With the US Independence Day on the horizon, I am wondering if anyone misses the empire schism with the fall of government (usually democracy) in Civ II or the declaration of independence usually of overseas territories in Civ IV?
(I apologise if this thread has been started before)
Sid Meier has stated in an interview already that he doesn't like this idea. The reason he gave is that he found from playtesting and feedback that when people get a negative event like a schism within their civilization, they would tend to just reload their old game. This is also why things like negative random events were removed.
I see other problems with this as well. Cities play too central a role for some of them to simply separate in Civilization V, especially when it comes to people adopting leaner city strategies at times for winning. In a multiplayer game they would be really imbalanced too, essentially just randomly damning anybody who's unlikely enough to suffer an independence movement. If Civilization were a game that included extensive amounts of territory like Paradox's or Creative Assembly's games, I'd say it'd work better.
The problem with it in Civ V is that I don't know how it would work with the new happiness system.
A pure random event would break the game but conceivable, in a Civ IV system, I could see it working if say an overseas colony had a large amount of unhappiness (and maybe maintenance due to no courthouse etc.) for x amount of turns it would attempt to revolt and you would need to squash the revolt or it becomes independent. It would just add one more thing to maintaining your empire and could fit into the game. With the universal happiness of Civ V, though, I can't think of a comparable way to work it in.
I also read of the policy not to include negative events as most people would reload. I really wish this wasn't a policy because I actually like the random events of Civ IV.
(Edit: I know you can declare colonies independent in IV, I was talking about the possibility of this happening without you doing it. Besides the colony system in IV had a lot of flaws and abusable mechanics).
Last edited by istry555; 06-20-2011 at 02:44 PM.
I'd actually wanted to make a mod for this, but you can't add player slots to a game in progress.
My idea would have been to just calculate a local unhappiness, and if too high for too long, go into anarchy for x turns before revolting.
Yunno, this is a great idea we've all thought of, except I couldn't see it in Civ5. Colonies worked real well on Civ4, and schisms would fall in the same category also working well. Like stated by Slick, cities play a more vital role on Civ5, and losing a few can most definitely cost you the game.
I'd really like to see a mod with this, though. It would be fun to try a few times. But if it were put in the game, without an option to disable it, the game would be entirely different, and a lot of the victories would be by a chance of luck.
Depends on how it works. Could have it just be far flung "colony" cities, for example, while the core around your capital is immune. Would mean you have to carefully maintain distant cities.
Declaring independence and all this jazz, I don't think would play out well. However, maybe if the happiness is low enough, chunks of the civ could start breaking off predictably the way the automatic disbanding of units is predictable. If happiness is below -10 and no more happiness is left in the golden age counter, groups of cities will start to break off until you are back inside the margin.
Another thing I truly miss is gaining a protectorate over another civ like in civ IV, because I don't feel that it is this that puppets replace. You should have both puppets and protectorates. Maybe we could get these back in an expansion?
I think a similar thing could be implemented by having a really unhappy empire start having its cities go into resistance (that state right after you annex or puppet a city where it can't do anything). Right now if an empire is at -20 happiness, rebels (barbarians) start appearing; maybe if happiness went to -30 a city will go into resistance, and for every 5 unhappiness after that another city resists.
The problem I see with this is that should you ever at any point in a game reach -30 happiness, the game is long, long lost, and there's no need to penalize the player any further. Even -10, you should avoid like the plague, but it is still a realistic situation in certain circumstances, while, for most people I'm sure, -30 would never, ever be reached, and so putting a penalty in this low would be completely pointless.Originally Posted by Mega-Dolphin
Aside from the historical factor, to be honest I don't think it's a good gameplay mechanic no matter what. Really what is the point of some huge penalty that the player has to deal with? I think if it were actually implemented, people would just rage at it. Making it based on happiness would have worked for Civ IV maybe. In that game it would make sense that if you mismanaged a city and incurred enormous unhappiness within it, maybe you'd suffer consequences. In Civ V it's less logical since your whole empire has a happiness rating and most of the time you tend to be more limited with your cities.
The only way I could see it implemented is if some kind of counter popped up when your happiness got really low, indicating how many turns you had to fix being such a crappy ruler. Even then I think it's a little draconian to punish players that are already lagging behind, and I'm positive it would open up a whole new wave of drama with the AI. Whether they could or couldn't deal with the schisms, people would complain bitterly about it. If they could, they'd say that the system unfairly penalizes only the player. If they couldn't, they'd say that the AI is a laughing stock.
Ugh, sorry for being harsh. I just really see this idea as unnecessary.
Look, the Order policy tree was obviously made with large empires in mind. What if there were an Order policy that drastically reduced or eliminated the possibility of a secession event occurring? Do you think it would work then?
I think this would make order a must-have for militaristic victories, and, especially with Autocracy and Order now being mutually exclusive, such would only lead to autocracy becoming useless.
How about a social policy in another tree then?
Bear in mind, I would prefer not having this in the game. I'm just playing devil's advocate and arguing on behalf of those who do.
Hmmmm, if most people don't like negative events in the game, why don't they make such thing a non-default option? I wouldn't mind a few minor random events here and there.
I agree with random events, I actually quite liked those, they should be put back in.
However, any social-policy tree with that would be indispensable unless going for culture pretty much, so it would seem much too forced, I feel. I don't know, I just don't think there would be a good way of implementing them.
That Sid Meier interview kind of vexed me.
I'm sitting there thinking... so is there going to be a version of the game for adults, in which the formulas are not manipulated to fool the player, and negative things are actually allowed to happen?
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