what about a civ that has a government that does not use money?

I am not sure what you mean :notsure:

~SDC~

Well, what about a government that as reached a point of self-enlightenment that money is not needed in order for government, military, exploration, resource management and whatever else to be accomplished productively?

Yes, you can research it as technology "Beyond Human"; you will win the game immediately, though

I don't see how it could be implemented. If they don't use money you can't get/give tributes to them. Also what would happened with the spending sliders (military/social/research) if there is nothing to spend. Money is quite integral part of the design as it is right now so I am not sure how it could be done.

~SDC~

What about a civ that doesn't use computers anymore (they have CyberUberBrains) ?
When you choose this civ, the PC immediately switches to OFF .... LOL LOL LOL

I don't think it's practical to have a system without money. Money is just a way to represent resources in an abstract way.

Consider: the enlightened civ has a war department, an agriculture department, a mining department and 30 people. You could allocate people to departments, say 10 to each. But how do you manage the war and agriculture department's acquisition of raw materials from the mining department? Why, you give them money, so that the mining department doesn't have to be told exactly how much to give to the other departments. They'll know who should get the resources based on the bids they receive. You also give the deparments money to hire their workers.

Now you say, the workers don't get paid in this utopia. But they need food and shelter and the way you allow a department to hire workers is by giving them money to allocate to their workers' food and shelter. The more money they have, the more workers they can hire.

So even if individuals have no need for money, money is still required in order to manage resources. Of course, you could be dogmatic and insist on calling it something else, like "Enlightenment Tokens", but it would still be...money.

Another roadblock to this idea is the fact that you can't do anything for only ONE civilization. Everything that exists is available for everyone to acquire with the single exception of alignment restrictions.

To be honest, all I know about alignment restrictions is that you apparently can't RESEARCH a tech if you don't have the requisite alignment. Does the game also prevent you from trading for and/or stealing techs that are contrary to your alignment? Anybody know for sure?

--Soulfire

Well, in such a model, the only limitations to your empire would be people people and materials really. It's hard to tell what bonuses and negatives such a government would receive, but let's take the Federation for example
- they probably don't trade a whole lot with other species if they are outside the federation. I think transports cover the supply and demand of materials to all allied colonies in the federation. The federation just gives what it can to outside governments for free or something diplomatically in return. In fact, it would probably be very difficult to trade with outside organizations (hence Ferengi and Federation have a hard time getting along as they don't have a lot in common for example).
- The average intelligence and diplomatic tolerance of other species would be quite high. Morale would be higher but there should be small cases of revolt (like the Maquis).
- technology aquisition would have to be higher since people work towards common goals and want to achieve progress. There would be more time for technological advancement since in such a society, more people would be allocated to research fromt he absence of manual labour
- military would be somewhat weaker since it's not the goal of such a government. Spying would frowned upon and wouldn't be very effective if it was used.
- production would probably be the same as any other form of government. Although you probably have equipment to get a lot of the work done, you have fewer people allocated to this kind of work. In fact, you might even get a lower amount of production since you spend some time aiding people. This is probably counter-balanced from the better production models, production technology and morale.
- you couldn't 'rush-build' things. Perhaps this makes sense to have a better-than-average production ability with no ability to rush-build
- evil races would be more inclined to hate you and see you destroyed.

I dunno, I'm sure you could look at such a government in more detail and come up with lots of advantages/disadvantages for it. It would be a high-level technology for sure, but it should be researchable I think just like "democracy" is an invention in real life.

This is an interesting idea. But it's not new, nor is it a particularly advanced concept. In fact it's been attempted before in real life. I beleive it is usually refered to as Communism. Many people think of communism as a polictical term or form of government, but actually it is an economic system (at least that is what I was taught). Resources are (ideally) distributed in such a way as to maximize the benefit to society as a whole, so money is not needed internally. Communist societies still need to maintain the concept of money in order to deal with other countries/civilizations/galactic empires or what-have-you.

It's the same but it's different. Communism is an example of economics that does not use money, but I would think there are others not invented. The federation, as much as it has some parallels to communism, has many differences too. The difference is that technology is the key to supplying demand. The greater the technology and more expertise required to build it, the less capitalism will become important. Even our own planet (that is, if we don't blow ourselves up) will eventually see little need for capital. It won't be in our lifespan, but it will happen. I really wanted to play a model that this kind of system as it makes a lot of sense.

There are also several cultural differences to countries that have implemented communism on earth. For instance, family isn't so important in these societies but I would believe that should always be a core element of any society and it would be a bitter mistakes to ignore it.

Communistic countries also don't value material things as greatly (or at least cannot aquire them like a capitalistic country can - we can buy what we want). There is a parallel in this regard to the federation (just for example since there isn't much to refer to), but the culture embraces living their own lives because it really would be more interesting than playing a video game. In any case, a holodeck pretty much supplies all your needs

Also many people that lived on earth actually had a lot of materialistic things - there own homes or apartments, computers, some luxeries and even their own businesses (well, open-organizations since there is no money like Sisko's dad's restaurant or the independant science and argriculture projects that are not part of starfleet - both on earth and other colonies).

I actually had a list of key elements that were part of a communistic government and there were some similitaries, but there were differeneces. The key thing to note is that the outcomes (at least the hopeful outcomes) might be the same, but the steps to achieve these outcomes are somewhat different.

anway.. it would be pretty nice if they could include it in the game at some point

With any requested change I would suggest running it through this type of filter.

What would it add to the game play and how would you implement it.

You will need money when dealing with the other races.
Money is really measuring you excess capacity you are saving up. If money is not used it would need to be some other number.

Its an interesting idea I am just not sure what it add to the game and even more importantly how you could implement it.

Keep in mind also that the Federation is a work of FICTION. It is not a system or form of government that has actually worked or failed with real humans trying it out. What the writers of the various shows have chosen to show is not heavily based in the day-to-day economics of their govermental system. It is easy for a character to mention, "In the future we have no need of money." The practical implications of that are not so easy to work out. What happens when some system has a valuable natural resource that would benefit the entire society? Even a barter system (technology or other advances for this material) is still the same as having money/resources. Zxtt said it best, when they mentioned that money is an abstract way of characterizing resources. Maybe individuals would have little use for money, because their technology can replicate anything they want for free, but Governments will always need a universal way to work with other, even in peaceful ways.

All of this is aside from the point of game mechanics, which could not possibly support a technology that suddenly makes money a non-issue.

-Dave

~SDC~

too bad. I just thought it might a very cool selection from both a role-playing and strategical point of view.