Ok, so last week I started a discussion about a combat mechanic for a civ game I'm working on. Thanks to all who chimed in, I'm very happy with the mechanic we hashed out, and I think the game is pretty much done now.
Or is it? One thing I realized I haven't really incorporated into the game is a "political" mechanic; the idea that you must maintain civility and contentment in your empire, in addition to scoring combat victories against foes and spending gadzooks of cash to build the pyramids, etc.
So, I am trying to brainstorm a bit as to how this effect could be incorporated into the game. Rather than wade into specific mechanics, I'd like to propose a couple of possible ways that the effect could be interpreted to be important from a simulation standpoint. Identifying which fits best with the game (if any) and how to add it in will be my challenge, and may in fact get dropped altogether since the game already has some complexity. (and that's also a relevant question: is this kind of effect important in a Civ game, in your opinion?)
I see several possible ways in which "politics" could be important. One would be the "upkeep" aspects of control -- keeping the citizens clothed, fed, sheltered, etc. Another would be the "contentedness" aspect -- keeping the citizens happy so they don't revolt. (these are similar, but probably different in how they're evoked). Another possibility would be the "bureaucracy" aspects: managing the economy and avoiding corruption. Another is the "sprawl" aspect -- keeping control of an empire.
So in game terms, how can these be evoked? The "upkeep" aspects are easy -- you must pay X resources for each Y citizens/territories, etc. If you don't, you suffer consequence Z (lose citizens, territories, etc). This is simple and effective, but I don't think it adds anything interesting to my game. For one, it's been done quite well in the past in games like La Citta, where you must have access to food for all of your population or suffer consequences. In my game, resources are already plenty tight, so i don't think adding one more resource management aspect is worth it, but maybe.
I could perhaps foresee having a "pay one resource per sitting army" that would kind of incorporate both the "upkeep" and "sprawl" aspects. Having a very spread-out army gives you the ability to strike in more possible directions, but it is also more costly to maintain such a structure. However, again, I don't think this would add anything to my game, in which you already, as I described, must "pay to fight" -- I think this does an adequate job of accounting for the cost of maintaining the military -- lots of battles = lots of costs.
I'm most intrigued, then, by the "bureaucracy" aspects. One idea might be to have the cost of builds scale with the size of your empire. So, as your Civ gets bigger, presumably it's producing more, but things also end up costing more because of the overhead associated with having a big empire. Perhaps this would only be related to specific endeavors; building a statue has a fixed cost, but instituting the civ advance "law" is more difficult as your Civilization increases in size, for example. Another thing I could envision is there is some kind of "unrest" track that you must maintain below a certain level, or else you lose something. And maybe keeping unrest down gets more expensive as you own more territories.
The key question, then, would be how to make unrest interesting. I envision some random events that say "Famine: Unrest +1", but you don't want to rely on that entirely. I want to have a couple of situations where the consequence of action A is that your unrest goes up. These might include losing a battle, or overpopulating a territory, etc.
I guess the main question I need to answer is whether I even want to add a political system in the first place. I think it would mainly serve, in the model I outline above, to make land-grabbing a more expensive strategy, as doing so would increase unrest. But there may already be some built-in checks against land-grabbing anyway, so maybe it's not necessary...
Are there other possible ways that you've seen, or could imagine, political or "empire management" concepts being incorporated into a game?
It occurs to me that this might be better as a journal entry, but since my last post generated good discussion, perhaps this one will as well....Thanks for any input!
-Jeff
I guess it depends somewhat on the scope of the game. Have you played La Citta? The mechanism for food supply is brilliant. I also like the one in Wallenstein, where if you don't produce enough grain, you incur peasant revolts (or, alternatively, "revolting peasants"!)
That's fine. My game currently has options to build structures to gain special benefits (like "Barracks" improves the defense of the territory) but I'm wondering if I should add a separate mechanic to force players to pay attention to the infrastructure/citizenry, which would incorporate the effect that the bigger/more populous an empire gets, the more effort must be expended to rule it.
This is certainly a possibility; it's kind of the same, mechanically, as "pay for each citizen" although one limits population expansion, one limits land expansion, and not sure which one needs to be reined in.
This is also an interesting idea, but I'm a little worried it adds more bookkeeping to remember which territory was acquired when. This is definitely different than any of the mechanics I advanced, though. I'm probably leaning a bit towards something like "things cost more the bigger/more populous your empire gets", or maybe "if you don't manage unrest, every now and again it boils over and something bad happens". But your suggestions would also contribute to an "empire management" effect.
Thanks for the input!