01-03-2002 04:27									#1
	What do you think of Social Engineering? Suffering from ads?

While many would disagree, I feel that social engineering should be a prime part of the Civ experience. This would have the unciv-like consequence of not having preset governments, but think about it: in reality every society is slightly different, not by system of government, but by values and experience. My initial idea is to have the following SMAC categories:
-Political
-Economic
-Values
-???

Political: this is the place where we could have things like democracy or monarchy or totalitarian. There's tonnes of options I'm forgetting, but these are the basics.
Economic: It's by combining economic and political systems that we get the old-style governments. For example, democracy alone has different flavours: the American democratic/free market variety, while (Sweden, I think) would tend towards democratic/socialist. I don't think I have to list off options.
Values: It might just be me, but by classifying the various cultures as "blank and blank" seems kind of racist. You should be able to change your values, not every other turn, but certainly eventually. I can recall German history for anyone who cares, but the fact of the matter is a nation can alter it's system of values.
???: I've seen it suggested that religion be a choice in Civ. That'd be cool. And there's other things I havn't worked in yet.

I don't argue this point in romantic nostagia for SMAC, just for the sake of realism. Realistically, I also know there's no way this could ever come out on Civ3. Combinations of these produce everything, from Fascism to Communism and all the stuff that hasn't been tried out yet. Whatever the case, any thoughts?

	01-03-2002 04:55									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

I'm also thinking about doing a poll whether polls are useful or not. Maybe I should take a poll...

	01-03-2002 04:56									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

The other one in SMAC was futuristic society I think. Social Engineering and the Unit Workshop really should have been included in Civ3. They would make for a more imbalanced game, but add lots of replay value and entertainment.

Often I would spend half my time playing SMAC in the Unit Workshop, just designing useless variations of my main line of units. They never served any real purpose, but it's always nice to know that a Secure Stasis Tactical that costs 2x to subvert is available if the need arises. It would be equally comforting to know that in Civ3 I could arm a tank platform with a catapult arm and train them specifically for jungle fighting. Making it horsedrawn would just be icing on the cake!

Hopefully Civ4 (or even an expansion pack for Civ3 if I'm really naive) can make such things a reality.

	01-03-2002 05:51									#4
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

SE would have definately been fun in this game.
Now that you mention it, a unit workshop would be fun too.
It wouldn't have as many options as the SMAC one did, but it would have been interesting to have different units requiring different resources depending on how you designed the thing.
Interesting.