Political Ideas for future expansion pack or sequal

Leaders, Cabinet, Governers, Morale based on in game actions and more

from GalCiv2 Forums
At present, the political system of Galactic Civilizations, has mantained the same simplistic and illogical nature. You have a ruling party, which if voted out of power merely implies penalties upon your civilization, rather than changing it.

Political systems

There should be 3 primery goverment forms. You can choose a goverment form for your civilization, and the aliens will have goverment forms as well. They are.

Autocracy.

Oligarchy.

Democracy.

None of these should be inherantly superior, all of them should have benefits and penalties and none of them should require any technologies. This is not civ, these are civilizations that have millenia of experiance with various goverment types, so requiring them to research any of the goverment types possible is rather odd.

However, just like ethical alignments, they have their own set of technologies, which can be researched to improve their functioning.

Leaders and Cabinets

Each civilization has a leader. Leaders have abilities and weaknesses, which add or subtract to the overall abilities of the civilization.

Your first leader, you (and the AI) tailor make yourself. You have a limited number of points to assign to the abilities of your leader in various areas. By assigning weaknesses to your leader, you earn more points to spend on strengths.

This initial leader is important, since he is the only leader that has exactly the scores you want. The others are random, though you can, assuming you don't suffer something nasty like a coup, have some control over your succession, by nominating a particular cabinet member to be your successor.

Your cabinet is a group of up to 5 individuals, who you can appoint. Your cabinet has abilities of their own, just like your leader.

However you do not have the ability to determine your 'initial cabinet', at the beginning of the game you start with no cabinet and must appoint one.

The abilities of your entire cabinet add or subtract from the abilities of your civilization.

Each character, has the following.

A name.
Gender, male, female, both or none. This is cosmetic, and affects only whether the character is reffered to as a he or a she, or a he/she or an it. Depending on their race, different option are available.
Age- The older they are, the more likely they are to get fatally ill or decide to retire.
Abilities.
A Loyalty score, this decides how likely they are to resign or attempt a coup or if they are governers to rebel. Depending on how your regime behaves, in relation to their interests.
Abilities
Interests, in general each character will have up to3 interests. Depending on party, one of their interests will be their party interests, they may also have other interests. This affects their loyalty, if someone whose interests is a strong militery, sees you slashing your militery, or losing a war, then their loyalty will plummet, the reverse is also true.

Over time, a character will gain more positive abilities from experiance, which gives you an incentive to protect the 'status quo', and to care about things like loyalty and morale.

Character Judgement ability and appointing new cabinet members

When you try to fill up an empty cabinet slot you may do so two ways. One is to appoint an existing governer to the position. The second is to make a random character to fill the slot.

When making a random character, the computer generates 3 characters at random. Depending on your civilizations total abilities and weaknesses at Character Judgement (ministers, leaders and basic civ ability) you will know a varying amounts about the 3 characters.

You must select one of them, this is to stop someone from trying again, until they get a perfect character.

Governers
Each world can have a governer. A governer is a character that adds his abilities directly to the abilities of the planet. Having a governer always increase economy, production and influence by 5%.

A governer can also be a member of your cabinet, so you can either choose a random character, or make one of your cabinet members governer. You leader can be a governer also, but only of your homeworld.

Needless to say, a character cannot be governer of multiple worlds.


Intrigues, Charisma and Disloyalty

Depending on their diplomacy skill, or lack of it, each character has a certain amount of influence. People with more diplomacy skill, influence those with less.

If a character or governer is disloyal (their loyalty score has reached 0), they will use their diplomacy skill to bring down the loyalty of other characters. Depending on their diplomacy, or lack of it, this will be fairly effective or ineffective.

If a character is loyal, they reverse is true.

Disloyal cabinet members will conspire to do certain things to your regime. This can include. All but one of the intigues, relies upon espionage, the espionage of the character(s) vs the espionage skill of the ruler and all characters with a loyalty above 50.

Resign- The disloyal characters dissapear from the game, taking their skills with them. If an intrigue fails and someone is caught, this will happen automaticly to them.

Internal coup- The disloyal characters, depose the ruler and establish a new regime. If the coup succeeds, the ruler and all characters with a loyalty above 50 are eliminated, and the place of the ruler is taken by one of the disloyal characters.

Assasinate- The more evil your civilization is, the more likely this is to happen. The ruler or a character with a loyalty above 50, is eliminated from the game.

External coup- This is likely to happen if the loyalty of your homeworld is low. The character opens the door to a rebel faction and your ruling party changes, all disloyal characters defect to the new regime. A new random leader of the new ruling party is created.

Speak out against the leader- The character(s) speak out against your leader, attempting to turn the people of your civilization against the leadership. This hurts morale. In this case, the success of this depends on their diplomacy skill, while their chances of avoiding detection


Disloyal Governers
Governers also have loyalty. A disloyal governer will reduce the morale of the planet that he rules over. A combination of a disloyal governer, and a population with low morale, will make rebellion a lot easier and the governer will continue to rule the now rebel world.


This isn't everything, but it's enough today.
ideas
14,619 views 20 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There are so many more types of governments than those three. I beleive the system they have works, except that there's no real incentive to pick one or the other. Personally, my empire is universalist simply because the abundence of bonuses. Why not have something like communisim in there? If they tweek it to make the political styles more important then that would be great. There is a mod that gives you the Imperialist and one other but I can never get it to work.

-Spencer
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I say simply: EU2-style events. All they need in this category.

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There are so many more types of governments than those three. I beleive the system they have works, except that there's no real incentive to pick one or the other. Personally, my empire is universalist simply because the abundence of bonuses. Why not have something like communisim in there? If they tweek it to make the political styles more important then that would be great. There is a mod that gives you the Imperialist and one other but I can never get it to work.


The problem with communism is that it isn't really in itself a goverment form. It's
more like an economic policy. The system we have is stupid and illogical. Why does anyone ever bother to vote?

The three I chose (the Aristotlian goverments basically) are the only three simple and general enough, to fit all the alien races as basic goverment forms.

We could have a system like alignment, for goverment policy. So your goverment can choose communism, capitalism or corporatism as their economic policy.

Civilizations start off not officially any of these, but leaning towards certain policies. The Korx would start off leaning towards capitalism, the Thalan would start off leaning towards communism and the humans would start off corpratist.

Communist goverments, get on better with other communist regimes and badly with capitalist regimes. This should be like alignment but less extreme.

Certain technologies would only be available to goverments of particular policies.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You have a ruling party,


Yep, even in Imperialism, which is odd at best...

None of these should be inherantly superior, all of them should have benefits and penalties


Yep, although I understand that the way the game works, you need that hierarchization.

and none of them should require any technologies.


That's only to justify another branch in the extensive techtree...   

This is not civ, these are civilizations that have millenia of experiance with various goverment types, so requiring them to research any of the goverment types possible is rather odd.


Let's say the Drengin Empire moving to Federation and still calling itself Drengin *Empire* is somewhat silly   

There's a few good thoughts and ideas there, but I think you went overboard with it. Don't want to turn it into a game of politics, now would you?
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Yep, although I understand that the way the game works, you need that hierarchization.


The systems would affect how the characters behave primerily and whether you have elections. It would work like this.


Imperium, no elections, disloyal characters more likely to coup the regime.

Oligarchy, elections involve all characters, but not the general population. If the small electorate don't like you, then you will find your leader replaced.

Democracy, elections, population less likely to resort to violence or defections, however you hold elections every so often the decide ruling party. If you lose an election, your entire cabinet and leader is replaced.



Let's say the Drengin Empire moving to Federation and still calling itself Drengin *Empire* is somewhat silly

There's a few good thoughts and ideas there, but I think you went overboard with it. Don't want to turn it into a game of politics, now would you?


What's wrong with adding a political system that is at least as sophisticated as the diplomatic system?

Given that the political aspect of the game, would be linked to your playing, via the characters "interests", and the population too, there would be an interaction between the political and other aspects of the game.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Problems would arise in some of the bigger maps, foreign, influence, and especially on those worlds which have an extremely high pop.

Furthermore, it would kinda ruin the immersion of the game somewhat if your were to be "replaced" during a coup or poor election year, since it means you aren't the leader but are actually some type of omnipotent presence in the game. (Hey, that's not a bad idea for a random event! Imagine if a Q-like entity were to pop up and start screwing around with your empire or your starships, or maybe sick the Dread Lords or one of the bigger Empires on yours just for kicks? That would be so wicked and hillarious all at once! )

BTW, I heard that a gold bundle of both Dread Lords and Dark Avatar would be coming out sometime after the expansion's release. Can anyone confirm this?  
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
BTW, I heard that a gold bundle of both Dread Lords and Dark Avatar would be coming out


That is how DA will be at retail. GalCiv2 Gold will include both DL and DA as well as a $10 mail-in rebate for owners of the original retail version of GC2, so it ends up being the same price for them to get DA as it would be for those buying DA-only direct from Stardock.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What's wrong with adding a political system that is at least as sophisticated as the diplomatic system?


I'd say it's much more sophisticated, emphasys on much. The diplo system, as well as the econ system, and to a degree the whole game, can hardly be considered minimally realistic. The system you propose goes against that   
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Don't want to turn it into a game of politics, now would you?


Two answers here: either "Absolutely" or "It already is one." What is the 4X genre other than a collection of modeling kits for building toy political economies? And if you're thinking "but it's a wargame," that's no defense--war is violence that's organized for political reasons.

I've been thinking about leader/hero stuff along the lines the OP describes, particularly since Frogboy's thread a while back about multicore CPUs and the future of TBS games.

I have high hopes that GCIII might gain features like this, and that NotMoM2 might be the proving ground for Stardock's work along these lines. The fantasy setting can support "less realism" re things like aging, and it would surely be neato to have to choose between leaving a hero in the field to make an army/fleet stack stronger vs. planting him/her/it in a city (planet) to make it stronger.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Two answers here: either "Absolutely" or "It already is one."


I could swear these are mutually exclusive...

And if you're thinking "but it's a wargame," that's no defense


Good thing I'm not thinking that, then.

war is violence that's organized for political reasons.


I wonder why you'd bring up something that even a moron knows... but that doesn't really have anything to do with what's being discussed, does it? There *is* already a political system in GC, as you very well know. If it's accurate or not, that's one of the points of the OP. Should it be dominant? Doesn't seem so, with the way the game is set up. Why should there be distinctive personalities in the political side of the game, or in the military side, if there are none in the economic, cultural, technological, industrial, etc? Each one serves a purpose (agree with it or not), and each one is simple in its own way. Why increase the complexity in one of them if the others don't match? That's all I was trying to say.
Furthermore, why now have another set of stats (for the individuals) if the races already have a slew of those (the abilities)? Not saying they're related, but seems like overkill to me.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I could swear these are mutually exclusive...


I'm not one of those folks who thinks swearing's impolite, but your apparent objection seems like half my point. The game is fundamentally political, but also open to endless debate about about details (the underlying math models and "formal" English about those models).

Why should there be distinctive personalities in the political side of the game, or in the military side, if there are none in the economic, cultural, technological, industrial, etc?


I don't get "if there are none..." here. Did anyone in this thread say that a leader "thingy" would have no effect on wealth, knowledge, or aesthetics? I got almost the oppsite impression from the OP.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It really couldn't hurt to make the game more political really: just don't make it to the point where you can't do jack without consulting your consulate/senate/congress etc...

One nice option for future GalCiv games would be political espionage. Say for instance, you are the Krynn and you want to make Alan Bradley lose his next election or maybe bribe some important folks in the Terran Alliance to give away a tech that bradley didn't want to sell you on some conditions. You could send a spy to Earth and perhaps in some form or another get some officials under your sway so that way when the next election comes along you can cripple his vote!  

BTW Kryo, when will Stardock release the bundle pack?


(sorry for the poor grammar, I'm in a bit of a rush here!)
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I don't get "if there are none..." here. Did anyone in this thread say that a leader "thingy" would have no effect on wealth, knowledge, or aesthetics? I got almost the oppsite impression from the OP.


Exactly, the political system is hardely an isolated aspect of the game. It overlaps with the research, production, economy and such aspects of the game, through governers. A scientific character, could be appointed to a scientific world and he would increase greatly the scientific output of that world. However, the flip side of it is, if you do really badly in an area that governer cares about, then you might resign, defect to another civilization, or rebel.

Also it should be possible to assasinate characters, so one could cripple another civilizations research, by killing their great scientist governers.

Governers with weapons, defense or hitpoints skill would increase the abilities of ships in orbit around their planet, a bonus that would last for the rest of the turn if they moved away from their planet.

It really couldn't hurt to make the game more political really: just don't make it to the point where you can't do jack without consulting your consulate/senate/congress etc...

One nice option for future GalCiv games would be political espionage. Say for instance, you are the Krynn and you want to make Alan Bradley lose his next election or maybe bribe some important folks in the Terran Alliance to give away a tech that bradley didn't want to sell you on some conditions. You could send a spy to Earth and perhaps in some form or another get some officials under your sway so that way when the next election comes along you can cripple his vote!


Well, the strategy of bribing officials to make a leader win elections, would work best under the oligarchy form of goverment, where the electorate are all the characters in the game.

It might work in an Imperial form of goverment, as long as you got someone with a good espionage and soldiering skill, who would be capable of launching successful coups.

It wouldn't work too well in a democratic form of goverment, unless you got some pursuasive characters to influence the population to drag down their morale.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The game is fundamentally political,


Nope, if it were to reflect RL, it'd be. But it's a game, and like every aspect of it the political part is just another piling of bonuses.

Did anyone in this thread say that a leader "thingy" would have no effect on wealth, knowledge, or aesthetics?


So yet another bonus source to add to the current ones? You've got political parties, racial, buildings, trade goods, research, resources, star bases, do I need to go on? Yep, let's add several more. Because there'll be *several* characters. BTW, how many characters are we talking here? At least several per planet, plus cabinets, replacements, fleets, ground forces, etc. Tell me, is this feasible? How much will this burden the game? How much micro-management will this add?

It overlaps with the research, production, economy and such aspects of the game, through governers.


See above. You're talking about several governors per planet, in scenarios that comprise hundreds of planets. This is not civ building on a planetary scale, but on a galactic scale. Some "minimization" is required.

However, the flip side of it is, if you do really badly in an area that governer cares about, then you might resign, defect to another civilization, or rebel.


And you're going to monitor that for hundreds of planets? Will you have time to play?
I'm assuming you're talking about characters, because *you* can't resign or defect   
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Nope, if it were to reflect RL, it'd be.


I suspect we disagree on language here more than "the facts." My feeble efforts in this thread have failed so far to get across to you that, for me, GCII is by definition a game about politics.

When I taught civics, I asked my students on the first day of class to start working on their own definitions of Big Words like power, politics, and democracy. I usually started them off with a fairly famous short def of politics: the art of resolving conflicts over scarce resources. Seems to me you could accurately define GCII in very similar terms.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When I taught civics, I asked my students on the first day of class to start working on their own definitions of Big Words like power, politics, and democracy. I usually started them off with a fairly famous short def of politics: the art of resolving conflicts over scarce resources. Seems to me you could accurately define GCII in very similar terms.


Damn straight.

BTW, did any of your students answers for power happen to be Emperor Palpatine, or something related to him? Just wanna know  
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

So yet another bonus source to add to the current ones? You've got political parties, racial, buildings, trade goods, research, resources, star bases, do I need to go on? Yep, let's add several more. Because there'll be *several* characters. BTW, how many characters are we talking here? At least several per planet, plus cabinets, replacements, fleets, ground forces, etc. Tell me, is this feasible? How much will this burden the game? How much micro-management will this add?


Okay, there is a leader, and up to five cabinet members. And then there is a maximum of 1 governer character per planet.

You can only have 1 governer per planet and your cabinet will usually be unhappy if non-cabinet members get given planets, before you do. Which means it is usually a good idea (and the AI should know this) to give cabinet members governerships.

This effectively cuts down the number of characters to 8-10 for most large civilizations, while small civilizations would have effectively no non-cabinet governers.

Governers do not in themselves have cabinets, only the civilization leader has a cabinet, which is max 5 people in size. Essentially the maximum number of charcters is number of planets +5 and the leader, though it is likely not going to be advisable to have this amount (beacause cabinet members expect their own fiefdoms).


See above. You're talking about several governors per planet, in scenarios that comprise hundreds of planets. This is not civ building on a planetary scale, but on a galactic scale. Some "minimization" is required.


I am talking about a single governer per planet. Replacements, if not chosen immediately are deleted. You get 3 randomly generated possibilities, you select one of them and the others are deleted.


And you're going to monitor that for hundreds of planets? Will you have time to play?
I'm assuming you're talking about characters, because *you* can't resign or defect


You already have to monitor the planets that you have colonised. Keeping half an eye on their governers, is not going to be hard. Expecially since it's not like a disloyal governer can do much harm on a world which has an high morale, it is just the governers of unhappy worlds which you have to keep an eye on. An unexplainable drop in morale, would often be a sign of a disloyal governer, so you would be able to replace them.

However, replacing governers hurts the loyalty of the other governers, and it hurts the morale of the planet slightly, although any sedition by the disloyal governer would be removed. A disloyal governer with a morale or loyalty boosting ability, would be particularly dangerous, beacause not only would his bonus be negated, but it would gradually translate into a negative bonus.

A particularly likable or charismatic governer, while useful for keeping people loyal to your regime, has the flip side of inspiring personal loyalty, which makes him far more likely for a rebellious governer, to make the planet rebellious.

Lastly, governer or even cabinet disloyalty is far less of a problem in a democracy and in an oligarchy it is likely to be channelled into trying to set up a vote of no confidence in your leader, rather than cause planets to rebel.

An Imperium is really the only goverment form, in which you have to keep a close eye on your governers and cabinets or else very nasty things will happen to your civilization, but you do get more control over your governers and cabinets as a result of having this goverment form.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
for me, GCII is by definition a game about politics.



the art of resolving conflicts over scarce resources. Seems to me you could accurately define GCII in very similar terms.


If you go that way, is there really any strategy game (or any game, for that matter) that isn't about politics? In the end, this is a silly argument IMO.

Essentially the maximum number of charcters is number of planets +5 and the leader, though it is likely not going to be advisable to have this amount (beacause cabinet members expect their own fiefdoms).


So with 300+ planets you get...

This effectively cuts down the number of characters to 8-10 for most large civilizations


Some confusion here? I see two very different things.

I am talking about a single governer per planet.


So there's a single person acting as governor for the econ, research, manu, culture etc aspects of the planet? I don't quite understand that. A person that is very good at all that, and you just have to find a gazillion of them to run all your planets... unless you're now trying to simplify what you were trying to complicate.

Replacements, if not chosen immediately are deleted.


Like executed?   

You already have to monitor the planets that you have colonised


Yes, and there are mechanisms which make that relatively simple. If you add more things to monitor, it doesn't get any simpler.
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


So with 300+ planets you get...

306 characters. However, it's not like you would really have to worry about them, you could just leave them alone to rule the planets. Making your regime democratic, would make things easier, beacause you'd have to worry less about disloyal characters causing trouble.


Some confusion here? I see two very different things.


It would depend on the size of the galaxy and the number of civilizations obviously.


So there's a single person acting as governor for the econ, research, manu, culture etc aspects of the planet? I don't quite understand that. A person that is very good at all that, and you just have to find a gazillion of them to run all your planets... unless you're now trying to simplify what you were trying to complicate.


It was never my intention to have a seperate character for each aspect of the planets. However, they do effect all aspects of the planets capabilities.

Okay, you have a number of governers, each governer, just like each cabinet member is good at some things, and bad at others. Simple enough.

The trick would be to get the right kind of governers, for the right kind of planets. So the great scientist governers, would rule the research world, the engineers would rule the production worlds and so on.

A governer, imparts his bonuses and penalties directly to the world that he rules and to nowhere else. Cabinet and leader bonuses however, are applied to your whole civilization. If you have a cabinet member/leader who is also a governer, then in effect their abilities and penalties are applied twice.

You cannot find the "perfect governer" beacause you are limited to 3 randomly generated possibilities OR the members of your cabinet, when making a new governer. When you decide which one to have, the other two are deleted.

All characters have weaknesses, in general the better they are, the worse they are also. And you don't always know what the weaknesses of a governer are, although you know their strengths. How much you know about a governer's weaknesses, is dependant on your goverments total character judgement skill.

For the most part, you wouldn't have to pay much attention to governers, except when they die and need replacing, unless they are causing trouble. If they are causing trouble, then you'd likely be able to spot the effects of the disloyal governer and have him either removed (which hurts loyalty of other governers) or investigated for subversion (costs money), which requires espionage skill and goes against the espionage skill of governer. If it succeeds, you can remove the governer without any trouble, if it fails then you would have to wait 4 weeks to do it again.

By en-large, it is your cabinet that requires the most intention, which isn't too hard since there are only ever 5 of them.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
BTW, did any of your students answers for power happen to be Emperor Palpatine


Nope. I didn't know the name until you made me look it up on Wikipedia. Now I'm armed with some potential mockery-fodder (go Palpitate yourself, etc.) if TheGreatEmporer gets out of line