Why did social engienering gone?

[Blake]

How would the idea of policies go down?
With the basic idea being a policy costs a certain amount to enact/run, and has certain benefits.

Each policy would have a cost per turn, in addition to other effects. Each additional policy would cost more (per turn) than the last, as the economy becomes stifled by increased controls and expenses. (this is to prevent a civilisation running all policies)
These policies are very real in todays worlds, different countries have different policies, despite the same goverment. Policies can change quickly.

off the top of my head some would be:

Nuclear Free Zone: {Prevents the construction of Nuclear Missiles, subs, powerplants etc etc, if these already exist they cause unhappiness, increases international regard (or something), also prevents nuclear equiped units from allied nations entering territory}
New Zealand has this policy We also have a policy whereby we roll over and play dead if another country decides to invade us.

Compulsary Military Training: {At the age of 18 (or so) citizens spend a few months/years in the army, this slightly reduces productivity, but improves the overall quality of military units, and has a "homeguard" effect}
I believe Israel does something like this. And most countries did until fairly recentely.

Free Tertiary Education: {Gives all young people, rich or poor, smart or stupid, the oppurtunity to spend several years of their life drinking a lot and generally having a good time, after which they bugger off to other countries. Results in a marginal improvment in science & happiness, with a hefty increase for University upkeep.}

Recycling Subsidies: {Encourages companies to recycle. This results in a reduced probability of tiles becoming polluted (less dumps required). Also adds a slight production bonus to the Recycling Facility}

Emissions Control: {Forces strict control over emissions from factories and vechiles, production takes a hit and pollution is reduced.} *cough* *cough* the city I live in could do with this policy.

Free Health Care: {Increases upkeep for medical facilities, improves overall health and happiness in cities with medical facilities} - only makes sense if the population model includes health.
Many countries have this in some shape or form.

Birth Control: {Limits the size of families, to reduce growth} - This would only make sense if overcrowding causes starvation or unhappiness in Civ3, in Civ2 population couldn't outstrip food supply, which was one of the flaws of the population model.
China has this policy.

edit: I should add that a policy would become available when a number of conditions have been met, for example Free Health Care would only be available if your civ has atleast one medical facility.
Other policies could become available at certain techs (Military Training could become available at conscription).

Mr. Pleasant -
I never liked all of the govs in CtP because I never found that the AI could handle them. Nor did I like switching every couple turns. But the SE system with modest changes is something I did enjoy.

tniem-
Agreed! SE was far superior.
CTP's AI could use the different governments - but you had to rewrite the strategies.txt file. Since civ3 won't have SE, adding some new govs will be cool. I just hope the civ3 AI can handle additions I make without the need to f_ck around with txt files.

One thing is that using governments keeps in the spirit of the civilization series. The old debate for when to change governments will occur all over again.

I disagree. The spirit of the civ series is to take over history. SE gives you a fine-grained control. The gov system was fine for Civ, but this is Civ3.

Maybe because civilisations in history were not changing so much things, they all had some few general paterns. Future paterns are now more diversified, even if some paterns are almost unused these days, such as "green economy" and such.

Trifna -
There are numerous possibilities that have been tried and left untried in the history of the world. Sure, modern monarchies (Elizabethan England for example) followed a mercantile economy. But this does not mean ancient "monarchies" (in civ terms I take it this would be Rome and Egypt back in the day) were at all mercantile. Moreover, why not mercantile Republic? An economically imperialist gov elected by the people? Why can't you have democratic politics with socialist economics? Oh wait, that was Europe in the mid 20th century - so I guess you can. As for a green economy, this is a fairly new idea in the grand scheme of things. But who knows, it might catch on. Besides, Civ is all about counterfactual possibilities, so bring on some stuff that never happened (you know, stuff like the Aztecs capturing Madrid).

[tniem]

Originally posted by Mister Pleasant
I disagree. The spirit of the civ series is to take over history. SE gives you a fine-grained control. The gov system was fine for Civ, but this is Civ3.

Totally agree.

There are numerous possibilities that have been tried and left untried in the history of the world. Sure, modern monarchies (Elizabethan England for example) followed a mercantile economy. But this does not mean ancient "monarchies" (in civ terms I take it this would be Rome and Egypt back in the day) were at all mercantile. Moreover, why not mercantile Republic? An economically imperialist gov elected by the people? Why can't you have democratic politics with socialist economics? Oh wait, that was Europe in the mid 20th century - so I guess you can. As for a green economy, this is a fairly new idea in the grand scheme of things. But who knows, it might catch on. Besides, Civ is all about counterfactual possibilities, so bring on some stuff that never happened (you know, stuff like the Aztecs capturing Madrid).

Exactly. So well put. And I just listened to a professor from Oberland College explain that a more green approach is going to be vital in the next 25 years because of the bell curve on oil (anyways off topic). But the point is that Civ is a game to recreate history not relive it. I am not saying that SE is necessarily the best governmental option, just the best one that has been used in the civ series and without it, Sid going back to the Civ 1 system is downgrading the governmental system that we will be playing with.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Mister Pleasant
SE gives you a fine-grained control.

Well, this "fine-grade control" is actually a part of the problem with SE. You can change the gov-policy one tiny step at a time, without much transition risktaking, and for a relatively modest overcomeable cost. No challenge/ risktaking whatsoever.

Personally, I keep my thumbs crossed for a game that makes those gov/anarchy transitions MORE of a risk-estimated challenge, then it ever was in Civ-2. Not necessarilly as hard as those nationally enforced religious conversions in "Europa Universalis", perhaps. But, gov-switching SHOULD definitely be harder, in order to prevent "tactical gov-switching" back and forth.

The gov system was fine for Civ, but this is Civ3.

That gov-system is great for Civ-3. as well.

Personally, I keep my thumbs crossed for a game that makes those gov/anarchy transitions MORE of a risk-estimated challenge, then it ever was in Civ-2. Not necessarilly as hard as those nationally enforced religious conversions in "Europa Universalis", perhaps. But, gov-switching SHOULD definitely be harder, in order to prevent "tactical gov-switching" back and forth.

Simple solution - fine grain the penalties for switching. I would point out that it is not always the case that everything changes at once. Socialists can be voted into office - they don't have to overthrow the government. And presumably, a monarch could allow a free economy. Its just when everything changes all at once that things go a little haywire (i.e. Russian Revolution, French Revolution, Iranian Revolution, Cuban Revolution, and so on . . . )

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Mister Pleasant
Simple solution - fine grain the penalties for switching.

Well, that IS the problem, right there!

The more these transition-penalties is fine-grained, the less problems you have to overcome them, one at a time, right? And the less need for in-advance preparations also.

can be voted into office - they don't have to overthrow the government. And presumably, a monarch could allow a free economy. Its just when everything changes all at once that things go a little haywire (i.e. Russian Revolution, French Revolution, Iranian Revolution, Cuban Revolution, and so on . . . )

- I dont want to be overburden with too many gov-platform +/- attributes. Its a game - not a "reality-simulator".

- Weighting these attributes is a hopeless game-design task in itself, since every customer have his own subjective viewpoints about it. We are talking civilization history here - not futuristic Alpha Centauri fantasies. By choosing traditional Civ-1 style govs, they have minimized the problem.

- Its easier to design new standalone gov-types, then it is to incorporate new SMAC-style SE-factors.

- Also; lets say you could tweak 100 gov-attributes in Civ-3. What would that mean? It would mean that each attribute would be worth about 1% change. To put it in one single word: gameplay inflation.

- Finally, the harder it is to overview & understand the exact relationship between each player-input and the corresponding game-output, the less meaningful (and more frustrating) it feels for the player. Fractionizing the gov-platform into mix-and-match choices certanly doesnt help...

[knott]

Why don´t kepp SE and only make it harder and more painful to change goverment.

[Cyclotron]

Thank you, Korn and Tniem!

Actually, I just attacked SE because nobody was answering me when I asked what it was, and look! I got an answer. That's why that argument of mine was so baseless and stupid.

Now that I know what I'm talking about, I would come back to the point of "templates" for government by saying that there are two different sets of controls in Civ.

Fine controls are those that determine small features of your society, such as the fine amount of gold produced, shield production, and other city-by-city features.

Global controls are those that determine global values like trade, military support rates, etc.

The idea of Civilization's original gov't model was to divide everything into specific large sets, i.e. the major governments. To provide a challenge, all of the fine controlling was done by the micromanaging player's action and not templates.

SE sounds like it divides the fine controls into sets, too... but a lot of different ones. I think that it is too much to have both the improvement model AND the SE model controlling fine aspects of the game, and since Civ has always been built around the improvement model I see no need for SE or other "alternate" fine control techniques.

[Sandman]

So-called revolutions are about as difficult as changing your breakfast cereal. They are so feeble as to be not worth having.

In my view revolutions should be much more challenging. Some of historys bloodiest conflicts have been civil wars, but a situation like that is barely supported by civ.

[Jamison]

I think SE was very good, and I think it can/could be put in civ. It would be a gradeup from the pick Monarch, Republic, Communism (ie Civ2). In the civ3 SE it would be wider than the AC version. It would have: Government form, Economy, and Social Stance. Example: Republic, Free Market, Knowledge. Or Despoit, Planned, Power. Each form would give properties to heighten or weaken the Civ. I just don't like picking a Government and all of it's form is layed out. I find very little stratgey in that. Just look at the world governments, you can't just say America is a democracy. It has so many variables that make it good at economy, and international status, and national status. Or saying Cuba is just Communist, again many properties go into a government and the working of the citizens of the country. It's much better to customize government, so you can get cool tweaks that invloves economy and military. Also to show the world you social stance. With peaceful civs it would cater to diplomacy, and warlike would gives bonus's to combat strength and the world would be less likely to trust or even honor your sayings. And a political change would have a civ moving from like to neutral, if the change is more power/warlike. There are huge strategic points in this. I sure hope Civ3 is really more realistic, as opposed to Civ2. Just moving units around and picking one government gets old. And actually I am having second thoughts about buying Civ3. Is it really going to be more strategic? Or is it, move knight here and attack? I have been reading info on Civ3 and it seems a cross with Civ2 and AC, more on Civ2. And I have played the same dull things in Civ2, I just don't want another Civ2 repackaged. You know what I am saying?

[korn469]

ok i am not saying that SE is perfect, but it is a better gameplay system that governments

as far as we know civ3 will have five governments:

despotism (default)
monarchy (ancient war)
republic (ancient peace)
democracy (modern peace)
communism (modern war)

not only does it only have five governments but those governments are balanced so that the player will pick the modern form of government, for example there is little reason to stay in monarchy when you have discovered communism

so the government system restricts the player's choice, the player doesn't have interesting choices, they have a routine choice, either they are building up infrastructure or they are building an army and attacking with it...those are the choices and a good player will be able to determine which choice applies to their situation in almost every case, so a good player will make the "right choice"

that doesn't sound like strategy to me

with the SE system players have a number of choices they can make, and with about 40 different choices available to them for the most part (SE has a total of 256 different choices once you have all of the tech)

each choice you make with SE is more specialized, and each corresponds to one particular strategy, there are many more "right" SE choices for each situation, so this forces the player to make interesting choices instead of automatic responces

*****Spartan Information Ministry****
-Colonel Santiago, U.N. Planetary Govenor
Head of the Spartan Free State

Since arriving on Planet, the Spartan Free State has been monitoring suspected Human Rights abuses. Our intelligence network has also been monitoring the vast Proliforation of arms and advanced weaponry on Planet. Furthermore there have been many as of yet unconfirmed rumors of factional cleansing perpertrated by forces loyal to Lady Nell.

The Spartan Free State, although not engaging in the massive arms build on Planet as all of the other factions have, has deployed our troops in a wide varitey of peace keeping missions across Planet. Although the Spartan Free State's Armed Forces are small compared to the huge armies maintained by the Gaians and the University, they are highly motivated to ensure that freedom's eternal flame never dies. In the past 70 years on planet the Spartan Free State's armed forces have grown from a handful of volunteers protecting Spartan citizens from the voracious mind worms that began constant attacks on our settelments shortly after Planetfall. The Spartan armed forces have matured into a dedicated peaceing keeping force. Proud of the fact that only the Spartan Free State has banned weapons research, and has instead dedicated it's time and effort to improving the quality of life for all those on Planet.

The Spartan soldier, is a glorious and proud youth who only seeks to help those around him. Carrying the standard 7.62 U.N. issue handgun the Spartan soldier is tough but compassionate. There are reports of so called "Chaos Weapons" being deployed by other forces, there is widespread speculation in the Spartan scientific community, that these weapons are roughly eight to ten times as power as the Spartan armed forces hand guns. An anonymous corporal was questioned about this huge disparity in arms and he gave this simple responce "The reason we only use basic handguns is the fact that we are not an offensive army. We have *****(note: all referances to the size of the Spartan armed force are classifed) divisions spread around our continant, and all of these legions are strictly for defense. Also we have been deployed to help our neighbors when they have been in trouble. The reason that other factions have deployed such destructive weapons is clearly a sign of their governments agressive totalitarian agendas."
When questioned about the unconfirmed factional cleansing perpertrated by the Gaians his only words were "tragic".

The Spartan Armed forces have been deployed on various aid missions. The first of these was shortly after the Morgan Liberation Front started a revolution in Morgan Territory. Gaian covert operatives had initiated a coup in the Morgan High Command. CEO Morgan was locked away in his executive residence. The gaian backed military junta issued a statement that CEO Morgan was suffering from heart problems and had given them exectuive authority. Shortly after the Spartan Explorer Corps contacted them, the scouts were surrounded and massacred, without even a formal declaration of war before the attack. Shortly thereafter the Morgan junta and it's Gaian backers declared war on the Spartan Free State. Freedom loving Morgan citizens banded togther in the Morgan liberation Front and launched a revolution that toppled this evil Gaian backed dictatorship. CEO Morgan onced freed set the record straight and normalized relations with the Spartan Free State. However, once the revolution was over Lady Nell declared war on the Morgans. Some rumors persist that Spartan soldiers helped in the revolution, and although these rumors make the Spartans out to be heroic soldiers, they are false. Spartan peace keepers arrived at Morgan industries only after Morgan requested aid in fending off a Gaian offensive. Spartans soldiers have not, and will never engage in any acts of aggresion on other factions. This goes against the very essence of the peace loving Spartan soul.

Shortly after declaring war on Morgan, Lady Nell's foces moved against the Believers and the Hive. We've had no contact with the believers in fouty years. Every year the evidence mounts that Gaian forces ruthlessly slaughtered thousands of believers and obiltorated their cities. The believers who were only trying to establish a new home for their faith on Planet have all become maryters for it. Less than two years after permantly losing contact with the believers Gaians ruthlessly used their latest bioweapons, trained mindworms to enslave the people of the hive. Human rights monitors report that The Hive is nothing more than a concentration camp, where the gaians use hive citizens as forced labor to feed their ever growing war machine.

The Spartan Free State came into contact with Brother Lal and his exiled U.N. aid workers not long after the tragedy of the beleivers. Our causes were the same, every person on Planet should live a free life safe from aggression, and the Spartan Free State signed a Pact with Brother Lal immeadiatly. The Gaian war machine heard of this Pact and once again declared war on a peace loving people.

All the while University reserchers were proceeding with a massive weapons research program, backed by the gaians, they flaunted every U.N. convention that existed. Whenever the gaians declared war the depraved unversity followed them. Both hungering for world domination, however the evil scientist of the unversity have been betrayed by the gaian war criminals. The Gaians launched a massive offensive across their entire border with the university. Our intelligence agency is monitoring this war and hope both sides start to honor the U.N. declaration of a nonmilitarized Planet.

Spartan life is simple, and every good Spartan enjoys life on the Bay of Biggun and only wishes for a peaceful Planet. This is why we must ask the Gaians an the University to disarm, like we already have. We also must request that more information about possible gaian war criminals be brought out into the open. Fianally, we would like information on the whereabouts of Chairman Yang, reports are that he was tortured and executed. The concentration camp at The Hive should be closed and all Hive citizens should be freed. These are conditons we will strive for.

Colonel Santiago, Spartan Free State

_________________________________

==================================================
===============
PRESS RELEASE
Timeline: M.Y.2172
Issued by: Gaian Chief Public Relations Officer, Gaia's Landing
==================================================
===============

We are moved to comment on recent scandalous statements emanating from the office of our alleged new Planetary Governor, the self-styled head of the Spartan "Free" State, Colonel Santiago.

Contrary to all rumours, we Gaians stand for nothing but peace and harmony, and if we have found it desirable to spread our light and friendship throughout other factions, then this can only be to the benefit of any citizens lucky enough to be embraced by our philosophy. Any concerned member of the Planetary Council is welcome to inspect any of our bases, such is our desire to show the whole of Planet how wonderful life is under our glorious leader, the charming and peace-loving Lady Nell. There have been suggestions that a few citizens of other factions, while attempting to accept this generous invitation, were set upon and killed by our touchingly loyal pet mindworms. This is regrettable, but anyone thinking of visiting us in the future must realise that we really can't control what these creatures will do when faced with non-Gaian, and therefore probably hostile (not to mention inferior, aggressive and quite probably unwashed) human beings... we cannot blame the creatures for, well, over-reacting slightly. Future visitors must be aware that, notwithstanding our invitation, they run a serious risk of being accidentally killed in this manner. You have been warned.

Relations between ourselves and our good friends the University of Planet have sadly deteriorated, although we must emphasise that this has nothing to do with our recent envoys, whom we sent to University Base with the best of intentions, but who were inexplicably mistaken for some kind of espionage team. Provost Zakharov's very rude response to our envoys' overtures simply invited our counter-response, which has been to offer some of his bases the chance to join the growing Gaian fold, an offer which they have gladly accepted. We welcome them with open arms.

We are sad to hear that CEO Morgan and Brother Lal have been not only so spineless as to be influenced by Colonel Santiago, but have even sunk so low as to lie about Gaian aggression towards them. It came as a terrible shock to our peaceful leader to hear that her former allies, Morgan and Lal, had both inexplicably declared Vendetta against our noble Gaian empire, without any apparent cause. We can only assume malicious Spartan influence, particularly as Brother Lal has recently taken the wholly uncharacteristic step of voting for Colonel Santiago in the elections for Planetary Governor. We detect strong evidence of bribery, corruption and vote-rigging, and invite Colonel Santiago to answer to these charges before we Gaians will recognise any Spartan claim to true Planetary Governorship. Prior to our good allies' sudden switch of allegiance, both Lal and Morgan had beseeched us for help against Spartan aggression. We have the Commlink transcripts and will produce them in any court of law if required. If Brother Lal or CEO Morgan would answer our friendly Commlink broadcasts, we would find out the truth of the matter, but for now we have our strong suspicions, and believe that the unfortunate Morgan may even be vilely enslaved by the Spartan warmongers.

It has come to our attention that the good Lady Nell's reputation amongst the other factions can only be described as "wicked". This is a disgraceful slur on the character of a wise and benevolent leader, and can only be the work of dissatisfied elements within certain sectors of our society, whom we are now in the process of re-educating. To counter this vicious libel, I am authorised to reproduce below a genuine extract from Lady Nell's own personal diary. Nobody could possibly ask for any further proof of our great leader's charity, benevolence and goodwill towards all men.

_________________________________________



=============================================
Spartan Democratic Republic News Network

VICTORY!
VG Day Celebrations break out across Chiron!
=============================================

According to Colonel Santiago in an off camera interview our victory came from defeat.

Nearly one hundred years ago our young men of the Spartan Armed Forces stormed University Beach it was a bloody battle. Heavy casualties were taken on both sides in the struggle to take the beaches, and at first although causualties were heavy the Spartan Amphibious Task Forced stormed ashore. Although Intelligence was quite good prior to the invasion, some of the Gaian Units were well camoflauged and escaped detection. These camoflauged units were mindworms and the put up a desperate fight for the beaches but even their fanatical defence of the beaches couldn't hold off the first wave of our armored vehicles. According to the invasion plan University base should have fallen to our forces and it would then be used for a staging area to strike deep into Gaian territory. Also freeing University base would lift the seige of of our Ally Academician Zakharov, because it appear that he too was about to be overran by the gaian war machine.

The fight for university base was a desprate pitched battle, the gaian defenders were well dug into their positions, and our Spartan forces were almost all tanks. Tanks were ill equipped for the bloody house to house fighting, and even though we out numbered the gaians they managed to hold off our first assault. Despite taking fewer causualties than the gaians our losses were still heavy, while we regrouped and prepared to continue our assualt, a fierce gaian counter attack swept our troops into the sea, every single soldiers that had made it ashore died in the counter attack. Then the gaian navy engaged our amphibious transports, and destroyed one third of them and inflicted heavy damage on the rest. Colonel Santiago met with her generals in what was supposed to be a victory celebration but now we looked across the ocean at the gaians, they were heavily entrenched across all fronts, they were firmly in control of all of their territories and the gaian army was growing larger each day, and our intelligence agency had warned us fifty years earlier that the gaians were research efforts were aimed at developing an aerospace industry. Suddenly the bulk of our army was dead, the gaians had a lead in technology, and the gap was beginning to widen. Our intelligence agency predicted that within 20 years they would have the capacity to deploy an airforce. Things were looking bleak. It appeared that the gaians were preparing for their own invasion, Zakharov had fled to his last rfuge and his situation was desperate. Without our immeadiate aid, it appeared that the gaians would overrun his last two divisions. It really was a time of choas in the Spartan high command.

It came down to a tough decision, the old guard hard liners wanted to continue the war following the same strategy, except they wanted more control of the people, they insisted that military production must be increased, they also suggested that our current economic system had collapsed and with greater regulation of the economy we could boost our industrial output and increase our weapons production. They pointed out that our current system held the population in check quite easily through our secret police force and our propaganda ministry, no one dared question the state's authority. And it was quite easy to see that the Spartan Armed Forces were the best trained and equipped across Chiron. Our total dedication to military power had given our generals the tools they need to build a large and formidable army. They insisted that to achieve victory, we justed need to do what we had been except divert all of our resources to the war effort.

There was one decenting voice, one person who had the courage to speak up. That person was Doctor Hector Bonaventura. He was the mastermind behind the Spartan research effort. Shortly after the battle he had a long and priavte conversation with Colonel Santiago, and he urged her for changes, when he left her office he later confided in her that he expected to be arrested, and tried as a traitor. That was how wide spread the grip of terror extended.

Less than a week later he was shocked by the annoucement that Colonel Santiago issued. In the statement Santiago annouced military cutback and the retirement of two of the top generals. Usually generals were not dismissed, usually they simply disappeared, being dragged somewhere into the Internal Security Beaurea's Head Quarters. Drastic social reforms began to sweep the Spartan Free State. Production of recreation facilities and science centers began in everycity. Sweeping economic reforms took place and then in a suprise move Colonel Santiago annouced that she was stepping down as the Supreme Commander of the Spartan Free State, she annouced that she was going to run for President of Sparta in the first free election since Planet fall. In the first truly free election Colonel Santiago won, U.N. Peace Keepers monitored the election to prevent vote tampering and in the constitution convention the Spartan Free State was disbanded, and the new Spartan Democratic republic was born.

that quote came from a multiplayer game i played against Nell (ip not PBEM) back in the may madness tournament in 1999

i was into that game (you get into MP games way more than single player games) and part of the reason was SE

my original form of government was Police State/Green/Power but then i switched to Democratic/Free Market/Knowledge and because of that change (in the middle of a war) i was able to achieve a technological lead over Nell and win the game, i could see how i was effecting my people, much moreso than if i had of changed from communism to democracy...but the great thing about SE i could have made a number of changes

i could have went to fundy/planned/power or dem/planned/know or police/fm/kno or dem/green/power or quite a number of other choices all of which would effect my strategy

so that is why i think SE is better than governments in the gameplay department

*the player has a number of interesting strategic choices to make instead of a routine choice
*it involves the player more in the game

[korn469]

my reply was too long for one post and here is the second part

here is my reply to those critiques of SE

posted by sandman
So-called revolutions are about as difficult as changing your breakfast cereal. They are so feeble as to be not worth having.

this is a probelm with SE, but firaxis could have changed it if they had of wanted to...also note that the government system suffers from this same problem

posted by cyclotron7
The idea of Civilization's original gov't model was to divide everything into specific large sets, i.e. the major governments. To provide a challenge, all of the fine controlling was done by the micromanaging player's action and not templates.

SE sounds like it divides the fine controls into sets, too... but a lot of different ones. I think that it is too much to have both the improvement model AND the SE model controlling fine aspects of the game, and since Civ has always been built around the improvement model I see no need for SE or other "alternate" fine control techniques.

since you have never played SMAC, i think that you have misjudged SE. like i said earlier the divisions that the government system makes are too broad you only have the choice between a peace or a war system, SE is still a very simple system yet it allows for a far greater number of choices, and these choices are somewhere between the fine choices and the large sets

though i don't really understand why we even have large sets in civ if the designers shared your thoughts...the large sets don't seem to do anything, and you much rather have the player micromanaging everything...the truth is SE allows the player to be able to macromanage their empire, which is a good thing

when you switch to police/green/power you are in one of the best military SE choices...you have strong police controls of your people and you can support a large army who fights slighty better than a civ who has dem/FM/wealth

however if you haven't used the fine controls, such as building military improvements while your opponent has, then you will still be outclassed a player who takes advantage of fine controls and field a larger better trained army than a player who ignores the fine controls and just relies on the power of SE

in SMAC good players have to rely on making appropriate SE choices while at the same time never ignoring the fine controls, so SE doesn't usurp the fine controls, it just makes the large sets better

posted by Ralf
The more these transition-penalties is fine-grained, the less problems you have to overcome them, one at a time, right? And the less need for in-advance preparations also

- I dont want to be overburden with too many gov-platform +/- attributes. Its a game - not a "reality-simulator"

- Weighting these attributes is a hopeless game-design task in itself, since every customer have his own subjective viewpoints about it. We are talking civilization history here - not futuristic Alpha Centauri fantasies.

- Also; lets say you could tweak 100 gov-attributes in Civ-3. What would that mean? It would mean that each attribute would be worth about 1% change. To put it in one single word: gameplay inflation

- Finally, the harder it is to overview & understand the exact relationship between each player-input and the corresponding game-output, the less meaningful (and more frustrating) it feels for the player. Fractionizing the gov-platform into mix-and-match choices certanly doesnt help

actually Ralf does has some good points here, but he still hasn't seen the light

first argument: easier to overcome changes, you need less preparation

this is a problem, but it easy to overcome changes and these problems also effects civ...for one thing because of exploitation of oedo years it is easier to change governments in civ2 than what it was in SMAC, because in civ2 the change was free but you had to endure anarchy, by using the oedo years exploit you ignored the anarchy, so you got a free change, whereas in SMAC it at least costed money, and in civ3 the religious ability will allow free changes, and oedo years might have made their way back into the code

also i would say changing from police/green to dem/FM is just as shocking to your civ as the change from communism to democracy in civ, and at most it will take two turns compared to one turn for civ

learn more about oedo years here

second argument: doesn't want too many choices, hates having +/- instead of a simple description of the effect

too many choices is only a problem if the choices are meaningless, and i do not think that they are meaningless in SMAC, and having meanless choices isn't always because the system doesn't work, but instead because it isn't balanced right

as for the +/- instead of a word description, if you look on the SE screen it gives you a word description of what is going on so you can ignore the +/- aspect, it just makes it easier to see what is going on with a quick glance, but they could hide this without having any problems...and all systems will have pros and cons no matter if it is SE or if it is government, i don't really see why having a shorthand way of seeing what the pros and cons are upsets you so

third argument: so many opinions on how they should represent governments that it is impossible to design

lol

Ralf are you being serious, or are you trying to be funny, because that's hilarious

ok i will pretend like you are being serious, first the same argument applies to civ only moreso, does a democracy mean the US system, or the german system, or the french system, or the japanese system, or the US system from the 1800's or what?
so civ has the exact problem

but don't worry the designers will be able to design a government system or a SE system...i mean they have narrowed down all of the variables of mounted gunpowder operations to a single unit, represented by three a.d.m (maybe as many as five if hp and fp are in the game) numbers, so if they can make the US seventh cavalry that died at the little bighorn and the polish cavalry that made suicidal charges against german tanks into one unit represented by just a few numbers i'm sure they can come up with values for SE if they wanted

fourth argument: same as the second argument

as long as the choices are meaningful and balanced this isn't a problem

fifth and final argument: it becomes so hard to gauge what the effect of different SE choices are that it frustrates the player

well i don't see how this argument applies to SE, when you change from democratic to police state it clearly states what the changes are,

police state: +2 police, +2 support, -2 efficiency
*each base can support four units for free
*each base can use three units for martial law
*higher corruption
*growth rate is normal

democratic: +2 growth, +2 efficiency, -2 support
*each base can support two units for free
*each base can use one unit for martial law
*lower corruption
*growth rate is 20% faster

maybe once again you have problems because of the +/- i don't know, but i don't see where the disconnect forms
please explain where you lose sight of what is happening and get frustrated, otherwise i don't see how your argument is valid in practice

[tniem]

Not much else I can say after the all knowing korn has spoken.