Hello,

apologies if this has been discussed before. I thought it might be an interesting topic to discuss, and it would be cool to see in a Future (like, in a year or two's time!) release/expansion of Elemental. Maybe it's just because I live in Scotland, and there's growing talk about Scottish Independence, which would end the United Kingdom as we know it!

I really love the idea of civil wars and decline in games. But, in practise, they rarely work. I'm not sure if there are any good examples out there. Civ has played around with it, but I think the main lesson they've learnt is that it's hard to make it work in such a way that the player doesn't get annoyed. Apparently Golden Ages were originally going to be the opposite, periods of decline and stagnation. On testing this, they discovered players hated it, so they switched them to Golden Ages instead.

The Total War games have rebellions, but i find them really annoying. They just seem to slow the game down, as they only really kick in when you're trying to get the last 10 regions that you need in order to win. 

So, it would be a challenge to make it work. But if it was somehow implemented into Elemental, it would be a a neat feature that would help set it apart from other 4x games. And i think it suits the fantasy elements. 

Futhermore, it would stop a single player snowballing to victory, which would increase the challenge of beating the AI, without needing to give it large bonuses and so on. 

Anybody fancy some brainstorming? Maybe we could try modding some ideas.

I think the key to making a civil war acceptable to the average player is to involve them in either the events leading up to the rebellion. If it appears to random it will just annoy them. So one possibility is some sort of "National cohesion" meter that various economic and happiness stats lead into. It could be clearly displayed on the main interface, maybe as simply as a green/amber/red warning ball (like the pollution meter in old Civ games). As your Empire/Kingdom expands, the cohesion decreases and the chance of a city declaring independence increases. This way, a player can see that by expanding his/her empire too quickly, (s)he is risking civil wars, and will understand why. 

Another situation could arrive if a Sov dies. There could be two brothers/sisters of a similar age, who both want to claim the throne. Maybe the capital city prefers the older brother while cities on the eastern border support the younger sister as she's been based there, helping to defend the country from its enemies. In this situation the player could be presented with a choice to which sibling they want to support, and then take control of that faction in a civil war. 

A third situation could involve adventuring/quests (essentially espionage, but it could be implemented via the Quest system rather than developing a whole new game play mechanic). Send an adventurer to an enemy city to support rebels who're trying to stage a coup. Similarly, a player could go on quests to try and stop a rebellion... this might be a way to generate interesting quests later in the game. "Lord, the recently captured city of x is under the sway of rebel separatists who demand independence... shall we send an adventurer to assassinate their leader"

Any other ideas and scenarios? Obviously it's a hard game mechanic to do well, which is why I think discussing interesting scenarios first is the way forward. How can the player be presented with interesting choices. And if done well, it would be a great natural stopper on over expanding and so on.