Changing Goverrnments

[Biddles]

That's why SE is good. It may not be realistic as such, but it does make for good gameplay. If the game was to be changed so that you lost a lot of control over what happens (when you change to democracy) than I for one would probably not buy it.


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- Biddles

"Now that our life-support systems are utilising the new Windows 2027 OS, we don't have to worry about anythi......."
Mars Colonizer Mission

[Adm.Naismith]

NoviceCEO, you state democracy fell in dictatorship overnight. WRONG! as I subtly affirm

Country with A LOT of trouble (e.g. horrible economy, bribed statesmen, poor level of education) develop social opportunity for a dictatorship. Then someone grab the opportunity and, more or less overnight, push the last pillar to make democracy (or any other form of government) falls.

Then start the nightmare of control the riots, the opposer, the unhappy neighbours (if you don't make pre-emptive diplomatic pact, as in CIV/SMAC you can't do, but should in CIV III) and the like.
Macchiavelli (or Machiavelli as you not italian people prefer ) state as it's easier to get opposition from people that dislike you idea than sustain from people who like it. So it's pretty hard to control a country into that first moment after a revolution. Then things can slighty improve.

Ok, that's a over simplified model, neverthless is better than a stupid anarchy because I switch from monarchy to democracy: it doesn't happen in Italy at the end of WWII, it was only held a referendum: no one stopped to work for some years

Biddles, the point isn't to lose control of your people: you should have tools to help you to keep it, but you aren't a kind of god:
also a dictator need to exercise control over population (by army, by promises, by pact with some social classes) but can be overthrow because make the wrong choice.

Mussolini in Italy (I'm not a fascist, but I know this example because I'm italian) gain a lot of popular sustain during some 20 years.

Then dead italian soldiers start to pile up during World War II (an effect never simulated in CIV because the simulated war is fun and part of the CIV game model) and people suffer hunger and more poverty than before.

To make short (sorry, over simple again), partisan killed Mussolini - game over.

Biddles, I don't mean you deserve to be killed (nor in game sense ) but simulating some juggling of your CIV's people IS a major need IMHO, without throwing the fun out of the Windows (pun intended, eh eh ).


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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[rexlunae]

What civ really needs is a grass-roots movement capability. Democracy seldom just happens because a king thought it was a good idea. Sometimes, the people need more than a voice. They need teeth. There should be a coherant public will. A popular war should make a democracy more selfless and effective, not riotous and prone to revolution. An unpopular war should cause riots and perhaps revolution.

[NoviceCEO]

Adam, I'll be forced to agree with you (again ). But I'll keep my comments: you CAN change governments overnight, when the your people's 'mood' is OK for it.

About the Dictatorships in the 20th century, I used this example but I really don't know that much about the subject.

I'll give you a quite simple example. When Brazil turned from Monarchy to Republic. It happened literally overnight. A party was being held in an island and all the monarchs were there. Brazilian army surrounded the Island and declared Republic.

Another example that I can't assure you is so true is when Brail declared Independence from Portugal. D.Pedro II (I believe it was the second), Brazlians Emperor received a letter from Portugal, increasing taxes and stuff. D.Pedro II said: "Independence or Death!", and Brazil was free. Obviously it took sometime (and money) to Portugal accept it, but anyway, we made the British rich. But I don't want do get on a discussion about it.

Anyway, on both situations, that could be done "instantly" because the people had been for sometime demanding for it. When it happened, everyone wanted.

Sorry if I made it too long (and pointless)
novice

[don Don]

About the Nazi government vs. the Weimar Republic: economically there was almost no difference whatsoever. The economy under Weimar was remakably good, the hyperinflation ended in '20 or '21. The Nazis knew they could only remain in power if the economy remained strong, so industry was not really nationalized, but more like a partnership with the Nazi gov't.

During WWII only ~25% of the German economy went into war materials, whereas in USA the war effort reached 51% by sometime in '43. The arms industries like Krupp were only too happy to cooperate with the Nazis, and some other industries as well. The German auto industry continued to make cars for the home market in substantial quantities, whereas US auto production was converted to military use. Germany built few new factories specifically for war production (unless you count moving existing machinery into old mines to protect production from bombing), whereas US built many new factories just to make aircraft in large numbers.

In Civ terms it would be like the US changing from a Democracy to a Fundamentalism: "making the world safe for Democracy" as though Democracy were a religion.

[The Joker]

I like pkokko's idea. It would be really cool to fight civil wars because a part of the population doesn't agree with you. And interfere with other civ's civil wars, supporting one side in hope of getting influence there (like getting the civ as a protectorate or have a really great relationship with the new gov, making it possible to get trade contracts etc). It could also be possible to pay another civ to station troops in your cities when you begin a revolution. This could help your side to win, but would include the risk of the other civ's troops betraying you.

BTW after reading raingoon's column and the thread "Column #96; WHY SE DOES NOT BELONG IN CIV3" (check it out, it's pretty interesting) I don't think he is totally against SE, just that he think it's too easy to change SE and that you are too much in control of it. And that is to some extend the meaning here too.

I have an idea on how to make it possible to have SE changes that divides your civ. It has been posted on the previously mentioned thread, and here it is:

First, SE effects should be added/substracted from the effects given by city improvements and advances.
Second the people should have a mind of it's own. I think this could be done by having some categories (like Individualism and Militarism) in which the pop had a rating between 1 and 10. The SE effects by each SE choise should partly/entirely be based on these numbers. With a high Individualism rating people would be unhappy with a nondemocratic gov or a planned economy, but with a low Individualism rating a democratic gov would give a lot of corruption and a capitalist economy would not give very much trade (resembling Russia after the revolution). The SE choises would also effect these ratings. A democratic gov would increase the Individualism rating with time, a destructive war would decrease the Militarism rating etc. These effects could be influenced and influence loads of things. A high Militarism rating would reduce/eliminate the unhappyness caused by units away from the city etc.

On top of this each city could have it's own rating. This way in a huge and polarised civ it would be very hard to manage it efficiently, as what caused happyness in some parts of the civ could create unhappyness and corruption elsewhere, and this would make civil wars very likely.

This would make it much harder to make SE changes, as it could take up to decades to get the bonuses you want.

[Orz]

My opinion about democracy: It should develop all over the time so it would indeed be useful to keep the same type of government all the time.

About communism I think that it should get more and more resistant to bribery and stuff from outside. Inside corruption should be common.

Fundamentalism should get more and more tithes and the corruption and approval rate should be improving all over the time.

Switching to democracy should be difficult when citizens are poor and uneducated, when they are uneducated and poor then it should be easy to switch to communism or fundamentalism and when they are educated but poor then it should be easy to change to nazism or monarchy.

Actually I agree that the US is not too peaceful - US has interfered a lot in conflict regions. I used to think that the governments of same type should have increased attitude towards each other (Cuba-USSR, USA-Canada) but time has shown that it is not so (EU accused Austria in natzism while they keep their mouths shut about basks, irish and the lapponians). The politics is way too comlicated for me ;-)

SE is great enough as it is!

[colossus]

In my opinion, changing government should be more difficult if the civilization is very populous or advanced.

The larger the civilization size, the greater the disruption will be when changing government, simply because more heads are affected by the revolution. Just look at Russia, which is in a far worse condition than her Eastern European neighbour. One reason is that the revolution, when translated to her extensiveness and population size, brings about much greater disruption to the country.

And advanced society has a more complicated social structure and more need, so it will be more difficult to repair the damage caused by revolution. In ancient times, the prime consideration for leaders after revolution are to settle and feed the population. But nowadays, revolution leaders have to think of unemployment, energy supply, debt repayment, inflation, economic growth, and a hundred more items. So it will be more difficult to accomodate the change.

In Civ III, there should be modifiers of penalty depending on civilization size and advancement.

[S. Kroeze]

quote: Originally posted by Sikander on 02-01-2000 10:29 PM The crux of the SE problem in Civ is the inherent conflict between history (a long series of systems and rulers) vs the god level game (one ruler over all time, who decides when the system needs to be changed). Thus societies do not evolve in Civ, but rather are planned, with occaisional adjustments made based upon events. In my opinion, the game tilts towards too much control by the player and not enough friction by the populace to that control. Thus you have the government type 'democracy' (which has never occured at any scale above a city state in history) where the ruler has almost the same (still unrealistic) control over his population as Stalin. The names of the government change, but the control by the player (god king) remains just about the same. Read any history from the middle ages in Europe, or the feudal period in Japan. The rulers spent almost all of their time intriquing and fighting their own 'subjects'. In Civ, the player controls an empire / nation state from the beginning, and there is very little subtlety involved in the process. Just build stuff. The people seem to go along with very unlikely changes (like switching from Democracy to Despotism) with only a loss of a year's production. A revolutionary game would increase the challenge of controlling your own empire, adding a lot of game play to that area. This would take a lot of pressure off the poor AI, which now has to match 'wits' with a player who has nothing better to do then turn his hungry eyes outward for victims.

I completely agree with this really intelligent and insightful analysis of CivII. Thank you! It deserves to be remembered.
don Don also made a valuable contribution:

quote: About the Nazi government vs. the Weimar Republic: economically there was almost no difference whatsoever. The economy under Weimar was remakably good, the hyperinflation ended in '20 or '21. The Nazis knew they could only remain in power if the economy remained strong, so industry was not really nationalized, but more like a partnership with the Nazi gov't. During WWII only ~25% of the German economy went into war materials, whereas in USA the war effort reached 51% by sometime in '43. The arms industries like Krupp were only too happy to cooperate with the Nazis, and some other industries as well. The German auto industry continued to make cars for the home market in substantial quantities, whereas US auto production was converted to military use. Germany built few new factories specifically for war production (unless you count moving existing machinery into old mines to protect production from bombing), whereas US built many new factories just to make aircraft in large numbers. In Civ terms it would be like the US changing from a Democracy to a Fundamentalism: "making the world safe for Democracy" as though Democracy were a religion.

I don't know whether the given figures are correct, but the general picture presented here is beyond doubt: Almost nothing beats a 'provoked' democracy! The fairy tale of democracies always being peaceful has to be shattered.
This thread contains many intelligent remarks; they shouldn't become forgotten!

[Napoleon I]

I will propose several ideas that can make the government system in Civ3 more realistic and at the same time playable without a huge time investment.

First of all, I completely agree with raingoon, that the SE system should not be implemented in Civ3. I think the idea of being able to make your civilization "green" or "militaristic" is completely absurd. Try to make the Russians "green" or the Swiss "militaristic" and I guarantee you will fail miserably.

However, I agree that there should be a way in which you can influence the values that your nation holds. Therefore, I would propose something called the educational system. Under this system the ruler of the nation will have an influence of what is taught in schools and universities. The amount of control that the ruler has should decrease with freer governments, i.e. very low for democracy, low for republic and increase for dictatorial governments: medium for monarchy, high for communism, very high for fundamentalism. The effect of education in a society will depend on the number of libraries, univercities, etc., the civ has and perhaps on an inherent "receptiveness" rating. Therefore, before a ruler of a monarchy can switch to democracy, he will have to educate his people for say 70 turns. This will make sure that you cannot switch governments quickly and easily.

Second I think that the idea that democracies have to be peacefull is also wrong, because U.S., for example, intervened in other countries on numerous occasions while being a democracy. Therefore democracies should be able to build units with special "covert operation" ability that would increase the cost of the unit but allow it to do anything and anywhere. However, on any given turn these units will have a 10 % chance of being discovered, so that the more of these units you build the greater the chance that the population will find out about this. If such a unit is discovered than all of "covert operation" units already in operation are disbanded, that civ cannot build new ones for another 10 turns and certain economic penalties apply to simulate loss of confidence in government.

If I took anybody else's ideas in this post, then I'm sorry, I just guess that same ideas can come many different people at the same time. Sorry for the long post.

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Napoleon I

[Par4]

Napoleon check out my media thread, boohoo it died and went into the 20 day archives. It has a bunch of stuff on the schools and television and books and propaganda but it died and new ideas from other people didn't get in, I think I made it a little{way} too complicated. I'll bump it up now.

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[S. Kroeze]

The general picture presented here is beyond doubt:

Almost nothing beats a 'provoked' democracy!

The fairy tale of democracies always being peaceful has to be shattered.
This excellent thread contains many intelligent remarks; they shouldn't become forgotten!

[Ralf]

I have always been dead against "tactical government-switching" Civ-2 style. Firaxis must adjust this! Its just too easy to switch back-and-forth between the extremes. Switching from totalitarian or autocratic to democratic - or the other way around.

As for the virtues of this or that government-type; im all in for the "mixed blessings" approach, as much as reasonably possible. And that includes democracy as well. Whatever government-type you choose, and whatever your empire is really huge, or just a small well-managed one - you always have to deal with nice benefits and hard-to-swallow trade-offs.

And this "hard-to-swallow trade-offs" should (of course) occur under democracy as well. I have posted what trade-offs there should be in the Democracy at war thread.

Then push-comes-to-shove its all about gameplay-balance first and foremost.
As for the actual benefits/trade-offs themselves, they must of course be tweakable through the text-files.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited January 23, 2001).]

[The diplomat]

Let the player switch governments but only with HUGE consequences. The effect should be much more than just gold. I suggest that all cities get extra happiness or extra unhappiness (for a small time, ex 5 turns) depending on the switch. Going from an authoritarian regime to a lesser one, would produce happiness. Going from a democratic regime to a lesser one would produce unhappiness. The amount of happiness or unhappiness should be significant. If I switch from despotism to democracy, I would probably get say 5 turns of "We love the President" because of the people celebrating their new found freedom. If I were to switch, for example, from democracy to communism, I should get several cities possibly revolting. I might have to fight my rebel cities to impose my government on them.

Whatever the solution, civ3 must get rid "tactical government changing"!

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[MrFun]

The United States does not have a democracy - it has a republic government with democractic principles and values.

But also remember that the United States, with its democratic principles, has done the following in its history:

1) exterminated American Indian tribes who resisted being removed to reservations
2) had an economic system in the south that was based on one of the largest slave systems at that time
3) burned people alived from 1870s through 1930s during the nadir of race relations
4) violated the sovereignity of weaker nations whom many Americans believed were ruled by inferior races (our little brown brothers)
5) had imperalistic ambitions in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century

So, when we have a Democracy or Republic government in any civ game, why is it shown to be pacifist and a humanistic government? This world has never seen a republic or democracy where people were equal and where the nation never conducted warfare.