I think the presence of different cultures is a necessity in a game that tries to get historical flavor right. Here's my take on the concept. (Still... Written up sketchily due to time constraints

Cultures are used to facilitate handling the overall character of the peoples in a society. In the game, a Culture encompasses a host of things like ethnicity, language, religion, social structure …

A few areas where I think cultures are especially important are:
· Driving the breakup of multi-cultural empires with the rise of nationalism
· As representing prerequisiste social conditions for industrialization (e.g. a very tradition-bound society will have trouble making the transition to industrialization)
· Conquered peoples "throwing the bums out"

Note: The cultures in clash are just a pale cartoon of what happens in the real world. Some of the notions I'm including would surely be rejected by sociologists and anthropologists. However I think what's below is a reasonable way to simulate at a game level the effects cultures have had in history.

In general each square of the map can have 3 or so cultures associated with it (limitation is memory and speed of game). Each Culture is described as below. New Cultures can be formed by the amalgamation of cultures. For example the Ptolemaic Egyptian Empire would start as bi-cultural, Greek (ruling) and Egyptian. As time goes on, intermarriage and
emulation of the rulers by the ruled would result in a tri-cultural state: Greek, Egyptian and a Greek/Egyptian hybrid.
Depending on how the government acts the cultural change process can be either advanced or retarded. Given enough time the new hybrid culture might become the dominant one in the civilization.

Cultural Attributes
· General culture, aspects not covered elsewhere: language, social norms,… use a polar plot, or some 2D arbitrary mapping for "distance" between cultures
· Unity - How likely are political sub-groups to unite to face a threat to some of them from outside
· Insularity - How unwilling is culture to accept ideas from outside, will it allow other cultures within its empire or must they
conform, or alternately become slaves... also how assimilable is this culture
· Religion - up to two religions w/ pct of pop involved in each, religion, will modify other aspects
· Aggressiveness - 0= pacifistic, 100 = most warlike
· Tradition - Social Mobility combined with how willing the people are to try out new ideas --
0 = free mobility, very willing to try out new approaches, 100 = rigid castes, unshakable tradition
· Social Status of the economic classes: constant sum divided between classes of
1. Upper Classes (Priestly classes, landed aristocracy, upper bureaucrats, higher level military leaders...)
2. Military
3. Laborers
4. Religious
5. Merchants
6. Minorities / Dependents (Children / Elderly / women in some societies)
7. Slaves

I envision the player's guiding of culture as being a main thrust of the game. Money and resources can be thrown into changing the culture (resulting in very slow change). Also some spice can be added to the game by allowing for larger-than-usual cultural change under certain circumstances (points for cool actions...)

People's Thoughts? Will this add spice to Clash or become a micromanagement nightmare? If this is too complicated, is some middle ground preferred to no cultural information as in Civ2?

Hrafnkell:
I wanted to make one observation on this. I think it would be best if all ‘types’ of culture would be defined on how ‘compatible’ it was to other culture ‘types’. This could f.e. be a general number (maybe ranging from 1-100) were a culture ‘type’ 1 woud be more compatible to the one numbered 10, than the one numbered 100. Thus, some religions are more tolerant to others than some, and some culture ‘types’ , f.e. the Hebrews, are scorned and avioded by most other culture ‘types’. This number would then be used in determining the likelihood or extent of two cultures hybridizing.

Mark:
I think I've already got the basis for your ideas between the distance on the "General Culture" plot and Insularity (especially
the last line), which I have quoted below. I'd already chosen a 2D plot for general culture as preferable since there are many
"levels" of cultural interaction. Say we crudely map cultures on a 2D plot going from 0-100 in each dimesion and culture A is at (0,0). If Culture B is at (0,5) indicating very close kinship in language, mores etc the cultures would probably get along well. if B were at (90, 55) well, it wouldn't be pretty. Religion would also play a part.

However, I think History of the interaction between the cultures is just as important. Just as siblings frequenly fight because of being in the same place much of the time so it should be with cultures. So history of the interaction should be included in the cultural specifications, and changed as appropriate as the game goes by...

· Insularity - How unwilling is culture to accept ideas from outside, will it allow other cultures within its empire or must they
conform, or alternately become slaves... also how assimilable is this culture

Peter Dobrovka:
Races/cultures:
How will the AI treat hybrids of 2 cultures? As a 3rd? I ask because they open a bridge for unity but if treated as another "alien" there will be a different outcome.
How will hybrids hybridize? Will they?

The other points are good but their benefit will turn out later I think, when we see the effects on gameplay.

Mark:
Yes, hybrids of two cultures, as I envision it now, will be treated as a 3rd culture, with its attributes largely taken from one parent, the other, or intermediate between the two. Cultural interactions will generally be smoothed by a common or similar
General Culture (including language) and similarity of the other cultural attributes.

For most of the cultrual attributes listed my first take is that hybrids will tend to serve as bridges between the two cultures as you suggest. Take cultures A and B (with A on top politically) resulting in a hybrid AB culture. For each attribute, the worst (most polarized) result in terms for the AB hybrid would be that it was either completely like A or completely like B. In aggregate however AB should get along better with either A or B than A and B do with each other. The things that could change that would be things i'd consider relistic such as AB establishing / endorsing a "new" religion that either A or B strongly dislikes. Another case would be if AB are fortunate enough to become on top politically somewhere and always end up at war with A for instance. This would sour the AB - A relationship. These cases would be exceptions, however, and I think your feeling about the hybrids becoming a bridge is very reasonable.

I saw your post about cultures and then shortly after the forums stopped working.
I'm not a programmer but I once saw this algorithim that seemed really good. It is
for reducing colors in an image using three dimensional volumes. I think that it
would work quite well for cultures as well. Imagine the people as colors in a 16
million color scheme (each slighly different from each other) and imagine the
cultures as colors in an optimized 256 color scheme. People naturally fall into
cultures but their individual characteristics remain. Thus if the population changes
the list of cultures updates automatically. Thus hybrids are handled automatically.
The article is at:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/visual_arts/061997/a_few_good_colors.htm

It also makes sense to use a color model. For example in a picture of some grass,
they sky, the sun and some clouds you would get a set of cultures. Imagine how the
256 colors would be assigned. The sun would probably only get 2-3, the grass
would get more. The sky would get a few but the clouds (especially where the
edges blend with the sky) would get the most. This is probably how it should be
done if you imagine the picture as a representation of the cultures. To encourage
hybrids you would have new people formed by a simple breeding process. Each
parent has a red, green, and blue chromosome. A mate would be chosen by some
sort of process, weighted towards similar chracteristics, for example an orange
person would be more inclined to breed with a yellow person than a dark blue
person. However forces (government intervention, etc..) could cause different
breeding behaviour. After every cycle of population growth cultures could be
redefined and people would be reallotted to new cultures.

"First, let's take a close look at a color image. Fresh off the digitizer, a typical image uses 24-bit pixels having 1 byte per color component, as shown in Figure 1. Each pixel is one of 16 million variations of red, green, and blue (256-by-256-by-256). The pixels are laid out in a rectangle, 640-by-480. This gives us a grand total of 307,200 pixels per image, with 3 bytes per pixel or just under a megabyte of data."

Each pixel represents a person, each of the possible 16 million colors indicates a possible location for markers. So if there is a large population I guess it would take longer to process it all. However I doubt that there would be 307,200 seperate population people in the game. The information that would need storing would be a cultural color on each person and the coordinates of markers.

The 256 cultures doesn't seem like too big of a number, especially since many of them will be similar until significant hybridization occurs. 256 is also the limit on the number of cultures. That way the late game doesn't get overrun with hybrids. If you set a limit but didn't redistibute then you would either have to cut out old cultures or prevent new ones from being made. The color model means that the 256 most representatvie cultures are always in existance. You could cut it down to something like 16x16x16 for each person and 16 total cultures in the game at any one time. Here's what the guy had to say about speed and such:

"I can tell you the results in hard numbers. This algorithm executes in six seconds on a MacIIx, converting a 640-by-480 image from 24-bit pixels to 8- bit indexes and yielding a high-quality displayed image. A well-written but brute-force solution takes about 70 seconds and yields a lesser-quality image. It took me about three weeks to write and debug the code resulting in 30 pages (1,500 lines) of assembler and a 9K object file."

Your suggestion is up here now, why don't we see what other people think of it?

Maybe at the start of the game you could decide yourself what cultural attributes your civ is going to have.Obviously you would have to make them balanced or if you want you could let the computer generate them.How many civs do you intend to throw in the game?
Maybe at the end of the game if one "culture" is predominant the other cultures (they'd have to be flexible, though) could start copying it and eventually there would be less and less cultures in the world( western culture nowadays has completely taken over).

I like your idea about cultures trying to emulate more successful ones.

I'm not sure about the aggressiveness atribute. I thing is perhaps a hangover from Civ. I think in the real world no civ is intrinsically agressive. I think aggressiveness should depend on two factors:

1) The government - feudal kings were expected to wage war while democratic leaders are expected to avoid war.

2) A new culture attribute - "Enlightenment". This represents the growing collective consciousness and understanding of the nation, from a simplistic warlike view of the world, to present-day cynical world-view where human life is valued and we have a welfare system to support the needy etc. The higher this is the more likely the culture is to do the "right thing". It would be increased by the power of the media, the living standards of the populace, education standards and humanitarian disasters like the Holocaust and the world wars. Taking Britain as an example several stages can be identified:

1) Feudal England, kings are expected to wage war against the traditional enemies France and Scotland. Human rights are non-existant.

2) The British Empire is the first major power to abolish slavery in the early nineteenth century (I think) and East African slave ports are bombed by the Royal Navy. On the other hand, the empire continues to expand at a phenomenal rate. Not very nice in hindsight but perfectly righteous in the context of the time.

3) Modern Britain: Although mainly as a consequence of the devastating effects of two world wars, but also because people no longer felt the empire was morally justifiable, Britain's gigantic world empire is abandoned and replaced by the Commonwealth.

Which leads me neatly on to yet more proposed cultural attributes:

Faith in Government: When the economy or the national pride begins to decline ppl beging to lose faith in their leadership and turn to rebellious movements.

Yeah, I think you're right on aggressiveness.

Patriotism, and war tolerance, I think of as more of a manifestation of government. Are you up to date on the latest govt. stuff?

Respect for Law is already embedded in the govt "class power" structure.

All these are up for debate, that's just the way they are now...

1) please list the attributes ya'll are going to want on the screen -- by name, # of levels, and pt breakdown of those levels. It would fit best if we can limit it to 8 attributes, for now. We can simply do multiple 'Panels', if it runs more than that . . .

1. World selection (a few std sizes, or go to customize menu)
2a. player civ size [2a,2b already in v0.05]
2b. average size of AI civs
3. position (flank power, or surrounded by other civs. perhaps could be done as # of neighbor civs)
4. starting culture (some general options like militaristic, nomadic, trade-oriented, fuedalistic, bureaucratic, theocratic. if player wants can go to another more detailed screen)
5. Overall tech level
6. Player civ tech level(my thought is that the specific techs should flow from the culture and the general tech level, or could go to a special tech selection screen)

If we do the point cost thing Selections might gray out or something when you can no longer select them. So if you picked few neighbors and a larger civ size you might have tech levels above the overall tech level grayed out because you can no longer afford it. Thoughts...

Do we need specifics for Culture screen etc yet?

how will multiplayer be handled? Currently I know of two ways: the small game and the big game. Small games are the most common, typically 2-8 players are in one game and play it until the end, this is how RTS games work. Big games can involve many people (these rely on servers though) and they can allow for people to come and go. this is how RPG games (with a few exceptions) work.

I was thinking that both ways could be implemented, also sort of an improved version of the second. In my experience most people play their games according to a schedual. It would be nice if you could have a massive game that starts up at say 9:00pm and goes to 10:00pm every night. If you don't show the AI takes your turns. This way you would have the benefits of the 2-8 game type (everyone is in the game at the same time) and the benefits of the massive game type (more people can mean more fun)

That was my introduction. I will now try to divide what I want to say between the different threads. Here about Culture.

Mark, I love your idea of cultural attributes. Of course, the specific attributes, the number of them, and their specific effect on the general behavior of the civ have to be fine tuned. What I have to say here is :

- IMHO, cutlural attributes are largely the result of the civ's history and environment. It is the result of environment in the same sense you said that Mongols should'nt be able to research Sea-related techs cause their environment did not include sea nor big lakes. I have not yet any idea of how to model this, but there may be something to do here. Also, it is the result of history. Let me give you two examples here. First, about France (you should have guessed it...). In the end Renaissance - early industrial ages, it was probably the first generator of new ideas, the enlightened people (the notion of enlightment was invented by french XVIII century philosophs, like Voltaire, Montaigne or Diderot. Those same guys were also the authors of the first universal encyclopediae). In this general intelectual atmosphere, the idea that the cultural wealth of a people was directly linked to how widely the accepted and integrated outside ideas (and new ideas in general also). This could be directly linked to your "bip bip" idea. I'm not sure it is the only explanation, but I'm certain it has a strong role in this : France was also the most lixed people in Europe. Due to its geographic position, France has been the end of most of the massiv conquests in Europe, as well as beiing the end of the original migrations that took people from India and Central Asia who become the first settlers in France. Then, we had (not in this order) the Roman conquests, the Norma conquests, the Huns conquests, the Arab conquests conquests... which all ended somewhere in what is now the french territory (and it was almsot the same in the times of enlightment). So, we have a civ that is historically the most mixed civ, and that is also the civ the most disposed to take and accept outside new ideas. Second example, about the insularity attribute. At first look, I've can see two civs that are reknown to be insular : England and China. In the case of England, this is a country that has not been conquered since more than 1000 years... The case of China is slightly different, since they have been partly occupied by Occidentals in the XIX century. But this was quite a short period compared to the very long history of the Chinese civilization, and they are the builders of the Great Wall... If you interpret this like me, you certainly see strong links between history and attributes. Since the history of a civ is just the precedent turns of the game, this should be feasible. Must think more...

- Second, I think attribute values could be slightly different between the classes. In deed, I don't think the "values" of the peasants and the nobles of the European Renaissance were the same... Btw, the different classes could have different sets of values. For example, the "servility", which represent the degree of acceptance of the servitude of the lowest classes could be interesting to make a more realistic model for inner politic. This attribute could be influenced by another attribute, in the religion class attribute set, which would measure how much measure how much servility is encouraged by the religious morale. This attribute could be in turn influenced by something else, I don't know what, which would represent the relationship between the powerful classes. Thus, the french situation before the revolution could be simulated, where the kingdom had three "states" : the first state, the most powerful, was the aristocracy (including the King); the second class, very powerful also, was the religious class. And then there was the third-state, including every others. The fact that the first and second states were complice in the dominance of the third-state explains the cohesion of the third-state (which included very rich merchants as well as almost-slaves peasants), the fact that this revolution was a "burgess" revolution, and the fact that religion was prohibited right after the revoltion, and then that the state and the religion were strongly seperated after religion was made legal again. I know all this could be out of focus, these are only ideas...

- About the religion. Concerning the religions whose histories I know a little bit (christian, protestant, muslim, jewish mainly), it seems that they have erected as a reaction from a people against a dominant - and often persecuting civilization. The Jews vs. the Egyptians, the Christians vs. the Jews and the Romans, the Muslims vs. the Jews and the Chrstians (I'm not sure of this one...) Well, I think modeling smthg around this coulg help make the evolution of religions in the game more smooth and natural.

- One last thing, about the hybrids and the AB-B or AB-A problem. I'm note of what I write... Maybe the problem should be treated like this : the result of AB-A type mixing should depend on three factors : the relationship between A and B, the distance between the A and B in the "visible area" (color of skin...) and the ratio of population between A and B. First, if A dominates and persecutes B like, say, the white men vs. the black men, AB should be treated by A like B, and probably AB should be rejected by B. So there is no diference for A nor for B between AB and AAB and ABBBB and .... . Second, if the distance between A and B is not huge, anf if A and B have not very bad relations, and if there is a lot more of A than B (or the inverse), then A should absorb B, AB, AAB, ABBB and the others after a time, making and slightly mutated A (but still labeled A, only attributes would have varieted).

OK, that's all, I'm sorry I'm so long...

Your people all start out as a homogeneous cultural group. There are several "diplomatic" categories: You(the ruling class) vs. other rulers, your people vs. other rulers, your people vs. you, your people vs. other peoples, their people vs. their rulers, & their people vs. you; also a religion vs. religion scale. Generally each category is on a sliding scale from, say, 1-10, 1 being insanely hateful while 10 is harmonious bliss. At 1st contact these will generally fall into the 6-7 range. Markers include daggers, bloody daggers(to represent atrocities), doves, and doves with an olive branch(represents generous gifts). These last few will affect relations far into the future, otherwise the scale tips for standard actions(wars, treaties, trade, etc.) on a turn by turn basis. Things that affect one group(their people) will not affect others(rulers) quite the same; ex. genocide rarely affects the ruling class, so although the people will be very angry with you, the rulers will not be as angry; a gift of food or medicine(tech?) will please the population more while a gift of money will more likely please the ruler.

Societies cease being homogeneous over time w/o govt. intervention. Conquest & trade are the quickest methods; warfare w/o conquest, connection by roads between peaceful empires, types of terrain between cities, etc. also affect the rate. Conquered cities are assumed to have their old culture. Whenever a city grows by a population point (assuming Clash will be using citizens like civ1&2 in that the size of the city=# of "people") a formula will be needed to determine what the new pop's culture will be based on the above factors, plus how well the populations get along(a pop will rarely migrate to a land where they are not welcome!). The new pop will then assume all of the diplomatic categories of that culture. Governments can limit the flow of people to their lands and of their people to other lands; there should be some kind of penalty for this(perhaps a minor trade reduction?). Mixed pops may cause additional unrest in a city if the pops do not get along.

Differences in religion will be handled separately. Religion will function mainly as to how you will handle certain situations, and will be chosen by you when the pre-requisite tech is discovered(polytheism, monotheism in civII). For instance, you're a christian leader of the christian Franks. Burning a christian city of the Germans to the ground will not only upset the Germans, but every other christian leader and population, including yours. Now if you burn another city down that is pagan, muslim, etc., your people will not be as upset and if it is considered a 'hateful' culture by ANYone then it may even grant a bonus in relations to that group(with exception of a modern democratic society). In the case of a mixed city you could leave certain pops alive. Depending on how this is set up, I envision either (a) button(s) to push in the city screen or a command given to army groups to cause actions like SMAC. Some possible actions:

Forced conversions/cultural- Removes possible unrest due to differing cultures. Diplomatic penalties with other civs people, possibly minor penalty with rulers.

Forced conversion/religious- Removes possible unrest due to differing religions. Diplomatic penalty with all civs with that religion & their rulers.

genocide- Kills off citizens of the city. Can be tailored to only kill certain religious/cultural groups. Severe penalties with that civ & it's rulers, penalties/bonuses with other civs/rulers depending on their diplomatic status with the genocided civ and religion, possible penalties/bonuses with your own pop.

Suppress population following conquest- Unrest in city decreases considerably. Suppressed people of conquered cities do not begin to assimilate into your civ until suppression ends. Penalties to any similar cultural/religious group. City will probably lose 1-2 pop points as refugees flee from your armies.

Treat new population well after conquest- No extra penalties vs. their people, but penalties vs. their rulers. If you treat your people better than the newly conquered people's are used to, and treat them as well, less unrest will result and assimilation will be quicker, and your penalty vs. the other ruler would be greater. If your pop hates their pop and you treat them well after conquest, you may suffer a penalty with your own people.

Gifts- Depending on type of gift. Food to starving population will increase diplomatic bonuses between yourself/your people and their people considerably, and to their rulers somewhat. If you want to make it even more complicated allow the ruler to not tell where the food came from; then the bonus is between the ruler and subjects while you/your people have minor penalty vs. the other ruler.

Forced conversion/genocide after modern era AND civ is democratic causes additional penalties from demo population vs. the ruler committing the action.

Although I've added my own ideas, I'm also going to rain on this parade: This is starting to be very complex, and right now I'm having visions of someone figuring out the "best" way of socially engineering his/her populace & then EVERYone copies this method game after game. I imagine atrocities etc. will be very rare, especially after playing SMAC; people are not going to act "crazy" like a lot of rulers did, at least not without some sort of compensation from the game(which I tried to include above)! So this might add a lot of extra programming that won't be necessary.

Glad to see you hard at work already .

On your point about the culture being a result of history and environment... I think you're right, but we need to keep in mind that the "history" in Clash is only a very pale shadow of the history in the real world. So I think trying to model Too much of the game culture based on the game history may be too constraining for us. Just an observation.

On insularity: I think we need to be careful in examples because IMO England was very open to technological ideas. My point here is that we need to define what the most important influences are within Clash and stick to them.

Religions: This is a somewhat touchy subject. I'm not sure I agree with your points about generation of religion as a reaction to dominance. I guess the best thing is to see what you come up with and then discuss it. A big decision we have to make is whether to have real world religions in there, or just have a way to parameterize new "pretend" religions. I'd like to hear what everyone thinks about this one.

On hybrids: I'm convinced by Peter's point about it getting too messy if you allow endless hybridization at different levels. I kind of like his idea about "dominance" (as in genetics) of certain cultural attributes. I guess my point is that AB shouldn't be able to hybridized with A or B for quite some time or the cultural system will blow up in size to an unmanageable extent. Perhaps you can think of a better way to handle it. Anyway those are my thoughts for what they're worth.

Theben:

That's an excellent set of ideas taking the concepts further than we have to date. A lot of the comments also effect the interface between culture and government which is something we are just starting to think about seriously.

With regard to the "raining on parade" comment. First, we certainly need to hear such things. Please continue to dump metaphorical buckets of water on us whenever you percieve it as useful . That said I *think* we are on good ground here...

IMO the idea that the current civ-like games are subject to the construction of rigid "recipies" is that they are too simple, and the game elements don't strongly interact. The general Idea for Clash is that if all these complicated interactions are included between culture, government and technology that no simple method will ever be generally usable. In essence the extra complicating factors will bring Clash from "science" to "art". The player can develop some rules of thumb for what works in particular types of situations, but that would be it. Now scenarios may be subject to the kind of behavior you're talking about, but that just goes with the territory. Again I *think* we're on a good path, but only playtesting will tell.