Government Types

[Christantine The Great]

The Holy Roman Empire was not a theocracy. It was a poor excuse to band all of those tiny, German states together under one roof, headed by Austria. Crusaders were knights from Europe who wanted a place in Heaven by killing the "heathen" Seljuk Turks, not an actual military force.

Governments:

Despotism: Persia for example. You are a ruler who claims divine guidance or that you are divine or you are a military usurper. Your military enforces your strict laws but their elevated importance in your country corrupts them heavily, severly limiting trade and production.

Republic: USA for example. Your city-states are all nominally independant, but look to you for overall leadership and military guidance. You have a Senate made up of representitives from all of the city-states and they form most of the national government. Your power is limited to managing the military and diplomatic aspects of your empire. You do have the right of a veto but your veto can be overturned by the Senate if they disagree with a vast majority. Since the people have a lot of say about law in the form of the Senate corruption is suprisingly low.

Monarchy: Roman Empire and Russian Empire for examples. You rule because your family has risen to the position through marrage, diplomacy, or outright murder and blackmail. Of course there are other families in the state that are very important landowners so they have a lot of power and steal from the royal taxes.

*Nationalism: Attitude throughout Europe in the 19th century and facism in the 1930s and 40s for example. You are the charismatic leader of the major culture of your nation. You can either wip your population's resentment of another race into a frenzy for war or give them a feeling of unity for peace. But there is a penalty for both. If you chose to become warlike, you are forced to put more control in the hands of your generals, which can cause corruption. If you choose to be peaceful, your armies are seen by the public to be tools of distruction, a no-no when your population is geared to trade and production, so you must disband most of it.

Communism: I'm leaving this out because we don't know exactly what "type" of communism is used.

Democracy: Athens for example. Everyone has a say in your government, everyone. The entire population votes on issues of diplomacy, trade, and war. This lets your country be unparalleled in production and trade, causing low corruption since everyone gets a share. This also severely limits your options in diplomacy. In ancient times it is easier to maintain a Democracy since your population is low. In later centuries it is almost impossible since you cannot effectively get everyone's vote for every bill submitted. With the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web in the modern era, though, your population is once again connected to the government.

*Speculation based on what I've seen people say about the new gov't.

[KrazyHorse]

Communism: I'm leaving this out because we don't know exactly what "type" of communism is used

By common consensus, it was agreed that the model used was bureaucratised Bolshevism.

[splangy]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


By common consensus, it was agreed that the model used was bureaucratised Bolshevism.

Really? I always thought it was Stalinism (same thing, plus terror campaigns) that they tried to represent?

[KrazyHorse]

Why terror campaigns? No decrease in unhappiness like under Fundmentalism, only martial law like Monarchy.

[barefootbadass]

umm, falconius, I haven't played civ2 in a while but I'm pretty sure communism had low corruption that was spread out evenly such as you described for civ1.

Fundamentalism had no corruption in civ2 along with democracy I believe.

[KrazyHorse]

There was pretty high corruption in fundie, IIRC.

[Christantine The Great]

You're both wrong. Fundy had slightly lower corruption then Republic and Communism and Democracy were corruption-free.

[Ribannah]

It is funny how this subject seems to pop up every year, and to see the confusion that follows.
Here are some definitions of the civ governments that I find pleasant to work with:

Despotism = single ruler, by force
Monarchy = single ruler bound by law
Republic = ruled by representatives of the rich, chosen by the rich
Fundamentalism = ruled by representatives of the church (or similar), chosen by the church
Communism = ruled by representatives of the civil service, chosen by the civil service
Democracy = ruled by representatives of the people, chosen by the people

Obviously in real life governments tend to be a mix.

Nationalism, Socialism and Fascism aren't really governments.

The government "Communism" should really be called "Bureaucracy", "Fundamentalism" should be called "Theocracy".
Replace "rich" etc. by another selected group (military, scientists, entrepeneurs, secret service) and you get more government types.

[Ozymandias]

Most of my thoughts on government types etc. center on how Civ tries to model (i.e., make coherent assumptions and thereby rules about) real-world phenomenon.

Part of the overall Civ modeling structure glosses over economics -- or, as a Marxist historiographer would state it, "modes of production."

"Feudalism" left me figurativley scratching my head as it refers, in Europe, to (to be glib) de-centralized, pre-capitalist, fundamentalist, dynastic monarchies.

Then I started focusing on the de-centralization: princes and minor nobles were able to assert their relative independence from the monarch by virtue of defensive technology: castle walls could not be breached by the available offensive forces (sopisticated seige mechanics having been forgotten with the fall of Rome). So Feudalism would have, somewhere along the line, Construction as a prerequisite and City Walls would be stand-ins for castles.

Given the relative political unsophistication of medieval Europe compared to any number of earlier monarchies, I would still suggest that Feudalism be simply achieved, say by requiring Construction and Warrior Code. Currency is specifically NOT required. Feudalism plus Horses yields Chivalry (a more Japanese version would yield Samurai, perhaps that nation's special unit).

One interesting side effect is that, absent the Mongol hordes, Feudalism engendered the most potent military forces around -- Crusaders sacked Constantinople; raised Cain in the Holy Land, etc. They were first checked by pikemen from Republics in Switzerland, but their real downfall came with gunpowder (there is a telling scene in Orlando Furioso with a knight rowing to sea to toss overboard an arquebus -- a primitive firearm -- hoping it's the only one of its kind).

So: Feudalism (not a Government, merely an adjunct to Despotism) plus Chivalry yields a potent early game military force, good for conquest-minded players.

Developing Monarchy takes longer (more advances are required) and a Feudal military can pose a definite challenge to it).

-- Now, the way centralized governments were eventually able to reassert control was by developing offensive technology capable of overpowering castle walls: Gunpowder (cannons, specifically). This recentralization of power in turn slowly led to our modern concept of the nation state. -- Gunpowder should definitely take rather longer to arrive at than feudalism! (As an aside, one might stetch the game's notion of Feudalism to include Persian satrapies etc.)

So Pikemen should decidedly be able to challenge the supremacy of Knights, and Musketeers should settle the matter once and for all -- and Feudalism should definitely be removed as a precursor for Invention and hence Gunpowder.

Monarchy plus Gunpowder would yield Nationalism (which we now know is NOT a gov type in Civ). Early armies formed under nationalism would group Musketeers and Pikemen, which is absolutely historical and accounts for most of the action in the 30 Years War.

Nationalism plus the printing press would allow the transition from Monarchy to Democracy.

Nationalism would also give rise to the interesting new "Military Tradition" advance -- all those antique regiments still in existence and whatnot. This would construed as a proto-militarism which, when combined with Radio, would yield Totalitarianism (accounting for Communism and Fascism both: centralized governments, run by bureacratized propaganda and terror, anti-religious, with a penchant for both military conquest and what we now call "ethnic cleansing" -- as I mentioned above, Civ doesn't address inherent economic models much, so whether the underlying economy is collectivist or "directed" capitalism is nearly moot; 1941 found the "technologically superior" Nazis amazed by Soviet tanks, and the Soviets of course gave Western capitalism a -- forgive the pun -- a run for its money for decades).

Note that in this schema there is specifically no link between the Republic and Democracy, which is also historically accurate. (Other debates about how Republics and Democracies might actually be defined aside, I am sticking here to the game's assignment of Republic as an early form of government and Democracy as a later, and neither the Greek city-states, Republican Rome, nor the 17th Century Dutch led directly to either the French or American revolutions).

... Do you all get the feeling that about the first thing I'm going to do once I get my hands on Civ III is reassemble the tech tree?

-Oz

[splangy]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Why terror campaigns? No decrease in unhappiness like under Fundmentalism, only martial law like Monarchy.

but in civ2 its martial law was doubled, i just used terror campaignes as an example of the overall oppressive nature they are trying to portray. That rifleman isn't exactly entertaining the people is he

[splangy]

they stated that nationalism isn't a goverment but heres what the goverment would be like in game terms, not real life becouse it is a game (i know, shocking )

despotism= total dog****, sad, oppressed people with a high corruption
monarchy= average, run of the mill type production etc
republic= medium corruption, good trade, peaceful
fuedalism (were the hell did this apear?)= High corruption, good millitary, posibly some unrest (it was very unstable, hence the term "fued")
democracy= peaceful, scientifict, *****y, little merchants
comunism= opressive, millitant, spies with a resonable science rate.
nationalism= extremly patrioc people with good production, and a nice millitary
fascism= opressive, with the ability to fight, but it will need to pay all of its troops, and perhaps a unique unit that is free and realy good
fundy= fannatical people who love war and are looked at as barbarians by other nations, they also dont allow very much free thought.
tyranny(whats sadam husain, and other opressive but not fascist or communist leaders?)= good money, opressive, high corruption, good war machine, but real stupid.

these are game goverments, real ones would differ heavily.

ps- if civ3 has only 5 goverments heads are gona roll

[K.J.H.]

Originally posted by splangy
ps- if civ3 has only 5 goverments heads are gona roll

I WANT MORE GOVERNMENTS!
Make the guillotine ready, splangly

Or maybe a Joan-of-Arc-treatment for FIRE-axis?
REVOLUTION!!

[Ozymandias]

Re: all these cries for more government types -- that's a large part of what my musings about Feudalism and Nationalism are about. If (as I maintain) real-world Feudalism can be modelled without a proper game government type, then perhaps others might be as well.

Again, a large part of the problem is blurring together of government types with economies -- even though I maintain that Communism and Fascism can both be modelled as "Totalitarianism" in Civ (as their translation into game mechanics would be the same) they were quite obviously different economic models.

One way to further model such modern despotism: have a city "improvement" called Secret Police which significantly increases control of the population while limiting conversion of populace to scientists etc. Through this and other tweakings make "Totalitarianism" very efective for warfare -- BUT (if there are event switches which can be thrown) also have the presence of a Secret Police installation also nullify effects of cathedrals etc., perhaps even cause them to be removed. A transition to Democracy would have the effect of nullifying Secret Police installations etc. Having to build Secret Police control city by city would also reflect the fact that it took time to extend, e.g., Bolshevik control throughout the USSR. Without meaning to engender a debate on current events, a sudden switch to Democracy (which, it can be argued, within game terms is what the ex-USSR is going through) would result in mass confusion as the controlling effect of the Secret Police was removed ...

So, a large part of my Question remains, in game terms -- considering the scale of the game and its mechanics, what Government types truly are worth modelling?

Still Pondering Away,

O.

[Cyclotron]

I find it silly that people are saying that in Civ terms, the USA is a Republic. I don't want to debate policy or real life ideals, but a republic represents an upper class government, i.e. where property owners, rich people, powerful people, etc. represent the non-voting majority but are not accountable to them. If the USA is not a civ Democracy, what is? Certainly not greece, where not every member of the society could vote. People who do not consider the USA and similar countries Democracies in Civ3 are making the bar to be some kind of perfect, utopian society. Yes, there is no such thing as a "true" democracy, but who cares? A Democracy in civ represents the kind of "imperfect" democracy that we in the states (and most of the world) have as our government.

[Melios]

I hope there is at least one new government type in Civ3 e.g. Fascism or Totalitarian or something like that.

Although the editing tools will let you edit government types. javascript:smilie('')
smile

[Bill3000]

Originally posted by Melios
Although the editing tools will let you edit government types.
smile

You completely sure about that? Where'd you find that info?

[isaac brock]

why does everyone rag on saddam? the u.s. had no trouble being buddy-buddy with iraq before the gulf war. but iraq marched into a corrupt little nation that happened to provide very cheap oil to americans. when little corrupt kuwait channeled millions into the u.s. to print bumper stickers and say war is good, they sent their faulty stealth bombers in to teach saddam to cease his tyrannic ways.

My point is that just because you've accepted the propaganda doesn't mean he has a bad government. military dictatorship. that would be a sweet government.