I really liked how SMAC did it, which is pretty much as you described (assuming I'm understanding you correctly) landi as being mostly hardcoded. You could choose a bunch of different civics for different categories (government type, culture type, economy type etc I forget the precise names) altering productivity, environmental impact of production, police power etc but you'd have certain choices ruled out or in depending on your faction choice. For instance the dictatorial hive mind chappies couldn't select democratic as a government model and if I recall correctly the environmentalists had to choose green economy (although I could be misremembering that).

Also each faction had various inherent bonuses/weaknesses in their stats which generally worked best with the types of civics inkeeping witht he theme of the faction (eg totally negating the cons of some civic choices). I think this was a great way of giving some interesting variety and strategic decision making options to the player while at the same time keeping a unique feel to each individual faction.

Civics don't really fit with what we know of the lore.

So your people have a witch hunt and ban magic. Don't they realise that magic is what lets them live at all in this crapsack world?

IMHO, the more granularity and nuts and bolts, the better.  Too much simplicity leads to balance issues between traits/civics/etc...  Make everything nuts and bolts and it's easier to make small adjustments to the game play and achieve a decent game balance. Game balance = replayability = good thing.  If the nuts and bolts look ugly to the player, allow them to customize a set of traits/civics into a pretty meta-form.

OTOH, like Tamren said, civics might not fit into the theme of the game.  The values of the people are likely to be simpler than most political philosophies that might be at home in Civ4. If anything, the moding of Civ4 civics in the Fall From Heaven 2 mod is probably closer to what a map of a medieval fantasy society's values.  Things like the degree of social grace, importance of religion, choice of religion, importance of magic, castes relations, are probably going to be more significant in a medieval fantasy than most economic and political philosophies.

    And if Elemental is like GalCiv2, it'll probably be more about getting bonuses from teching, than optimizing social memes turn by turn. There might not actually be a need for a civics system then.  A good compromise to Civ4ers then might be a simple social focus system analogous to GalCiv2's planetary production focus, perhaps expanded, but still kept simple.  Maybe even one based on castes---e.g. Merchant, Peasant, Mage, Military, etc... so the dominant caste extends production bonuses.

Don't bother with the search function. I haven't tried it in a while, but it doesn't appear to work. I remember some other thread where the issue of Civics were discussed, but I don't think it was a dedicated thread.

For what it's worth, I'd love to have a SMAC/Civ4 system, but obviously a lot more biased and without the whip of political correctness. I loved how Fascism actually was a viable system of governance in Civ3 instead of the "That's not democracy, boo! -40 Happiness!" that comes with the post-modern "the best of all possible worlds" & "Eurasia have always been at war with Oceania. Eurasia will always be at war with Oceania" trails of thought.

I want all possible kinds of civics, all mostly viable under a vast amount of specializations or situations.

Edit: https://forums.elementalgame.com/328989/page/4/#1939498

The subject of Magocracy could be a dodgy one, though, since the only real holder of magic is the Channeler. Also, nice to see someone that recognizes Orwell 'on the fly'.

Or so we must assume, given the fact that all the dev journal posts since site launch have been mostly about mundane mechanics and not magical ones.

Any chance you can share a link to that? I try to catch all the dev journal entries, and I don't recall any significant detail about how essence will work other than that it is separate from mana, possibly never increases during the game, and is required both to make blasted lands arable again and to transform 'regular' units into heroes. Even there, I'm paraphrasing and dredging from my sloppy excuse for a memory.

Also, even if no one can wield magic without being imbued with essence, until we know more about the essence system, it isn't safe to assume that the imbuing channeler will have any lasting connection to the imbued hero. It seems plausible that a channeler would 'own' every wizard he or she created and be able to 'cut the thread' at will, stripping them of the powers. It seems equally plausible that a wizard, once imbued, is an independent magical entity and the imbuing channeler would need to use charisma and/or fear to hold that wizard's loyalty. The latter context leaves plenty of room for a 'magocracy' founded by a channeler who wanted to found something like a meritocratic oligarchy.

Edit: They REALLY need to fix quoting on these forums. Especially since there's no preview function, and you have to go back, and back, and back, editing, trying to fix it, until finally giving up and opting for a second-rate junkyard solution. PFEH!

I'm one of those people that just 'catch' things as I'm running through life, but just by backtracking a bit and looking over the sections, I found this.

If that is true for heroes, I see no reason why it wouldn't be for politicians and plebes.

Yes, of course. It would just mean sacrificing a small amount of essence in order to found a council. This is where I bring up the Red Wizards of Thay and how much I absolutely love them. I'm all in favor of a Magocracy civic - I just meant to say that the issue is somewhat dodgy.

That, though, is entirely possible. There's nothing to suggest that, in time, there will be plebes born with magic talent - simply from the Channeler returning magic to the world, infusing his people au naturelle.

Question is if he wants to bring it back to his people, after we saw what eventually happened to the last world, before the cataclysm. Maybe it's better if we have some kind of order, where only the best are invited. Where the magic is restricted from the common man. Where only mages have power over those that lack the power to control themselves. Where mages are continously controlled by other mages.. oh, wait! MAGOCRACY!