"After 50 turns in democracy, trade should increase again, and after another 25 turns again etc. In other words, there would be a huge advantage to staying in democracy. The 'penalty' would be that you can't just attack anyone. You could only declare war if seriously provoked or attacked first. Democracies would be very powerful but very peaceful."

Man!! How can you say something like that? Which planet do you live on? Or you're going to tell me that U.S only attacks when "seriously provoked or attacked first", or that U.S is "very peaceful"?

I do like SMACS custom units, terriitory boarders, random events, and many other things. However maybe its the sci fi part that just doesn't grab me like earth civ does. Smac is a great game though.

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I am a civ addict. ARE U 2??????

icq 30200920

I wish that when Civ3 is launched, you'll enjoy it as much as you liked Civ2.

quote: Originally posted by deity on 01-29-2000 04:25 PM ...Ask the Russians how easy it's been to change from communism to democracy. And it's ridiculous to think that the US could change to communism or fundamentalism...

This is true but ask the Germans how easy it was to change from democracy to fascism and back to democracy. The reason it was easy is because Germans saw their democratic leaders as unfit and their economy was in ruins. Hitler and his fascist cohorts had the answer to the German's problems. After Germany's defeat in WW2, the Germans were able to change back to democracy easily because they knew the system (the Third Reich only lasted like 10 years) and their conquerors were offering them billions to become democratic. And we look at early 20th century Russia. It was able to change to communism easily because like Germany its leaders were incompetent and the economy was nearly shot.
The reason Russia isn't converting to democracy that easily is because the people weren't dissatisfied with their previous system enough. Since communism was toppled by a leader and not a revolution, the people are reluctant to step into the new democratic system. As for the US, if democracy was failing badly enough for them, they'll switch governments like the Germans and Russians.
Maybe in civ3 in order to change the government your civ has to be in very bad shape and the citizens are very willing to try a different system or if you decide to change governments if your current system is prosperous or even adequate be prepared to deal with high corruption and some cities that will be rioting or revolting. Basically if your current government is doing well and the people are happy with it, changing things will do no good.

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Learn the mistakes of yesterday to prevent the ones of tomorrow...

quote: This is true but ask the Germans how easy it was to change from democracy to fascism and back to democracy. The reason it was easy is because Germans saw their democratic leaders as unfit and their economy was in ruins. Hitler and his fascist cohorts had the answer to the German's problems. After Germany's defeat in WW2, the Germans were able to change back to democracy easily because they knew the system (the Third Reich only lasted like 10 years) and their conquerors were offering them billions to become democratic

Lord Magnus i completely disagree with you, you are contradicting yourself...the weinmar republic in germany only lasted for about 14 years and the nazi government lasted for 12, while the monarchy had lasted for like round fifty years

you say that the germans saw their democratic government as unfit and their economy was in ruins yet you state that they were able to change back to democracy easily because they knew the system...the democratic system tey had was a failure...what you don't realize is that germany had no choice, the allies made germany become a democracy...russia made east germany become a communist state

the weinmar republic was a failure and that experiance had little or nothing to do with them becoming a democracy...if WWII had of happened 150 years earlier, britan and france would have probably installed a monarchy

i'm not saying that germany was a puppet state, it's more complicated than that...but i am saying that they didn't have a choice in choosing what form of government they would have, east versus west germany is all the proof of that i need, and i am also saying that their previous experiance with democracy had little to do with their choice...if they were going to go with what they knew, they would have installed a prussian monarch

quote: The reason Russia isn't converting to democracy that easily is because the people weren't dissatisfied with their previous system enough

i disagree with you again, i think the people aren't happy with what they have...russia is in shambles right now, if they were in a state of great economic prosperity they would be perfectly happy with their system, but it isn't working...people have a short memory and i doubt that a communist system would improve russia's economy or make the people happy...the communist system in russia failed
why would a state that had used terror tactics and had silenced it's people just give up and die? something wasn't working right, things were bad, that's why...

but all of the historical analysis doesn't matter...

CIV IS NOT A SIM, IT'S NOT SIMCIV 3 THAT FIRAXIS IS MAKING

...it's civ 3 and it's just a game and they need to make it fun, balanced and give the player lots of interesting strategic choices and not just lots of micromnagement

and they need to do something about ICS

korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited January 30, 2000).]

Ok, I don't check carefully the math, so it may be unbalanced right here, but you get the whole concept, I suppose.

You can also get some city revolt if the temporary condition become too much to keep with previus condition (how many citizen are happy-unhappy, how many city improvment are at work, how far your city is from your capital ...).

Sure, this SE model is simplified (as Raingoon pointed out into his Column) still I have no idea how to better handle the whole concept of social effects.

I also want to point out that's a bad point of view (IMHO) to state Democracy is the only choice to play with. We only prefer this because we are (more or less) all citizen of democratic country. Some country got good results (handling their limits, quite differents from west resource and historical background) where some try to go for a democracy fell apart quite quickly.

In game terms, at last, we need more choice, not less, because this is SIMCIV (sorry korn), but not HistoryOfCiv, and SIM only means (IMO) realistic reactions to player orders as far as the game designers can handle them.

quote: and they need to do something about ICS

They will do something about it, Brian Reynolds promised it in the Firaxis Forums (before they were closed down).

So, each government should be beneficial in some way and you should be able to change between them.

How about this: the game option is called "Revolution". So why not actually let it be a _revolution_. You can stage a revolution or coup anytime you wish, but not everyone will agree with you. One part of the cities will remain loyal to the old government and the other part will go with you. In other words the Loyalists form a new civilization. If you want to keep your Empire together you have to play the revolution and conquer the other group.

And the other civilizations? Ah, there is nothing like meddling in the civil wars of foreign nations! :-)

That doesn't mean you can't send in Delta Force to piss off the guys you don't like .

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- Biddles

In my opinion, the game tilts towards too much control by the player and not enough friction by the populace to that control. Thus you have the government type 'democracy' (which has never occured at any scale above a city state in history) where the ruler has almost the same (still unrealistic) control over his population as Stalin. The names of the government change, but the control by the player (god king) remains just about the same.

Read any history from the middle ages in Europe, or the feudal period in Japan. The rulers spent almost all of their time intriquing and fighting their own 'subjects'. In Civ, the player controls an empire / nation state from the beginning, and there is very little subtlety involved in the process. Just build stuff. The people seem to go along with very unlikely changes (like switching from Democracy to Despotism) with only a loss of a year's production.

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- Biddles

Country with A LOT of trouble (e.g. horrible economy, bribed statesmen, poor level of education) develop social opportunity for a dictatorship. Then someone grab the opportunity and, more or less overnight, push the last pillar to make democracy (or any other form of government) falls.

Then start the nightmare of control the riots, the opposer, the unhappy neighbours (if you don't make pre-emptive diplomatic pact, as in CIV/SMAC you can't do, but should in CIV III) and the like.
Macchiavelli (or Machiavelli as you not italian people prefer ) state as it's easier to get opposition from people that dislike you idea than sustain from people who like it. So it's pretty hard to control a country into that first moment after a revolution. Then things can slighty improve.

Ok, that's a over simplified model, neverthless is better than a stupid anarchy because I switch from monarchy to democracy: it doesn't happen in Italy at the end of WWII, it was only held a referendum: no one stopped to work for some years

Biddles, the point isn't to lose control of your people: you should have tools to help you to keep it, but you aren't a kind of god:
also a dictator need to exercise control over population (by army, by promises, by pact with some social classes) but can be overthrow because make the wrong choice.

Mussolini in Italy (I'm not a fascist, but I know this example because I'm italian) gain a lot of popular sustain during some 20 years.

Then dead italian soldiers start to pile up during World War II (an effect never simulated in CIV because the simulated war is fun and part of the CIV game model) and people suffer hunger and more poverty than before.

To make short (sorry, over simple again), partisan killed Mussolini - game over.

Biddles, I don't mean you deserve to be killed (nor in game sense ) but simulating some juggling of your CIV's people IS a major need IMHO, without throwing the fun out of the Windows (pun intended, eh eh ).

About the Dictatorships in the 20th century, I used this example but I really don't know that much about the subject.

I'll give you a quite simple example. When Brazil turned from Monarchy to Republic. It happened literally overnight. A party was being held in an island and all the monarchs were there. Brazilian army surrounded the Island and declared Republic.

Another example that I can't assure you is so true is when Brail declared Independence from Portugal. D.Pedro II (I believe it was the second), Brazlians Emperor received a letter from Portugal, increasing taxes and stuff. D.Pedro II said: "Independence or Death!", and Brazil was free. Obviously it took sometime (and money) to Portugal accept it, but anyway, we made the British rich. But I don't want do get on a discussion about it.

Anyway, on both situations, that could be done "instantly" because the people had been for sometime demanding for it. When it happened, everyone wanted.

During WWII only ~25% of the German economy went into war materials, whereas in USA the war effort reached 51% by sometime in '43. The arms industries like Krupp were only too happy to cooperate with the Nazis, and some other industries as well. The German auto industry continued to make cars for the home market in substantial quantities, whereas US auto production was converted to military use. Germany built few new factories specifically for war production (unless you count moving existing machinery into old mines to protect production from bombing), whereas US built many new factories just to make aircraft in large numbers.

BTW after reading raingoon's column and the thread "Column #96; WHY SE DOES NOT BELONG IN CIV3" (check it out, it's pretty interesting) I don't think he is totally against SE, just that he think it's too easy to change SE and that you are too much in control of it. And that is to some extend the meaning here too.

I have an idea on how to make it possible to have SE changes that divides your civ. It has been posted on the previously mentioned thread, and here it is:

First, SE effects should be added/substracted from the effects given by city improvements and advances.
Second the people should have a mind of it's own. I think this could be done by having some categories (like Individualism and Militarism) in which the pop had a rating between 1 and 10. The SE effects by each SE choise should partly/entirely be based on these numbers. With a high Individualism rating people would be unhappy with a nondemocratic gov or a planned economy, but with a low Individualism rating a democratic gov would give a lot of corruption and a capitalist economy would not give very much trade (resembling Russia after the revolution). The SE choises would also effect these ratings. A democratic gov would increase the Individualism rating with time, a destructive war would decrease the Militarism rating etc. These effects could be influenced and influence loads of things. A high Militarism rating would reduce/eliminate the unhappyness caused by units away from the city etc.

On top of this each city could have it's own rating. This way in a huge and polarised civ it would be very hard to manage it efficiently, as what caused happyness in some parts of the civ could create unhappyness and corruption elsewhere, and this would make civil wars very likely.

About communism I think that it should get more and more resistant to bribery and stuff from outside. Inside corruption should be common.

Fundamentalism should get more and more tithes and the corruption and approval rate should be improving all over the time.

Switching to democracy should be difficult when citizens are poor and uneducated, when they are uneducated and poor then it should be easy to switch to communism or fundamentalism and when they are educated but poor then it should be easy to change to nazism or monarchy.

Actually I agree that the US is not too peaceful - US has interfered a lot in conflict regions. I used to think that the governments of same type should have increased attitude towards each other (Cuba-USSR, USA-Canada) but time has shown that it is not so (EU accused Austria in natzism while they keep their mouths shut about basks, irish and the lapponians). The politics is way too comlicated for me ;-)

The larger the civilization size, the greater the disruption will be when changing government, simply because more heads are affected by the revolution. Just look at Russia, which is in a far worse condition than her Eastern European neighbour. One reason is that the revolution, when translated to her extensiveness and population size, brings about much greater disruption to the country.

And advanced society has a more complicated social structure and more need, so it will be more difficult to repair the damage caused by revolution. In ancient times, the prime consideration for leaders after revolution are to settle and feed the population. But nowadays, revolution leaders have to think of unemployment, energy supply, debt repayment, inflation, economic growth, and a hundred more items. So it will be more difficult to accomodate the change.

quote: Originally posted by Sikander on 02-01-2000 10:29 PM The crux of the SE problem in Civ is the inherent conflict between history (a long series of systems and rulers) vs the god level game (one ruler over all time, who decides when the system needs to be changed). Thus societies do not evolve in Civ, but rather are planned, with occaisional adjustments made based upon events. In my opinion, the game tilts towards too much control by the player and not enough friction by the populace to that control. Thus you have the government type 'democracy' (which has never occured at any scale above a city state in history) where the ruler has almost the same (still unrealistic) control over his population as Stalin. The names of the government change, but the control by the player (god king) remains just about the same. Read any history from the middle ages in Europe, or the feudal period in Japan. The rulers spent almost all of their time intriquing and fighting their own 'subjects'. In Civ, the player controls an empire / nation state from the beginning, and there is very little subtlety involved in the process. Just build stuff. The people seem to go along with very unlikely changes (like switching from Democracy to Despotism) with only a loss of a year's production. A revolutionary game would increase the challenge of controlling your own empire, adding a lot of game play to that area. This would take a lot of pressure off the poor AI, which now has to match 'wits' with a player who has nothing better to do then turn his hungry eyes outward for victims.

I completely agree with this really intelligent and insightful analysis of CivII. Thank you! It deserves to be remembered.
don Don also made a valuable contribution:

quote: About the Nazi government vs. the Weimar Republic: economically there was almost no difference whatsoever. The economy under Weimar was remakably good, the hyperinflation ended in '20 or '21. The Nazis knew they could only remain in power if the economy remained strong, so industry was not really nationalized, but more like a partnership with the Nazi gov't. During WWII only ~25% of the German economy went into war materials, whereas in USA the war effort reached 51% by sometime in '43. The arms industries like Krupp were only too happy to cooperate with the Nazis, and some other industries as well. The German auto industry continued to make cars for the home market in substantial quantities, whereas US auto production was converted to military use. Germany built few new factories specifically for war production (unless you count moving existing machinery into old mines to protect production from bombing), whereas US built many new factories just to make aircraft in large numbers. In Civ terms it would be like the US changing from a Democracy to a Fundamentalism: "making the world safe for Democracy" as though Democracy were a religion.

First of all, I completely agree with raingoon, that the SE system should not be implemented in Civ3. I think the idea of being able to make your civilization "green" or "militaristic" is completely absurd. Try to make the Russians "green" or the Swiss "militaristic" and I guarantee you will fail miserably.

However, I agree that there should be a way in which you can influence the values that your nation holds. Therefore, I would propose something called the educational system. Under this system the ruler of the nation will have an influence of what is taught in schools and universities. The amount of control that the ruler has should decrease with freer governments, i.e. very low for democracy, low for republic and increase for dictatorial governments: medium for monarchy, high for communism, very high for fundamentalism. The effect of education in a society will depend on the number of libraries, univercities, etc., the civ has and perhaps on an inherent "receptiveness" rating. Therefore, before a ruler of a monarchy can switch to democracy, he will have to educate his people for say 70 turns. This will make sure that you cannot switch governments quickly and easily.

Second I think that the idea that democracies have to be peacefull is also wrong, because U.S., for example, intervened in other countries on numerous occasions while being a democracy. Therefore democracies should be able to build units with special "covert operation" ability that would increase the cost of the unit but allow it to do anything and anywhere. However, on any given turn these units will have a 10 % chance of being discovered, so that the more of these units you build the greater the chance that the population will find out about this. If such a unit is discovered than all of "covert operation" units already in operation are disbanded, that civ cannot build new ones for another 10 turns and certain economic penalties apply to simulate loss of confidence in government.

If I took anybody else's ideas in this post, then I'm sorry, I just guess that same ideas can come many different people at the same time. Sorry for the long post.

Almost nothing beats a 'provoked' democracy!

As for the virtues of this or that government-type; im all in for the "mixed blessings" approach, as much as reasonably possible. And that includes democracy as well. Whatever government-type you choose, and whatever your empire is really huge, or just a small well-managed one - you always have to deal with nice benefits and hard-to-swallow trade-offs.

And this "hard-to-swallow trade-offs" should (of course) occur under democracy as well. I have posted what trade-offs there should be in the Democracy at war thread.

Whatever the solution, civ3 must get rid "tactical government changing"!

But also remember that the United States, with its democratic principles, has done the following in its history:

1) exterminated American Indian tribes who resisted being removed to reservations
2) had an economic system in the south that was based on one of the largest slave systems at that time
3) burned people alived from 1870s through 1930s during the nadir of race relations
4) violated the sovereignity of weaker nations whom many Americans believed were ruled by inferior races (our little brown brothers)
5) had imperalistic ambitions in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century

As a child my grandfather told me how proud he was on Empire day, when the class would stand round the flag and sing patriotic songs .. My friends in India talk often about how there grand parents remember the British Raj, and how they wish it would return .. I know few Indian youth who would surrender their nation to the UK, and few British youth who would want to rule over them (apart from in CIV of course ).

So whats changed ?

Education ! i feel is a central key to this. It was Education that gave Gandhi his voice, and education which allows us to not just accept the word of others.

My grandfather believed Imperialism was right.. it gave "more primitive" people a chance to take part in an industrial world.. I believe Imperialism is wrong, because absolute power, corrupts absolutly .. and that knowledge is gained through education.

So I think that democracies become more pacifist, as the society becomes more educated ..

I found it very revealing when I realized that the South region of the United States was the only region of a modern, industrialized nation to still burn people alive from 1870s through 1930s. Yes, European nations in the same period persecuted natives of their colonies with bayonet, firing squads and the noose, but at least they refrained from burning them alive.

quote: Originally posted by deity on 01-29-2000 04:25 PM And it's ridiculous to think that the US could change to communism or fundamentalism.

Try reading Margaret Atwood's "The Handsmaid's Tale". Easier than you think.

quote: Originally posted by Vitmore The Great on 01-25-2001 02:34 PM Try reading Margaret Atwood's "The Handsmaid's Tale". Easier than you think.

Vitmore,

Again please quote the author or summarize. I don't think there is many people on Apolyton that have time to read every book that has been written on these ideas. I for one have enough trouble trying to keep up with the posts here at the Civ Board.

A valid and justified point.

How about this in order to curb the abuse of constant government change: The initial advancement to a new form of government is allowed without penalties/price. If you change back to an old form of government, there is a price to pay. The price to pay can even be a minor price (50 gold), but at least there would be a price for your constant government changes.