The idea is to add ordinances that work in a similar manner to the ones found in SimCity 3000. Ordinances would work equally well with either system (governments or SE) and it would be an easy to understand system that could increase player emersion exponentially. Though while this suggestion may be hard to program into the game (it may not I don't know) it would not violate the Sid rule of complexity is never a substitute for depth. It is straight forward, you open up a screen click a box and it goes into effect. It adds depth, each box would make a civ unique to an extent and it would allow for interesting game play possibilities. Ordinances would be tied to technology so you couldn't have "clean air laws" before you knew what air was. So here are some examples of what I would like to see included in the game. My examples will be in simple civ2 terms and concepts.

Constitution: a constitution codifies the customs and practices of a government. It gives an acceptable legal frame work on how to solves crisis situations on how to govern. A constitution symbolizes a government's legitamacy. It has the following effects:

However, I am totally in support of Korn's idea here. First of all, it's not SE. The model he is trying to suggest does not mire itself in +/- factors of numbers that become tedious, a la SE in SMAC (my opinion, of course). He's describing a Civ style universe of adjusted percentages and levels being affected. Nice. This would really work, I think.

yes there would be more of them, lots more hopefully. there should be enough choices where a player could have a very unique civ. 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.

raingoon

thanks for the support!

if u like please suggest more ordinances...just make sure all ordinances have both good and bad in them
subjective choices are much more interesting than objective choices

Here are ideas, obviously there's room for more, but I was bored and doing this kept me busy, there are hints of other ideas in here too (like earthquake zones)

Total Freedom

- Police effects are negated
- Corruption is zero
- Waste +50%
- Luxuries +10%
- All content people become happy
- Cities never revolt or change loyalties
- Cannot use Total Control
- Cannot use Drafting
- Cannot use Forced Labour
- Automatically activates Legal Drugs

Forced Labour

- Food & Production +50%
- Every 4th Citizen becomes unhappy
- Cities always revolt if unhappy people > garrison units

Drafting

- Military units require -25% Production (-50% if infantry)
- Every 2nd military unit reduces population by 1

National Health Service

- Each medical building makes one unhappy person content
- Cannot use Privitisation

Privitization

- Service buildings cost 0 upkeep
- Service buildings cannot be scrapped
- Service building cost -50% Production to build
- One person in each city > 5 becomes unhappy

Legal Drugs

- Corruption is -25%
- Waste is +25%
- Tax is +5% in all cities
- Half the unhappy people in your cities (round down) is made content
- Each person made content by this method increases waste +5%

Total Control

- Production, Food, & Tax are -25%
- All content people become unhappy (before other modifiers)
- Cities are twice as likely to revolt
- Cities require less incentive to change loyalty
- Police effect is unlimited
- There is no corruption
- No foreign stealth unit may enter your cities unless elite

Capital Punishment

- One content person is made unhappy
- One content person is made happy

Environmental Protection

- Production is -25%
- Pollution is -50%
- Upkeep on all Production enhancing buildings is +1
- You can clean up Pollution twice as fast
- Each square of Pollution in your territory makes one content person unhappy in the nearest city, and all of your cities within 3 squares of it
- Cannot use Excessive Mining

Nuclear Ban

- You may not build Nuclear Weapons or Nuclear Plants
- The cost to build natural energy plants is -25%

Excessive Mining

- One content person is made unhappy
- Each square produces +1 production
- You cannot create hills or mountains
- There is a 5% chance a hill or mountain square that you are working will be replaced with plains
- The bonus from your mines is doubled
- When a hill or mountain collapses there is a 25% chance the city's population will be reduced by one
- You can build mines twice a quickly

Strengthened Buildings
(Applies only to cities in earthquake zones)
- Earthquakes, Terrorist Bombings and Saboteurs do not destroy your cities improvements
- You must spend 5 upkeep on cities in general
- Each improvement cost +25% to build
- One content person becomes happy
- Earthquakes do not reduce your population

Geared Production (Military/Scientific/Social/Other)

- Building (chosen category) cost -25% Production
- Building other categories costs +25% Production
- Cannot choose other Geared Production

Those 'Ordinance'(better called charters) are promugated to meet certain circumstances, eg: Conscription for warfare, Bills of Rights for happiness. It tends to change or distort the nature of government so a price must be paid for that.

1.It hinders the change of government(more turns for anarchy if ordinances are on).

2.There should be maximum no. of ordinances on at the same time, possibly three or four.(Questions of guns or butter, you can't have both)

3.Certain ordinances are contradictory(Bills of Rights Vs Secret Police) and cannot be on at the same time.

4.Immediate price paid for promugation of ordinance: money/science/production/anarchy, some of these.

5.Price paid for lifting the ordinance: money/science/production/anarchy, some of these.

Ordinances are HIGH PRINCIPLES determining the policy of governments. As more efforts are concentrated in specific areas, other areas receive less attention/resources, so ordinances should confer both ADVANTAGES and DISADVANTAGES.

Like a change of governmant, promugating an ordinance produces confusion and it takes time for the civ to adapt it, so there will be some loss of money/science/production, even anarchy possibly.

Lifting the ordinance produces similar effects so there will be some loss of money/science/production.

When more than one ordinances are promugated, they tend to conflict with each other and compete for resources, so there cannot be more than a few ordinances on at the same time.

i am looking forward to your comments

LTD

you have some nice suggestions in there, i especially like forced labor and environmental protection

colossus

thanks for the comments! here is my responces

1. i agree, but besides just increasing the number of turns a civ spends in anarchy maybe it could strengthen the ill effects that anarchy has on a civ instead of just increasing anarchy time...things like infrastructure gets distroyed, military units get disbanded, part of the treasury disappears and other nasty things.

2. i disagree, i don't think that there should be limit on the total number of ordinances you could have at one time as long as they aren't contradictory...i don't think that society has to choose which it would rather have, freedom of speech or freedom of assembly i think that it can have both, i think they are independent of one another and easy to provide...but on the other had, privacy and security are two things that you can't have infinite amounts of, you must sacrifice one to satisfy the other

having said that i would support only being able to approve/repeal one ordinance per five turns...this represents the time and political capital it takes to influence society on a massive scale. there would be one exception, and that would be during a revolution when you could approve or repeal a number of ordinances...however the more changes you make the worse the upheaval would be

3. i strongly agree!

4. i think that the up front costs should be rather low and the real cost should be built into the ordinances through its disadvantages

5. same answer as before

i agree with you and truly believe that all ordinances should have both advantages and disadvantages

on the whole i agree with just about everything you said except for the total number of ordinances that a civ can have in effect at one time

yin

do u have any suggestions on how to make it more difficult to manipulate the system without adding to complexity? also do u have any comments on the idea of ordinances themself?

I like these ideas. Especially keeping them in terms of Civ 2 (percentage changes, etc.) I suppose there is room for the old "Makes 2 Citizens content" or what have you.

For some reason my ideas are coming more in the macro. Like, along the lines of colossus' comment, it's not really "ordinances" first of all, which sounds too municipal and local, but rather "Policy." I suggest "The Policy Screen," as equivalent to "The Trade Screen." And the options available in this screen appear as your technological level warrants.

From there, it seems you would have major categories, not unlike SimCity 3000's Ordinance window. For Civ I would guess the obvious choices are:

Trade
Civil
Environmental
Military

Note these four categories coincide with the four cornerstones of the genre itself, respectively:

Explore Trade
Expand Civil
Exploit Environmental
Exterminate Military

I just noticed that, and if I'm not mistaken SMAC had five different categories? I wonder if that helped to create the disconnect that Ralf and others mention when they explain why they didn't like the SE system. At any rate, naysayers like myself and Ralf can now easily see how actions taken within this system would impact their game in each of its respective fundamental areas.

However, it's fraught with complications. People will be second guessing the assumptions that go into the ordinances.

For example, korn469 proposes that "Bill of Rights" and "Secret Police" can't be selected at the same time, which is ludicrous given that the United States currently has both. And I would object to the idea that a Constitution means automatic civil war in the event of change of government. There have been numerous bloodless coups. The idea that Universal Health Care requires a larger infrastructure than other systems is silly. And in many cultures / historical periods, the idea that draftees would be worse fighters than volunteers doesn't work either.

i think that it would be quite acceptable to change the name from ordinance to policy...i used the name ordinance becuase that is what they are called in simcity and that is what gave me the inspiration...so a name change is quite in order

i think that each policy should cover broad subjects and have some basis in history

ChrisShaffer

i am sure that you are completely right about people protesting any change, and not only will people protest any change, they will tear each one apart and say that it isn't insert derogitory name here

however i think that it would add to the game depth without adding complexity...i think it would also add to variety and variety helps make the game more fun to play over and over again...each policy would add a little strategic wrinkle to the game and would help keep the game fresh

also my examples were only suggestions of how that firaxis could implement this idea...i would like to see more things in civ that has both good and bad aspects, each benefit should have some cost

This where religion could come into play besides only making people happy. It could shape the type of ordinances you could apply.

I think that the Spartans where just as happy with thier code of cunduct as the Athenians as with thiers.

Religion is the underlying assumptions for actions/laws/ordinances.

Just some random thoughts:

All men are created equal - +immigration, +production, +lawlessness

The King has descended from the gods and is divine - +police, +control

If we keep this in terms of Civ 2 percentages of happiness and production and the trade stream, though that's probably a new system by now, then I can keep going along with it.

Meanwhile, Chris Shaffer -- you said it's ludicrous to consider Bill of Rights and Secret Police in opposition to each other, since the US has both. Not sure what you mean by that, but I sense you're being literal, maybe referring to the U.S. Secret Service? For me when Korn says Secret Police I assume he means Gestapo squads, KGB Stalinistas -- imagine whatever is required for you to see an organization in opposition to a Bill of Rights, and that must be what Korn means.

There are too many ordinances! What I have in mind is between 5 to (max) 10-12 ordinances totally for each government-type, depending on how advanced it is. Better a few carefully balanced and really worthwhile ones, then trying to cram in as many of them as possible (it just gets rather inflationary in the end).

quote: Meanwhile, Chris Shaffer -- you said it's ludicrous to consider Bill of Rights and Secret Police in opposition to each other, since the US has both. Not sure what you mean by that, but I sense you're being literal, maybe referring to the U.S. Secret Service? For me when Korn says Secret Police I assume he means Gestapo squads, KGB Stalinistas -- imagine whatever is required for you to see an organization in opposition to a Bill of Rights, and that must be what Korn means.

I don't see much difference between the Gestapo squads or KGB Stalinistas and current police tactics in the United States. I certainly wasn't referring only to the FBI. The US military/police/spy industry is quite frightening and certainly qualifies as a secret police.

I wasn't saying that the secret police aren't opposed to the Bill of Rights, I was saying that the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Korn469, I think you missed my point. I did not say that people would be opposed to change simply because it is change. I said that designing them in a consistent fashion would be quite difficult, as it was relatively easy to find serious objections to the handful you suggested as examples. Similar objections would doubtless be raised against any ordinances designed by Firaxis.

A democracy with pollution controls, free health, full education, anti-nuclear, no conscription/national service, extensive police funding but no death penalty will be an enviable place to live but runs the risk of being dangerously uncompetitive and needing high levels of taxation. If the policies are chosen well you should always have to think carefully before activating any of them because there could be long term implications. If all they do is add +1 to something and -1 to something else, as you say it will be all to easy to calculate optimum combinations of policies to fit your circumstances.

Oh, I strongly agree your points.
To prevent excesses of ordinances the negative effects have to be at least as great as the positive effects. Ordinances may solve an imminent problem but also have grave legacies. This cures my worries about too many ordinances.

There is such an unbelievable world of difference between the KGB, Gestapo, etc and today's US law enforcement agencies. For instance, a friend of yours writes an essay for the school newspaper detailing some of the downsides of some minor government policy. With an out-of-control secret police, it would not be unheard of for your friend to simply disappear. Any attempts to find out what happened would be _strongly discouraged_. Should you ever be allowed to leave the country (as, say, a tourist), you would have to do it in a group which would almost certainly have an agent there to keep an eye on you.

Now we gripe often about the heavy hand of the law, and they do sometimes get out of control, but it is like the touch of a feather compared to what went on and in many places does still.

All this means is that I am absolutely in love with this idea of ordinances/policies/charters. Civ with a dash of SimCity. You could actually give your civ distinctiveness. Though it would probably be very hard to balance them all just right.