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Another form of government: oligarchy?

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 5:04 pm
by drgerg
Listening to one of my favorite podcasts during my commute (Tides of History), the author mentions the form of government for the northern Italian cities just before the Black Plague arrives, as being a oligarchies, where each city is dominated by several families. The cities he mentioned were Florence, Genoa, Milan, and a few others.

My first question is, how would I represent this in game from an attribute point. To me it has attributes of depostism (corruption could be high), and capitalism (trading, banking) could be higher. Thoughts?

The second question is, how would actually make this happen in game. Is there a ruleset I could modify?

Third, I don't what to upset the balance of the game. How do I know if I have ruined the balance of the game?

Re: Another form of government: oligarchy?

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 1:47 am
by GriffonSpade
drgerg wrote:Listening to one of my favorite podcasts during my commute (Tides of History), the author mentions the form of government for the northern Italian cities just before the Black Plague arrives, as being a oligarchies, where each city is dominated by several families. The cities he mentioned were Florence, Genoa, Milan, and a few others.

My first question is, how would I represent this in game from an attribute point. To me it has attributes of depostism (corruption could be high), and capitalism (trading, banking) could be higher. Thoughts?

The second question is, how would actually make this happen in game. Is there a ruleset I could modify?

Third, I don't what to upset the balance of the game. How do I know if I have ruined the balance of the game?
You can basically just copy the directory and serv file of one of the existing rulesets, rename them and point the serv at the new directory, and voila, new ruleset, ready for editing. (You might also put it in the addon directory in your appdata instead of leaving it in the game directory) You might also consider some of the other things, like if there are other rulers, that could mean a Senate preventing you from breaking treaties. However, it might not have unit unhappiness like republic and democracy.

As for balance, it can be a bit finicky, but you can generally get a feel for what kinds of bonuses the other governments get, and adjust it accordingly. Like, if you make them stronger than an existing gov in one way, you need to make them weaker in another way. However, not all ways of being stronger or weaker are equal, and that will take intuition and trial and error.

Re: Another form of government: oligarchy?

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:13 pm
by Corbeau
In my view, Civ already has all the government combinations it can take. The problem is that in the game you an have only discrete cases of governments, either-or, while in reality every government has elements of various systems and the whatever is in power in a country is a combination of many aspects of a number of base options. Alpha Centauri went along a very good path of combining 4x4 elements to create 256 different combinations. Of course, some are powerful and some are completely useless, but it gives much, much more realism and options than ANY number of governments in Civ, even if we invent dozens more.

Re: Another form of government: oligarchy?

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:15 pm
by GriffonSpade
Corbeau wrote:In my view, Civ already has all the government combinations it can take. The problem is that in the game you an have only discrete cases of governments, either-or, while in reality every government has elements of various systems and the whatever is in power in a country is a combination of many aspects of a number of base options. Alpha Centauri went along a very good path of combining 4x4 elements to create 256 different combinations. Of course, some are powerful and some are completely useless, but it gives much, much more realism and options than ANY number of governments in Civ, even if we invent dozens more.
This is true. What is really needed is a reduplication of the government system itself, though we've had plenty of feature requests for it. After all, Government, Economics, Values, and even 'Future Society' can all (theoretically) be done independently in real life, as well.

Re: Another form of government: oligarchy?

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 6:14 pm
by cazfi
Master branch has requirement vectors for policies (multipliers). This makes it possible for the ruleset author to introduce policies that player can adjust only when specific tech, like government enabling techs, is known. There's plans to improve support for boolean (on/off) policies.

Re: Another form of government: oligarchy?

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 9:26 pm
by Corbeau
Is there any ruleset-dependable way to deliberately "forget" specific technologies?

Re: Another form of government: oligarchy?

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2018 6:08 pm
by GriffonSpade
cazfi wrote:Master branch has requirement vectors for policies (multipliers). This makes it possible for the ruleset author to introduce policies that player can adjust only when specific tech, like government enabling techs, is known. There's plans to improve support for boolean (on/off) policies.
True, but that's still not up to the multiple choice style policy system such as currently exists in Governments. Having choices A, or B, or C, or D, or E, and each choice having requirements (and a default) is rather more rigorous than unconnected booleans and multipliers. Rather more invasive too though, I suspect.
Corbeau wrote:Is there any ruleset-dependable way to deliberately "forget" specific technologies?
Via LUA perhaps?