If you say that the AI should not be fully fledged, you are creating a "Cookie Cutter" situation, in which each time the civ will react the same, as by a specific Civil War script. If the civ becomes one of the old ones, it will have personality traits, which lead to different situations. I mean, the Indians will probably try to find a peaceful way of recapturing you, while the Russians will go for all-out-war.

[Captain]

I see your point. Full AI would be best.
But I still think it would be better than nothing. I mean, even a warmonger semi-AI rebel civ would be better than no civil war option.

I think the rebel civ should be on it's own though. It should be it's own unique civ and not join some preexisting civ.

Think in history, rebels didn't usually want to JOIN another country, they wanted to get control of their OWN - they just happen to have only partial control now. (spanish civil war, USA, England, China, Japan, Russia, France, Sudan, etc...)
Or to form their own unique civ free from ALL other civ's domination (the Basques and Spain, chechnya & russia, Eritrea & Ethiopia, Algeria & France, India & GB, etc...)

btw, rebel civs should be immune to your culture and vice-versa. you should only be able to conquer them back or threaten the AI to hand them over.

[TinCow]

Originally posted by Captain
Not all civil wars ended in a permanent split (US, France, Russia, England, China... all rejoined).

Sorry for being a picky History buff, but Taiwan's not exactly chopped liver. China certainly doesn't consider itself fully united.

Anyway, this has given me an idea. What if cities (colonies) linked to the capital only via water (i.e. islands or distant detached colonies) had a greater likelihood of revolting than cities connected by roads? Of course this would still require one of the above triggers to result in Civil War, but when it comes to determining which cities defect this could be a factor. I think the rebel civ would have a much greater chance of surviving if it centered itself on a different island/continent than the parent civ. Other cities not on this island/continent would also have a chance of rebelling, but perhaps give the ones there a much greater chance. It would be interesting to have have one of your medium sized islands revolt, with only one city remaining loyal and then have to defend that city as a toehold until you can ship reinforcements back over.

To make this more realistic, this added chance of rebellion on the island would only exist if it only had harbor contact (or no contact) with the mother civ. A road or an airport would give it a the same chance as every other city.

[Ghengis-Sean]

first, this is *definitely* a good topic.

I agree 150% with velociryx when says that we should distinguish between revolts, internal political movement, and independence movements.

Political Revolts;
These should take place inside an empire and be spread out randomly among discontented cities. In this case rebels should have a form of government different than their original. Democracy to Communist, Monarchy to Republic, so on and so forth. Also you (or the AI) should be able to use espionage to encourage revolutions.

I also agree with the captain that Rebel civ's first goal should be to kill off the other half of the civ. If this can be done then the rebels win, the rebels goverment prevails and then the entire civ reverts to its original form, unless the rebels and the goverment make peace in which case a new civ is born.

Independence Movements.

cities on the fringe, or recently captured cities should from time to time revolt and form a new civ. These guys shouldn't aggresively seek to replace the government or join another civOf course cities sometimes defect, but I'm not talking about defection, I'm saying an entierly new civ. Somebody else brought up the idea that their should be a subset of splinter groups for each civ, I think this is spot on.

Also instead of cities defecting how about rebel armies? or rebel leaders? For each city in civil disorder how about a chance for each point of unhappy populace to spawn a rebel unit, then if the rebels capture a city then the ball gets rolling?

Also also (this almost a complete aside) in despotism and communism what happens to the population points when you rush build? In game logic they become unhappy and hit the road, well shouldn't they turn up somewhere like neighboring civs? If cities are connecting by a road net or harbors then everytime you ruch build a certain amount of that poulation loss should disipate, go to foreign countries, or possibley spawn rebels.

just some thoughts.

[Bautou]

Originally posted by Ghengis-Sean

Also also (this almost a complete aside) in despotism and communism what happens to the population points when you rush build? In game logic they become unhappy and hit the road, well shouldn't they turn up somewhere like neighboring civs? If cities are connecting by a road net or harbors then everytime you ruch build a certain amount of that poulation loss should disipate, go to foreign countries, or possibley spawn rebels.

That's an interesting idea, sorta like the Civ2 partisan system but maybe beefed up a bit to make them a more relevent factor than they were in Civ2. It could be a useful counter to overusing pop-rushing if you have to fight rebel forces that result.

[Captain]

tincow:
you're right! gotta be more careful. strange that it should slip my mind since I have some heritage from both Taiwan and China. Just making a list too quick I guess. Still, at the time, no one thought China would be as unified as it is now. With all the warlords plus Japan's interference over that half-century, no one would have guessed Sunny's dream would come as close to being fulfilled as it is today. of course commies aren't republics, but hey, it's not a monarchy. Still HK returned to the fold. Who knows what the future holds for the ROC? but definitely not joining Japan!

Ghengis & Bautou:

What about something like a "refugee" unit that gets spawned outside that city (or on your frontier instead).
It would be a "barbarian" unit in that it would belong to no one. Then you could recapture it (like a despot would likely try for), or the enemy AI might "recruit" them into their empire.

It would be just like a worker except less useful. Just good for increasing pop.

Maybe even a general refugee unit, so a city in great danger might spawn refugees, or you could purposefully evacuate and save some of your people. Or allied refugees might come pouring over your borders too!

Or in some cases, "barbarian" partisans get spawned instead of refugees.
Excellent! Then your freedom loving civ could have some incentive for "liberating" those cities from despotic civs since they'd be spawning hostile barb partisans on your border from all their slave-driving!

As for rebel leaders, great idea! you kill the rebel leader, they go passive and you retake the cities. But you should also get a figurehead unit, so if they kill you, they win. The higher the stakes, the more exciting!

[korn469]

Captain

have you played SMAX? it introduced Aliens to alpha centauri, and when a human conquered an alien base, or when an alien conquered a human base, that base went down to size one and two refugee units (i think they were actually colony pods but i don't remember for sure) appeared beside the city, so it is in firaxis's ability to code that in

what i would love to see is in addition to leaders forming armies, if they could lead an army, like if you hit "L" for example a leader could join an army (instead of building an army, or rushing a wonder) and would give all of the units in that army like something between a 25-50% bonus

anyways here is something quite old (march 21 2000) that you can find here

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/001213-2.html

it is how i envisioned civ3 long long ago

The ideas presented here are my ideas for how we should model the decay of a civilization…

Civil Wars: civil wars happen when a group of cities change their allegiance. Listed below are types and causes of civil wars. Though civil wars could happen anytime the chance for a civil war would increase greatly if a civ lost its capital.


*Break-away republics: this type of civil war happens when a group of cities with a similar culture forms a new civ. The effects of this are local to those cities with a similar culture. This process should happen over a very short amount of time, between one and three turns. All units supported by the break-away republics would have a chance of defecting to them, regardless of where they were at the time, and all units supported by the break-away republic inside of their territory would automatically defect to them. All units inside of their territory (only from the civ they are breaking away from, not units from other civs) would have a chance of defecting to them, regardless of where they were supported from. The only exception would be the units supported from the capital.

*Colonial Wars: this type of civil war happens when a group of colonies form a new civ. The effects of this are local to the colonies. This process should happen over an extended period of time, with some of the colonies revolting and then as time passes other colonies join them. All units supported by the colonies would automatically defect to them regardless of where they were. Units inside of their territory would have a chance of defecting to the rebels if they were supported from other colonies that didn’t declare independence. Units supported from normal cities would not have a chance to defect to the colonies even if they were inside of colonial territory.

*Defections: this type of civil war happen when a city, or group of cities (or colonies) switch allegiance to another civ. This would happen if the cities had a similar culture, or similar social engineering settings, or those cities had a very low nationalism. Also a factor would be the ratio of two civs power and wealth, poor weak cities would be more likely to defect to a strong wealthy civ. This would happen in one turn and would be local to just the cities most like the civ they are defecting to. All units supported by the defectors inside of their territory would automatically switch allegiances to them. Units supported by the defectors, but that were inside of the original civs territory would not switch allegiances, and units outside of both the rebels and the original civs territory would have a chance of defecting to the rebels. All other units inside of their territory (only from the civ they are breaking away from, not units from other civs) would have a chance of defecting to them, regardless of where they were supported from. The only exception would be the units supported from the capital.

*Sessionist States: this type of civil war happens when a group of cites with similar ideal settings would declare their independence. There would have to be a great deal of difference between their ideal settings and the rest of the civ’s ideal setting for them to just declare a civil war. However after the capital fell, they would have a great chance of defecting. All of this would happen fairly quickly with all of the cities that are going to defect, defecting over a short period of turns, say less than five. All of this would be localized to the cities with the similar ideal settings. All units supported by the rebels inside of their territory would automatically switch allegiances to them. All units supported by the rebels outside of their territory would have a chance of joining them. All other units inside of their territory (only from the civ they are breaking away from, not units from other civs) would have a small chance (maybe 25%)of defecting to them, regardless of where they were supported from. The only exception would be the units supported from the capital.

Coups: coups happen when your own military units turn against you. Coups are not always violent, and they usually happen fairly quickly, unlike a civil war which can drag on for an extended amount of time. Cities never switch allegiances during a successful coup, but during a less successful coup there might be a few break away cities.

*Ambitious Generals: An ambitious general is when a high morale command unit decides to topple the government. This is very likely to happen where the government isn’t very effective and the people are unhappy and unproductive, the worse the civ is doing the more likely a general is to seize control. Also a better general will be more likely to lead a coup, so if a command unit is green morale they will be less likely to lead a coup than a command unit that has elite morale. All units attached to the command unit will turn against you, the command unit also can effect all of the other command units around it. When a command unit decides to launch a coup, all of the command units close to it does a loyalty check. Basically this should work like psi combat in SMAC on a 1:1 attack defense ratio with no modifiers (except maybe something like polymorphic encryption could act as trance and high morale could act like empath song). If a command unit turns then other command units near it have a chance of turning but the loyalty check is made based on the coup leaders morale. Also if the command unit that launches the coup is based in the capital, the coup has a larger effective radius on recruiting other generals. If the coup manages to capture your king unit then there would be a greater chance of the coup succeeding. The results of this would be one of two things. Either part of your military forces would be hostile towards you (counts as barbarian units) and you would subdue them or the coup would take over. If the coup was successful, then for a few turns the AI would run your cities and then you would play on representing the coup leaders, with the command unit that led the coup becoming your king unit. If the coup is not successful but the renegade general does take over your civ then it is like you have been overran by barbarians.

*Failed State: If at anytime you lose half of your civs power bar in less than ten turns there would be a great chance of your entire military structure revolting against you. The less time it took for your power bar to go down the greater the chance of the military replacing your government with a new one. This would happen in one turn and when it happened it would always be successful, but it wouldn’t always happen. Once again the AI would control your civ for a few turn, change social engineering setting and production to what it thought was acceptable. Then after a few (between 3-10) turns you would be in control of your civ again.

*Hard Liners: Would work in the same manner as an ambitious general, except it would only happen after you change social engineering settings. The more radical the social engineering changes the greater the chance of a coup. The longer you kept a social engineering setting the greater the chance of a coup. If the coup was successful, then not only would the AI take over for a few turns but it would change the social engineering back to what it was originally and the player couldn’t change it for 25 turns. If the coup is not successful but the renegade general does take over your civ then it is like you have been overran by barbarians.

*Rouge Military Units: units should require money for support, and when disbanding a unit it should cost a small amount of money to do so. When military units are not paid then there is a great chance that they will turn into rogue units that act basically like barbarian units. If rogue military units overcome your entire civ, it would be like barbarians overran it and you would not get a second chance.

Popular Uprisings: This is when the people turn against you. Usually not as quick or as organized as a coup or a civil war, this represents the civil strife that constantly tears at your empire.

*Peasant Revolts: this is when unhappy citizens try to seize control of a city. This would happen spontaneously and bad conditions would encourage it. If a peasant revolt happened a number of peasant units would appear in the city and they would fight the military garrison. If the Garrison won the battle the population would go down by one. The size of the peasant army would be based on the size of the city. If the city fell to the peasants it would count as a barbarian city.

*Resistance movement: This is when a city, or a group of cities actively support a guerrilla war against your civ. This would only happen spontaneously with unhappy occupied territories, or if your reputation dropped to dangerously low levels with your people. Cities that support the resistance would have a chance of partisans appearing nearby, and the partisans would have an increased chance of carrying out guerilla activity against the city. This could tie up a large number of military units trying to combat the guerrillas.

*Revolution: a revolution would occur when great changes tug at your empire, especially if your entire civ had a different ideal setting than what you currently had. It would basically have the same effect as a failed state, except it would not always be successful when it occurred. After a revolution you would not be able to change your social engineering setting for 25 turns.

*Student Demonstrations: this would occur in more advanced civs, and would basically be peaceful riots. All production in the city would be cut in half because of student demonstrations. Students would take to the streets in support of a cause, whether it was to end slavery in your civ, or to disband your nuclear arsenal. Only cities with a university would experience student riots. Student demonstrations would end when you appeased the students. If one city had a student demonstration they would quickly spread to all of the other cities with universities. Students would only demonstrate over socially acceptable causes. Military units would no longer cause a set number of drones, but instead military units outside of your civ could trigger student demonstrations. The more peaceful and democratic your civ is the more likely students will demonstrate. Some causes would be, slavery, war, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, a more democratic form government (ie they want you to change your SE setting), greater education spending, greater health spending, starving cities ect. The students would be your civs conscious. Though marshal law could temporarily end student demonstrations this would hurt your civ's reputations and could lead to resistance movements forming.

ok that is just the rough draft for my decay model but here are some new concepts associated with it

culture: though i am still determining what this is in civ terms i think that it basically represents a people's simularities
support: although i believe in a global support budget i believe that units should still have a home city representing where they are from and where their loyalties are
defecting: this is when a unit or a city switch sides to another civ
capital: this is your civs headquaters
colonies: when you found a new city it starts out as a colony, and it takes 50 turns to assimilate that colony into your society...colonies are more likely to spontaneously revolt than normal cities
nationalism: this would be a social engineering parameter like growth, it would partially replace the probe rating it would determine how much your people wanna stay part of your civ
ideal settings: this is the social engineering setting, tax rate, ect that the people want...the more you differ from what the people want the more likely bad things are to happen to you
command unit: a noncombatant unit that lets a player form military units into a stack. players form a stack by attaching military units to the command unit. the command unit gives bonuses to the stack.
king unit: a special command unit that you could only have one of at a time. this represents the player on the map. besides having all of the abilities of a command unit, it would also have other abilities like it would make a city happier if it was in it, it would decrease corruption and lower the likely hood of revolt. losing this unit would be a serious setback to your civ, but you could rebuild your king unit.
peasant units: weak military units for the age, representing a peasant army. they would have the special ability that any number of peasant units could be in a stack without a command unit.
reputation: how your civ is veiwed by other civs and its population. carrying out atrocities against your own people could galvanize them against you.
guerilla activity: partisan units should have some of the special abilities of probe team units besides their other abilities. incite riots and carrout sabotage would be the most likely candidates. partisans, though not the toughest military units they would be problem to an occupying army.

WOW!
it's almost scary
let me say again, i wrote this in march of 2000! about a year and nine months before civ3 came out

[Willem]

Re: Civil War Discussion

Originally posted by TinCow
The civ that these cities join will be determined in the following order:
1) Largest civ that the player has conquered.
2) If player has not conquered any civs, the largest civ that has most recently been eliminated.
3) If no civs have been eliminated, the cities revert to the owners that had them with their highest culture rating.

Or, if a player is using less than 16, one of the unused Civs will be used.

I like the idea of the Civil War, though another post had some good ideas as well. He suggested that you appear somewhere in your empire in the form of a Leader, and you have to make it back and retake your Palace in order to continue your Empire building. I was thinking that you would have to find cities and troops that are loyal to you, and avoid those that aren't, and lead an assault on your "pretender". And if you get killed in the attempt, the game is over.

And if you do succeed, your Empire be a little smaller than it was, since the other Civs will take of advantage of the turmoil and capture a few of the frontier towns. Not a full out war necessarily, just a few weak towns that were easy pickings. Or maybe a reduction in the culture during the conflict so that they become assimilated by another Civ.

[Willem]

Originally posted by simwiz2
"In my example, you could win a war of attrition against a much larger Democratic enemy by switching to Communism and making him fight (holding your borders) until his nation goes into Civil War. I think that would be pretty damn cool."

Great, a communist gov can already hold a democracy hostage with War Weariness and ANARCHY, and now lets add civil war to make this unrealistic and cheap strategy even more effective.

Come on, think of the multiplayer we might be getting someday. Do you really want any communist government to not only destroy a democratic government at will, but also to split the empire in half???

What a mess that would be

Well if the Soviet Union fell apart, I'm sure something could be arranged for a Communist gov. Some covert subversion with local freedom fighters perhaps? When it came right down to it, the US defeated the USSR and didn't have to fire a shot. A Civil War option could really put some major power in the hands of a Democracy against a Communist civ.

[Willem]

Originally posted by ****gyRA
I don't care how it's implemented. Civil Wars would be very welcome. I think if 40% or more of your population is unhappy they could break away and form a new civ.

I also liked the volcanoes and other natual disasters in Civ1

Bring 'em back!

And the odd hurricane/tornado would be kind of cool too.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Captain
Have a look here for a quick step by step of how you could "be the rebel".

Basically the idea is that there's a chance your civ could revolt and you won't be in control of the resulting gov. You'll be a lone rebel unit running around trying to regain support and retake your throne.

Of course, in that thread, I don't know how the %chance of recapturing throne would work yet. Just that you need to get back to the capital and then you get a chance to recapture.

You would have to find and enter a city that was loyal to you, not knowing which are or aren't. You would then be able to start production in that town in order to build a force to send against your capital. You can also send envoys to other towns, and ones they encounter that are loyal, you can use for further production. If your envoy encounters a town that is not loyal, the rebels will attack him. The same would go with units in the field. You'd have to build/recruit enough loyal troops to march on the capital and retake it.

[TinCow]

The "Be the Rebel" idea is definitely cool and worthy of time, but it seems to me that should be more of a scenario than a game feature. If this kind of Civil War occurred, where someone lost complete control over their empire for a period of time, most people would probably quit that game (after they played the rebel section first of course) because they would be so far behind and/or have lost so much to other civs during the revolt period. What we need is a situation where a person suddenly has to deal with a dangerous military scenario, but at the same time they can continue to develop normally in all other regards. It would be a lot easier to recapture a dozen cities from the rebels than half a dozen cities from half a dozen other civs (you're not going to want to go to war with all six at once).

I'm thinking this whole Civil War thing could be tied into the game so as to help deal with the Late Game Tedium thing that so many people complain about. What if Civil Wars only occurred in the Industrial and Modern Ages? If you had to fight off a rebel faction of your empire, that would sure as hell make that part of the game more interesting.