Requires Rise to Power - (Core) Utilities
Requires Rise to Power (UI) Info Panel
Cycles of Power is a new gameplay mechanic. Each civilization now starts with a choice of one of three Cycle Powers: Autocracy, Oligarchy, or Democracy, with each affecting the rate of your global Gold, Science, and Culture outputs.
With your chosen Cycle Power, you will have a unique way of generating the new yield Virtue, which decays each turn. If your Virtue reaches 0, you will descend into Anarchy, after which your Cycle Power is replaced with a new one.
In addition to these three Cycle Powers, the unique Theocracy Power is available to the first player that founds a Religion. This Cycle Power replaces the previous Power, and is permanently lost if the player loses all Virtue and enters into Anarchy. NOTE that in the current version the Theocracy Power has been temporarily disabled.
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| You are prompted to begin you Cycle of Power as soon as you found your Capital |
Additional Changes
Some Social Policies are renamed to avoid conflicting with the Government Powers.
Further Information
Background Information
Cycles of Power takes inspiration from two concepts in political philosophy: Polybius' (or Aristotle's) Kyklos and Jean Bodin's twin forms. For Polybius and other ancient Greeks that spoke on politics, government is essentially cyclical in nature; one system inevitably falls to corruption and is overthrown by those below it, only for those newly in power to fall to corruption themselves and be overthrown in turn, and so forth ad infinitum. Corruption, here, describes when the public good - the basis for government itself - is forsaken for the personal good of the ruler(s). Cycles of Power replicates this idea plainly - you start with one of three government choices (Autocracy, Oligarchy, or Democracy), which charges you with the upkeep of Virtue; what stands in for the public good expected of that government (in this mod, coterminous with the main yield benefit you get from it). If you fail to upkeep your Virtue, you will descend into Anarchy, and the eponymous cycle of power will continue on afterwards with a new government (the next one down in terms of the concentration of power).
However, this mod is not so much about government - that is, the day-to-day of governance - as it is about authority, - the mandate to govern - and this is where Bodin's two forms come into play. Legitimate government always has a mandate to rule, which is to say the authority and consent to govern, and that mandate can oftentimes be deceiving. A government whose legislature is made up of popularly elected officials might seem like a democracy, but in truth the mandate to govern might lie with a few individuals rather than with those that elected them (some cynical folks like myself might even argue the former is always the case, as in the iron law of oligarchy). On the other hand, having a crown and calling yourself a kingdom doesn't necessarily make you an autocracy; when a monarch is not absolute, he is no autocrat. For this reason, this mod uses the term 'Cyle of Power' to distinguish the source of authority from actual governance, what in Sovereignty I call simply 'Government.' This two-pronged conception of government follows Bodin's theory of the two forms of government: the constitutional and the administrative, and helps to represent the oftentimes deceptive nature of political desginations.
Patchnotes
1.3.2020
- Monarchy renamed to Autocracy and Aristocracy renamed to Oligarchy.
23.2.2020
- Fixed issue where Monarchy and Democracy had their Virtue rates swapped around.
13.2.2020
- Updated Social Policy name replacements to avoid conflicts with Sovereignty.
24.1.2020
- Government Powers are now referred to as Cycle Powers to avoid confusion with Sovereignty's Governments.
- Added new Icon to represent the Cycle of Power and Cycle Powers.
- Added Virtue to the Top Panel.
- Increased Virtue gain across the board.
- Theocracy temporarily disabled.
