(Almost) everyone seems to agree that SMAC-style social engineering should replace CivII style governments, because of the greater flexibility and capacity to force decisions that is inherent in the SE system. So, how do you want it implemented? What SE options do you want, and what game effects do you want them to have? Or do you not want SE at all? That's fine too, post your ideas and we'll see who likes what.

These underlying sentiments would also be influenced by other factors, not just the social engineering choices. For example discovering television might increase "Contentment" but also increase "Apathy" while declaring war would increase "Patriotism" but decrease "Morality", or it might have different results depending on other underlying factors. If "Trust in leadership" is too low, you would have different effects (like the Vietnam war).

In the same direction, how would revolutions be handled? It is very infrequent that a civ changes governemnt types overnight. Look at the change from monarchy to democracy in france. Or to communism in Russia. Or to fundamentalism in Iran...

The anarchy in Civ between government types is a good idea, but it should be more volatile. Perhaps revolutions should be out of the hands of the player, but they can influence public sentiment. Instead of simply becomming a democracy, the player can build propagandist units to spread pro-democracy sentiments, then allow the revolution to occur on its own, or relieve tensions in the changeover.. If the sentiments are opposed to the change, the revolution might fail or another revolution may occur, to bring the nation back to the good old days.

Would also be really cool to do against an enemy, leading to real cold wars....

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Live your own life, for you will die your own death. -Latin Proverb

First, monarchy is a form of government, not an economic system. Second, nobody said that it didn't (although several might dispute your claim, I don't want to start that argument right now).

What's SOL?

"OK, that's a small point, the SOL would just become like the Eiffel Tower. But the bigger point is, have you guys thought thru how this would affect a game, as it is played (as opposed to a reflection of history)? You tried to be a peaceful democracy, but those darned Carthaginians will NOT stop their sneak attacks. You decide it's time for them to go. So you need to switch to communism or fundy. But wait!!! Your civ splits in half!! Or not. Either way, you're putting waaaay too much power in the random chance of your empire splitting."

That's the challenge. I'm tired of being a peaceful democracy and not being able to afford the cost of anarchy of switching governments to keep fighting because some AI player keeps switching governments just so it can attack me, then switches back to Republic of Democracy and plays out the war. I notice the computer AI does not have to deal with a Senate forcing them to concede!

"3rd, the AI changes govts all the time, when you go to war with it. If you put this feature in the game, and it affects the AI civs, the game will be too easy. It will quickly become apparent that the best way to win (I'm pretty sure about this) would be to go warmonger. Get them, and force them to switch govts, before they get to you. Why would you want to create a strategy funnel?"

You just reinforced my point. The AI would have to decide to either be a warmonger, or be a Republic/Democracy, and not do both.

What's to stop you from staying a warmonger gov? Nothing, except for the advantages of being a Republic/Democracy over the costs of being a Despotism/Monarchy/Communism/Fundamentalism. Which would you rather be, Libya or the U.S.?

It balances itself out. Civilizations do not change governments at the tip of a hat, and they shouldn't in a game, either.

More examples from this century: Korea, Viet Nam upon transitions to communism (if I'm not mistaken).

An example from the 19th century: United States transitioning to abolish slavery; traditionalist states formed a confederacy.

It is realistic. It also adds to gameplay balance. Governments should not be changed at the drop of a hat. Falling into anarchy for any reason is risky ... there is no government, everyone is fighting for control, there are bound to be other factions that gain some control.

Here's how I think it should work (at least the social engineering part):

Each population unit (10,000 people or whatever) should have a racial identity (caucasian, hispanic, etc.), religious identity (Christian, Moslem, etc), and cultural identity (American, Chinese, etc) and a strength associated with each, that is the strength of that unit's association with a particular "identity". Each type of identity has a bias toward certain sentiments.

Each unit also has a number of sentiments which are how the unit feels about different areas/ideas/philosophies/desires. There would be 15-20 of these sentiments grouped in a few categories such as the following:

Government:
Trust in leadership
Accepting of meddling by
Desire for input in
Patriotism
Outsiders (other races, cultures, religions):
Tolerance of
Identification with
Self:
Work Ethic
Morality
Desire for Freedom
Contentment
Future:
Desire for growth (of civilization)
Desire for change

(This is definitely just a rough outline to present the idea.)

So the basic idea is this. All the sentiments are non-linearly related and the best you can hope for is a good balance. Your job is to choose your social engineering (as well your actions and research) to influence your population to the sentiments you want. In the beginning it's easy due to the homogenous nature of your people and the small number of them, but as time goes on the balancing is more difficult. You may decide to fight a war because it's a good way to get people to "rally round the flag," but you may be limited in your choice of targets based on who your population identifies with or fears.

Conquered nations, especially if their social engineering was more englightened than yours, hate you when you take over. Any troops built from there retain their tag of ethnicity. So the Germans have conquered the Czcechs and accepted Austria in as part of the Anschluss (in game terms, unification between a major and a minor nation). The Austrians are Germans, there's very little discontent, and military units built from their cities are mostly loyal. The Czechs on the other hand, a democracy, hates the Germans. The Germans can recruit Czech units if they like, but should the Czech cities revolt, those units will probably come with them. So German units are probably best for keeping order safely in Czech cities.

That way, you don't have to keep track of ethnicity, merely the old nationality of the city or area. Besides, would you decide ethnicity based on nation or location? Decide by location, and you might end up with Asian Vikings. Decide by nation, and the "racism" and hostility from two different ethnicities wouldn't make sense- why should the Danes and the Sioux hate each other when they've been living peacefully side by side for 4000 years (in this random map game)?

On revolution: I know it's an abstraction, but I think that the current SMAC model with perhaps a "slow burn" on settings change would be best. That way infant democracies easily lapse back to dictatorships (Germany) but strong democracies that have been that way for hundreds of years survive the worst of times easily (England, Scotland, USA) without revolution. In other words, you can call a revolution whenever you want, but sometimes the revolution will call you, whether you want it or not.

I think a good variation on what DarkEagle refers to- if you have a revolution, that's a common time for conquered civs to hold independence movements, proclaiming freedom, justice, etc., when you try and become a dictatorship again (England trying to exsert more control over the US). Alternatively, you want to be a democracy, and they demand self-determination (like Russia in the 90's.). It's not something arbitrary, it's just that oppressed peoples know that a revolution is a great time to strike. If you switch to a more liberal form of government, then they might agree to stop the revolution. The only time I see cities founded by you, your own people rebeling is an Americas type situation- colonies very far off that have substantially better living conditions may "break off" if you're still a monarchy and become a democracy. But, this would be no big deal since they would automatically be your very best friends still and good trading partners (the British made more money after the war than before). Of course, you could attack and surpress them, if you really wanted to hold on, but given the problem of logistics... it's better just to let them run free.

By the way, SOL=Statue of Liberty.

Which reminds me. Russia's revolution was extremely bloody, Spartan.

I also would like to force Social Engineering on governments as a term of a treaty, a la Versailles.

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Live your own life, for you will die your own death. -Latin Proverb

Overall this shouldn't be too significant a threat to gameplay if it happened often enough. Sure, you changing governments and losing 1/3 of your cities would be devastating in a Civ II game, but if happened to everyone and fairly often, it wouldn't be unbalancing. A fragmentation could happen whenever the right combination of sentiments occurred, not just during a governmental change.

Few, if any, civilizations in history survived for long before they began experiencing all of these. If Civ3 is to going to recreate the "feel" of the things that have shaped the history of civilizations and nations then they have to be there.

Civ 1 had a feature where the computer player's cities would occasionally decide to defect to your civ, let's put that back in an improved form. It should depend on things like the geographical proximity of the city, the two forms of government involved and the personalities of the leaders. At one extreme, its easy to see how an unhappy city on the far edge of an empire led by an aggressive, militaristic leader might find it attractive to defect to a nearby, prosperous empire led by a perfectionist or a human with a good reputation. Of course, the situation should work in reverse too-the human's peripheral cities might find an adjacent AI civs attractive in the same way!

Second, there should be some danger of civil war for any civ which pursues a long war with lots of losses, or has lots of unhappiness from any cause, or (if leaders are important) has a rival leader rise up within it. A resulting civil war could mean that a fraction of the empire would split off or a portion of the empire could split off and become part of some other player. Again, this would have to apply to both the computer players and the human.

Now, I'm considering three types of socialist state. (1) The "Traditional" Communist one, e.g. The Soviet Union. (2) An Ecologist/socialist one that would curb growth but decrease pollution (aikin to Green Economy in SMAC), and finally (3) A utopian communsitic one. It was in SMAC as "eudaimonia", so why not include it here? It would gain some major advantages such as increased production and no corruption or waste, but would be extremely hard to control, much more so than a democracy. People would be extremely hard to keep in check, no police units would be allowed, people would get angry at military units and imminent anarchy would constantly reign. It would be difficult to master but ultimately worth the pain.

So what I'm trying to say here is that Empires divide, even without revolutions, but even better with revolutions. Dividing up shouldn't be that rampant.
Lets say that your civ was in a long war with your worst enemy and the county is run-down, the economy is at it's lowest in 1000 years, your science is so stuck up that you play Civilization in candle light (not really ) and 90% of your citizens are unhappy. So you got a great idea to give up fundamentalism and turn into democracy, Well your citizens have heard about that great democratic country over seas where people have Electricity and Cable TVs and they think that maybe they'll get that too with the revolution. So are they gonna run away with some Fundamentalist Terrorist Commander and form their own nation? HECK NO!

It's a different thing when you're a some dumb monarch in 1500's, you inherited your power from your mother-in-law, and you don't give a S*** about how bad is your people's living conditions are . There was a revolution in a another nation, they used this great new idea about Republic. But you don't care, you declared war on them just for the heck of it.
Well, your citizens think that maybe they should give shot on that republic of the Zulus, so they come to you and ask for revolution but all you do is kill 'em all!
So you think they're not gonna start burning prisons and military forts and then come to kill you? i think that's what they'll be planning...

I do not like the idea of Revolutions DIRECTLY causing a Civ to split, for these reasons,

1. This would really hurt gameplay.. I would hate having such catastrophic effects occuring when I decided to take a diffrent couse in my gameplay.

2. This could be totally and easily remidied realistically. All you would need is a SE factor (like econ, effic, police etc in SMAC) that directly effected happiness. Take for instance, every revelolution to Democracy (as we know it today) has been reletively non-violent. Why? Because people are happy in a democracy, whereas a revolution from Democracy to Monacrchy should raise some unhappy citizens. Therefore, Democ should have a +2 hap, monarchy -1 hap, depotism - 2... etc.. (this could also be offset by the police factor in some governments... That way you are not at a horid happiness disadvantage at the begining of the game.

With that said, I think unchecked unhappy civilizations should be a lot more likely to split than in the other games, that way if someone goes from Democracy to Depotism, they still have a good chance of splitting if the player doesnt do something to stop it.

to replace the future society part of the SMAC SE tree, I recomend we have religeon be part of SE. We wont need to have a difrent seting for every religeon out there, just basic setings for characteristics of each religeon... Here is the basic outline of what I'm thinking..

----- Simple Spirtual

Real world exapmpe: Pre-historical religeon.. Belief in spirits and such, but not organized god/gods.

Game effect: wouldn't really effect the SE tree at all, just the default at the begining of the game

----- Offering (There has got to be a better name for this one)

Real world example: Aztec's (Animal sacrifices), Greek/Roman. In these religeons, people sacrifficed or offered material possesions to the gods to please them, or quell their anger.

Game Effects: a signifigant damper on trade, but here's the fun part: This religeous choice should increase the likely-hood of good random events, and decrease the likely-hood of bad ones. Maybe we could even make the likelyhood of bad things happening to enemy civilizations higher. Here's a more specific example of what I'm talking about:

Trimeme's ttpically have a 25% (?) chance of sinking when thet leave shore, Having this religeos choice would reduce that to 10-15%... Another: This would be a great choice early in the game, because it would effect what is found in the village squares, with this religeon, the chances of finding a tech or a free city in a village would be greatly increased.

Note: this reliegeos choice should not effect happiness positively or negitivly. Because most religeons of this type did not believe in an afterlife for common-folk, they did not really make people happier, but I don't see any reason why they would be sadder than in simple spirtual.

--- Monotheistic (??)

Real world examples: Judasim, Christianity

Game effects: this would increase happiness signifigantly (+2), and probably decrease police a bit (-1) (look at christianity durng the Roman Empire. Becasue of a belief in the after-life death was no long a signifigant threat to keep people in line.) It should have some other negative as well, but I cant think of one that would work right now (The ability to easily keep people happy needs to be offset to keep the challenge on hight dificulty levels.

--- Re-incarnationism

Real world example: ??? I cant remember what religeon belives in reincartion..

Game effects: +1 know, (this would come from people somewhat "remembering" past lives, therefore not having to realearn stuff). It should also increase hapiness maybe +1... needs a couple minuses too...

--- Atheism

Real world example: "Reliegeon is Opium for the masses" -- Lennin or Marx.. can't recall.

Game effects: -2 to hapiness... plus temples etc have have no effect (but colessuems, stadiums etc still work). +2/ maybe even +3 police (death is a real threat).

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anyway, its something to toy with.. I really like the effecting random events thing. Of couse none of the stats should be set in stone. What do you guys think

This is not a fantasy game. Perhaps past lives are true, but if they are, then they affect everyone equally.

The religiously-based societies (theocracy is one definition) are and were important and quite different from a monarchy, much less a republic. Although similar to some of the warlord-based societies, there are still enough differences to mean that it should show up differently. For the game's purposes it really isn't important what the religion believed, what's important is that it was a way to organize society, it created a set of leaders (hmmm... or was it the other way around?) and a system of leadership succession. The trick is figuring out just how a theocracy is different from the other ways to organize society and how to make it useful in the game. If its not different and useful for the game, then it doesn't need to be there.

Theocracies have come in many, many flavors, but if we just go with the stereotypes and generalities, I think it would mean we'd have a civ that:

-- has a strong leader class
-- is a well organized, highly controlled society
-- has education generally restricted to the leader class
-- has wealth concentrated in the leader class
-- can raise strong, often fanatical army
-- resists change, contact with the outside
-- instant dislike for other theocracies
-- often resists technology (forces of change)
-- tends to be expansionist
-- maybe allow them to raise small fanatic armies with little or no support to represent various kinds of holy wars or crusades

I don't think it has much if any impact on population growth or militarism vs. pacifist characteristics--too many examples in both directions. Here we'd let the particular leader in power determine how the civ behaved.

As for the ethnic side of this: why not simplify this and say that each city retains the ethnic "flavor" of the civ that founded it? Religion can change (eg - "Hindu Indian city vs. Buddist Indian city), and these different groups would be able to influence (vote in a senate) and be influenced by the government.