Civilization and its discontents
Civilization and its discontents is a 4x forum game in which you play as a civilization attempting to navigate the course of history. In a 4x game, you are expected to expand, exploit, explore, and exterminate.
Actual rules
The primary means by which you do this are a) controlling the demographics of your population by choosing their occupation and where they live; b) through choosing the form of government and society you have; c) through choosing the direction of technological research; and d), through diplomacy and interactions with other civilizations.
Demographics
Occupations
There are three different occupations each POP can have-Farmer, Worker, or Soldier.
Farmers work the land to generate food.
Workers work in factories to generate productivity.
Soldiers defend your civilization from the aggression of other civilizations.
Besides generating a set amount of food, each farmer will generate 1.5 wealth.
Each Worker will generate 3 wealth.
Soldiers do not add wealth.
The fourth type of occupation is that of Bureacrats. For every 6th POP, that POP is a bureaucrat. They do nothing but draw a salary.
Wealth, Productivity, and Authority
Each Pop requires 1 wealth to buy 1 unit of food per turn. If they go unpaid or there is a shortage of food, then they will die. The surplus wealth is distributed either in payments towards the Plutocracy (or later, the workers) or else in trading with other civilizations.
Productivity is a measure of the industrial productivity of a civilization. Productivity is applied towards maintaining soldiers and transportation networks; and also as a means of generating wealth (since each worker generates 3 wealth).
Authority is a measure of how much authority the state holds over a citizen. Every POP who is unemployed, part of a different culture, or a different religion is counted at 50% loyalty. Every POP who is employed, of the same culture, and of the same religion as the civilization counts as 1 full point. If for example, 30 out of 100 POPs are unemployed, authority will be at 8.5. Authority will circulate up and down around the happiness of the POPs. If it reaches 0, a revolution occurs.
Culture, religion
Culture reflects the culture of the POP. It is spread through state control, trade routes, and other bonuses.
If POPs get out of range of the effective control of the civilization (defined as 1 square away from the capital at the start) they will form a new culture. Cultures that are not independent will try to become so.
Religion is spread much the same way. Each religion holds one value that gives a bonus.
Emigration
The player is able to choose where each POP lives, provided that a) the territory is uncontrolled or controlled by them; b) they have either a population connection or a trade route through that territory.
Population increase
For every surplus food generated, the population will increase by half of that.
Government and Society
The Players civilization hold three attributes: Government, Society, and Economy.
Government reflects how the ruling class is chosen in the civilization and has two attributes: the chance of a governmental change per turn, and the bonus that that form of government gives.
The economy is not chosen by the player. It gives certain benefits and in some cases requires certain types of societies or governments. It is chosen by revolutions, civil wars, coup d’etat’s or natural governmental changes.
Society reflects the make up of the ruling class, and consists of two values: cultural and economic. Economic values reflect where the distribution of wealth goes; cultural reflect the justification for that.
The Ruling Class
The type of society the player has chosen reflects the make up of the ruling class. Each economic and cultural value has a certain amount of conditions which must be met to register as ‘happy’. The more unhappy the ruling class is, the greater the pace of technological change, but also a higher risk of civil war or a coup d’etat.
Technological research
As noted above, the unhappiness of the ruling class adds a point to technological progress per their level of unhappiness. The other way to shrink the time to reach a new technology is through increasing population density. A population density of 1:1 will cut research time by half.
Trade routes from one civilization to another will also spread technology, provided that civilization is more advanced then yours.
Loss of population leads to a proportional loss in technology per the accumulated amount of knowledge.
Diplomacy
Fairly self-explanatory. War is handled automatically, though players must naturally declare it. Wealth, food, and productivity are all exchangeable. Deals between players lacking either a land connection or a trade route are not allowed.
Nature
Different biomes dot the map, much like in real life. Weather events and other geological events will occur and have events like in real life.
Biomes closer to the tropics and with average to high amount of moisture yield higher food; biomes far away from the tropics or which have low moisture yield lower food.
Hunting and gathering
At the beginning of the game, farming is not yet known. Instead all the players POPs are hunter-gatherers. Based on the biome they chose to specialize in at the beginning of the game, they gain a certain amount of food and wealth from the province they were in. This province can only be hunted from every other turn before it is ‘depleted’ and yields no food.
Specialization
At the beginning of the game, each civilization has two specializations (beyond that in hunting): to wealth, production, authority, faith, culture, or military. These yield a 5% bonus to their respective areas.
You start off with all 4 of your POPs (roughly equivalent to 50,000 people) concentrated into one province. What does your small band start off with?
Technologically, you start off with the lowest tech possible:
Nomadic Civilization
Effects: Allows Hunting
Government types: Tribal Confederation
Social Policies: Elitism, Plutocracy
Economics: Gift Economy
Religion: Traditionalism
Tribal confederation gives the following benefits: a 1/5 chance of a policy shift, a 5% bonus to Authority, and a 5% bonus to wealth.
Elitism has the following benefits: 10% science; and the following requirements: Authority higher then 3, Authority higher then 6, and Authority higher then 9.
Plutocracy has the following benefits: 10% wealth; and the following requirements: a majority of wealth going to plutocrats, and a level of wealth increasing proportional to those of other civilizations.
Gift Economy has the following benefits: 20% bonus to authority.
Traditionalism has the following benefits: 5% bonus to authority. (Religious bonuses are given per the percentage of the world population that follows that religion; each civilization currently has different religions).
The next tech, which everyone has to research, is:
Semi-Nomadic civilization
Effects: Allows Farming
Transportation: Allows Trade Routes 1
Knowledge requirement: 60
Hunters have a military strength of 0.5. Setting workers towards production is not possible yet, and neither as farming, which has already been stated.
Hunting, as has been stated above, depletes the province for one turn after hunting takes place in the province.
At the beginning of the game, each civilization gets to choose a hunting specialization. This yields an extra 0.5 food on top of the standard 1 per biome, per the biome you choose to specialize in. You may choose to specialize in any biomes listed. Biomes at the present time have no effect (only under farming does that make a difference). Ice yields no food no matter what. In addition, you may choose to specialize in fishing, which yields 0.5 extra food for every coastal province and river biome provinces; it also enables the creation of level 1 trade routes 1 tech early.
Trade routes
Trade routes represent, as might be inferred, routes along which goods are shipped. Trade routes have 2 effects. The first is that every trade route which connects with another civilization gives the civilization initiating that contact a wealth bonus of 10% of the wealth of the civilization. The second purpose is allowing settlers to be placed anywhere along that route. To create a trade route, ask one of the GMs if a trade route between X and Y would be possible and we will give an answer. A trade route requires an investment of 2 wealth to be created.
Map of Biomes (Biomes Listed on Map [Mountains are impassable]) w/starting positions marked on dots: http://i.imgur.com/SSiq78S.jpg
Political Map w/Starting positions outlined in color: http://i.imgur.com/X0z7sIP.jpg
The first task for each civilization is to choose a hunting specialization per the directions listed in the last update [post in the thread]. Once that is done, the game proper will start.
Each of your 4 POPs is located in that single province. Your task is:
1-Get enough food to feed all of them.
2-Get enough wealth so that they can pay for their food.
this will most probably require moving your pops to different provinces. Only 1 POP per province can hunt, and that exhausts hunting for one turn. A further consideration on movement is communication. Currently, your communication range is 1 province away from your capitol province (capitol province is up to you, and can be changed at any time. If a POP is out of range of the capitol, it forms a new culture.
How to submit an order
1. Download the Political map above.
2. Label on the map provinces the number of POPs per province that you wish to occupy per the rules already given. Color these provinces in the assigned color.
3. Assign the number of POPs per occupation in a spreadsheet or word document per the rules above (Workers are not allowed at this time, neither are farmers, the only designations are hunter and soldier).
4. Assign the distribution of wealth per your estimate according to the above rules (hunters make 1.25 wealth, each POP needs 1 to buy food). Example: 5 to workers, 1 to ruling class; when expenses come into play, you will have to pay for those too.
5. Send it all in a PM to myself.
Anything else, as well as player actions will be resolved by the mods.
Sign-ups are now closed
Subs, Co-Gms, etc should also apply in this thread.
coldfront.net channel #CivDis
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