I wanted to kick off a discussion about how to rework internal politics with an aim to developing something for the SPQR mod.
At the moment the internal politics is quite 'light' - consuls come and go, characters have rivals, and occasionally disloyalty bubbles over into civil war. However there was much more going on behind the scenes.
Of course different things happened in different ways in different countries and what follows is quite Rome-focuses.
A couple of people have mentioned the need to model the Dictatorships of the Roman republic more effectively. I strongly suport that, but have a few more ideas...
Culture conversion
Of course this isn't strictly "internal" but is still important.
Most of Italy starts off as non-Roman culture in 474. If you begin a game at a later date, it remains non-Roman. If you play from 474 then it converts. All of this has big impact on the manpower situation because "same culture group" territory gives you a -80% manpower modifier.
I think it is somewhat more historical for most of Italy to remain non-Roman culture - or perhaps to change culture but retain the manpower modifier.
Even late in the Republic, most of Italy was in an allied but subsidiary position to Rome, rather than being Roman citizens. According to Wikipedia, the allies provided about half of the military manpower. The fact that the citizens of allied cities had no say in politics meant a lot of resentment and a full-scale civil war, the Social War...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91–88_BC)
This suggests to me that rather than having a simple "culture conversion" event reliant on a charismatic governor, there should be different levels: the process of Romanizing a barbarian tribe should be different to that of granting privileges and ultimately citizenship to an allied city; there should be some reflection of the different elements - Roman colonists, allied citizens, villagers speaking Etrusca - which are contained within the geographical area of a province.
The spread of culture should be a political issue which affects character loyalty, ruler popularity, revolt risk, and ultimately stability and form of government.
What's more it should be possible for a province, as opposed to a governor, to become disloyal, and if dissatisfaction is widespread, for this to trigger some kind of civil war, whether using the existing civil war system or not.
Optimates vs Populares
One of the big stories in the Roman Republic was the ongoing battle between the patrician classes and the plebians. The issues included...
*how much power the senate had, how much the popular assembly
*how state land was distributed (to smallholders or patricians);
*the size of the grain dole
*whether morality or license prevailed
*whether more farmers should be slaves, or citizens
*which senators (if any) were proscribed, exiled or executed under the reign of a dictator with their estates confiscated
*whether citizenship should be extended (see above!)
... and much more besides.
A way of modelling all of this might include...
- country flags to describe how severely split the nation was over the issue
- character traits/flags denoting the allegiance of particular characters to one side or another (probably influenced by their families)
- a range of events - agrarian reform proposals and various other things in the Senate, appointments as tribunes, censors castigating people - which either ratchet up tension on this issue or calm it down, move characters between sides, and change things like loyalty and popularity, prestige, stability, revolt-risk, tax revenue and even province population distribution.
.... what do people think?
At the moment the internal politics is quite 'light' - consuls come and go, characters have rivals, and occasionally disloyalty bubbles over into civil war. However there was much more going on behind the scenes.
Of course different things happened in different ways in different countries and what follows is quite Rome-focuses.
A couple of people have mentioned the need to model the Dictatorships of the Roman republic more effectively. I strongly suport that, but have a few more ideas...
Culture conversion
Of course this isn't strictly "internal" but is still important.
Most of Italy starts off as non-Roman culture in 474. If you begin a game at a later date, it remains non-Roman. If you play from 474 then it converts. All of this has big impact on the manpower situation because "same culture group" territory gives you a -80% manpower modifier.
I think it is somewhat more historical for most of Italy to remain non-Roman culture - or perhaps to change culture but retain the manpower modifier.
Even late in the Republic, most of Italy was in an allied but subsidiary position to Rome, rather than being Roman citizens. According to Wikipedia, the allies provided about half of the military manpower. The fact that the citizens of allied cities had no say in politics meant a lot of resentment and a full-scale civil war, the Social War...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91–88_BC)
This suggests to me that rather than having a simple "culture conversion" event reliant on a charismatic governor, there should be different levels: the process of Romanizing a barbarian tribe should be different to that of granting privileges and ultimately citizenship to an allied city; there should be some reflection of the different elements - Roman colonists, allied citizens, villagers speaking Etrusca - which are contained within the geographical area of a province.
The spread of culture should be a political issue which affects character loyalty, ruler popularity, revolt risk, and ultimately stability and form of government.
What's more it should be possible for a province, as opposed to a governor, to become disloyal, and if dissatisfaction is widespread, for this to trigger some kind of civil war, whether using the existing civil war system or not.
Optimates vs Populares
One of the big stories in the Roman Republic was the ongoing battle between the patrician classes and the plebians. The issues included...
*how much power the senate had, how much the popular assembly
*how state land was distributed (to smallholders or patricians);
*the size of the grain dole
*whether morality or license prevailed
*whether more farmers should be slaves, or citizens
*which senators (if any) were proscribed, exiled or executed under the reign of a dictator with their estates confiscated
*whether citizenship should be extended (see above!)
... and much more besides.
A way of modelling all of this might include...
- country flags to describe how severely split the nation was over the issue
- character traits/flags denoting the allegiance of particular characters to one side or another (probably influenced by their families)
- a range of events - agrarian reform proposals and various other things in the Senate, appointments as tribunes, censors castigating people - which either ratchet up tension on this issue or calm it down, move characters between sides, and change things like loyalty and popularity, prestige, stability, revolt-risk, tax revenue and even province population distribution.
.... what do people think?
