I would like to see communist aliens.
I mean, that would be crazy.
Rebublics, direct democracy, empire etcā¦ should all be in the game. Maybe you not be able to directly choose it, but to guide it. Like if your becoming a civilization and your species had an alpha in the pack you would become and empire?
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A couple of ideas for tradeoffs when it comes to government: (these are all random ideas off the top of my head and have no more weight than that, nothing is fixed for the later stages)
Maybe you can pick on a āsocial uniformity / equalityā spectrum. So if everyone is completely equal (like communism) then you get strong social order, low unrest, low war fatigue and low creativity / reduced science. On the other end you can choose very unequal (libertarian capitalism) where you get poor social order, high unrest, high war fatigue and also high creativity and increased science.
Such a thing could also be partially rooted in genetics. You could choose for your creature what sized groups it wanted to live in, a civilisation of tigers would be very different from a civilisation of ants.
Another spectrum could be how fast your leadership changes + how big the pool of candidates is. So in a monarchy it only changes on average once every 20-30 years and the choices on succession are very few (or 1). However in a democracy it might change every 5 years and you might get a large number of choices.
From a gameplay perspective this would mean if you get a good king they will boost your society well for a long time, however if you get a bad one thatās a big penalty. If you get a great president then it doesnāt have a huge impact because they will be gone in 5 years to be replaced. The candidates may also be more average, not great generals, for example.
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That sounds like a great idea, and this kind of sounds like Stellaris for a second, but - like you said- if you had a civilization of wasps , ants, etcā¦ you could have a hive mind. No unrest, boost in production, extremely low war fatigue, low creativity, low science
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When i play the space stage in thrive by the time i am 50, i think i would end up trying to stay away from a hive mind style of alien, since they seem pretty common in alien oriented movies.
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You could always want to play as a hive mind. It might not always be that fun, but you could want to create a swarm of an animal!
Consider centralization in addition to the usual democracy-autocracy spectrum. I donāt imagine an empire operating the same way as an assortment of marginally unified principalities. Especially when order collapses in transition from one to the other and then they all got invaded the end.
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A whole race of Rasputin. I have created a literal lord. And maybe whatever government Pokemon haveā¦
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This is the weirdest take on politics Iāve seen. Honestly, Iām very confused by the amount of oversimplification and muddling the lines in this post. So Iām going to try and give it a second opinion.
Rant that took me hours to compose
So one type of disparity is resolved. So does this usher in the end of helping the disabled or injured, the gifting of presents, or simple hospitality? These acts of generosity have no relation to profit, yet we still do them. Sure, under this functioning communism, you may not need to give money to beggars, but does that mean all generosity ends?
And even then, people might still be obliged to contribute money/resources to a charitable cause. Just because all economic woes have been conquered doesnāt mean that society still has problems. Disaster relief is a good example of a charitable cause because you canāt stop nature.
This is the point where we definitely need a better political scale. Most online political tests provide many axes for ideas on society to diverge, because politics is more complicated than economic left vs. economic right. Hell, even communists themselves are very divided - Soviet politics had a left and right, Spanish republicans during their civil war suffered from literal infighting, the list goes on and on. That being said, Plato is on a different track entirely.
My favorite subversion of this binary, however, is the ideology of the Democratic-Republicans in early America. They were the party of the common man, but were pro-slavery, pro-expansion, and anti-immigrant, in order to protect the existing white lower class and not introduce competition from āinferiors.ā
If weāre conflating communism with Platonic collectivism, the argument āUnder communism, youāll even have to share your toothbrush!ā is a joke. Thereās a difference between productive facilities (factories, farms, offices, etc) and personal property (your clothes, your home, etc). The slogan is āSeize the means of production!ā stating that workers should control their own workplace and be in charge of production, instead of āDanos tus cositas!ā (Give us your things).
Getting people into the equation is something thatās even more confusing. Some early Marxist feminists supported the concept of free-love (romance without marriage) and believed the family structure was simply a way to continue economic stratification. There are people who practice free love today, many being polyamorists. Rejecting the sexist connotations of polygamy, one of their main tenets is that oneās other relationships should be informed to their partners so as to prevent jealousy and accusations of infidelity.
Children as property of the society is an even older idea. Ever hear the saying āIt takes a village to raise a child?ā Thatās because itās a thing humans did, since tribes were formed. Spartan collectivism takes a nationalistic turn on this idea, stating that children are wards of the state, and their health is linked to the health of the nation. Weak children are essentially sacrificed, whereas those who survive are well-educated to further their role in the health of the nation. Of course, nobodyās suggesting killing disabled toddlers in todayās culture.
This seems pretty accurate. Fascistic messaging plays to the fears of being defeated and supplanted by the other, noting that society has structural issues but places the blame on a scapegoat rather than their own people.
Oh, the centre. Theyāre not exactly fighting for nothing, as much as there may be jokes about it. Centrism is about stability and compromise. Itās great when you think society is fine as is, but if youāre struggling with it, centrism loses its palatibility.
It gets even more confusing when itās attacked by both far left and right for its willingness to bend to ideological enemies: leftists believe that centrism is a tool for oppression to maintain its grip (ex: MLK, despite his pacifism, saw white moderates as the greatest opponent to civil rights because they thought change was happening too quickly ), while fascist-types see centrism as allowing āundesirablesā to hold power (ex: some reactions to corporate LGBT pride during June, or complaints that public education is promoting communism )
These are just my two cents. I may be biased, but this is what happens when I can address a flawed conception of ideology. Besides, having a wide range of policies and interest groups in the game would make it more fun than two similar extremes and a golden mean.
And having a modular approach to politics would allow more alien ideologies to be constructed. Iāll allow RNG to design a system with bizarre logic.
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The Real question is where is a Synthetic Technocracy.
Or Digital Democracy. Or Corporate Libertarianism.
Perhaps your ideology would be defined by your raceās history? Thatās obviously after the unification of the planet. Otherwise, I think you should just be able to pick from the start and maybe change after revolutions or after spans of decades. It could even be random events! Iām thinking propaganda campaigns from the neighbouring country and other such examples. Iām just throwing some ideas around though.
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Like many things in the game, Iād like to see earlier choices affect the possible ideologies of a species. Perhaps even the choices made in multicellular could affect it in some way.
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Itād also be cool to see intelligent colonial organisms and societies of said colonial organism, although Iām not exactly sure how that would work.
You really need to do some research on these topics. It isnāt just one spectrum, there are tonnes of lines from left to right with a lot of variety. For example, anarchy is a leftist ideal, yet communism with total state control is also a leftist ideal.
Also, āanti-democracyā has nothing to do with extremes. Often, extremist powers are dictators in order to keep their power, but itās never part of the idealogy. A centre dictator is not impossible, and an extreme leadership will not need dictatorship if the average nation stands behind him on his opinions.
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FYI: the American āleftā parties would be classified as right by almost the entire rest of the world. The USA is a very right-wing country.
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However you view Blackjacksikeās conception of politics, I do not find it very compelling (lacking structural meaning), especially not as a model for an alien evolution game. It only seems relevant to the modern day political landscape.
Firstly - the whole left-right dichotomy originally came from the events leading up to the French Revolution. Different classes sat on different sides of the estates-general, with the peasants on the left and the nobility and church on the right.
Also - common political terms have become very loaded with usage: āliberal,ā ācommunist,ā and āfascistā most prominently. Kaiserreichās ideologies (real but off the beaten path) are a good example of meaningful names in a post-WWI alternate universe.
Instead of an alien government only having 5 flavors of government : totalitarian socialism, social democracy, centrist liberalism, libertarian conservatism, and fascism; the game should allow a wide range of policies and governmental structures.
A council of ( elders/ heroic warriors/ wealthiest CEOs/ etc) would make for an alternative to democracy or autocracy, and itās a well-tested human government system.
Policy decisions are a thing that are even easier to make up throw around - The browser-based NationStates is built around deciding on hundreds of policies and issues. Each choice brings benefits and downsides in different areas, like freedom indexes or resource production.
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Yeah the concept of everything from the Borg to Xenomorphs neatly fitting into 5 categories is honestly ridiculous.
Left vs Right is just what happens to be going on on Earth right now. Different alien species should have their own prominent issues.
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When would we actually āunlockā politics? Would it start as soon as you awaken, or once you settle a village? If for the latter, politics would be very somple and probably hierarchical, where it will slowly evolve in complexity and diversity as the village grows and the population increases. It wouldnāt make much sense if, for example, a stone-age village was technocratic. Which leads me to wonder if a primitive village could start off as a republic or a democracy, since counselship and monarchies are pretty common.
I think that it should be population-based. Because in a small tribe one leader is more than enough, be it the strongest one of the tribe, a shaman or whatever. In a small village, this might still apply, but as your population grows, a more intricate leadership system might be required, so Iād say itād be tied to population. And I personally donāt imagine it as being āunlockedā, but a gradual shift.