Right now the effects of government posistion are such that there is clearly one "best" setup, combined with the fact that you can change it as often as you would like, this makes it essentially meaningless. I propose three modifications:

1. You can only change your government posistion once every 7 days.

2. Different options have different positive and negative effects, where each option is the bese IN A CERTAIN SITUATION.

Example: Drug traffickers are crossing into your borders from all sides bringing with them narcotics and an assortment of recreational drugs. Many of your citizens are becoming addicted and have been unable to hold steady jobs which is both endangering your citizen’s lives and hurting your economy. What is your government’s position?

Our leaders are aware of the situation but are too addicted to drugs themselves to do anything about it. -1% population (addicts), + 15% soldier efficiency (Stimulants, ect.)

Our nation will open new rehabilitation centers and educate our citizens to the dangers of drugs, but we are not prepared to declare an all out war on drugs. + 1 Happiness, +1% infra upkeep (cost of the centres)

Our military has been positioned at all border crossings and is arresting all drug traffickers. Drugs are illegal in this nation. + 1 Happiness, -10% soldier efficiency (Soldiers are stationed st the border instead of training, tactical posistions, ect.)

No position at this time. No effect

Option 1 would be best in a war, Option 2 in a smaller nation, and Option 3 in a larger but peaceful nation.

3. +0.1 happiness per trade partner per shared government posistion.
- 0.1 happiness per trade partner per opposing government posistion, unless "no posistion" is selected.

This would make people want to trade with people with the same government posistion, adding an additional dimension to trading, as the positive happiness effects must be balanced against nation effects of the posistion.

Approved for discussion.

I am assuming you mean something like this for #2

as for #1, seeing as how their really is no benefit/downside of government position, there really is no need to switch.

and as for #3, I am assuming the majority of the CN pop all have the same selections, which means you would in essence be giving free happiness bonuses. Something that doesn't really need to be added in the game unless it offers some kind of downside.

but I do agree with the fact SOMETHING needs to be added for the government position.

Something like that, but with the new modifications to government posistion not everyone would have the same choices, and the switch delay would be so people couldn't switch twice a day to collect/pay bills, ect, essentially only using the good part of each posistion. They need to have some sort of negative effect.

I'd like to see more government positions, with more effects spelled out for them. I'd like to see the decisions allow for branching paths that would then allow for even more benefits along specific lines. I like the time it takes to undo a decision. If there were a number of choices to make between being militaristic or economic (and I hope that wouldn't be the only dichotomy), then it would take a good deal of time to "unchoose" one path and then go down another.

No. Just, no. People really need to stop trying to come up with ways to make the trade system even worse than it already is. It's already the most tedious, unfun, element of this game, and the permanent disadvantages some face are probably responsible for a not-insignificant portion of player losses. The player retention of this game is already terrible; people are quitting faster than new people join; the game is dying. We need more reasons for people to keep playing, not more reasons for them to quit.

As for the drug options, they've always been ridiculously unrealistic. Your suggestions don't make them any better.

Then please make a suggestion that doesn't increase inflation since you want to criticize everyone else who makes a suggestion so harshly. I haven't seen you put forth an alternative (if you have and the mods denied that, then that's another matter).

Personally though government positions are the wrong way to go for affecting trade as they are on the extended display screen and not everyone checks that. I think it's best to not do that in this case.

Not everyone, just those who think it's a good idea to make the trade system even more tediously unfun than it already is.


I've put forth tons of suggestions over the years, probably around as many as Syzygy, often as modifications or alternatives to other people's suggestions; I can't even remember most of them anymore. A great many of them dealt with the trade system, but aside from a couple of minor tweaks to the effects of individual resources, the only one that wasn't ignored was the bonus resources concept, and what was actually put into the game failed to even match my proposal, which was meant to help strengthen weaker resources by providing incentives for them to be combined with the stronger resources (as opposed to overpowering groups of already strong resources, like Construction does). At this point I find it's generally more productive to just argue against bad suggestions than to propose good ones; at the very least I can say "I told you so" when things go wrong.

Well what you find "not fun" someone else may like. While there are generally some things people agree aren't fun, something that causes more interaction with other players is not universally "not fun".

I'm gonna have to agree with rich here. The trade system is tedious at best. I was blessed with
coal and marble, but as I progressed with the game, I started to see the huge advantage I got.

Responding to the OP, I like your idea. When I first joined I was confused with the concept of government
position. I was expecting some sort of double edged choices. I am in favor of having more questions, or
more choices. I don't think any of them should be too extreme, but you should be able to give yourself an
edge early on without having to have aid.

I agree with your idea Maxwell, but I would also like to add in this idea from Energizer's original topic.



This would make government type and position actually mean something.

I'm not sure about that. We've got a pretty fluid way of changing governments. How would you implement the bureaucracy actions, especially in light of that? In a way, more often than not we just effectively dissolve our peaceful governments and institute other more warlike ones already. And that has a three-day waiting period after last governmental change (especially if that change was to Anarchy for some reason).

Maybe the time change is based could be based on your government type?

Beautiful. In fact, that is the exact solution that I was thinking about.

I like this, as it does have potential.


Say for example, different government positions make different governments more favored. Instead of having a random favored government, you have your government positions. Every government position has two effects:

1) The choice has some effect on the nation. It may be increased military, decrease bills, increase income, there's all sorts of things that can be affected by individual choices. If you're worried about inflation, which is a very serious concern which should be acknowledged, make all decisions have an equal penalty to go along with it.

That isn't to say "Give military benefits and econ penalty and econ benefits a military penalty" which so many people like to throw out in balance discussions. While economy may not rely on military, military does rely heavily on economy. You can make the decisions balanced in effect but still meaningful.

For example, reducing happiness in exchange for lowing infra upkeep, we're all used to it being a non-issue because the only time the trade off comes up is labor camps, but if it came up in something that can't just be swapped out easily (yes Government positions can currently be swapped out daily, and that would need to change. But in general more things need to be changed into "You must collect before you can change this" anyway. Though the suggestion above of a time delay based on your government type is very good too. Though rather than waiting 7 days from your last change, I would instead make it X days from the time you select change. So if you choose to change to a position in a Democracy it might take effect 7 days later, while a change in a Monarchy might take effect the following day) it's a very real decision which can depend sharply on other factors. Or %income bonuses vs pop bonuses vs flat happiness/income bonuses. Same thing with military, you might pick up soldier efficiency at the cost of plane efficiency, increase your max planes but decrease your nuclear capacity, etc.

2) Each choice has association with one or more government types, and possibly a negative effect on others. (So some choices may make your nation lean more towards democracy, and anti-Monarchy for example).

The point totals determine what government your people really want. Going with a government that you have more positions associated with gives synergy bonuses so to say. Whereas going with one your people are against may give no bonus at all, and you may have high chance of bad events occuring, possibly leading up to if you ignore it long enough the government switching to Revolutionary/Anarchy, and causing some rather nasty penalties. I'm thinking that what your people are against would be determined by how many points it is from your number 1 government option. Of course there's the middle ground, you don't necessarily have to go with the government you have the closest association to, but if you have 2-3 that are close, you can choose one of them. But if you have 1 this is at say 10 points, 2 at 8 points and another at 3, and choose the one at 3, you might start to see some disgruntlement in the form of the bad events popping up here and there, not to mention a lower overall government bonus. If you have another one in the negative point range, it could be that swapping causes penalties rather than bonuses immediately.


The synergy bonuses can be a good way to balance out the overall positions. Positions may seem stronger individually but when getting them altogether, and going with the associated government, it may end up less than having the less beneficial positions, but a government with a stronger synergy. There's tons of room for customization here. Wonders/Improvements specific to government types, both to disincentivize switching, and also to give more variety in nation types. More militaristic governments might see new unique weapons systems come their way, or a peaceful government might find new defensive advantages that other nations hadnt developed due to focusing outward rather than inward. I figure by the time a nation is developing wonders it should be developed enough to be sure in its government and no longer be fluctuating radically. If a nation wishes to change government, any wonders or improvements from their previous government are automatically destroyed. (An anarchy caused by war being the exception to this rule)


Realistically if done right something like this could supplement the trade system, giving a degree of customization that we really can't even hope for under the current system. It would be a long process to balance properly though, and as such we wouldn't see anything as radical as I have suggested get added.


Fake Edit: After typing all that I read a link provided above. Much of what was in that link corresponds with what I am saying. However a post from that link caught my eye. Lucas Perry said:



I actually kind of like this idea as opposed to my side note above about the time to change government. Once every month you are presented with your government options as they presently are, and are given the choice to alter them. Events may also give the opportunity to alter your options outside of this timeline. This prevents swapping out your government positions in anticipation of a war (unless you're going to have a one month advance), and stops any back collecting schemes to maximize benefits from this in its tracks. All while opening up the customization.

The idea sounds good but your way of doing it doesn't. I'm not the one to expand on the suggestion but if somoene else comes up with something it could be good.

I would like it if you got different events based on the government positions you took.