Democracy at war

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse on 01-22-2001 02:02 AM What you are not taking into account is multiplayer. Human players start wars with democracies precisely to achieve that outcome - a change of government. I think it is unfair.

I dont say that Civ-democracys must switch government just to defend their own homelands. Such limits would be very unfair. If any AI-military units (or multiplayer enemy-units) barge in over your borders and starts to pillage improved tiles, or attack units & cities in your democracy - then you always automatically get full permission to retaliate - of course.

What im against is that civ-democracys so easily can continue their wars abroad, in Civ-2. Its simply too easy to conquer-and-keep one AI-civ after the other, Napoleon-style, under the sanctimonious pretext of "peacekeeping". Too easy to ignore enemy-diplomats asking for cease-fire, and too easy to reload games to overcome the 50/50% senate-veto. This has to change in Civ-3 - both seen from a real-life viewpoint and in terms of civ-3 game-balancing.

Just being a civ-democracy carry in itself so many manufactural, economical, scientifical and military defence advantages, compared to other government forms. Isnt that enough?
Why should it, on top of that, be possible (under democracy) to carry out Napoleon/Alexander-style land-grabbing conquering-wars as well?

The way I look at it, playing Civ-3 must be more of a balancing-act challenge; meaning every government-form has its nice benefits and hard-to-swallow trade-offs. Now, democracy-civs have powerful advantages in no less the three very important areas (economy, science, production), but only the inadequate unit-unhappiness and the senat 50/50% veto-disadvantage. Its not enough. Its too unbalanced.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited January 22, 2001).]

[Biddles]

quote: Originally posted by Cannes on 01-22-2001 08:09 AM That's definitely not true. China has a much larger defense budget than the states.

That would require the chinese to actually have money to spend. They might have a larger military, but the US defense budget is way higher.

[Cannes]

quote: Originally posted by Biddles on 01-22-2001 08:00 PM That would require the chinese to actually have money to spend. They might have a larger military, but the US defense budget is way higher.

I concur. China has the larger budget... Remeber that there are 6-7 times as many people in China than there is in the States, just because the peasants are poor doesn't mean that the government is. My source is Newsweek. What's yours?

[S. Kroeze]

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 01-21-2001 05:09 PM Isnt it the other way around? Isnt the growing dislike of intolerance/bigotry and glorifying militaristic ancient/medieval-style conquering-wars, an absolut necessity, in order to establish (and maintain) real republic/democracy? Isnt that dislike likewise, an necessity in order to science and humane values to grow? If the people/the government is very militaristic, oppressive and aggressive - science and culture tend to shrink and suffer from that. Historic lessons from both Nazi-Germany and Stalins Soviet confirms this. You really cannot compare ancient Athens with a modern democracy. Or Rome's early republic with a modern western republic. Those ancient empires was only democratic and republic to a few; a selected elitistic group of people. Women, slaves and integrated foreigners was excluded. In practice; the only ones who had any real influence was the nobility. Even today we dont live in a real democracy (the power of money is to strong). Still, the difference between now and then, is rather big anyway. In biblical words: Is it likely to expect wonderful fruits from dry thistles and sharp thorn-bushes? Nope! [This message has been edited by Ralf (edited January 21, 2001).]

Dear Ralf,

There are many points in your post on which I completely agree with you. In my opinion making war in CivII was far too easy under all governments!

There is one detail though, which I think I should correct:
Athens, though it excluded women and slaves, was truly quite democratic! About half of all male adults, slaves included, were citizens. And citizens were not necessarily more affluent than non-citizens. There were many wealthy metoikoi(immigrants) and a lot more poor citizens!

The power of the aristocracy was diminished and every male citizen could participate in the tribal meeting, where all decisions were taken by majority decision, one person, one vote. They could banish every citizen they considered too powerful, usually aristocrats. There was no Electoral College or silly 'winner takes all' rules and money did hardly influence the outcome of elections. Also middle-class citizens had a fair chance to hold a high office. In many ways it was more democratic than the current US!

About Rome you are quite correct, Rome was indeed dominated by an aristocracy which monopolized all high offices. Yet even in Rome the comitia had the right to declare war without the approval of the Senate. And though they rarely took decisions against the will of the Senate, they sometimes did. Surprisingly, both in Rome and Athens the tribal meeting was always more eager to declare war and pursue an imperialistic policy. Generally only those senators who estimated they could secure a general command and their political 'clientela' were enthusiastic about an imperialistic foreign policy and another war front!

Athens became more and more imperialistic as it became more democratic. In all allied poleis it established a democratic form of government or at least tried to do so, often banishing the aristocracy, the natural allies of Sparta. When Sparta had defeated Athens, they immediately abolished democracy!

What is your opinion about this idea?:

I still believe in one radical SE choice: a War/Peace button linked to foreign policy. War would mean you are waging at least one war, Peace the absence of any such war. Because war in real life has a far greater impact on society than suggested by CivII or SMAC; it heavily influences all aspects of society. It might even be the most important SE choice!

It puts a tremendous strain on public finances: a major war can result in budgetary deficits for years. This was one of the main causes of the French Revolution! And of course the economy will nearly always suffer a lot: soldiers can't gather the harvest, which could cause famine and peasant revolts, trade routes will be disrupted, soldiers often loot their own country, epidemics have a greater chance to be spread, refugees add to confusion, taxes will inevitably rise, etc....

War is also the ultimate test for the loyalty of its citizens. The army at the front can't put down a rebellion at home. It is of course no accident that during World War I three long-standing monarchies (in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia) toppled down. Republican France was also passing through a major crisis; it only narrowly escaped.

So if CivIII tries to add more realism to the game wars lasting two millennia will become impossible. Civilizations should break down under such never-ending stress! The Peloponnesian War, lasting only thirty years, definitely ended the 'Golden Age of Greece', destroying both Athens and Sparta. Only very militatistic societies like the Assyrian or Roman empire can endure the tension of almost continuous war. And it is of course no accident that the Roman Republic went down in civil wars. A really brilliant politician like Augustus was needed to restore order, at the same time fixing the borders and creating the pax Romana.

On the other hand war has a tremendous influence on the mind of people. Generally democracies are more peace-loving than autocratic regimes. But during a war this can change radically: I think a democracy once engaged in a war might prove to be far more fanatical to win it at all costs than most other governments. Usually democracies demand unconditional surrender, something unheard-of during Europe's 'Ancien Regime'.
It is public opinion which often will force politicians to make irrational choices, like interfering in Bosnia. After the French Revolution warfare has become much bloodier. The American civil war -between two more or less 'democratic' regimes- is considered the first modern war.

It would be very interesting to be forced by your own people to wage a war against your wishes and best interests!

This was the intelligent reaction of The Joker:

quote: Originally posted by The Joker on 05-06-2000 07:49 AM I guess late is better than never, Kroeze! I am happy to read your responce, though. I agree that wars should be far more destructive to a civ than they are in Civ2. But I think that they should be so because the war FORCES you to do things that are expensive to your budget etc. I don't think that just because you are at war your people should automatically revolt against you or food shortages should emerge. All these things should happend in some wars, but not automatically. I wouldn't want to be at war with some pathetic island on the other side of the world with just a few units over there, and this causing my civ to collaps. I therefor do not think that the war issue should be goverened on this macrolevel, but in stead on a microlevel. I am not sure how to make this workable, but it should definately include giving units some new features: Units should be much cheaper, especcially before the ind. rev. This way you could build LOADS of units if you really needed them during a serious war. At the same time units should require both money (which could be a serious thread to your national budget), production and in modern times energy for support. The two latter could seriously hurt your homeland productive capabilities. Units should also take pop away from the cities in which they were built. If done well this could give the food shortage we want in wartimes. Secularism should determine how much power religion had over people's lives. I think that the religions of the world should be independant AIs, that had their own agendas. They could ask the civs to do things for them. If the civs didn't obey the religions would cause unhappyness (and possibly revolts) among the people worshipping that religion. The more secularized the believers of the religion were, the more unhappy they would become. This way you could end up having to totally obey the religious leaders, if you had a very religious pop that all belonged to the same religion. It would be like Europe in the Medieval times.

Especially his idea that warfare should gradually ruin your economy is excellent! That is probably the main reason democratic countries today are reluctant engaging in warfare.

Another example of an highly imperialistic, though democratic nation is nineteenth century Britain, in many respects the most democratic country in its days. It was the first country taking action against slavery and granted the vote in 1832 to an eighth of the male population, gradually extending the suffrage. Yet this didn't change its imperialistic policies!

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, made by Sikander. 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.

Sincere regards,

S.Kroeze

[Biddles]

Cannes: In 2000 the US had a miltary budget of $290bn.

This site is about the 97 budget but still:

quote: Asked how much the United States "should spend on defense as compared to its potential enemies" (identified as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya), 48 percent said "the U.S. should spend a bit more than its most powerful potential enemy" (we currently spend four times as much as the strongest "potential enemy," Russia). Only 7 percent said the U.S. should spend "about twice as much as all its potential enemies combined" (we currently spend more than twice as much as these countries combined).

97 military budget

quote: Chinese military spending. Indeed, unofficial military spending estimates vary in range from US$10 billion to US$86 billion for 1995.

chinese budget estimates

Sorry these figures are old but I doubt china could afford to increase their budget by that much in 4 years (and I don't have time to find newer figures)

[Jason Beaudoin]

Actually, under a democratic government, it should be difficult to do almost anything. If anything can be said about a democracy, it certainly must be that there is opposition to almost anything a ruling governemnt tries to do. Not just in matters of national security, but in all aspects of the game.

Also... this debate about democratic governments making war is moot. One could argue either way, and history has shone us that democracies can be very agressive or very passive.

I think the difference is the media and mass communications, particularly television. If the general public is not aware of what's really going on, democracies can be just as irresponsible as dictatorships. However, once mass communication, television and the media were invented, that changed. Suddenly, democratic governments were held accountable, as we saw in Vietnam. You'll note that one of the top priorities for the US military during the Gulf War was to limit and control what the media was exposed to, and they did so very successfully.

[tniem]

What S. Kroeze said is what in a lot less lines (and less intelligence) was what I was trying to say.

I think that Democracies are very dynamic societies that do at times favor war. I remember as a child hoping that we would invade Iraq. I wanted war. The polls showed that most Americans felt about the same way and the President's approval rating soared to almost 75% at one point.

In the United States we do have isolationist tendencies (in the people not the government) but there isn't an American who stood by after the attack at Pearl Harbor and today most would do the same.

We also have many policies in this country that our against our best interests IMO but are popular. So those policies are the ones that are used.

I agree with those above that said that in a Democracy certain things should be forced on you including war. If Roosevelt didn't declare war on Germany and Japan following Pearl Harbor he would have been impeached and we would have gone to war anyway.

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by S. Kroeze on 01-23-2001 04:59 PM There is one detail though, which I think I should correct: Athens, though it excluded women and slaves, was truly quite democratic!

OK, I accept your version!

quote: But during a war this can change radically: I think a democracy once engaged in a war might prove to be far more fanatical to win it at all costs than most other governments.

From a historical WW-2 point of view, this is correct.
But, remember that both WW-2 Great Britain and USA was in many ways special cases. Great Britain was given both moral, economical, productional and later; massive military troop support (D-day) from US. USA on the other hand, was in the unique position, that they could actively engage in modern warfare without ever having to deal with the civil costs of foreign occupation and terror-bombing ala Hamburg, London, Dresden, Tokyo, Stalingrad and (of course) Hiroschima & Nagasaki. Also, both US civil & war industrial production was never threatened at all.

The fact is that we have simply no historical democratic equivalents to WW-2 Soviet-union, Nazi-Germany, Imperial Japan. Would democratic countries fight similar wars more successfully, under the exact same population/nature-resource/industrial conditions, as these three dictatorial countries?

Well, thats an open question! Anyway, as i said in a previous post: it all boils down to the game-balancing issue. I have nothing, whatsoever, against Civ-3 democracys having outstanding military production and country defence-capabilities. Its just that if Firaxis should/must add more "offensive war under democracy penalties", then in Civ-2. And this; regardless of the player is "forced" into a war-situation, or not. Otherwise the democratic government-type becomes too unbalanced (= too powerful; less challenging).

THE JOKER QUOTE:
I agree that wars should be far more destructive to a civ than they are in Civ2. But I think that they should be so because the war FORCES you to do things that are expensive to your budget etc. I don't think that just because you are at war your people should automatically revolt against you or food shortages should emerge. All these things should happend in some wars, but not automatically.

OK, I agree in princip.

Quote: Units should be much cheaper, especially before the ind. rev. This way you could build LOADS of units if you really needed them during a serious war.

I really DONT agree, at all! The human Civ-player have an enourmous advantage over the AI, in handling LOADS of units simultaneously. This is a suggestion that any half-decent civer can exploit much more efficiently, then any AI-civ programming Firaxis-employee can. Keep expensive unit-costs as they are.

Quote: At the same time units should require both money (which could be a serious thread to your national budget), production and in modern times energy for support. The two latter could seriously hurt your homeland productive capabilities.

Thats better! Especially supporting/moving around 8-10+ units or more, per city, should be much more support-prohibitive, then it is in Civ-2.

Quote: Units should also take pop away from the cities in which they were built. If done well this could give the food shortage we want in wartimes.

(Maybe) this would be the straw that broke the camels back. Firaxis must be careful in not adding too many drawbacks also. Too much and too little destroys everything (like salt in food).

SIKANDER QUOTE:
A revolutionary game would increase the challenge of controlling your own empire, adding a lot of game play to that area.

I certainly agree - although I dont have any ideas (at the moment) how this could be done.

[Admiral PJ]

Propoganda is a role that Spies (or diplomats?) could do..
Spies in the 60s or 70s in england were supposed to have incited demonstrations, making the protests violent which was a way to discredit the protestors to the public (remins me of the recent anti capitalist riots , though it may be different)

Control of the media is important with propoganda, look how russia has managed to privatise their independant new station that was against the chechnya war ,i believe.

Propoganda is relevant with communism and monarchy etc too.. the communists repress information flow traditionally ..
fascists were known for their propoganda fanatacisism (arghh)

You also find as a war goes on and casualties mount its increasingly hard to keep the public on the governments side in a war.. perhaps a Coallition parliamentary government like us Brits had in World war 2 can help to reduce negative feelings from the populace.

AdmiralPete

AND also - Chinas budget may well be above the US'es but chinas army is old and has out of date technology mostly, so it needs a lot more to develop new weapons and buy more material(sic), where as the US has the most advanced hardware in the world probably, and already has a large navy and airforce at least, though the chinese have a big land army.