DESIGN: Governments wish/request thread

[Maquiladora]

3 governments from the top of my head need tweaking,

Theocracy - Suffers from an awkward place in the tech tree, and its just piss poor compared to Monarchy, perhaps move it sooner in tech tree with 15 cities? Not sure myself.......

Republic - Armies are crud under it for such an early government, 'nuff said. 25 city limit with slighlty better army support?

Democracy - Hardly any scientific benefit by this stage of the game, if you built enough commerce imps already, you can go communism and totally bypass Democracy. Increase science benefits alot?

[Maquiladora]

oh and i voted to keep the same amount of governments but it could also be counted as more variety?

[Gilgamensch]

Actually I have a creasy idea: (no, don't kill me)

Instead of having fixed pregiven governments, how about that vwith certain discoveries you are allowed to change certain aspects yourself?

So, like having sliders for:

Min/Max/default number of cities
Min/Max/def research
Min/Max/def for polution
Min/Max/def for martial law
and so on.......

Each change would alter (depending on what have been discovered till then) the base-value, but always has to end up 0.

So for example: You start the game with Despotism:

This has (EXAMPLE, might not match reallity)
Min/Max/def of Cities: 5/15/10
Min/Max/def of research 10/70/50
Min/Max/def of Martial Law 1/7/5
.
.
.

But you feel like changing/tweaking a bit the form of government:
So you might want to run with max of cities=11, but only research of 40.

So a similar system as for the national settings with food/work/gold...............

To continue now a bit:

Certain discoveries will modify the values (like increasing the max of cities and so on). This would allow the human (and maybe even the AI) to be far more flexible. Change as needed

And all again in a txt-file, so that we could mod it

[The Big Mc]

but to increase the amount of city you must take a science cut or something it is the only way to make this work

[Gilgamensch]

exactly, if you vary from the default you will have boni/mali which have to end up >0 (don't know who would, but )

[Tamerlin]

I don't think CtP2 needs more governments...

[Tamerlin]

Gilgamensch, the problem I can see with the "sliders" option is that it could allow the human player to offset some governmental limitations through the use of the sliders when you are meant to choose a government to suit your needs and enforce a strategy.

As far as I am concerned I like the way the government are treated in CtP2 though some of them are lacking some incentives (I am almost never using anything other than Monarchy, Republic, Democracy, Technocracy and Virtual Democracy), when I consider the governments in Civ3 I have the feeling of being given a candy because I have clicked on the right button (a bit exaggerated but I have a reputation to keep).

[MrBaggins]

I don't like the idea, Gilgamensh. To some degree, we (and the AI) can adjust aspects of the AI ourselves, at the risk of taking happiness hits, or lesser bonuses for happiness bonuses.

The fact that the government aspects other than that are limited. Its good to have choices. The only thing I'll say, is if certain governments are weak, given the time period, then they should be tweaked, so there is a viable choice.

I'd also like to see a mod having more governments with differing themes introduced, just to test how it plays.... but thats nothing to do with the source code.

[Gilgamensch]

You still will have limitations, but it would me more realistic, more fun, more freedom and more more more..........

You would have a far better choice, how you would like to run your government, take RL, there are/were so many different versions of Monarchy/Despotism/Democracy/whatever.......every single one had slight differences. This would allow a player to adjust to really his own style.

A peaceful player would go for more science.
A warmonger would go for more martial law
whatever........

It would be just that, you pick a boni, you have to choose a mali.

So a 'perfect' offset.........increase here, decrease there......

The boni/mali would be determined by the default government, which you have researched. SO you would still have like Monarchy, but maybe a monarchy with more martial law, instead of more science.

It might also be a way for the AI to handle their empires better? But this is more for the programmers to overview (later )

[MrBaggins]

Any system where you can min-max advantages, such as this, is always an advantage to the human, unless the calculation to figure out the best approach, is unpractical to calculate for the human. The AI never has the advantage in value judgements including reasoning.

(See SMAC and the advantages human players regularly got over the AI where this system was in place for an example)

Any system which gives the AI a chance to be ineffective is a problem.

Thats pretty much our first concern... making the AI effective, and it overrides any new addition.

[Ekmek]

Although people hate a cheating AI could you link these changes to a bonus for all AI. So a slider to your advantage also gives and advantage to the AI. Say you increase cities by 10%, AI commerce and production goes up 10%. No historical reason for this, but for gameplay and competition. The AI bonus would be different for different difficulties...just a suggestion, not too keen on it.

[Gilgamensch]

One reason, why I was thinking of this kind of government (as you mentioned in the other thread, MrBeggins) giving the AI better ways of handling their empires.

[Peter Triggs]

This probably isn't going to be very coherent but it's something that's been in the back of my mind for years.

The way that Governments are implemented in CTP2 is a consequence of the way that they were done in Civ2 (probably Civ1 for that matter, but I don't go back that far). I've always thought it odd that you had to research Governments just like regular technologies. Even worse is when you can't research some technologies until you've researched some Government prerequisite.

I'd like to see the connection between the Govenment types that you can choose at any point in the game and your current position in the technology tree be made more indirect. Basically there should be a Government types tree in addition to the technology tree. You start the game in Tyranny and when you get the chance to move out of it, you choose one of, say three, Government threads: left, center, right. If you decide that you're going to play the game, for example, as a right winger you would go into some primitive version of Monarchy. From this point on your government type should evolve. I don't know what would be the best way to trigger the evolution: probably technologies to keep it simple. But the idea is that as you become more advanced, your government gets slightly better: maybe a larger cities cap, better production co-efficients and so on. This is basically what happens in the game now but would be more seamless. The biggest difference is that there would be no period of anarchy unless you change from one thread into another, e.g. changing from a Democratic center type government to a Communist left type government.

[child of Thor]

Gilgamensch, it sounds a bit like the system they use in EU2, where they have flexability within a government type.
In that game it just seemed very hard to discern just how much of a diference your tweaks had?(i will admit i only played it for a while - so i'm no expert on it).

As for CTP2, well i voted for more variation, and by that i guess i meant just maybe have a detailed look at each type and balance the existing ones out.
I will admit that i tend to use the same old path each game, just because the other choices seem not as strong.

Despotism>(early democracy type)>Monarchy>Rebublic/Communism/Fascism

Its more or less the same theme depending on current game situations(and the Mod being used). It would be nice to really make other choices much more........well chooseable IMHO.

It may well be that it would work best to completely replace/reinvent certain government types - and try to balance what we've already got? then move on to add more(as more is well - more, unless its less ) as the process goes on?

[MrBaggins]

The lack of variety is because CtP2 is a one trick pony essentially. Get ahead in production, and you basically win. Expansion through military conquest is a no brainer (plus one city you- with all those resources- minus one city them... and nothing they or anyone else can do about it.)

Its no coincidence that the best governments are the ones that help you conquer without being crippled in science.


There have to be more, viable victory conditions, that both the AI and human have a shot at, more roadblocks to war, and more incentives to peace.