02-12-2000 06:27									#1
	A new SE proposal ! Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

I personally think that SMAC's SE system was really cool. It allowed a lot more variation than civ2's governments and also gave the player a better "feel" for what kind of society his/her civ was like. However, just adapting SMAC's SE to civ3 would probably not work very well. So, I came up with a variation on SMAC's SE that I think might be better suited for civ3.

First, we get rid of the actual SE choices. No more POLITICS choices, no more ECON choices and no more VALUES choices.

But, we are going to keep the idea of SE factors (in SMAC there were econ, growth, police, support etc). However, they would not be the same as in SMAC since we are dealing with civ3.

Now here comes the innovative part. The player would be able to directly add points to the different factors. So, for example, the player could add +1 to support or +2 to econ. These factors would represent government policies in these different areas of society.

However, the player would not be able to simply add say +5 to every factor. Here is why:

1)there would be an AUTHORITY factor which would determine how totalitarian or how democratic your regime is. The more AUTHORITY, the more unhappiness in your civ. So, the player would have to be very careful when increasing his/her amount of authority. Making yourself a dictator could cause a real revolution!!
The benefit of AUTHORITY is that the more you have, the more "points" you would get with which to add to the other factors. In other words, a player would spend a limited number of "authority" points in order to improve the various SE factors. The player would never have enough points to improve everything, so he/she would have to choose what SE to affect.

2)After a player has spent his/her points on SE, the computer would determine the effect of your changes on the rest of the SE factors. For example, giving yourself a +4 industry could cause a -3 in envirronment.

Since, civ3 is on Earth, the actual factors would be different from those in SMAC!

I purposely refrained from getting into specifics. I want to know if the overall concept is good or not. I think it would allow even more variations than the SMAC model since it does not depend on a small set of choices. Furthermore, I think this model suits civ3 better because it would allow the player to better shape his civ! Since the player would spend "authority" points to shape his/her civ, I think this model would give the player that excellent "I am a little emperor" feeling that is so central to civ!


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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

	02-12-2000 12:23									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Although it was suggested in the recent column that SE won't be in Civ3, I really like the idea of having it.

However, I personally don't like the idea of the authority - I'd like to be able to play a dictator easily!

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards... Despite any stupid advertisments you may see to the contrary... (And no, koalas don't usually speak!)

	02-12-2000 14:55									#3
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Have all diplomats so many good ideas as you?

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Who am I? What am I? Do we need Civ? Yes!!
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