Ordinances: a simple idea to improve government in Civ3 (aka plz read firaxis)

[Grumbold]

Universal good quality health care may be one of the goals of communism but it certainly is/was not fulfilled by the communist states around the world. They seem to concentrate more on maintaining a vigorous military defence. Korn's last suggestion of varying pools of ordinances appropriate to each government model seems excellent. That would make health care a possible choice for an ordinance but certainly one more suited to democracy/republic governments.

I'd be happy for there to be many more ordinances but that is a personal choice. If you only get one every 20 turns or so, and outdated ones fade away, you should never have to worry about how many in total there actually are. just if you want to activate each one as it comes along. I don't see these as toggle buttons you play with every turn but as long term choices (a one year nuclear ban or clean air act is useless, they need to be sustained to provide benefits.) The only short term ones are military options for boosting production in the short term and to hell with the long term cost. Firaxis seem to be wrapping many of them up in the concept of Nationalism.

[Adm.Naismith]

*bumping* a good proposal I'm afraid Firaxis missed, just in case they have a "last minute" slot to add it as political side of Culture model.
This *bump* is for reference about a post I have written in "Most impressive feature" poll

[korn469]

well tropico and simcity 3000 both have a feature like this already, and i really hope that civ3 does have something like this in it too. but if civ3 doesn't ship with it, there is always time for the expansion...so i hope some people like Adm.Naismith and others will be willing to petition firaxis to include something similar to this in the civ3 expansion

civ3 needs this idea because it is simple, and it has the potential to add new depth to the strategy in civ3 and it could also help gameplay by increasing the attachment the player feels to their civ

[To_Serve_Man]

Originally posted by korn469
i also think that many of the choices should be opposites of one another (like bill of rights and secret police) and i think that they should cover a broad range of areas from politics to the economy to the environment.

korn469

I like the idea, because I have actually been able to use it in SimCity 3k. It is a tried and true method. Many ideas are from scratch and sometimes hard to understand. However in a game like Civ, there should be more than just opposites of one another. I feel that there should be more than just A vs. B. Instead, maybe 3 different sides, or more. An example of this is Age of Kings. Although its not anything like Ordinances, it is the number of units. In Age of Kings, one would have infantry. A basic unit. To counter infantry, archers are used. To counter archers, Skirmishers. Cavalry beats skirmishers, pikemen (and camels) beat cavalry, infantry beats pikemen. So, there is a cycle. I'm not going to say that Age of Kings was the most balanced game, but it was very good. I think that the idea of having a cycle, or several choices instead of just two would be much more balanced and would allow more diversity with between the civs. I also have a concern with how the AI would use them. I am mostly a single player person because my friends and I all dont have the same schedule, so games are played once a week or so. So being able to play a good single player game when I have time is important to me. So I wonder if the AI will be able to use these ordinances to there full advantage. IMO, the AI can, but it might take some time making it able to. And there is another question, would we be willing to delay the game to create a outstanding AI to be able to work with all these new features?

Although there are a few parts to this idea that are very sketchy, I support it all the way! It is a tried and true method.

[shum00]

Magnus,
Constitution wouldn't be an option under communism

[connorkimbro]

Wow, i've had this idea before, but hadn't said anything about it.

I think it's a terrific idea, it could REALLY enhance civ gameplay, if done right.

I think sid could do it right.

i only dismay at the fact that it may be too late to add it now.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by shum00
Magnus,
Constitution wouldn't be an option under communism

Don't be a fool.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Don't be a fool.

Please at least TRY to be constructive. If you don't agree with the post, say why.

[ancient]

Originally posted by colossus
Korn

While in reality you can have many, many ordinances, in civ3 you will destroy the game. The effects of unlimited ordinances are similar to unlimited wonders in a more uncontrollable fashion. You can solve the problems of happiness, production, money, science, etc. simultaneously by issuing the appropriate ordinances. Then there is no point for change of government. In civ2, we still have to choose fundy for conquest or demo for A.C., but if demo can be as strong militarily as fundy, why change the government? The game will degenrate to rushing all the advances to get the benefits of ordinances.

nah i think this would ruin the game, as colosus said, it would make switching governments pointless. i think a better system would work like this; (ill probably get yelled at since ive said it before, but i think its 10x better than this dumb system.)

Having to choose between 2 different systems, an economic system a goverment system then a final switch of wether you want to be conservative liberal or just in the middle.

Government would work like this

----------------------------Republic>Democracy
Despotism>Monarchy>
-----------------------------Nationalism>Fascism (not officially in but should be)

Governments could be switched to on above it or in front of it at a natural rate but moving backwords would cause it to take 2x time.

Government policy
Liberal-Mediocracy-Conservative

At anytime you can chose one of these to change different affects on your government.

Economic System

--------------------Serfism>Capitalism
Barter System>
--------------------Socialism>Communism

This would effect your amopunt of money brought in, the rate of science developement, how fast your workers irigate and make colonys. changing economic systems take a very long time maybe 5-20 turns depending on your culture.
a few ideas would be serfism brings in more money but workers work more slowly and units are produced at a slower rate as well as science research, is also very slow, so you wonder why do it? simply because you must be it first before you can be capitalist which would give you most money, fastest research faster unit production and workers, but your citizens are more likely to revolt when they are unhappy.
moving backwords takes the longest time, more than moving forwards.


these three choices you mkae, have many combinations the different combinations have different results.

i dont have all the ideas for every setting but it could be figured out relatively easy, and this would make customizable governments a more balanced thing.

[korn469]

ancient

how about a system like this...

you have goverment systems with the following choices: frontier (default) police state, democratic, fundamentalism

then you have the following economic choices:
simple, free market, planned, green

then you have the following values:
survival, power, knowledge, wealth

finally you have the following future society choices:
none, cybernetic, eudimonic, and thought control

it's called Social engineering (SE) and it's in SMAC...as far as we know civ3 will not have SE, it will use the government model of civ2, and working in those confines i think that ordinances (or edicts or mandates or decrees whatever you wanna call it) would be a relatively simple way to add some unique attributes to a civ that if balanced correctly would not make switching governements pointless

a barebones approach would be that each government would have three unique ordinances, only one of which could be in effect at any one time...these ordinances would compliment that form of goverment