Anarchy Tiles

I like the idea a lot (picture the view! cities smoking from anarchy plaqued neighborhoods). However, I am concerned with practical implementation. I get the impression that this is something that, instead of seing that red unhappy symbol in GalCiv 1 we would just watch it unfold in front of our eyes. I will need to think on this one, but again, I like it alot.

Mike

From a theatrical standpoint this may seem interesting, but it smells like micromanagement could be involved, which would be bad, bad, bad.

No micromanagement needed. Those tiles just mark areas where building damage is likely/occuring due to unrest. The player does nothing special to decrease the unrest in a specific area, just overall. It's just something pretty to look at.

Rioting rebels should have to go to war against the planet the same as players. Maybe not exactly the same game mechanics/screens, but they shouldn't just be allowed to have a planet cause the player didn't do something. They should have to fight against the local police/melitia just as hard.

BUT if a planet is in riot (or tiles are in riot), then it's defense against attack is weaker. This could be psychological warfare/terrorism (depending on who's doing it!) and could be something that spies/agents do to a planet--morale reduction.

Well, GoblinCookie's proposal to me sounds like a purely graphical feature, I don't think it would actually affect the player any more or less than the red icon in GC1, other than looking cooler. It may even serve as a more persuasive indicator that the plyer is looking at a deteriorating situation, which sounds good to me.

I think the points AngleWyrm is raising are effectively already in the game, unrest on planets builds over time, and I think morale affects the productivity of a planet (I may be wrong). That I think is representing the rioting and clahes against the government you are talking about, it's just done behind the scenes.

In GC1 it was possible to use the Information War tactic during invasions to turn disgruntled citizens against your enemy, so that represents the weakened defences of a demoralised planet. I think this could probably be expanded and further explored in some way, but the core of the concept is already in place. So I guess the questions is, how to develop it?

Exactly, remember that a rebellion is not the same as a planetery invasion, the lines are not as clear cut, it's not necceserily rebels vs army and police, quite often sections of the army and the police are rebels, remember the most dangerous rebels from the perspective of the goverment are not unarmed rioting mobs but the army and police that have sided with the rebels.

Anarchy is the most nasty of the three dissent titles they are......

Unhappy- The people of this tile are hostile to the goverment and suspicious of them, however they still have some faith in the ability of the democratic process or the wisdom of their benificent and all-powerful leader to change things for the better in their neighborhood.
Unrest- Rebels groups clash with the goverment throughout this tile and control is greatly contested, all production friendly to the goverment has stopped and the province is radidly falling into chaos. If things hold up the goverment forces may be pushed out completely
Anarchy- Goverment control is virtually non-existant and reduced to a few die-hard covert cells and heavily fortified and besieged complexes. The fighting has died down somewhat, but the various rebel factions often battle with one another and with common criminals for control of the streets and the resourses of the province.

Basicly unhappy tiles, turn into Unrest tiles, which then turn into anarchy tiles, then the anarchy tiles spread unrest to neigboring areas. Loyal tiles (ie tiles that aren't unhappy) do their best to reduce the anarchy to unrest and then to eliminate them completely. Unhappy tiles do not possess the capacity to reestablish order in neighboring tiles, and fall much faster. The more neighboring tiles that are in anarchy vs those that are loyal, the faster the revolt spreads and the more loyal tiles and the happier they are the quicker anarchy dissolves.

So eventually all the tiles in a planet would come under the control of the rebels? interesting...? however if the planet falls under the control of the rebelion what Civ will control it? maybe The I-League?

I think it would be a good idea for Revolts to break out Rather than a Revolution Like in galciv1 which throws you out of power too easily however the same event Triggers some tiles to break out in revoultion. i was thinking that there should be a captiol terriotry for each planet Probley the Intial Colony Tile which is always loyal and fights rebelions agresivly and if it falls you loose control over the planet and if its the captiol planet... Well things fall apart because of your inablity to control your empire effectivly also the Senate (Which should have the name as the empire's) would fall apart and means that your polictal party bonuses are severly cut by 50% for loss of your capitol planet also this is good for planetary invansions as well so Captiol planets are very important to defend oh and in galciv1 the manual stated that if the captiol planet fell bad things would happen... it didin't everything was fine besides your One per Civ Planetary improvements...

oh and also make it possible in a later version of the game that you can change your captiol to another Intial colony tile

oh and also make it possible in a later version of the game that you can change your captiol to another Intial colony tile

oops i pressed sumbit twice... can you kill one of those posts?

Yes the initial colony tile is key to controlling the planet and the planet does indeed fall into rebellion as soon as the initial colony tile goes into anarchy. Basicly the initial colony tile always counts as a loyal tile ie it is never unhappy, but can go into unrest as a result of sorrounding anarchy tiles. The instant the initial colony goes into unrest, a revolution occurs. What happens to the planet depends on it's origins and the active galactic movements. Basicly, galactic movements are multi-racial confederacies, devoted to an ideology. Galciv I had galactic movements but Galciv II should have even more.

All galactic movements are activated by random events and persist until the death event occurs and the movement fizzles out. They represent ideologies that are current at the moment in the galaxy, they include wierd and obscure cults, fanatical groups such as the fundies and revolutionary or reactionary political dogmas. The I leugue is technically a galactic movement, but is always active from the games start to it's end. It's sort of the defualt which all planets that fall to revolts become, unless they fit the criteria of an active movement.

However if the planet was originally colonised by another race than the current ruler of the planet (this can include galactic movements) there is a very high chance that it will defect to that race upon falling to revolution. If that race no longer exists then it is recreated. The recreated civilization can be a major or a minor, if it is minor it regains it's seat on the U.P. council.

If a planet rebels then all ships that are in orbit of that planet defect to it's new owners (it is assumed they were boarded and captured). In addition ships that were built on that planet, this includes colony ships and transports will defect to the new owners aswell. This is to give these new civilizations a fighting chance against their former owners. Understandibly this also means that key shipyards that fall to rebels are potentially very dangerous, so it's important that you mantain such worlds loyalty.

Descriptions of galactic movements I would like to see and the criteria for rebellious planets joining it.

I leugue
The I leugue is a loose coalition of technicly sovereign worlds that exist under their own law, that have banded together for defensive and trading reasons. They believe in the right of all planets to govern themselves free from the interference of others.

Criteria- none
Fundermentalists
The fundermantalists are fanaticly devoted to the principles of justice and righteousness and to the sometimes forcible redemtion of all races, peoples and regimes that have turned to the path of evil. They seek to achieve the highest levels of moral enlightenment, justice and harmony throughout the universe and have little tolorance towards those who oppose their agenda.

Criteria- Evil or Nuetral civilization.

Dread Pact
The Dread Pact are the evil equivilant of the fundermentalists, devoted to all that is evil. They glory in fear, torture, cruelty and strength and seek galactic domination by any means. They aim to show the universe the awesome glory of the Dark side and destroy any who oppose them.

Criteria- Good or Neutral civilization.

The twilight pact
The third way are devoted to neutrality, balance and harmony. They disdain all extremes, veiwing both good and evil as equally dangerous, striving to walk the thin line between both extremes. They aim to unify the universe and all ways and peoples into one harmonious whole.

Criteria- Civilizations of a "Pure" moral aligment, that is pure good or pure evil.

I haven't read all the replies on this one, but I like the idea of low morale translating to low productivity / no productivity / rebellion on colony tiles. Who knows what colony improvement may go down due to an unhappy population? I hope it's not the Red Light District. Or the Starport. Or the Turbinium mines! Damn you Quaid!

Sounds cool but the list of possible New races should include some more esoteric answers

like

Gaias Protectors

An eclological society based on the return to nature
good points Planetary Quality improvements
Bad points - industrial improvements

Cause over industrialisation

Anti Freaks league

Anti research group hating all research improvements

cause over reliance on research improvements

holy order of galactic harmony

Good holy order caused by not enough social improvements

Holy order of the Dark Spaces

Dark holy order see above

The problem I've just realised is that it would be that a spaced out planet would never fall to rebels. Therefore I think that every improvement should be linked to every other in a transportation network, so rebels could potentially take tiles on the other side of the planet if there's nothing in the way.

The problem I've just realised is that it would be that a spaced out planet would never fall to rebels. Therefore I think that every improvement should be linked to every other in a transportation network, so rebels could potentially take tiles on the other side of the planet if there's nothing in the way.

I had kind of assumed that was what you meant.

If there is no immediately adjacent tile to the anarchy tile, it could leap frog across the gap to the next used tile.

I'd be interested to hear a developers opinion on this idea.

I hate to say this, but it looks like the conversation in this thread is going to shift this concept into micromanagement.

I hate to say this, but it looks like the conversation in this thread is going to shift this concept into micromanagement.

Actually I dont think anyone has suggested anything that the player has to actually do. All this simply shows a planet slipping into anarchy and becoming less productive as planetary improvements fall into rebel hands. You would fix it in the same old manner, lowering taxes, building cultural improvements etc. You did that in GC1, the work load for the player isn't actually effected.

You would fix it in the same old manner

It's not the fixing that bothers me. Its the spotting and analyzing. I think the basic ideas have merit, but I think there may be some severe problems in implementation to be solved to aid the player and to prevent a tendancy to micromanage to overcome the affects of anarchy tiles.

One problem with the idea of anarchy tiles is that the anarchy can occur on a tile with a cultural improvement, causing a severe cascade affect and very rapid loss of the planet. Such sudden and catastrophic loss of planets can be frustrating and reduce the appeal of the game to its players (see the initial release levels of Sid Meier's CIV3 for some examples of how the sudden and unexpected loss of cities can be).

There would have to be something that showed the first occurance of tile anarchy for each planet, and a continuing indication of the degree of the problem on each planet, in some summary of some sort. Another problem is that this notification and/or summary could get a bit annoying. It all depends on how it is done. It could reach a saturation level where we would have a tendancy to ignore it and end up loosing planets unexpectedly. That would then start a trend towards micromangement of our planets just to avoid loss of planets in this manner. Etc. etc. etc..

Also, looking at summaries each turn tends to slow down game play. The amount of slow down depends on how many sumnaries there are and how much detail is presented in those summaries. Again, you get micromanagement problems, but this time at a higher level.

You did that in GC1, the work load for the player isn't actually effected.

Even so, this did result in some need for micromanagement. In building a game, you can't avoid micromanagement entirely, but you want to keep it to a minimum.

It's not the fixing that bothers me. Its the spotting and analyzing.

I agree. It would be a lot of work to look through each colony and have to eyeball all the tiles to see what's going wrong. At least a single "overall morale" number is easy for the player to process, even if it is not as interesting as seeing individual tiles go to hell.

I don't want to be a party pooper (nobody at the party wants that), but this feature sounds like it would just be eye candy and would get tiresome after you've been playing the game for awhile.

- Proud Canadian

I still don't think it would add any extra work load for the player. In GC1 a colony with poor morale (on the way to rebellion) had a red unhappy face icon by it on the main screen. You would a similar icon under this system, and when you see it you can go to the colony view to see just how bad it is. In GC1 you got 1 or 2 low morale warnings then your colony would flip, it's up to you to keep an eye on the colonies which are at risk. This was rarely more than 2 or 3 at a time, any more means that it's all gone wrong and your civilisation is about to collapse.

As far as notification goes, the drop down message system with the filters that are being added is the answer. The player could set their options to notify them on a tile going to unrest, to anarchy, to planetary revolution. Perhaps a fourth filter option might be to only alert you to the first unrest/anarchy tiles appearing on each planet. You could probably turn it all off if you wanted, or be notified at every step of the way. Up to you.

One problem with the idea of anarchy tiles is that the anarchy can occur on a tile with a cultural improvement, causing a severe cascade affect and very rapid loss of the planet.

I think thats a feature, not a problem. If the media is subverted then yes, the revolution would leap forwards as its message reaches the masses. You would have been unlucky, but then luck is a part of the game. Consider it a random event and a challenge. I suppose if it really is a big issue then the game's difficulty level might effect this somehow? On easier levels cultural tiles are less likely to be lost maybe.

If the media fell to the rebels, then they could put forward a catalogue of atrocities commited by the goverment onto the airwaves, spread propoganda and all that. All of which is realistic and it does add a level of unpredictability to the game, all of which is going to be interesting.

Once a rebellion has reached a certain point, it can be very different to suppress it by playing nice and building nice stuff for the locals. Maybe you could spend money on suppression, which is quite expensive but allows anarchy and unrest tiles to be crushed and reduced to unhappy tiles, so planetery production can be brought up to the point where you can begin to win the hearts and minds campaign. Suppression would be expensive, and the cost would be linked to the number of anarchy tiles and the size of the population on the planet. Incase you've not already guess, suppression funds represent money and resourses brought in from elsewhere to mantain order on the planet and crush revolts.

Imperials should be able to spend the most money on suppression and Star Federationists very little.

i think you should be able to enact "certian Polices" on planets depending on your morailty and Govt Type
oh all imperial means is that the ruler and his (or her) party maintains Complete control over gov in more "liberal"
govt Types you gotta fight for control over the senate. you never loose an election as to loose the game only to get F ed up or so to speek.

Or you could simply fly some menecing Battleships to supprese the revolt.