Additional Government Types

What would you like to see in Freeciv? Do you have a good idea what should be improved or how?
ahfretheim
Posts: 49
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 9:29 pm

Additional Government Types

Post by ahfretheim »

Hi all!

It seems to me that only 5 types of government is a bit limited, even though I know you tried very hard to capture everything in those five. I think it might make for a much more interesting game if a few additional were included. I took the time to write down 3 that came to mind. I don't know if the Sid Meyer games ever included any of these, but I do know that both Theocracy and Ecotopia are availabe in Call to Power (though would not be handled the way I describe below as Gov effects are handled very differently in that game). Ecotopia in particular would be brilliant for late game bloodlust victories, while Theocracy gives an alternate path for early game governments and small states that are either remnants or split offs.


Theocracy

Description

Rule by a powerful church and temple, a council of religious elders, and a court. Theocracies have a very strong rule-of-law, and also a strong emphasis on duty and obligation, making them strong both economically and militarily, but have the worst empire growth problems of any government type. In addition, the quasisuperstitious religious faith and religious raison d’etre of theocracy makes them susceptible to civil wars.

Requisite Technology

Polytheism

Title of Ruler

High Priest, Father, Reverend, Ayatollah, Caliph, Elder, Pope, Pontifex…

Gameplay:

• First unhappy citizen appears at six cities.
• An additional unhappy citizen appears at every five cities.
• Each city can support up to 3 units without paying production upkeep. Settlers require 2 food a turn.
• Max rate for science, luxury and tax is 80%.
• Additional trade produced for every tile that produces trade, and additional production produced for every tile that produces at least 2 production.
• Celebrating cities grow in population.
• Up to three units can enforce martial law, each makes one unhappy citizen content.
• If the capitol is lost, likelihood of civil war is 50%. If population is lost to famine, likelihood of civil war is 50%. If a city is in disorder for more than 2 turns, likelihood of civil war is 10% a turn.
• Military units cause no unhappiness.
• No corruption at capitol, corruption increases rapidly as distance from capitol increases (faster than increase in monarchy)


Imperialism

Description

Monarchy meets the modern age. Imperialist governments are a balanced state of a monarch, parliament, courts, royal magistrates and viceroys governing far away territories on behalf of the monarch and royally chartered corporations that have the authority of a government but the profit motivation of a private business. A deeply contradictory, oligarchic, contract-based, conservative form of government, Imperialist states are both strong and weak in both economic and military ways, and are prone to civil wars for reasons that most other government types do not deal with and additional constraints that other more ideologically consistent government types need not concern themselves with.

Requisite Technology

The Corporation

Title of Ruler

Emperor, Chancellor, King…

Gameplay

• First unhappy citizen appears at 19 cities.
• An additional unhappy citizens appears at every 23 cities.
• Each city can support up to 1 unit without paying production upkeep.
• Up to three units can enforce martial law. Each unit enforcing martial law makes 2 unhappy citizens content.
• If more than one unit is present in a city, corruption increases 25% for two unit or 50% for three or more.
• Any tile producing trade produces one additional trade.
• Corruption is low near capitol, and increases moderately fast as distance increases.
• Celebrating cities grow.
• MINIMUM rate for tax, luxury and science is 20% (meaning that the maximum rate is 60%, but in such a case the other two factors must be 20% each.)
• Your parliament can object to you increasing taxes, moving the capitol, selling a building or ceasing work on a wonder (but will never object to you going to war, or turning luxury to science or science to luxury, or decreasing taxes).
• You cannot replace existing trade routes. Once a city reaches four trade routes, its trade will remain the same forever.
• Any time a city is lost, one additional unhappy citizen occurs throughout your civilization for 5 turns (even if you win it back). If the capitol is lost, three additional unhappy citizens occur throughout your civilization for 10 turns (even if you win it back).
• If the capitol is lost, likelihood of civil war is 40%. If famine occurs, the likelihood of civil war is 75%. Any time a city is in disorder for more than two turns, the likelihood of civil war is 50% a turn.


Ecotopia

Description

The ultimate military state, Ecotopia considers complete control and re-engineering of all human behavior and any act of war justified by the salvation of the Earth. Micromanaging every aspect of human existence and seeking to decrease humanities ecological footprint, Ecotopias are inevitably very corrupt and inefficient economically but consider this a small price to pay for making the world “sustainable”. Ecotopias are weak economically, and deal with constraints both economically and demographically that other government types do not deal with, but have an unlimited empire size and are powerful for rapidly vanquishing other civilizations and bringing them under your control.

Requisite Techonlogy

Environmentalism

Title of Ruler

Brother, Great Leader, Wiseman, Defender, Protector…

Gameplay

• After the first 17 cities, the first unhappy citizen appears. Like in Communism, it is the only one.
• Each military unit enforcing martial law makes 2 unhappy citizens content. There is no limit on how many may be used for this purpose.
• Military units do not produce unhappiness, but each Settler, Engineer, Caravan/Freight and Worker makes 2 citizens unhappy.
• Celebrating cities pay +100% of trade output in taxes.
• Cities can support at most 2 trade routes.
• Each city can support 5 units without paying production upkeep. Nuclear weapons and missiles never cost upkeep.
• Each tile producing 3 or more food, production or trade suffers a penalty of one.
• Supermarkets, Stock Exchanges, Harbors, Granaries, Superhighways and any form of Power Plant aside from a Solar Plant are prohibited in this civilization type.
• Cities require twice as much food to grow.
• The maximum rate for science and tax is 60%. The maximum rate for luxury is 0%. Entertainers are the only allowable source of luxury in this civilization type.
• Pollution makes citizens unhappy, one unhappy citizen for every 1 pollution.
• Twice as much population loss caused when an Ecotopia takes over a city. Any city with less than 3 citizens is annihilated. City walls do not prevent population loss.
• Factories and other buildings that increase pollution are sold when an Ecotopia takes over a city. Amount of gold looted by Ecotopias is 300% more.
• Loss of capitol does not cause civil war.
• Spy & Diplomat actions cost 75% less gold.
Treefingers
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Joined: Fri Nov 08, 2013 11:40 pm

Re: Additional Government Types

Post by Treefingers »

Lol. Did a hippie kill your parents or something? You've got a pretty twisted view of environmentalism. :lol:

There seem to be two actual political systems fighting it out in your ecotopia. 1) some kind of environmentalism and 2) some kind of Skinnerian (see: B. F. Skinner) fascism. The rest is partly a response to your post, but it started turning into my own musing about the relationship between gameplay and state simulation. I stopped when I thought I'd be drifting way off topic. :roll:

If 1 (environmentalism):
  • Reduced production, I agree. But no way would there be a reduced food supply, or a ban on supermarkets, harbours and granaries.
  • If anything is banned, it would certainly be nuclear weapons. Nuclear power is arguable: they don't like the waste (which is minimal in present-day tech), but apart from that it's super clean.
  • If anything, they would be anti-war. The best equipment by this point in the game is all petroleum-dependant, and they should hate the damage war does to the environment. So penalties for pillaging and using military vehicles/explosives would be more believable.
  • Environmentalism should encourage maximum science output, since greener alternatives to existing tech is such a high philosophical priority.
  • Maybe universal veganism is assumed? If so, no food bonuses from things like pheasant, game, fish, etc. But maybe a single food bonus to all sea tiles because everyone eats algae now or something.
If 2 (Skinnerism):
  • Should be no corruption (people are engineered to be incorruptible, dissent is eliminated). So much so, that perhaps it should be impossible to change to any other government after accepting this one.
  • Perhaps there should be no happiness or unhappiness, only contentment.
  • I agree this would be a very effective military state. There should be plenty of big military bonuses from something like this.
I think Skinnerism would be a great addition as an extreme form of communism, maybe softening communism a bit to make room for it. But environmentalism can be expressed almost entirely in the way one plays the game. It's basically a democracy or republic played to minimize pollution and respect the natural environment. The game already rewards this behaviour in some situations. The "conquer the world to save it" idea is also a play style. It might even be a good strategy. If the other civs are lazy about pollution cleanup and all your farmland is turning into coastline, then yeah, switch to monarchy/communism, arm up and wipe them all out before it's too late. :twisted:

Theocracy and Imperial states are interesting ideas, too. I'd suggest being careful to not let theocracy look too much like a particular religion, or like an atheist's caricature or religion. I suspect theocracy isn't usually found in Civ games because, at the gameplay level, it would be almost identical to monarchy. The freeciv description of monarchy even uses the phrase "uniform religion".
cwf1986
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Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2014 1:25 pm

Re: Additional Government Types

Post by cwf1986 »

I'm going to bring this thread back from the grave. I think there's so much missing with just the 5 governments, 2 of those basically just improvements on the former two. It would allow for more styles of game play too.

I like the idea of theocracy. For what I have in mind, theocracy would be great for those who want a smaller empire, but still be militaristic. I'll be totally honest here, I have no idea how difficult the coding for some of this stuff would be so lemme know if it's crazy hard or impossible.

1. Prereq. is Monotheism.

2. Temples not only make 2 discontents content, but make 1 additional content happy. If there's 3 discontents then the 3 are just made content. Cathedrals will work the same way, except they make 2 additional workers act that way.

3. Rapture increases population from cities of min. size 3. This is incredibly important for anyone who doesn't want to be an expansionist. With the temple and cathedral improvements above, this should make that easier.

4. 75% production bonus in capital, the center of the religious zeal and fervor

5. 6 units supported free with 1 discontent made content per unit up to 6. People are fired up with the idea of holy war.

6. Empire size where only 3 start content would be 10, after that every 10 cities makes one more discontent.

7. Min. corruption of 15%, 4% for every tile away from the capital

8. 80% chance of civil war if the capital's taken.

9. People are so fanatical about their religion, units cannot be bribed AND cities cannot revolt into another nation from diplomat and spy action.

10. 50% food bonus for squares producing food since people are encouraged to have children through their religion.

11. Max 70% for Rax Rates

12. Settlers eat 2 food per turn

I think it's fair and balanced. There are very severe restrictions put on expansion through both happiness and corruption, but cities can grow like weeds through the food bonus and rapturing. The reason for so many units supported free is that there will be fewer cities to maintain the military.

Something else that would be nice in general is a better way to get rid of cities you don't want after conquering them. It's annoying to try to starve and 'settler' a city to death and have to hold it while you do that and sometimes I don't want to give a city away either. Perhaps an option of 'genocide' only possible in totalitarian governments after conquering a city?



I also think a government that makes a balance between totalitarian government and the freer governments would be great. For this constitutional monarchy sounds about right.

1. Prereq. is chivalry. I wanted something that combined republic and monarchy, but I don't see anything on the tech tree that would give me that before or even at democracy, but after republic.

2. Trade producing tiles make 50% more.

3. 1 unit for martial law making one citizen content. 1 unit supported for free.

4. No citizens made unhappy by military activity.

5. empire size where only 3 are content: 13. It'll take 14 more cities to cause one more unhappiness like in republic.

6. min corruption of 10%, 2% for every tile from the capital.

7. Settlers take up 1 food per turn

8. 60% chance of civil war if capital's taken

9. 50% production bonus in capital.

10. Rapture only creates a trade bonus, no pop growth

11. Max tax rate of 70%

I see this as a good trade off that doesn't make this government too weak or strong that can carry itself through the whole game. It gets a reduced trade bonus compared to republic/democracy, corruption issues of monarch/republic, minimal martial law, but no military unhappiness either. It would allow for some expansion b/c of the settler food upkeep and the 1 unit upkeep and the martial law for that unit. It's hard to make newly conquered or settled cities maintain a unit and build stuff at the same time before a city has a chance to grow and build terrain improvements under republic or democracy and this would help with that some. Because of the corruption, limited trade bonus, civil war possibility, and lack of rapture, I see democracy as still a good option compared to this but not necessarily superior.
cwf1986
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Re: Additional Government Types

Post by cwf1986 »

One more, Fascism.

1. Prereq. is Mobile Warfare.

2. +1 bonus to all production producing squares

3. -1 trade for every tile producing more than 1

4. 80% max tax rate

5. 3 units free upkeep, 2 made content per unit up to 3

6. min corruption: 33%, 1% for every tile from capital

7. All military units produced are veteran, having a barracks stacks this effect

8. 14 cities until only 3 are content. 16 more until one less is unhappy.

9. 1 food upkeep for settlers

10. only a trade bonus from rapture

A steep penalty for trade, but with every unit made a veteran or hardened and increased production you might just be able to conquer your democratic neighbors and get your techs like that. One would have to choose city improvements wisely.
rainbowrobin
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Joined: Tue Nov 04, 2014 5:10 am

Re: Additional Government Types

Post by rainbowrobin »

The new civ2civ3 ruleset has Fundamentalism and Federation as available governments (from the techs Theology and Economics.) Oh, and Tribal as a starting alternative to Despotism.

The Ancients ruleset, which you have to get elsewhere, has Ancient Democracy, Imperial Monarchy, Petty Monarchy, Principate, and Republic, in addition to Despotism. Ancient Democracy generates *2* additional trade per trade tile, and another 1 in celebration, but units cost 2 food, and trade losses grow rapidly with distance from the capital. Petty Monarchy has 60% as maxium rate, but martial law is 2 citizens per military unit, for 2 units. Imperial Monarchy has uniform corruption; 1 citizen per unit up to 5 units, and 5 shield upkeep for free. Principate is like a cross between Imperial Monarchy and Republic: you get the trade bonus along with uniform corruption and effective martial law.
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Arbogast
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Re: Additional Government Types

Post by Arbogast »

Is there a way to disable "Fundamentalism" in 'civ2civ3' ruleset? Rather, is there a way to eliminate it all altogether?
Remember you guys: a previous ruleset that had it -"Fundamentalism"- and it bombed out for obvious reasons. :( SO?
The Square Cow
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Re: Additional Government Types

Post by The Square Cow »

You could make a new rule set based on civ2civ3 with Fundamentalism removed.
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Arbogast
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Re: Additional Government Types

Post by Arbogast »

I love to do it! But how do I go about it? If I delete all the references to it would that work?
I DO think 'civ2civ3' is a great improvement, but...
The Square Cow
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Re: Additional Government Types

Post by The Square Cow »

Deleting all the references to it should work (though preferable in your own mod based on civ2civ3 instead of just changing civ2civ3 proper.)

To do that, I would delete the government from the government file, and then keep running Freeciv and fixing the errors that it reports. You should need to removing things from the effects file and change the fanatic unit some.
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Arbogast
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Re: Additional Government Types

Post by Arbogast »

Oh, am I Thankful for your attention and tips !!!
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