Civil Wars in CivIII

[TechWins]

civil wars DID occur in the original civ1, when the capital city was taken of a large empire

This also happened in Civ2.

[LaRusso]

I am always amazed at how an idea is taken here at the forums, spun around and turned into a complete system, together with a theory of how it should be implemented. Do not get me wrong, civil wars are exactly the kind of stuff that could be introduced....

A good civil war model would allow removal of so-called 'American' civ from the game - shameless concession to the NA games market. I reckon that they already did this with the introduction of the whole 'culture' concept, whereby conquered cities with different culture tend to break away easily. Still, game being only a game and not a historical simulation, I am not sure how one could simulate War of Independence, etc.

Did anyone play boardgame Civilization? Those civil wars were fun....

[Kc7mxo]

Well, to begin with I feel that you all are wrong. Switching governments isn't what should cause a revolution, because it isn't what caused revolutions.

Unrest causes revolutions. That and a weak government.

Look at the america. The colonies revolted after years of repressesion and taxation.

After Red November and Lenin's takeover, there were many many revolutions of people who didn't like the idea that the government was now taking away all their possesions to "redistrubte" them.

People revolt when they're unhappy.

Perhaps instead of the current system of riots, when a city becomes unhappy, it reports this. If it stays this way, then the city changes to a barbarian city, and the military units get driven outside the city. The barbarians could start with some of their own.

[polypheus]

Originally posted by LaRusso
A good civil war model would allow removal of so-called 'American' civ from the game - shameless concession to the NA games market. I reckon that they already did this with the introduction of the whole 'culture' concept, whereby conquered cities with different culture tend to break away easily. Still, game being only a game and not a historical simulation, I am not sure how one could simulate War of Independence, etc.

Did anyone play boardgame Civilization? Those civil wars were fun....

I usually play random world with random Civs. The Civs names and leaders are just for familiarity and there is no need to actual relate them to Civs in our world historically.

"Americans" of Civ3 could just as well be an ancient civ like our-world Egyptians as a breakaway civ. To me, its just a name and it is more fun that if they just made up civ names and cities, that is all.

As for "War of Independence", this is already simulated because if the capital is taken, the Civ splits and the original civ and rebel civ are always automatically at war. So all that is needed is a better model than the "take the capital" model for splitting up of Civs. And "Gen Jackson" has already come up with many good ideas.

[Grumbold]

The turns of anarchy between governments imply a form of revolution have taken place between governments. The anarchy that occurs if you don't respond to city warnings also bloodlessly (and effortlessly) implies a period of chaos before a new order is achieved.

Having a chance of significant numbers of cities breaking away and forming a new power bloc is a good additional twist but I think it appeals more to the hardened gamer than to the general public. After all, I think we feel that our own skill will be far too good to get caught out by this problem or for it to halt our rise to world dominance. Otherwise, we might as well ask for a 1% chance each turn of a "X event has occurred. Game over" message. For it to be not totally predictable and not totally random Civ would have to acquire a lot more in depth empire management, a kind of TBS Tropico, if you like.

[CivPatriot]

I must say that I am impressed that someone managed to find this thread from that far back(I'd almost forgotten about it myself). Wow. and I stand by the idea the swiching gov't can cause revolutions. There is always a signifagant amount of people in a civ that like will like the current gov't and will want want to switch.


How did you find this thread? polypheus, I thought the archives where offline(I've been away for a few days). I remember this thread when some starteda topic on Civil Wars but I htought that this thread was unaccessible.

[Kuciwalker]

It would also be more realistic if you almost always had to have a cilvil war to change your government in the first place, except for Republic/Democracy and similar transitions.

[ancient]

I think the civil war model should also include this; If citys are far away from citys connected by roads with the capital, they are in risk of developing a seperate culture from the Nation which if allowed to continue can cause them to revolt in favor of creating their own nation. This should continue untill the developement of flight where airplanes and such can unit the people even if not by road. Such examples of this are the american revolution, Pakistan-Indian (civil) war... This idea when implimented with other ideas in this postr would do both to enhance the necesity of building roads and further develope cultural instabilitys and balancing..

[ancient]

i want a reply..

[CivPatriot]

I like the idea if distance effecting the possibility of civil war. I belive that this should be even greater when the regions are seperated by a ocean.

But this should decrease as certian advances are discovered(telehgraph, radio, tv).

I personally do not want a civil war with my Civs. If there is a scenarios with civ war I will play it, but not in regular game.

[Ralf]

This reply contained ideas how to deter erratic government-switching, but I have moved it under the topic About "tactical government switching" instead.

[Ralf]

Heres some extra fuel to the important civil-war/rise-and-fall topic. I found it in the The EC3 List -new ideas. The Rise-and-fall concept recieved most votes, by the way. I dont know who wrote below (Korn469 ?). Anyway, its nice reading:

quote:

Empires should become increasingly difficult to hold together as they get larger. As in real world empires, they should be subject to a risk of civil war, rebellion, secession, etc. If that happened it would not be the end of your Civ, but you might have to rebuild from a small base again if you can't deal with your internal opponents and lose part of your empire.
One benefit of this idea is that it would make the later stages of the game more interesting: in Civ2 once your empire reaches a certain size, you can't lose, and there is not much fun left in the game. If your empire was increasingly likely to crumble as it expands, the challenge of conquering the other Civs would be replaced by that of keeping your empire together.

A second benefit is that, unlike Civ2, you could not predict the eventual outcome early in the game. Getting off to a slow start in BC4000 would not inevitably mean that you will also be behind in AD2000, as is the case in Civ2.

A third benefit of this idea is that it makes the infinite city sleaze approach to the game not as effective, as with all those cities, you would be constantly at risk of rebellion in one or more of them.

Instead of the steady exponential power graphs of Civ2, my idea would result in a graph with ups and downs, as one empire grew great and then collapsed. You would have the possibility of building up an empire in a number of different eras. Maybe there could be some kind of mega-wonders that you could build in each era if you have a rich enough empire, as part of the scoring system.

The thoughts I had about implementing this idea quite simply were to:

• Increase the factors affecting citizen happiness, so that for example the level of availability of food and trade goods, and whether the population is of the same nationality/culture/religion as the leader, etc. would affect the happiness rating.
• Make the effects of unhappiness non-deterministic, so that as the unhappiness
  increases, there is an increasing risk of a rebellion in that city. Unlike Civ2, there would be no way of being certain that a city would or would not fall into civil disorder, it would be a probability dependent on the happiness. The probability could increase as you get more distant from the capital.
• If a city goes into civil disorder, it rebels and becomes a minor Civ and starts out on its own. All units from that city from then on belong to that new mini-Civ. With regionalisation, you could also see a region rebel.
• Presence of a rebelling city would increase the likelihood of other cities nearby rebelling, so you get a domino effect: if you don't deal will a rebel city promptly you could see others rebelling too.
• You can station your own troops (not from that City) in a City to combat rebellion. A
  city will only rebel if the strength of any local units plus the City militia (low quality units in a number proportional to the population) is greater than that of your troops.
• You can sell arms using a spy to an enemy City to increase the quality of the militia, making rebellion more likely.

I provide this as an example to illustrate the idea. There would be other more sophisticated ways to implement the same idea of course.