Longturn Forum

This is probably another not that good idea, but what about having two different small wonders instead of one? One to remove the despotism/tribalism penalty and one for getting the production boost you get from the pyramids. The pyramids now cost 160 in LT40 but the penalty removing one could cost something like 120 and the other one with production boost 80.

You could decide which one to build first or leave one not built if you go for monarchy instead.

I'm writing this down here just for the comments even while I have my doubts about doing something like this.

Could be 100... The pyramids are now 160 on LT40 and 100 on LT39. Might be too cheap at least on LT39 but that's how it has been in the last few games.

In recent games researching Masonry and building Pyramids has taken almost the same time to achieve as researching Monarchy. So both routes are quite well balanced.
Obviously I would quite like a cheaper 'Aministrative centre' to achieve the same thing quicker

How about a more substantial change..
Players start without a palace and it is expensive to build for early game cities.
ALL governments have -1 production restriction if you dont have a palace.
No automatic palace when capital is lost (So losing your capital results in reduction in your economy until a new palace can be built, but that shouldnt be hard in later game).

So Pyramids will just give production bonus and all players will be trying to get their palace built in the early game, irrespective of which gov route they choose.

Good idea, but there is too often the but. I'm not certain if it's possible not to have a palace in the start. Or actually, maybe it's possible if the automatic rebuilding of the palace is turned off.

I'll look into it.

Actuaslly, there is something inherently wrong with governments in Civ. How much food a citizen produces and hiw much a city grows should not be dependent on the type of government, at least not in such a way as depicted here. But I still can't figure out what exactly is wrong - that is, which error is not the result of the whole game being an approximation.

Needs some more deep thinking. But for starters, I'd cancel the whole "Despotism means one less food on 3+ food tiles" think. Just can't figure out what needs to be put into its place.

Actually might not be a bad idea if Trade would cancel the production penalty from everyone. Anyone getting trade.

It's not that bad if there is a goal to race towards to in the early game. Something other than war. However building 20 or even 30 turns pyramids or getting monarchy is maybe not ideal. Maybe 8-12 turns for an average player?

How about a production penalty per city based on city size and/or happiness. Maybe up to size 8 after you build aqueduct?
A cheap small wonder to remove/reduce the penalty in small cities.
Researching a new government and/or tech would obsolete the wonder and eliminate the penalty for all cities?

Actually, what I had in mind wasn't "what to place instead of Despotism to reduce tile output", but instead "what penalty to give Despotism instead of tile penalty".

On a second thought, stealing ideas from a game called RealLife (it sucks anyway, so why not steal from it), Despotism shouldn't be the starting/default government. it should be discovered along with some military formation, legion or archers (I'd say Phalanx, but that maybe comes too early). Until then, a nation is in Tribalism (which is only logical). Also:

- Despotism has no tile output penalty
- I don't know if this is possible: in Tribailsm there are no defence bonuses; you may hate it, but it makes sense: first, nobody ever fights so early exactly because Warriors are virtually unbeatable when defending from other Warriors, this would even things up a little; secondly, living in tribes made first cities actually only piles of clay huts, and defending on hills with sticks and stones doesn't really have MUCH defence value

Maybe think of some bonus for Tribalism so that it doesn't suck so heavily; people more free than under Despotism so maybe derive it from that.

edit: I got it! Would it be possible to have Settlers cost only one population under Tribalism? If not, maybe boost initial city growth so that it makes up for when losing population due to settlers! Yes, that's some smallpoxing being reintroduced, but with other penalties (and may introduce some more), that should make it interesting.

Actually... people often say that the first techs are researched too fast. At least once the tech leak starts kicking in. It's just about now starting to do that on LT40. Probably also on LT39. There could be a research penalty for both despotism and tribalism. Nothing like fundamentalism has but maybe 10%? Also since tribalism is probably more free as you say, despotism could have tax rates as they are now, at 60% and tribalism could have maybe 50%. This would also make tribalism on the same line with nationalism, which is kind of later time tribalism. Also there would not be production penalty. Maybe removing the research penalty once you get writing?

I very much disagree that first techs are researched too fast. In the first phases the game is very slow and you don't have much to do anyway. It's all pretty much one-tracked (or two-tracked; you either go for military or for social techs). Making that even slower would be murder.

Actually, a few of us were discussing this earlier, we came to a conclusion that there wouldn't be a problem if the first few (around five) techs were even cheaper, up to 50%, and then, later techs should become much more expensive. And guess what: the Experimental tech tree does that. Not really much, but significantly. Caedo made an analysis, compared the bulb ratio for classic and experimental tech trees for earlier and later techs, turned out really interesting.

Also, a few things about early governments: yes, Tribalism is "more free", but for the people, not for the ruler. I see it as a loose association of villages that may expand rapidly, but doesn't grow much (as in: wide, but not high). This would (should?) mate it easier to build more cities, but more difficult for the cities to grow. Also, technology shouldn't develop much, and tax collection should be a laugh. Production, however, should have very little waste because people depend on it.

Secondly, despotism relies on military to hold the population under control. Tax collection is more efficient, although corruption will flourish, especially far from the centre. Things are more centralised, although the population is largely left to tend for themselves.

Unlike Despotism, in Monarchy, a ruler rules by a system of allegiances, meaning more voluntary (or "voluntary", but still, based on promises, laws and agreements, let's not go into how they were agreed on), and also this shows some first glimpses of a "state", where people may be starting to realise that the benefit of the state could also be in their interest.

In short, corruption should probably be in direct relation to the "advancedness" of government: Tribe -> Despot -> Monarch. Production, however, should relate almost exclusively to the tech level. A counterweight to corruption shouldn't be waste, but unhappiness and growth.

So I'd go with:

Tribalism:
- fast settler production or fast city growth until size of 3 (or 4), and then stagnation, either by unhappiness or bad granary or whatever (I'd go with bad granary and no unhappiness whatsoever)
- low control over taxes, possibly a penalty
- low tech progress

Despotism:
- normal settler production and growth, no tile penalty
- high corruption with distance from capital, reflecting on overall finances and tech progress, effect being that you can't expand too much
- very powerful martial law

Monarchy:
- a less corruption than despotism
- people start being unhappy and martial law has reasonable limits

Some ideas...

More food with tribalism sounds kind of reasonable if combined with smaller city sizes. Maybe the easiest way to implement this would be keeping the free units for tribalism but maybe even removing the ability to keep the citizens content with military units. Not sure really but one option.

Marduk also suggested something that would focus on gold production and trade. Maybe something like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

Maybe there would be a super high penalty for any kind of war?

While the alpha centauri style government options are not possible we could use some new govs. Not sure what those could be really... From the wikipedia there are few options.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_monarchy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timocracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

Not all of those could and should be added but maybe something could be worked out from them. I kind of would like to see some govs that would be useful for a short period of time. The revolution time with one turn helps switching. One gov could turn the libraries, universities etc into happiness buildings and reduce or remove the happiness effect from temples, amphitheaters etc.

Now I wonder what would be the gov for the current regime of China?

All this of course only to the more experimental game.

What also makes adding more govs more difficult is that we don't really want to take political stand here. Also makes it kind of tricky to make the help texts. For example nationalism is kind of hot topic now in Finland and apparently also in many other countries. Because of that it was kind of obvious addition but also needed more careful editing for the help. It's not about just one era or nation while there are some very famous nations with the focus on this type of gov.

The problem with "government" in Civ is that it presumes many things in one batch. For example, China is socially communist, economically capitalist and politically a dictatorship. UK is officially a monarchy, but realistically full democracy. There are combinations. "Republic" and "Dictatorship" are types of governments, "Democracy", "Monarchy" and "Despotism" are ways of choosing that government, "Communist", "Socialist" and "Capitalist" are economies, "Nationalism", "Internationalism" and "Fundamentalism" are ideologies and you can have all kinds of combinations among those.

Enter grey areas and transitions, mixes such as the one in China... A madhouse.

Yeah, the govs are kind of a mess but it my view they try to represent the main idea or ideology of a nation. For example with despotism there can be capitalistic features but the nation is ruled by the despot With communism the actual rulers could be anyone (even while usually the communist party) but stuff is owned by the people. With nationalism there can be capitalistic or some kind of another economy system but the most powerful factor is the nationalistic ideology. The nationalism has more effect than capitalistic or communistic economy system. Not sure if I'm able to explain this really...

From in-game perspective it might be nice to have more options for different kind of play styles. Some that could be used for certain types of situations. You might want to use different kind of gov when you try to push science. And maybe some different ind of gov for pushing economy. Now the best (or kind of best) gov for both of those is Democracy.

Some gov could be one where the max rate for sci/tax/lux is 40%. That would be the downside and there could be something that would make this worth using on some situations.

A side-idea about rapture effects: Communism should have a production bonus instead of whatever it's having right now. This reflects the "ideology of workers".

Corbeau wrote:A side-idea about rapture effects: Communism should have a production bonus instead of whatever it's having right now. This reflects the "ideology of workers".

Do me a favour, and please elaborate on how Communism production bonus or even the current no production
waste in Communism is compatible with your beloved paradigm of "realism".
SCNR.

Reading is always good

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_work_actions
http://bib.irb.hr/prikazi-rad?rad=828493
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakhanovite_movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alija_Sirotanovi%C4%87

edit: However, I never mentioned "no waste". But I'm pretty sure that in the middle of the 20th century, industrial waste in Communist countries wasn't that much more overwhelming compared to the capitalist ones. Being more efficient is a signature of an era, not of a system.

As far as I know, at least in the DDR (east Germany), there were many cases of "Dienst nach Vorschrift", or "work-to-rule", that is, only doing the minimum amount of work that is explicitly stated in your contract, and not necessarily the way it was intended. If a factory was supposed to produce X tons of e.g. screws in Y time, they'd make one giant screw weighing X tons and call it done. So I'd say that communism, the way it was realised IRL, typically wasn't very efficient, which is why the soviet union ended up selling the DDR to the west in order to alleviate their debts.

...while, on the other hand, there is China

Seriously, when looking into communism, DDR is probably one of the worst examples. It was one of the most rigid countries in the Eastern Bloc which in itself was pretty rigid. It also existed in a specific place and time that gave it its specifics. You may learn that even pre-Stalin USSR, Stalin pre-WWII USSR and Stalin post-WWII USSR, not to mention post-Stalin USSR are way more different not only from DDR, but also between themselves. Not to mention Yugoslavia, Cuba, Republic of Spain,the 1968 Chechoslovakia etc.

Well, I'll take your word on this one, since quite frankly, in our history classes, we did a few things multiple times in-depth while completely skipping over a lot of other stuff; our sociology teacher wasn't teaching very efficiently and unable to keep order; and now I'm studying in the computer science field and don't have anything to do with all that stuff anymore. So yeah. I'm not exactly an expert on that topic :/

Well, if you're interested, those links I shared are a good start, albeit perhaps one-sided