SOCIAL ENGINEERING/GOVERNMENT (ver 2.0): Hosted by Bell

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Social Engineering and Government
Wherein we shall discuss various methods of keeping the people firmly under our heels. This is a summary of the posts in <a href="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000002.html">Social Engineering ver1.0</a>, <a href="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000070.html">Social Engineering ver1.1</a>, and <a href="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/000548.html">CIV3: Starting a list for social choices</a>. (Note: I haven't included any of the religious discussions in this summary, since religion has its own thread now. All future discussion on that topic should probably go there.) For more details on anything in this summary, please see the previous threads.

Sections:
1. Social Engineering Choices
2. Social Engineering Effects
3. Related Concepts
4. Issues for Discussion

Social Engineering Choices
The general consensus seems to be to move Civ to the SMAC model of social engineering. Within that broad statement . . .
Categories for social engineering: Government, Society, Economic Structure, Values, Religion, Regional Government, Army.
Government Types:
Despotism, Monarchy, Fascism, Totalitarianism, Republic, Democracy, Tribal, Dictatorship, Feudalism, Darwinistic/’Pure’ Aristocracy, Virtual (Technological True Democracy)
(Note: Choice of government type restricts your choices in other areas.)
Society Types:
Police State, Open, Corporate, IngSoc, Welfare
Economic Structures:
Barter, Currency, Manoralism, Banking, Mercantilism, Corporate, Labor Union, Communism
Values:
Knowledge, Power, Mores, Wealth, Environment, Hedonism
Regional Governments:
National, Confederacy, City-State, Independent, Regional.
Army:
Militia, Volunteer, Selective Draft, Reserve, Mandatory Service, Brainwashed, Professional, People’s Army
Individual Liberty:
Individual liberty would be an indicator of all your other settings combined. If it gets too low, your people would revolt, but if it’s too high, you would have problems enforcing your will when you take an unpopular action (like go to war or raise taxes.) This isn’t really a setting, but a gauge of your other settings.
Special Events:
These are special events that you can order which have effects on the different classes in your society. Upsetting a certain class could make it harder for you to take action in the areas they control (for instance, unhappy merchants inhibit trade.)
Crusade: increases military strength, reduces population pressure, but angers target (a foreign power).
Purge: reduces military strength and science, but pacifies masses through terror.
Enclosures: angers masses, pacifies elites.
Grant Fairs: increase taxes, pacify merchants, grows cities (but thus angers nobles)
Grant city charters: enhance city growth, anger nobles
Increase Feudal Levy: increase taxes, anger nobles
Grant Serfdom: anger populace, pacify nobles
Sell Offices: increase corruption, pacify nobles
Conscription: increase military, anger masses


Social Engineering Effects:
SE choices can have effects on the following areas:
Growth, Happiness, Economy, Gregariousness, Environment, Pride, Control, Fanaticism, Ego, Materialism, Vengeance, Curiosity, Industry, Distribution of Wealth, Corruption, Conservatism
Game Effects:
SE Effect -- Game Effect
Growth -- Rate of population growth
Happiness -- Happiness of the populace
Economy -- Tax and trade income
Gregariousness -- Maximum size of cities
Environment -- Pollution rate
Pride -- Resistance to subversion
Control -- Police
Fanaticism -- Resistance to SE change
Ego -- Modifier to foreign relations
Materialism -- Duplicate of Economy?
Vengeance -- Holding a diplomatic grudge
Curiosity -- Research rates
Conservatism -- Combination of Fanaticism and Pride?
Distribution of Wealth -- Duplicate of Happiness?
Corruption -- As in CivII
Industry -- Production rates
Morale -- Um, ah, morale
Military -- How much your military costs, as a % of normal
Supply -- Upkeep costs on your military, as a % of normal

Concepts:
<ul>[*]SE settings should have an effect on gameplay. For instance, a setting of Laisse-Faire Capitalism should prevent you from micromanaging your economy, while Communism would force you to do more tweaking to be efficient.[*] National and ethnic character: Should each Civ start with inherent pluses and minuses like in SMAC? How to assign them without starting a race war?[*] Discovery of some techs should have an immediate impact on your SE effects, i.e. plastics gives you a minus on environment.[*] Culture Points: This system separates the discovery of a society tech from its implementation. Instead, after you discover a tech you have to spend a certain number of "culture points" to actually make the change in the social engineering window. Culture points are gained automatically as time passes, through (positive) diplomatic relations, Philosophers (which are like entertainers) and Wonders. Some culture settings are available at game start. This system would require eliminating many of the Wonder effects and replacing them with a large number of culture points.[*] Depending on your regional government structure, you should be able to make a few SE choices for regions as well as the entire empire. Tax/Lux/Sci rates may also be set down to the city level, but the interface must allow you to set levels in multiple cities at once.[*] Revolutions should cause large splits in the empire. Also, if different regions have very different SE settings, this should increase the chances of a revolution. Revolutions create new civ that you are immediately at war with, but they can be reintegrated with the original civ if they surrender or ally within a given amount of time.[*] Dynasties. Every once in a while, your government destabilizes as the line of succession is debated/argued/murdered over.[*] Generals, like the officers of MoO2.[*] Civ-specific units and buildings, but instead of assigning the units to a specific civ, the first civ to discover a given tech gets them, and that tech is no longer available to other civs.[*] Preset government "templates" that set all the SE choices for you, and which you can then modify from there.[*] Laws: Laws are like SE settings, only with less effect and not mutually exclusive. They're sort of like city ordinances from SimCity. Possible laws include mandatory military service, child labor/education, legalized drugs, etc. that all have small effects on your empire. We'd need a lot of these to get it to work. Suggestions: Legalize birth control, legalize drugs, crime crackdown, institute welfare, nationalize health care, legal human testing, ban child labor, freedom of information, ethnic cleansing, free university, environmental action.[*] Economies should go through boom/bust cycles, the strength of which depends on your SE settings.[*] Contradictory SE settings should be possible, but be very difficult to play or have contradictory game effects. For example, while you could play a democratic, communist, religious state, the various pluses and minuses would average out to about zero.[*] Inertia bonuses: A civilization that consistently maintains a certain attitude (peaceful, warlike, diplomatic, etc.) would get bonuses in those categories. For instance, if you’ve spent the last 400 years at peace, you could get a science or happiness bonus.[*] Certain SE choices allow other (AI) entities to take limited control over parts of your empire. If your SE settings give the church or corporations a great deal of power, they can automatically build structures, set up trade routes, etc. These actions are not controlled by you. There are advantages to this though, like lower costs or extra happiness. These AI entities would have their own agendas, mainly building things that enhance their own power (the church builds temples, etc.) If popular opinion gets strong enough, you may be forced to change a SE setting or face revolution.[*] More government-specific units, like fanatics.[*] Ethnicity, implemented like capturing a base in SMAC, where the populace (passively) resists you until they assimilate.[*] City structures would have their effects by modifying the SE values for the city in which they’re built, instead of as % of output changes. For instance, building a library increases your research value by 1 in that city only.[*] Gradual changes: You can hit the button anytime you want to make yourself a democracy, but your people won’t necessarily listen. Game effects are delayed after you change a SE setting.[/list]
Issues for Discussion:
<ul>[*] Slavery is something nobody can seem to agree on . . . in or out, and if in, how?[*] Instead of making SE choices directly, we make them by supporting certain structures or groups, which then create pluses and minuses on their own. So, instead of picking "Police State: +2Police, -1Economy" you beef up your police and military and they eventually give you +2 Police and -1 Economy.[*] There should be more choices under each SE category . . . but we don’t know what they are![*] Slavery, as implemented in C:CTP. Good or bad?[*] Use sliders for SE settings instead of set choices?[/list]
Contributers: Zorloc, JT, anachron, Trachmyr, Ecce Homo, mhistbuff, the Octopus, Fuji the Great, Shining1, Freddz, Mark_Everson, Frank Moore, kmj, 23 Skidoo, Depp, Singularity, NotLikeTea, Armageddon, LordStone1, HolyWarrior, Lancer, primetime000, JamesJKirk, RINCEWIND_HAS_RETURNED, darkgrendel, Spartan187, wheathin, Harel, Kropotkin, Diodorus Sicilius, CormacMacArt, Stefu, Isle, Galen, Flavor Dave, Cartagia the Great, korn469, Black Dragon, SnowFire, Daniel Bistman, Bell.


<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Bell (edited June 16, 1999).]</font>

[Flavor Dave]

I think it's a shame that corruption makes late game republic unviable. Two suggestions:

1. Police stations double the effect of courthouses. This way, courthouses + Women's Suffrage would mean that republic rocks. I might even build Women's Suffrage.

2. Certain techs (electricity, etc.) increase effectiveness of courthouses.

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Summary is up, sorry it took so long, and that it's not as pretty as the last one, I was kind of in a hurry. Hopefully I've screwed up enough that people will say something so Yin doesn't have to keep bumping the thread . . .

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Cross-posted from the Firaxis forums.

<hr>

Well, apparently there's some political sh1t going on between the forums, and I quite frankly don't want to get involved in it. So, here's what I'm going to be doing. First, I'm going to continue the thread as is on the Apolyton site, since that's where it was started and that's where the structure exists to support it. However, I'm also going to keep this thread going here, as long as people are willing to support it by posting their ideas and criticisms and suggestions. If you don't want me here, just don't post in the thread. I think there's a lot of advantages to this system, but if you don't want to use it, that's up to you.

The discussions themselves will remain separate. However, if I see an idea posted to one forum that is a real deviation in the direction the thread is moving, and introduces new thoughts and concepts to the dicussion, I'm going to cross-post it to the other forum. Yes, this will be based on my judgement, but there's nothing stopping the original poster from cross-posting their idea themselves. I think it would be counter-productive to cross-post everything and basically have a mirror of the discussion on both sites, but if that's what you want to do, go for it. I can't, and wouldn't, stop you anyways. However, both threads will be integrated into summaries, and the summaries will be cross-posted to both forums.

OK, now then. Soapbox mode on. That means, if you don't want to hear it, don't read it.

I've seen a lot of talk about the list's structure and leaders and politics, almost as much talk as has been involved in the gathering of ideas. I've run business and corporate web sites before, I know that the name of the game is traffic. That's one reason why Firaxis wants the list here, so they can get traffic. That's one reason why Apolyton volunteered it's resources in the first place. This list has generated a lot of traffic. I'm not saying that nobody is interested in the game, but that's what the whole forum fight is about. As far as the game is concerned, as long as the ideas get there, it doesn't matter where they came from. Where only matters to the people running the websites.

There's also been mention of whose property this list is. The first one belongs to Apolyton, the next ones belong to Firaxis, etc., etc. Bullsh1t! The list belongs to the people who post the ideas, not the people who run the sites. So if Firaxis wants to officially endorse Yin, or me, or any of the other thread masters from Apolyton, that's fine with me. If not, I really couldn't care less. I'm taking an organizational role only because chaos doesn't get the job done on this kind of effort. I'm willing to take the responsibility of saying that the ideas you post in this thread and the one at Apolyton will go in a list that will be sent to Brian Reynolds. Who sends it, I don't care about, as long as it gets done. If separate lists are generated, then the same summary will appear in both of them, as long as whoever generates the list is willing to accept my summary. Whether BR reads it or not, I can't say, but if you post ideas in these threads, at least he'll personally have to throw them away to ignore them.

So Stephen, if you want to say I'm official, go right for it. If you don't, that's all right too. One way or another, whatever ideas are put forth in this thread will end up in BR's mailbox from some source. I suspect that I'll still be part of the Apolyton list in any case, and I don't know what's going to happen here, but if I have to send them myself, that's how it will be done.

Soapbox Mode Off

OK, enough of this. Let's get back to work.

[Galen]

Bell, what about combinations and levels of SE enforcement?
Also, I think we should mabey make Values more indepth, perhaps having a Value set for Money(Economics?), Religion (already in your summary), Knowledge and Work. The last one is how much hard work is valued. An example of a high one is Confucianism, but our modern western value systems don't value it so much.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'enforcement' . . . could you elaborate?

[Colon™]

I was recently thinking about this and I propose a pretty radical change, instead of choosing wether your country is a democracy or fascism or something else why not actually 'making' your country a democracy ?
I believe that you should be able to customize your country more detailed in it's economic an institutional systems.

Rather then just making a country a democracu, you must install a parliament, decide who chooses the parliament (all of the population or just a part, only the aristocracy ?), you must intall freedom of speech, you must decide how much power the president (you) has.

Idem with economy, rather than saying "communism" or "capitalism", you must decide in detailed how your economy is structurised, a German welfare state type economy or a Japanese mercantilist, protectionist type economy ?

Rather than just turning your country into a federal democracy from a centralised dictature with a single click you must do it by reforming the institutions and laws etc
Rather then just turning your country into a capitalist from a communist you must do it by privatising etc
And all of this should take time as well of course.

The system SMAC has was a good start but it should be detailed and expanded MUCH MUCH more.

[Galen]

Such as choosing HIGH, NORMAL, LOW for your level of the setting, high having really big +s and -s, mormal medium, and low small. Like in Democracy, say it was like in SMAC with +2 GROWTH, +2 EFFIC, -2 SUPPORT. If you had it at low it would be +1 GROWTH, +1 EFFIC, -1 SUPPORT. If you had high it would be +3 GROWTH, +3 EFFIC, -3 SUPPORT.

I would like to suggest two forms of government:

. Oligarchy (should appear after monarchy but before republic). The Spartans and others employed it (government by elders/committees, can be with or without monarchy).

. Government of national unity (this is the form of government preferred by democracies during time of war - could be a subsetting of democracy and give the opportunity for democracy to continue during time of war - with some trade offs/costs).

[Theben]

At this point we may as well call everything VALUES, since it's an all-encompassing banner. My idea is to use slider bars (apparently like CtP). The various values would be:

Political/Social:One end is Tyranny and at the other is democracy, or anarchy, with things like Monarchy and Republic in between

Economic:Laisse-faire free market at one end and communal at the other, with regulated market & planned in between

Centralization: With very decentralized at one end and very centralized at another

Religion: With fundamentalism at one end and secularism at the other (which I've described at the RELIGION thread)

Happiness: This one is affected only by the other choices but is VERY IMPORTANT, so it should be easy to see by player (unless you want to learn the hard way; someone proposed using your spy network to keep tabs on the happiness levels of your people. Perhaps a toggle before game start?).

Technological (actually social) advances would allow newer forms of the same basic VALUE type. Based on what is posted above, I think that ARMY ratings might better be served by tech advances & "special options" in a workshop? The rest of the above suggestions can fit in this system, as many of the above can simply be techs (labor union) or combinations of the above(demo+very decentral= confederacy). Value bonuses/penalties would be presented in % modifications, rather than using the current SMAC style. Certain combinations would have additional benefits/ penalties outside the value system. Also certain choices would prevent, enhance, or subdue social effects from technology.

Tyranny: % bonus to suppress population. Allows greater control of market, production, and research. % bonus to support. % penalty to happiness. Democracy is opposite.

Laisse-faire: % bonus to economy, % penalty to happiness; little control of market, production, research. Communal is opposite. Complete laisse-faire cannot benefit from Environmentalism tech.

Centralization: very decentralized is greater happiness, higher corruption. Very centralized is opposite. Monarchy+decentralized=feudalism, which may collect revenue from forts, castles, etc. in populated areas. Decentralized may alter lux/tax/science (if used) at "city" level, centralized may only at government level.

Religion: & bonus to happiness, with penalty to research, secularism is opposite. Tyranny+communal/laisse-faire+centralized= communism/fascism, which has 1/2 bonus from religion, reduced unhappiness for secular (due to 'faith' in ideology).

A point to be made. I would like to see civ3 adopt some MOO1 basics: Multiple areas of research allowed at same time, and be able to build more than one item in city, as well as multiples of the same item (units only) if sufficient production. In civ2 there are 5 areas of 'research'-military, economic, social, academic, and applied. These would be the areas you could divide by % 'research production'. In addition, the city screen would have 2 different areas to build items in. Now if you have democracy + free-market, you will have a considerable boost in your economy, however, you will probably only get to pick where approx. 25% of it goes. The rest will be applied by the AI, representing your people, who will generally pick non-military areas. Also your production will be divided, one of the menus is for your people to build what they want, the rest goes to you. Generally your people will build buildings that help them somehow, trade routes, or tile improvements. The result is that totalitarian, communal govts will have greater control of what goes where, but democratic, free-market govts will have a greater production overall. Also production, research? can be 'purchased' from your people during times of crisis (i.e. war), say, 1 or 2 coins per production/2 beakers.

As in civ2, the extremes of these slider bars will not be available until higher "techs" are available, and higher "techs" will add to the bonuses and possibly reduce penalties.

A final note is happiness. Happiness affects everything. It will give a bonus/penalty to food, shield, science production, growth, taxes, you name it, it affects it. Low unhappiness can result in population decrease &/or revolt. Since it is so powerful it's % bonus/penalty will be much less than the other areas.

IMHO this is very simple and should reduce micromanagement, while retaining a great deal of realism.

Whew! Comments, criticisms welcome.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Theben (edited June 29, 1999).]</font>

[Theben]

Apologies to Zorloc, I didn't read your post 1st (in ver 1.1), which is basically the same idea I posted for the free-market system. But I'm glad that someone agrees!

[Theben]

In addition:
All types of value combinations are allowed (communal can be democratic).

Tyranny also gets MORALE bonus (military only) and bonus to defensive espionage. democracy opposite. Democractic societies will have effect on non-democratic ones. If happiness of democratic society is equal or higher than non-demo AND they are adjacent to each other with open borders, allied, &/or established trade routes then the non-demo people will start to move the tyranny bar towards democracy. If the player/AI resists (by moving back) there will be greater unhappiness as a result. The tyrannic player/AI may shut down trade & borders, this will stop democratic discontent. Later techs (internet?) will make demo discontent unstoppable (unless there are other techs invented to stop it).

Fundamentalism will grant additional MORALE to troops. Secularism does not suffer morale penalty.

Since people generally hate change, slider bars cannot quickly be swung back & forth (small amounts of change would be exempt). Sudden democracy will upset your generals (if tyranny, it would be interesting to see some of your units rebel against you!), communal to free-market will upset your people, religious to secular would cause heavy problems. When moving slider bars the happiness bar will note how much the people are reacting to these changes. The resulting unhappiness will last for x# of turns. If the new society would be 'happier' than the old, then the overall unhappiness is reduced. This should probably be an option before game start.

Another possibility is to allow your people (AI) to move the bars a little at a time w/o your intervention, then if you want to change back you must suffer some unhappiness. People will move sliders towards given points; strong democracy, middle for economic, religion, some decentralized.

[NotLikeTea]

Very interesting ideas! I lik ethis very much..

However, I'm not sure if I like the diea of the people changing your government settings, and you resisting by changing it back. I'd rather like to see some kind of public sentiment, which can result in a revolution, if not looked after.

[Cartagia the Great]

Hello, I'd like to take some of my time to explain my ideas of ethniticity in this game. Feel free to comment on them, after I'm done

First of all, what would ethniticity be? It would be differant ethnic groups living in the cities of your Empire, that are not of your people. They would be Celts, Egyptians and Carthegians living under Roman rule in differant cities.

These citizens would arrive in those cities in many differant ways. The first of these ways, and the most ovious, would be through conquest. When taking a city, your governers would take power, but the citizens would not magically become part of your people. They could retain their cutural identity inside your boarders.

This would not have to be forever true, ethniticities could disappear over time, after all, how many Babylonians do we see walking the streets of Ney York these days? Over time these populations would assimulate into your Empire. How quickly? well that would defend upon certian factors in the cities. If, in the city, let us call it Rome, there are 6 Roman citizens when your American army marches in, it would take much longer to assimualte them into your culture than it would be there were only 2 Roman citizens. Also your tolerance of these minorities woudl affect assilumation. More toerance means happier relations, but slower assimualtion, lower tolerance might mean expelling them, with a medium setting showing that you tolerate, but also try to assimualte. You could also build structures to quicken the time it takes for this to happen, but they might have negative facotrs in other areas, depending.

Another way to pick up an ethniticity in a city is through migration. If other governments are percuting a sertian group, some may flee from that Empire. By accepting them, you would get certian bonuses, as well as disadvantages.

What would be the big deal of ethniticiy? how would it affect this game? For one thing, you would need to keep relations with these ethniticities. A city that is rebelling, that has a alrge ethnic population, muight just decide to rebell and take other cities with it, to rejoin it's old nation, or to reform it. On the other hand, these minorities would be able to offer you several bennifits for keeping them happy. Such as increased production, science and money

Now lets say that the Romans in the American Empire are not doing quiet so well. They were unhappy, causing the Americans to try to percecute them slightly, but this only increased the anger. What can the Americans do to get rid of the problem once and for all?

Well it should have tried to absorb the population sooner. If you flood a city with your own settlers, and tip the ethnic scale of that city in your favor, assimulation goes quicker. Or, they could have expelled the citizens of that city into settlers and sent them to other cities, scattering the ethnic group, and making assimulation easier.

The Americans didn't do any of that, however. they allowed the Romans to remain largly holed in many of their former cities. They also neglected relations, and, when the Romans showed the first signs of disobediance, over reacted. They lowered their tolerance scale to the Romans(there woudl be an Ethniticity screen which would allow you to set your tolerance to these differant groups as well as set special programs for a cost) hoping that it would shut them up. It idn't, and so a downward spiral began between the Americans and the Romans, each one getting angrier and angrier at the other.

The final stray came when the Celts, the American's arch-enemies, attempted to set the Romans off into a rebellion. Four cities broke away, which the Amerians had to retake and crush the new nation. By this time, the Americans have grown sick of the Romans and feel they msut be taken care of. How can they do this? Well it would be possible to put an entire ethnic group into slavery in your Empire. With would decrease happiness in your cities as well as, later in the game, cause a major diplomatic incidnet, but production would sky rocket. The Americans could also evict the Romans, setting them fleeing to theh ills as refugees. This would take away large parts of those cities populations, as well as give other nations which brought them in a few bonuses. Finally, that idea would, like the previous one, be a diplomatic incident in late game. Or, finally, they could begin to attempt to kill the Romans off in those cities, perhapse with a concentration camp building. If kept secret there woudl be no diplomatic event, but if it's found out......it might nto be pretty.

As I said, it would be possible for a new nation to spring up from an ethniticty. If things got bad enough, the Romans in this American Empire might try to rebell and recreate their old nation. This might be hlped by funneling arms to dissidents by other civilizations. Or, an invading army toliberate these ethnic cities and recreate the nation. this would add a whole new side to diplomacy

Finally it would be possible for there to be more than one ethnic group in a city. Now thism ight be good, or it might be bad, if the two groups despise one another (the Americans took over the Romans, but the Romans had taken over the English so the Romans and English bitterly hate one another) there would always be the chance of riots between the two sides, with the third part stuck in the middle.

There should be more catastrophe /unforeseeable consequences in the game. I would like to see more civil wars/revolutions triggered or triggerable. I would also like for techs to be more double edged, have good and bad effects, and if you studied them in the wrong sequence for this to really bugger up your civ - lead to political or economic chaos. Civs should regress as well as progress. In Civ I and II, once you know the ropes, you get this sort procession through time which is very predictable - history isn't like that. In fact when your doing well is probably when your at most risk - Wall Street this coming October may be the next big example.

[Maniac]

This thread doesn't seem popular . I had to dig 20 days back to find it!
To the point. My SE wishes.

Government: Despotism, Monarchy, Totalitarianism, Theocracy, Republic, Democracy

Economic: Barter, Currency, Banking, Feudalism, Mercantilism, Protectionism, Communism, Corporate, Transnational

Values: Survival, Power, Knowledge, Wealth, Environment

Structure: City State, Federal, Confederate

Army: Militia, Reserve, Professional

Religion: Animism, Loose Polytheism, Strict Polytheism, Loose Monotheism, Strict Monotheism, Multitheism, Atheism

------------------
M@ni@c-SMAniaC
depends on what site I am.

[Maniac]

I think your Government choice should eliminate some other choices.

The first thing I wrote are the SE choices in the beginning= Despotism, Barter, Survival, City State, Militia, Animism. They are always available, whatever your SE Government may be.
Here a list which government should have which SE choices
I'm sorry if you don't get my abbrevations.

Army SE Choices should be available to everyone, so I won't type them.

Despotism: Curr/Po,Kno,Wea,Env/NoStructureChoices/LP,SP,LM,SM
Monarchy: Curr,Feu,Merc(I'm not sure about this one), Prot, Corp/P,K,W,E/Fed/LP,SP,LM,SM/
Totalitarianism: Cur,Prot,Comm/P,K,E/Fed/SP,SM,Ath
Theocracy: Cur,Feu,Merc,Comm,Corp,Ban,Prot/P,K,W,E/Fed,Conf/SP,SM
Republic: Cur,Merc,Ban,Comm,Corp,Prot/P,K,W;E/Fed,Conf/AllReligiousChoices
Democracy: ALL CHOICES

[Colon™]

I think there's one big problem in balancing the types of goverments, and all that other stuff, that is the fact that in real life they aren't balanced. One type fo goverment is better then another, one institutional organisation is better then another IN THE END.
Look at real life, Soviet type communism may have had it's advantages compared to American democracy/capitalism, but at the end it was proven that the last one was stronger.
In real life it's not a case of a certain organisation fighting with other but equal weapons, in real life one always wins.
The reason why there are dictatorships today is the factor of power, a certain person can have much more power over his country as dicator then as democratically elected president who has to leave after several years, but it's very important not to confuse the power of a leader over a country with power of that country over the world.
There should be a factor of internal power, of the amount of control youy can have of your own country, while taking in consideration that that may damage the country's power in the world.

[Maniac]

That amount of power is represented by your Police rating. For example in a Democracy/Corporate Society the people won't allow you to send lots of troops to war.

Good oppurtunity to introduce my Social Factors :
Economy
Corruption ( a part of SMAC Efficiency)
Support (supply in list1.0 renamed)
Morale (except the morale of your military I think it should also determine your senate's willingness to use military force. In Civ2 Republics/Democracies were always against a military action, but the Roman Republic doesn't seem pacifist IMO)
Police
Growth
Environment(= SMAC Planet)
Fanaticism(= SMAC Probe)
Industry
Research

[Maniac]

I would like to introduce a brand new Social Factor : Culture

Effects of Culture :1) A strong culture allows you to control more cities before additional unhappy citizens appear due to empire size. In SMAC this was a part of Efficiency. I would split EFFIC in Corruption and Culture.
2) How bigger your culture rate, the less it costs you to bribe enemy cities. Note this isn't the same as Fanaticism. That makes enemies bribing your cities more expensive.
3) If your Culture is stronger than that of nearby civilization, his cities become gradually and automatically converted to your Culture. The converted cities have your city stile, so you can know which are converted. If that other civ declares war at you, the citizens of the converted cities become more unhappy.
4) If the capital of another civ is converted, you have a better diplomatic relationship.

Culture should be particularly determined by your Religion. See my previous posts.

In my next posts I shall begin to give Social Factors to the SE choices.

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M@ni@c-SMAniaC
depends on what site I am.


<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by M@ni@c (edited July 20, 1999).]</font>

[Colon™]

Maniac, I'm afraid you misunberstood me, I explecitly said that having more power over you country does not equal more power for the country as whole.
And police rating is rather simplistic to respresent to whole internal affiars policitics. I'm talking about internal politics as a separate thing from external, and gaining more power over your country can be very bad for the power of a country because of the effects surpression and lack of freedom. You can hardly say that the totalitarian rule of the Tsar benefitted Russia in any way, but it was "fun" for the Tsar to have that amount of control over it's population.
And as I said, in real life things aren't balanced, certain organisation types are better then others, don't forget that either.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Colon (edited July 20, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

Colon :
In your first post you said something about installing a parliament and choosing if the people or the aristocracy choose the members.
A parliament chosen by the people is in CivX represented by a Democracy.
A parliament chosen by the aristocracy is in CivX IMO represented by a Republic for example Rome.
I agree a radical choice should require some time. How about this. A SE Government change causes a revolution just as in Civ2(for example Monarchy to Republic), but a change in another category doesn't. For example I don't think the people would revolt because you change priorities from Wealth to Knowledge.

In your thirth post you said :
I explicitly said that having more power over your country does not equal more power for the country as whole.
Again I agree. Let me translate your sentence in SE language.
Having a higher Police rate does not equal a higher Economy rate.
You're right that Totalitarianist rule doesn't mean a better country.
This is my suggestion for Totalitarianism :
+2Police, +2Support, -2Efficiency(=a lot of Corruption) or -2Economy

[Jimmy]

In civ3, I would like to really get a feel that my civ is what the SE choices are. So my suggestion is for each SE choice to have a WoW-type effect that changes gameplay rather than the SMAC system of + and -. (The SMAC system is good, I just feel that civ3 can do better) Here are some examples of what I am talking about:

- despotism: same as in civ2 except that you would face "pro-democracy riots" escpecially in the latter part of the game.
- communism: same as despotism except that ressources would be pooled.
- democracy: Breaking treaties, committing atrocities, using weapons of mass destruction would cause major riots. There would be a senate that would have to ratify treaties, SE changes, construction of WoW. The senate would also propose things that you could pass or veto.

- free market: computer would control city production. The player could change production but it would increase unhappiness ( a free market society does not like gov intervention). There would be no maintenance costs. (this would represent private corporations supporting the maintenance of infrastructure)
- planned: player has complete control over production.
- green: pollution would increase unhappiness. "high industry" type facilities would not be allowed. A new facility, the "state park" would be allowed to be constructed which would increase happiness.

- power: 1 out of 3 citizens would automatically become a free "militia" unit, similar to the partisan but more powerful. It would be upgradable when you got new weapons technologies.
- knowledge: 1 free tech every X turns
- wealth: +50% more income. more unhappiness.

- cybernetic: a free facility is built at random every X turns. small chance that a facility would be destroyed instead of built. ( The free facility would be because industry is much more innovative and more efficient since intelligent conputers do the work and people are free to think. The random loss of a facility would be because even smart computers can crash)
- eudaemonic: spontaneous "golden ages" at random. small chance that a military unit would disband (go AWOL because the society is very pacifist)
- thought control: you could spend money to get X amount of turns "drone" free. It would cost a lot because it would be expensive to control the minds of an entire civilization.

Some of your military units would revolt and try to take your capital if as a democracy you tried to revert back to a totalitarian sytem. if they succeeded, you would stay a democracy, if they failed you would become the totalitarian system you picked. This is realistic (a democratic leader could not switch the gov to a dictatorship without a revolution), and it would make it harder to switch to communism from democracy just to fight a war ( a common civ2 strategy that is not right).

I just think that these types of effects for the SE choices would bring deeper gameplay. A free market economy would feel like one with the unhappiness everytime you tried to switch production ( when you had a riot, you would get a popup window saying "The people took to the streets today chanting "ECONOMY MUST BE GOVT FREE") and the stronger economy (no maintenance costs meens more income and more facilities can be built), a society that believes in "power" would look like one with the free "militia" units moving around etc...

[Flavor Dave]

Harel--I see many, many problems with your idea. First, it doesn't fit with Civ. I mean, if you ranked all the nations in the world for "power," where would Israel rank? Way down the list. Even if Civ3 allows 20 civs, you wouldn't have a civ as insignificant as Israel is in the world. For Pete's sake, it's a one city civ!!!

2nd, to put it in Civ terms, Israel isn't a civ at all, it is an American colony (now, don't get riled, this is in Civ terms). If the US wasn't giving billions to Israel every year, and didn't provide certain military guarantees, the Arab states would have wiped out Israel long ago. Israel is a de facto American city. It projects our values, gets its weapons and the money for those weapons from us, etc.

3rd, you said that a US-Israeli war would entail many US casualties. No, it wouldn't, in civ terms. The US would just drop a nuke. Or, use spies to knock out the coastal fortress and then it would sit off the coast and shell Israel's one city (in civ terms) until all defenders were gone, and then offload marines. Or, the US' engineers would just offload from the transport, build an insta-fortress, and then the howies would come in and wipe out the defenders. There'd be no civ casualties, at all. Not one dead American civ soldier. So, your supposition is false. In Civ.

4th, you are forgetting that the object of real life politics is not to conquer every other nation, or be the first to colonize AC. In real life, any mission as large as going to another solar system would be a multi nation project. So in civ terms, what your saying is nonsensical. And in real life, conquering the world is utterly impractical for one nation.

5th, as far as small civs being harder to conquer, that is ALREADY THE CASE, at least when I choose to play perfectionist. I never lose a city, and almost never lose a unit. Why? Because I never have cities that aren't well protected. And I'm so rich, I'm immune to bribery, even if the AI were able to get a spy to one of my cities.

If you're talking about the AI having small civs, well, that's a whole 'nother issue. But remember, how much did Isreal actually discover itself??? Darn little, since the wheel and mapmaking and...were all discovered before Israel's founding.

6th, your small civs ALREADY get a bonus, in that a 7 city civ of mine is maxed out on improvements. When I'm expansionist, I don't have universities or stock exchanges in MOST of my cities.

[Maniac]

Jimmy :
Your ideas sound acceptable, except this.
Your idea to not be able to set production in a Corporate(=Free Market) Economy is bad.
Whenever I tried to set on the Advisor in Civ2, he wanted to produce something I wouldn't. I would hate it if that stupid AI decides my production.

Your green idea has a point. You shouldn't be able to build Nuclear Plants.

About your Power idea. You said 1 on 3 citizens become Militia. That would seriously decrease population growth.

Further I don't think the Future Societies Cybernetic, Eudaimonic and Thought Control will be in Civ3

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M@ni@c-SMAniaC
depends on what site I am.

[Harel]

Huh?
First off, Flavor, I used Israel as an example. It wasn't ment to show the entire reasoning. Even if you rule out Israel, the idea itself is still intact.
HOWEVER, In the interst of Israel I will answer your accusution.

First off, America tribute to Israel is 1.5% of our total production. Do you truly think such a small figure can make such a big difference?
Secondly, America started funding Israel in 1978, AFTER ISRAEL HAVE WON EVERY BIG WAR WITH THE ARABS. On our own. If anything, France helped us.
Third, you are aware Israel have nukes also?
Fourth, with Israel up-coming anti-missile defence, it's a long shot the missile would hit anyway.
Not that America won't have any other nation on it's tail after it.
Fourth, we DON'T use your values, don't like them and more Israelies don't like you either. Myself Included. I belive the us to be a simple-minded fool country, we no regard for TRUE democracy or human life. You lots would have never given up hard-earned land for peace, you butched thousand of Indians. We are not a colony of america. We earned our right way before you came.
Besides, Israel air force is ( and no, I am not making this up ) the fourth in it's size in the world, and FIRST in quality ( since Israel aeronotics supress those of america by far ). So, I won't guess america "bombing ships" would survive for long.
Not that Israel navy is very weak. It's very small, true, but it does carry the world three first clock-technology ships.
Beside, Israel develop most of it's weapons. If anything, America buy weapon designs FROM US.

But, you did you "civ-terms". Well, then civ terms are false. Civ should better reflect reality. In real life, america can't take over Israel that easily. Therefor, a civ that takes "power" as goal ( like Israel ), should get a much bigger spy-defence and morale bonus to refelct the fact that it's indeed harder to take over that civ. Surely you don't belive the "insta-fortress, multi-howitzer" idea can work in real life.

And last, Israel is considered the world leader is several key technologies, such as rocketry, semi-conductors, molecularic biology and plasma physics.
( I can back that up, btw. )
I don't think that can be explained by the miger help of 2 billion a year.

But, don't consider Israel alone.
Taiwan, Singapore, Monaco...
All of those tiny nations hold great economical power as they sell ( hi-tech, tourrism, or anything else ) exceptional power. Their hold of the world market far supress thier real size, and thier politcal power ( vote's in civ terms ) are also much bigger.
Also, there is no "no-causlties" war today so civ model is un-realistic anyway.
Even in desert storm america lost troops, and that war was as "play-safe" as you can get.

AND LAST AND NOT LEAST, never, never under-estmaied Israel. Very big nations learned that lesson after great pain.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Harel (edited July 21, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

Harel :
I totally disagree with you. Though it is true that small countries aren't that behind that much in the world, your ideas don't represent that in Civ3. Actually small countries already have benefits in Civ.
1) As you said yourself small countries don't get behind due to trade and tourism. A Democracy/Transnational/Wealth SE Choice would deliver enough money to make it livable.
2) Small countries can sign trade and science pacts(probably possible in Civ3) so they don't get behind. Examples : EU, GOS, MERCOSUR, OPEC...

[Ecce Homo]

Israel has won all the wars against the Arabs because a developing country can not possibly defeat an industrial country in a war. Why then? If an Israeli tank is damaged in battle, the soldiers read the manual and repair it. If an Egyptian tank is damaged, it cannot be repaired because the soldiers are illiterate.

I believe that progress should depend more on physical/intellectual infrastructure than on population.

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The best ideas are those that can be improved.
Ecce Homo