I've been thinking about a cultural model these days, and what I've come up with is
something well beyond the scope of what I was first thinking about.... In fact, I've
come back to smthg I was thinking about since quite a long time....
I think this is feasible, but if u intend to have a working version soon, this could
not fit in the time lane.
Anyway, I give you my first thoughts, I will be looking forward for your feedback.
(I will try to put my ideas in a coherent order...)

The general idea is based on the Multi-Agent Sytem theory (also called kenetics).
The theme of kenetics (maybe u know this already, maybe better than me, anyway I will
write a brief introduction, especially cause I can't give u english references on the
subject. If u search references, don't serach for "agent" cause u would only find
samrt web-based agents that have nothing to do with the subject. Rather search for
kenetics - I'm not sure of the spelling). Well, the theme of kenetics is to simulate
a high level behavior only with low level models. More precisely : you build agents,
with a model of their behavior, and making them interact you can simulate the
behavior of a whole group of agents. This is a very powerful technique, cause u can
create very sophisticated behaviours at the high level with very simple agent models.

Examples of realisations with this is the simulation of the behaviour of a anthill
with the agents being the ants. Resaerching a realistic high-level behaviour, the
researchers have been able to fine tune the behaviour model of the ants (then
verifying it matched the reality). In this particular case, they had a very realistic
model at the high level, which helped them to understand how it worked at the
agent-level. The method is to design agents, make them "live", observe the behaviour
at the level u wish to simulate, then tune the agents to have a better-matching
behaviour and iterate this process until u are happy of what u have. Other example of
application is the simulation of bio-systems - in this case, the simulation would be
quite impossible to build without this technique.
Another intersting point in the Mutli-Agent Systems (MAS) is that they embrace the
whole range of AI technologies. I mean that the agents can be "cognitiv", samrt if u
want, and built with traditionnal AI. I also mean that a neural network is basically
a MAS. In this particular case, u have a MAS built with "reactiv" agents - they are
not smart, they only react to external signals/events.
OK. Now a little bit theory.
The basic and necessary pieces for a MAS are the agents and the communication sytem.
As I mentioned, the behaviour of your model is the result of the interactions of the
agnts composing your system. For interaction to occur, u must have the agents to
communicate. I use this word in a very general sense : this means direct
communication (a dialogue) as well as signal coming from the environment - what the
agent "senses" (sees, hears ...). Thus, u have two types of communication :
"intentional" communication and "propagated" communication. Propagated communication
embraces every type of signal, be they natural or artificial. This covers everything
an aget senses. Intentional communication originates from an agent who whishes to
communicate. It can take several forms : direct (point to point), announce (everyone
who can hear).
Similarly, u have mainly two categories for the agents : the cognitiv agents and the
reactiv agents. The complexity of the system and the complexity of its implementation
mainly depends on the type of agents u have.
Whatever they are, the agents behaviour primarly depends on one factor : its goal (or
goals). Eventually, u also have contraint(s) (I mean internal constraints. Obviously,
u always have external contraits, the primary being to have to live with other agents
who have their own goal). In the case of the ants, each ant's goal is to secure the
persistence of its anthill. Then, the interactions between the agents are described
in terms of cooperation - their goals are compatible - or cooperation - their goals
are incompatible.
An agent is described in term of "state". The state is simply a set of values which
describe, in a way, its "state of mind" - in object terminology, these are its
attributes. Also, an agent has a set of behaviours, or actions (or methods in object
terminology), which are directly influenced by its state. The signals/communications
an agent receives generally have an effect on its state. Then, its net action will be
influenced by every signal it received - which means interactions it had with its
environment. Also, every action it takes is suceptible to alter its state.
As I said, agents may be reactiv or cognitiv. In the first case, its behaviour is
generally described as a mathematical model. In the second case, it can be a whole
expert system, simple heuristics, even a complete MAS.
That's all on theory for now. A brief summary on this : with a MAS, you create
"emerging" high-level behaviours with low-level models.

Back to Clash. My thought is to implement a part or the whole civilization's society
model as a MAS. The idea is to have the whole civ behaviour emerging from the
interactions between different groups composing the civ. At first sight, I envision
the groups as being a coherent agregate of people (or "heads", quoting Mark) sharing
the same characteristics. More on these characteristics later. The agents would be
defined as the groups. The agents should be IMO managed at the province level. I
mean, inside a given province you would group the heads given their characteritics
and form the agents. Actually, this would have to be done every time you have a new
group of population appearing in the province (through birth ---> Mark I need input
on your growth system, conquest, slavery...).
Then the agents' states would be updated every turn through the communication system.
I mean, every thing happeneing could come to the knowledge of an agent, which would
"reat" accordingly (propagated communication type). Also, there could be as a result
of an action by an agent direct communication (kind of diplomatic system).
The normal behaviour of an agent is to do nothing (meaning having its normal
activity). Each type of agent (more on this later) has a set of actions it can take.
Since these actions are, in a way, exceptionnal actions, there would be a trigger for
each action which would allow or prevent the action to be taken. These triggers are
part of the state description (the attributes) of the agents. Also, these triggers
move with time - this simulates the evolution of background culture. Other attributes
will move fatser - to simulate the immediate mood of the agent. More on this later.
In this way, actions taken by an agent, which are exceptionnal, result of the
encounter between the slow-moving trigger and the fast-moving immediate state. If
finely tuned, such a system could prove to be very supple and realistic.
One point that is not very clear now, but could be very interesting and powerful in
term of gameplay, is how to handle "classes" as u describe them. My thought is that
we coumd achieve a kind of "floating" class system, which means that the classes
shapes would be modeled by the way the agents group themselves (remember they have
interactions in the form of cooperation or confrontation). Specifically, in the very
beginning (I need input on this), there are basically two classes : the ruler/player
and the rest of the people. Upper-classes for example are not buit-in as the civ
arises, they are shaped by and evolve through the history of the civ. Then, the way
the ruler distributes the privileges and the way the different groups of people react
will define the aristocratic and the servant classes. I think there are means to
constraint the agents into forming groups. Also, the fact that a group explodes would
mean that the social stability is broken. For example, u could assume that under
certain circumsatnces different culural groups leave together, with an apparent
classic social shape - workers, bosses, religion... and that, when the situation
changes, these groups explode a new groups appear, based on culture : nationalistic
explosion...

OK, back on the agents. The agents are the profound base of the whole MAS. In a way,
the mechanics of the whole simulation is inside the agents (along with the
communication system).
This a very first definition and it has to be refined a lot. I also need a lot
feedback on this, as it will shape the whole behaviour of the civ. Also, as I
mentioned before, this is not a short-term piece of work.
Basically, the agents are reactiv agents (no cognitiv capacities). Since the agents
would be managed at the province level, and since they would group several heads, I
think the implementation would be quite smooth.
The agents'behaviour would be governed by mathematical laws based on their state.
An agent is an agregate of peaople sharing characteritics such as type of activity
(farmer, worker, religious, soldier, administrative...), cultural attributes
(original civilization, physical attributes, religion). These are some of the
characteristics of the group, those that are taken into account to form the group.
Then, when formed as an agent, the group has several other characteristics that shape
its behaviour. Some general :
- servility
- education (or enlightment)
- tradition/social mobility
- insularity
- life level
- activity

Some specific to other groups :
- a scale that defines a domined/dominant relation between two groups

Then, each agent has a set of actions at its disposal. Each action has a
corresponding trigger. This trigger moves in response to signals/communications. Each
turn, this trigger value is compared to the value of a formula based on the values of
the characteristics of the agents. The result of the comparison will determine if the
action is taken or not. The action set has two parts : one shared by evry agent (for
example everything concerning religion and nationalism, since every agent is
religion/culture-typed), another specific to the activity of the agent. More
precisely, the activity of an agent is linked to a specific function it has in the
civ. For example, merchants could be able to take actions such as boycotting, raising
prices... The military could take actions such as dismissing the ruler/player; the
worker could take actions such as strikes...
Additionnaly, each agent could take a "communication action", which means entering in
an intentional communication. Namely, they would wether negociate with other(s)
agents, or communicate informations/needs to the ruler/player.
Now on the class stuff. I said we have to tune the agents in a way such as they group
themselves into "classes". I think there is an elegant way to achieve this. As I
mentioned in the theory part, agents have goals and eventually constraints (which
could also be described in terms of goals, in a sense. For the clarity of this
discussion, I will however talk about constraints).

I. The agents have three primary goals :
1. enhance their life level
2. enhance their security of life
3. climb in the dominant/domined scale.

II. Their main constraint, which is overridable, is :
1. preserve the social cohesion.

A little disuscussion on these points :
I.1. enhance their life level : this goal will be pondered by the life level of a
given agent compared to the life levels he knows about. Ie : the mean life level in
the province, and the differences between this group and the others; if communication
tech is evolved enough, an agent could find its life level in a civ is so low he
prefers to emigrate in another sim. Also, it will alow to simulate "class struggles"
in the industrial age and stuffs like that. Through the comparison between the
different life-levels, this goal is also linked to the tech level/age.
I.2. Security of life may or may not be a characteristic of the agent (or be a result
of signals of the environment of the agent). Anyway, this goal is useful to handle
extreme sotuations, particularly reactions in front of wars (ie : typically, in a
war, the life-level of the groups will move; moreover, people will be mobilized. If
this war is directly linked to the security of the people, their angry will be
tempered. Else they maybe will refuse the war or take actions that go vs. the
ruler/player's will), and in the case of nationalist movements (a group is
threatening another group to death).
I.3. In my first thoughts, there is a scale between each group in the province. This
must allow to handle particular situations between two groups (fe :
workers/capitalists), as well as assess the relative strength of a group in the
province.
Each group wants to climb in the scale ge,nerally speaking, but in some particluar
cases there may be a "private" struggle between two specific groups.

II.1. This constraint is used to privide facility for the classes. As the civ builds
up, the shapes of the civ are arise through the way the agents group themselves. Then
the civ evolves and through strong social movements (including revolutions), the
shapes of the classes move. This constraint helps the agents group themselves, as it
prevents them, unless very particluar, extreme conditions, it prevents them to take
actions that will endanger the social cohesion, namely move the shape of the classes.
Thus, when the behaviour of the agents are computed, each agent has to decide
(compute) if it will override thsi constraint. If not, he will act as the majority of
the class it belongs to, and the class would act in a way that it will not deeply
modify the strenght ratios between each class. For example, u could have a workers
class which is composed of several agents (based on religion or culture). As long as
no particular events in the religious or natinalist field happens, the class will
remain united. If an event (like a war fe) occurs, maybe one agent of the workers
class will separate itself from the class and take actions on its own. Then further
effects could lead in the formation of new classes in this particular province, this
time based on nationality.

Now, about the interaction between agents, and between the agents and the world.
There should be two systems : direct diplomacy, and events. First on the events.
These represent everything that an agent can sense. They are implemented in the form
of signals, which are propagated between agents and between province? The speed on
propagation depends, among other things, on the communication tech level. Everything
that happens in the game should have an associated event, carrying values that will
modify the state of the agents. For example the tech evolution : each tech should
have values related to the goals of an agent. For example, the printing press tech
should mean for the dominated that there is a new mean to emancipate. Thus, the event
associated with the discover of printing press should carry a value indicating that
the domined are prompt to adopt it, where the dominant will try to prevent the
domined to have acces to it, thus conforting their dominant position. In turn, the
behaviour of each agent would be spotted by the other, adding to the tension between
the twos... Similarly, a religious war would have throw an event carrying the two
religions involved. These would modify values in the agents states, fe if the two
religions are represented in a given province, the one in minority will feel
threatened (ie its value for life security would decrease, possibily leading to an
explosive situation in the province...)
The diplomacy system would be implemented, as I stated before, as "communication
actions" taken by an agent (or group of agent = class. Remember, as long as it does
not decide to override its social cohesion constraint, the agents only behave like
the majority of their class). I think, a part of the grouping process leading to the
formation of classes would come from the negociations (compatible goals = tendancy
to cooperate).

Every characteristic of the state of an agent would have an influence both on the
level of the trigger, and as modifiers for the calcultion of behaviours. For example
: the servility characteristic of a given group would lower its tendancy to override
the social cohesion constraint. On the trigger point, the education (enlightment
level) of a given agent would pull the trigger higher as it enhances (simulating the
fact that educated people are generally less ready to make war), etc....

OK, this is the general framework. The work that has to be done consists of several
steps :
1. Strong specification for :
- the different activities
- the actions that can be taken by an agent, both shared actions and
activity-specific actions
- the events and the value they carry
- the precise characteristics of the agents

2. First design of the agents

3. Design of a simplified environment for test and tuning purpose

4. Fine-tuning of the agents so that we get the behaviours we want for the civ in
each given age, inside the test environment.

5. Then put all together and test the whole thing.

This system IMVHO is very interesting, cause it is very expandable. Fe, as I've
described it, the way that techs spred into the society and are accepted and adopted
is coded inside the behaviour of the agents. We could as well introduce in the agents
the way they contribute to the innovation effort of the society. Another extension
would be for example to refine the definition of the education/enlightement factor
and split into several categories, which would have a differentiated effects. These
modifications/refinement would be entirely transparent to the player, only the model
would be finer.

A word on the interaction between the player and the simulated world, cause maybe
it's not very clear. Such a system would not necessarly add micro-management or
complexity for the player. The very intersteing effect is that he will have a
"living" world to rule (I use the world "living" since, in a way, the agents will
drive thei lifes themselves according to their goals/constraint). He will have to
understand its civ's society, which does not mean micro-managing, but rather
observing and analyzing. Then, he will have to "arbitrate" the classes/agents
struggles, thus having a real inner politics (in the sense defined by Machiavel in
its "Prince", even if I don't pretend at all to reach such a level...). The
interactions between the player and its "citizens" wuill take the form of
communications in the people-leader way, and every action the leader could take in
the leader-people way. In deed, each action of the leader (be it legiferate, wage
war, declare peace...) will throw signal that will influence the agents. In away,
this looks like the things happen in reality.

Another advantage is that agents will carry on their history, as everything happening
is suceptible to alter rheir states. The rate at which they are altered is a point
that has to be tested and tuned. Anyway, it is a very supple system cause without
adding a new attribute, just changing their values and their weight in calculations
of decision (= action-taking) will change an agent's behaviour a lot. Also, u could
add new characteristics as the game and the environment evolves.... Anyway, this
means we could begin with quite a sipmle model and refine it step by step.

I still have troubles in clarifying certain points (I would appreciate input,
feddback and ideas on this a lot). A very important point is how to handle the
upper-class. I have one definition for this : it's the class that has enough
institutional power to influence the ruling of the empire. The composition of this
class changes with time. In the middle-age, the aristocrats were wether former Roman
aristocrats or warriors that have gained the king's favours. In the modern era, the
aristocrat is, in the USA, mainly the richest capitalists. In France, it is composed
with the richest capitalists and what we call the high administartors (the idea to
add the "administartion" activity comes mainly from here. In the modern France case,
u would have a very huge administartive class, since about 1/4 or 1/3 of the french
active pop works directly for the government. Also, if we want to simulate an empire
comarible with the ancient China, we di have to have an administration
activity-type.) Back to my problem : would upper-class be a different class-type,
since the population they are composed of is in number unsignificant vs. the whole
population? Also, I have the idea that the particular group/agent an aristocrat
belongs to would change the position of this group/agent in the general hierarchy of
the province. I have to think on this further.
Another point is yhe articulation between province and agents. As I have defined it,
there are interactions between the agents inside a province. But there should also be
interactions between the province, and interactions betwwen classes across the whole
empire. An idea is to not create a specific structure to handle this, keep on having
two basic structures : the agents and the classes they belong to, and work solely
with the events propagation system. For example, if a worker strike occurs in a
province, a signal will be thrown, and maybe the workers in the neigbhouring
provinces will take an action after receving this signal wich would be wether strike,
or eventually enter in diplomatic relation with the group that first stroke etc...
Thus you could simulate the propagation of events throiuhout the empire, and see
groups created over the province borders. This would also simulate chain-reactions.
These groups would not have any meaning in term of game mechanics (no specific
structure to handle them), they will be stricly the result of the interactions of the
agent composing the civ, but they will have strong impacts in term of gameplay.
An other point is to decide if we will constrain more the class sytem, I mean decide
and design every class that can exist and force each agent into one of them (in this
case there must be constitency between the available classes and the general shape of
the society and government, as well as the epoch) or if will leave the agents the
freedom to group themselves as tey "feel". We could also have a mid-trm strategy,
where we don't pre-design the classes, but we monitor that it doesnt create too much
an irrealistic situation and in this case force a little bit things.
Also, we have to find how gov type will be articulated with the agents behaviours.
Here again, we have the chpice of pre-designing gov forms and the influence they have
on the agents, or leave freedom to the player to organize its empire make the agents
behave in response to this. Of course, in this case we lose the ability to name the
each form of government (is this such a problem).... One example : we could let the
player the ability to choose who governs a new province. If the player hires a mamber
of its administration, then we a China-like centralized gov-type. If the player
chooses to elect a noble, then we would rather have a feudal-like gov type. More
finer, the choice of this province governor would be made between a local noble and a
noble "imported" from the empire-s capital province. This would have strong effect.
In the first case, the upper-class would shape itself as being a high-administrator
upper-class. In the other case, it would a traditionnal aritocratic class, but which
would be composed wether of nobles coming from different provinces (thus eventually
belonging to different religions or cultures) or forming a hardcore of nobles sharing
exactly the same characteristics. All this would modify the strength ratios in each
province and the behaviour of the agents. The other alternative is the player to
choose a government form and the game handle the rest itself (such as shaping the
classes, nominating the governors etc...), and the only role of the agents would be
to simulate how the new shape is accepted (I dont really like this. If we take the
first alternative, gov changes will mostly be the resulkt of revolutions originating
from the agents, without direct intervention to the player. Much more realistic,
cause this means a rev occurs when the conditions are good for a rev to occur, and
the gov form that erects then is consistent with the situation that led to the
revolution...)

Notes :
-we would also have a notion of distance between cultures that would influence the
way they live together, along with the dominant/domined scale.
- the hybrid problem would be handled quite naturally : they begin as a new agent,
and try to fit in an existing class. Eventually they will stay a distinct agent, or
they will be absorbed by an existing agent with time, according to several parameters
such as the original relationship between their parents, the pop ratio etc... (see my
post in the culture thread)
- the life level factor is very important. It is manipulated through the tax system
by the ruler/player, but also by the agents themselves. Thus, in a feudal type civ,
the life level of the serfs (peasants) depends as much on the tax imposed by the
nobles as on the tax imposed by the king. Same thing about workers vs. capitalists.
- The religion would be handled as a seperate model. Indeed, religions are basically
nationwide. So I suggest we have a model for the religions that show what kind of
values this paticular religion carries (thus allowing to compute distances between
religions). L*Maybe we could also try to simulate how they spreded in the world, how
they splitted to form new ones... On the agent level, each agent has a particular
religion, and a value showing how much he is influenced by the religion. The values
of the religion combined with its influence for a given agent would show how it
affects its behaviour. Fe, a religion which preaches servility to the master would
maintain an agent's servility level high as long as this religion has a strong
influence on him. But as soon as this influence is low enough for the agent to
override itd social cohesion constraint, he will be upset cause the religion class
forced him in a state that is against its goal (namely, climbing in the
dominant/domined scale).

OK, I think that's all for now. I'd really like feedbak on this, guys.

One last point, referring to my first email to Mark. I told that I would like the
tools given to the player to evolve with the civ and the techs. I've not thought more
about that, but I have a related idea. Since it seems clear that, in the early game,
the size of a manageable empire is very small compared to the empires of the late
game, say an early empire could have roughly the size of a late game's province, the
scale of the game could be changed at a given point. In the bginning, everything
happens in the square-level, then it turns to province level. (I guess in the
beginning there is only one province. Maybe taking control of this entire province is
an earky goal for the player, so reducing the scope of the game would be intersting
there. Once again, I need input on the beginning of the game).

OK, guys, Cya.

Manu.

PS : i wait for your feedback to post anything on the forum. Copies of this message
to Hrafnkell an Mark.
PS2 : I am really interested in developping this model, but if you need it we can try
to work strictly on the cultural model. As you can see, this model would embrace the
whole behaviour of the civ, including things related to the gov model. When I said it
was expandable, it also means that a part of the economic model would be mechanized
through the agents. Btw, MArk, have your considered unemployment in your model?

> Manu:
>
> Wow, what a model. I haven't been able to read it in detail yet, but I have skimmed it,
> and wanted to get back to you quickly. Firstly, I'm very familiar with MAS and am
> planning on using agents for merchants and military supply in Clash already. I am sorry
> to be negative on this, but my first response after having only skimmed your proposal, is
> that it would probably be too detailed and consume too many clock cycles to be usable. I
> think it would be Excellent if the whole game were oriented towards modeling the social
> dynamics. But since there is So much more going on in Clash I think each turn would be 5
> min if we did this level of approach. There is the additional problem that MASs of this
> complexity tend to give highly nonlinear and surprising results in some regeimes, and
> that ensuring non-chaotic behavior might be a problem. This is just my first thoughts on
> the matter. Lets see what Hrafnkell thinks also. Additionally you're welcome to post it
> on the fourm as an "alternate" model and see what other people think. I think we're all
> a flexible group, and can change our opinions after enough discussion. I'm sorry to be a
> "wet blanket" as we say in the States, but I thought you should hear this as soon as
> possible.
>
> On unemployment, the model has severe under-employment in it, which i think is probably
> good enough. I posted on it somewhere, but frankly can't tell you right now where...
>
> -Mark
>

What a quick answer, Mark...

Well, I understand your reserves about clock cycles. My first estimations were based on the
fact thet there should be few agents, and that they are strictly reactiv agents, meaning no
inference engine or things like that, only mathematical calculus.
Anyway, it obviously has to be tested...
I have come to such a model because I could not figure out how to articulate the classes of
the gov model with the cultures. Also, I thought that we need a lot of supplness to have
smooth evolution of the civs. And overall, as u know MAS are wonderful systems cause they
allow for very sophisticated behaviours with relatively simple models. On the chaotic
behaviour, I've included in my mail first thoughts on haow to constraint the agents. But I'm
still questionning on how to constraint them.
Also, on the problem of clock cycles, one parameter is important : if Clash is strictly an MP
game, each computer would run a limited number of civs (in many cases only one...)
Anyway, I will do what has to be done. I'm right now considering switching on a strictly
cultural model fitting in your current architecture (also I can't get a clear picture of this
architecture, so if you can help me on this... I think the main infos I miss are thosed
remaining on the former forum).

So if u have general guidelines for this cultural model beyond what I have seen in ur thread,
pass them to me.
Back on my system. I agree, as I mentionned in my mail, that it's maybe not feasible right
now. But to be frank, building a game based on such a model has been in my mind for quite a
long time, although I've never had the courage to begin this alone. U've helped me a lot in
making my ideas clearer and I think u already have a structure such that we could go
somewhere with such an idea...

I will wait for Hrafnkell feedback, then I guess I will post on the forum a mix of my mail
and your reactions.

Cya. Manu.

What a quick answer, Mark...

Now I have read the model more carefully. I stand behind my previous comments .

> Well, I understand your reserves about clock cycles. My first estimations were based on the
> fact thet there should be few agents, and that they are strictly reactiv agents, meaning no
> inference engine or things like that, only mathematical calculus.
> Anyway, it obviously has to be tested...

One problem is doing it on the province level. We were planning on doing something similar
(although not as detailed) on a civ level already. A crude sketch is in the government post on
the web page.

> I have come to such a model because I could not figure out how to articulate the classes of
> the gov model with the cultures. Also, I thought that we need a lot of supplness to have
> smooth evolution of the civs. And overall, as u know MAS are wonderful systems cause they
> allow for very sophisticated behaviours with relatively simple models. On the chaotic
> behaviour, I've included in my mail first thoughts on haow to constraint the agents. But I'm
> still questionning on how to constraint them.

You may be right that there is no good way to "cartoon" the right behavior in. I would certainly
be more supportive of your model if it turns out that there's no good way to get the Big effects
right with a simpler model.

> Also, on the problem of clock cycles, one parameter is important : if Clash is strictly an MP
> game, each computer would run a limited number of civs (in many cases only one...)

Clash should also be a single player game...

> Anyway, I will do what has to be done. I'm right now considering switching on a strictly
> cultural model fitting in your current architecture (also I can't get a clear picture of this
> architecture, so if you can help me on this... I think the main infos I miss are thosed
> remaining on the former forum).

There is no really clear picture I have thought about things not very far beyond what is
already written up. You might want to do a search on the new forum for "culture" and see what it
comes up with. The old BB has no search capability, so you'll just have to look around. There
are little references to culture all over the place. Hrafnkell has some ideas as culture relates
to government that I don't think he's posted yet (possibly also for tech also). I would say
flesh out what you think needs to be in there, and then post your ideas. Just remember we need
to keep it as limited as possible and still get the Big things in there...

> So if u have general guidelines for this cultural model beyond what I have seen in ur thread,
> pass them to me.
> Back on my system. I agree, as I mentionned in my mail, that it's maybe not feasible right
> now. But to be frank, building a game based on such a model has been in my mind for quite a
> long time, although I've never had the courage to begin this alone. U've helped me a lot in
> making my ideas clearer and I think u already have a structure such that we could go
> somewhere with such an idea...

I think we should keep your model in mind. Unfortunately all we have now are words. If you want
to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the overhead for your model, perhaps that
would help. Some sample numbers are that the map has 64k squares. Probably 15-20k good usable
land squares. Maybe 1000 provinces in the ancient world, 30 civs, and 100 cultures. A head is
right now 1000 people. Make some guesses and plug in some numbers for clock cycles and memory to
do it according to your model. I think the numbers will be very big... but we'll see!

IMO for computers 3-5 years from now it may be possible to implement such a model within the
context of a civ-like game. Maybe even in Clash2!

> I will wait for Hrafnkell feedback, then I guess I will post on the forum a mix of my mail
> and your reactions.

Again I am sorry to be negative. You have a fascinating idea. One of the bad parts about a
project like this is that there are Many hard decisions to make, and with far less than complete
information.

-Mark

Mark Everson wrote:

>
> I think we should keep your model in mind. Unfortunately all we have now are words. If you want
> to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the overhead for your model, perhaps that
> would help. Some sample numbers are that the map has 64k squares. Probably 15-20k good usable
> land squares. Maybe 1000 provinces in the ancient world, 30 civs, and 100 cultures. A head is
> right now 1000 people. Make some guesses and plug in some numbers for clock cycles and memory to
> do it according to your model. I think the numbers will be very big... but we'll see!
>
> IMO for computers 3-5 years from now it may be possible to implement such a model within the
> context of a civ-like game. Maybe even in Clash2!
>
> > I will wait for Hrafnkell feedback, then I guess I will post on the forum a mix of my mail
> > and your reactions.
>
> Again I am sorry to be negative. You have a fascinating idea. One of the bad parts about a
> project like this is that there are Many hard decisions to make, and with far less than complete
> information.
>
> -Mark

Yes, its not quite as bad as I'd feared, but not so good either. The big leverage of course is in
changing the 20k clock cycles number either up or down. As you thought, it is 1000 provinces total for
the world. Well, I guess we should talk about both ways of doing it and see what others think. Some
things will also be in common regardless of which way we pick to do it.

Bon Chance,

Mark

Iīve been digesting your proposals for awhile now, I must say I have mixed
feelings about them. I like the general idea and perhaps in the end weīll
adopt it, or some parts of it, simply out of necessity. It may very well be
that this system (or something similar) is the only way for us to make all
the different elements in the game work together.
However, in many cases I feel your system is maybe a bit too elaborate
than is really needed, to say nothing about time-consuming. IMHO many of
the things you mention could be implemented more easily (and simpler).
This is especially true for the class system you propose, I donīt think
that letting the people (agents) choose their class will work at all and
the class relationship is a bit too complicated. Maybe it would work better
to make the classes themselves agents? That way, instead of assigning each
agent a place in the land, itīs religion and other features we would simply
compute these things on the class as whole on a percentage scale. Then,
when a triggering event occurs only the portion in question is affected,
lets say f.e. that a class is 70% protestant and 30% catholic, if something
happens which makes only the catholics unhappy the unrest level is
increased by 30% of the total potential increase, then, if the catholics
would revolt, 30% of the class would be immiedietly affected. Where the
riot/revolt occurs would then simply be chosen randomly, with a few
class-related modifiers (laborers=city, upper class=faraway province, etc.)
I know this is much simpler than what you propose, but I have doubts that
we need all the details in your proposals.
Anyway, as I said, the general idea is good, but in my opinion we should
make the classes the focal point. Now, whether to make them into agents
the same way you propose or not is another question. But by all means, put
this on the forum, I think we should talk about your ideas some more,
constructive critizism should get us nearer the best solution :-). Iīll
look more closely on your ideas and for all I know your proposals are what
we could end up with, who knows :-). Also, I know my criticism above is
not well thought out (itīs such a short time since I saw your proposals)
and I donīt offer any solid ideas on my own at this stage, but Iīm working
on them.

Finally, here are a couple of unrelated things I want you to look over and
critize.

Be hearing from ya,

Keli.

Types of Governments:

Governments generally come in two forms: one-person rule, and many-persons
rule (sorry about the kiddie-talk, Iīm just trying to keep things simple
J). Of course this is nor black-and-white, many gov.forms can be of either
type (although not at once), f.e. theoritically communism is supposed to be
the control of the people, but in practice the Party always rules
everything and very often (more often than not) a single person takes
(almost) total control. Stalin, Castro and that N-Korea guy who died
recently are noteable examples. The most common form of single-person rule
is of course Monarchy, but there are many types of Monarchy, ranging from
ancient Tribal Chieftainism where the best warrior was king, to the
Absolutist Monarchies of 17th and 18th century Europe to modern day
Constitutionalized Monarchies where the King/Queen rule in name only. Other
factors can come in, such as imperialism, divine-right,
dictatorship/tyranny, dynasties, etc. As for many-person rule the ultimate
form is of course Democracy, but many other forms exist, such as
Citizen-Republic (ancient Greek, early Rome), Oligarchy-Republic (Venice,
Holland). Many factors can also influence this, such as fundamentalism,
federalism, feudalism, socialism, representive systems, party politics, etc.
The system I propose is a bit radical, but IMHO simple, efficient and fun.
Players simply choose between a single-person government and multi-person
government (we probably need to change the names tho J). The basic type of
single/multi government depends on the era I havenīt yet made all the
different types that gradually come into play, a rough scetch for
single-person would be: tribal-chieftain; despot, monarch, dictator.
Anyway, this is only top of the iceberg in any case, because in addition to
the basic governmental form players can choose all sorts of 'add-ons' to
further refine their government type. These add-ons (some of which I
mention above as 'factors') all have specific advantages/disadvantages.
Most will only become available through research and many can only be
applied under certain conditions. Lets take Imperialism as an example, the
requisite conditions for choosing it would probably be determined by the
size of your domain. Now, the main advantage of Imp. is that cultural
differences within the state are less potent, so this is very conveniant
for multi-national/racial states. Imp. also would give a small bonus to
diplomacy. The main disadvantage is more corruption and possibly some
unrest penalties for bad diplomatic/military results (people expect you to
win all the time, youīre the Kaiser for Christ sake J). So basically
players are able to tailor their government in accordance to their needs,
wishes and ability. This allows for numerous variations of government
types, democracy isnīt just democracy, you can add socialism to it,
federalism, commonwealth, whatever, and the same goes for the other
gov.forms (monarchy,dictatorship, etc.). The beauty of the system is that
itīs simple, although I havenīt completely thought this out I guess players
would be able to simply choose the direction theyīd want to go and the AI
would take care of the rest.
Anyway, this is my idea, its still in the rough-scetch stage, but if you
like it Iīll flesh it out.

Class support:

The classes in Clash each support the ruler to some degree and act against
him to some degree. Those (within a class) who support him are
pro-government, those against him are anti-government, the rest is
considered neutral. Those who are anti-government can affect various
activities by the government (negatively of course), while those who are
pro can affect it positively, although they donīt do as much good as the
anti does bad. The proportion within each class that is anti or pro
depends very much on how politically aware the class is. The Upper Class
is always very politically aware, thus theyīre are mainly anti and/or pro,
there are few neutrals in that class. On the other hand the Labor Class is
seldomly very politically aware (donīt let todayīs situation blind you J),
so they are most often majority neutral the advent of public education,
newpaper, the Enlightenment, etc. As for the other classes, the Military
is often very politically aware, for the Religious class, this depends on
the Religion (some are more active/reclusive than others). Of course many
things can affect these basic assumptions, such as cultural standings,
social advancements, spread of political theories, extent of economical and
individual freedom and so on.

The Unrest generated by each class (Social Tension, as you so elogantly
coined it J) is mainly based on the pro/anti/neutral distribution. I
havenīt decided upon the exact numbers for this, and I envision using the
Unrest to balance things out in the end, so this is liable to numerous
chances in playtest. The basic idea is, obviously, that the anti-group
generates most, then the neutrals. The main question is whether neutral
should have zero or a little negative effects and the pro-group zero or
somewhat posetive effects. But that is irrelevant at the moment. Of
course, if a class is more anti than pro there is a change it will revolt,
which significantly increases if the anti-group is 50% or more of the
class. My idea is that various events in the game can 'trigger' a revolt,
i.e. when some event occurs every class (or some, depending on the event)
are checked to see if the event causes them to revolt. If the class is
more pro than anti there is almost no chance it will revolt, if itīs more
anti the chances increase, but wonīt get significantly high unless the
anti-group is 50+%. Historically, few revolts just 'happened', first,
there must be a gradual build-up of unhappiness, then there must occur some
triggering event to set it all in motion.

The pro/anti/neutral distribution also affects the administration of the
government. The anti-group in an associate class diminishes the efficiency
of the administrative work the class does. As I said somewhere on the old
BB the total political power of the assoc.classes (plus the Principal)
determines whether the basic administrative system is large enough, i.e. if
itīs over 75% it performs admirably, if between 50 and 75 its sufficient,
if under 50 its insufficient and not enough, this will generate Unrest and,
in time, decrease the Central control (and maybe Provincial) and increase
Square/Village accordingly. The efficiency of the administration is then
based on how much is spent and how large the anti-groups of the
administrative classes are. The pro-element can on the other hand give
positive modifiers to administration efficiency, although not as much. I
was thinking perhaps 1.2 for pro, 0.5 for anti. This means that if a class
is 100% pro (only in the fabled Utopia J), administration efficiency is
120% (Dilbert and his colleagues would probably not buy this math J).
Of course, there are other modifiers to administration efficiency, but the
size of the anti-group within a class roughly determines the amount of
corruption (the 'lethality' of this corruption is then based on the
gov.form.

What effects a class's anti/pro distribution (I think we need a name for
this, but I canīt think of any at the moment):

Pol. Affairs Econ. Affairs Mil. Affairs Cult. Affairs
Upper Class High Medium Medium Medium
Military Medium Low High Medium
Religion Medium Medium Low High
Labor Class Low High Medium Medium

Pol.Affairs > Changes in government, diplomatic treaties (not Peace
treaties, that's Mil.Aff.), rise/decline of political power within the state.

Econ.Affairs > Taxes&tarrifs, restrictions on economical activity, prices,
shortages of neccesities (famines), unfair/bungling governmental
interferance in the economy.

Mil.Affairs > DoW (either way), mobilizing/demobilizing armies,
winning/losing battles, winning/losing wars, war atrocities (only, other
atrocities are in Cul.Affairs, (attempted) genocides (like the Holocaust)
would probably be in Cul.Aff. too), army plundering, brigandry&pirates.

Cul.Affairs > Religious disputes, radical changes in class structure,
rise/decline of education level, nationalism, minority groups, environment,
erosion of traditions.

This list is incomplete and should only be taken at face value, how a
class/state reacts to a given event depends largely on the gov.form,
culture and such, so this is only a crude generalization.

after further reflection upon Manus ideas Iīve decided to support them,
although I still think the Class bit needs some refinement. I suggest we
continue to dicuss that. I looked at the picture from Manus POV and as I
see it this idea is probably the only way we can accurately track cultural
changes. If we base the culture on the land (square/province/state)
migrations will be a problem, with Manus system the culture moves with the
people. If we can, we should try to trim the system down as much as we
can, else turns will take much too much time as Mark pointed out. I have no
ideas on this at the moment, simply because the system is still largely in
the shades for me. I encourage you Manu to try to simplify the system as
much as you can, if you can base it on Classes instead of a set body of
people as I suggested (which I have no idea if can work or not) that would
be very good. Mark, if you have any clever ideas on how to handle culture
differently, speak up now or be forever silent :-). I myself will look
into how this will tie up to the governmental system.

Keli.

Sure, I'd certainly like to see it fleshed out. It seems to tie into the tech stuff
better. I'm a little concerned that all the switches may require a byzantine set of
rules. "If you're in feudalism you can't do imperialism except if on a tuesday..." A
couple of examples of historical transitions done in the model would be illuminating
too. I'm looking forward to seeing it!

Hrafnkell Oskarsson wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> after further reflection upon Manus ideas Iīve decided to support them,
> although I still think the Class bit needs some refinement. I suggest we
> continue to dicuss that. I looked at the picture from Manus POV and as I
> see it this idea is probably the only way we can accurately track cultural
> changes. If we base the culture on the land (square/province/state)
> migrations will be a problem, with Manus system the culture moves with the
> people.

If the people move you just put a tag on them saying what their culture and
class is. Perhaps I never mentioned it, but its been my thought from the
beginning.

> If we can, we should try to trim the system down as much as we
> can, else turns will take much too much time as Mark pointed out. I have no
> ideas on this at the moment, simply because the system is still largely in
> the shades for me. I encourage you Manu to try to simplify the system as
> much as you can, if you can base it on Classes instead of a set body of
> people as I suggested (which I have no idea if can work or not) that would
> be very good.

If the general system Manu proposes is to be computationally feasible it must
be reduced at least to the classes in a province, as Hrafnkell says. That is,
say, an agent for each class in each province. This is the scenario Manu and I
discussed earlier today. Any more and there is an 'explosion' in the number of
agents that would probably require minutes per turn just to handle this one
segment of the game.

> Mark, if you have any clever ideas on how to handle culture
> differently, speak up now or be forever silent :-).

I still don't see what's wrong with the general direction we were going in
prior to this. Can you point out to me explicitly what is wrong? I seem to
have missed what is Big that doesn't work. I understand that Manu's proposal
could be a better world model. However, it also might not be. These models
can be very sensitive to details of agent behavior. I am migrating into the
area of agent-based systems for economic and strategic issues at work, so I
know a Lot about them. In my professional judgement what I've seen so far is a
very serious research project, not part of a game. I'm certainly not against
agents in general, in fact everything we've done up to this point could be
handled from an agent perspective. But to expand too far beyond what we have
now will IMO give us serious time problems. One of my goals for Clash is to
allow someone who is not interested in micromanaging anything to play an entire
game in a long evening. To achieve that turns need to be at most 15sec long
when not much is happening that needs the player's attention. I am very
concerned that even a stripped-down version of this model would consume a large
fraction of that time.

> I myself will look
> into how this will tie up to the governmental system.
>
> Keli.

I guess my main point is I Already thought we were going somewhat too far with
the detail in the previous model for government and culture, such as they
were. Now it looks to be getting a further 10-100x more complicated. (not necc
more complicated for the player, but in terms of clock cycles and debugging /
model refininig time. Sorry if I'm being sharp, but I think this is a very
important decision.

sorry if this has upset you, I knew I was walking on thin ice by
participating in this discussion because I know so little about
programming. Of course if you say that Manus system is undoable then thatīs
the end of that. My only thought was that Manus ideas (trimmed of course)
seemed a good way of handling a lot of different things in one go. But if
this means too much overhead (or whatever you guys call it), then lets just
forget about it and keep things like they where :-).

Keep in touch,

Keli.

Mark replies :

Keli:

I'm only stating my opinions. Don't worry, I'm much more difficult to seriously
upset than that. IMO Manu should do whatever he is convinced will work. We're
all doing this to see our own designs in action after all. He'd already said he
could work on both a "simple" (already vastly more complicated than any other game
I can think of system and the agent-based one. I could certainly be wrong
about which one will work out best. That's why when both ideas are sketched out
we should have the others look at them and see what they say. Then we can
evaluate the "return" each model gives us for the clock cycles "invested". I
guess the only thing my judgement tells me is not to spend too much time on the
agent one unless it has very large advantages over the other way.

I'd still like to hear what you think is so unworkable about the previous system
we had sketched out... I may have missed it in the 20+ emails a day I'm getting
on this both blessed and cursed (for my spare time project.

Take Care,

In the document, you made it sound as if keeping the upper class happy is much more important than keeping the lower class happy. I strongly disagree with this view. Keeping the lower class happy should also be important. While a greater unhappiness may be necessary for a working class revolt, it also should be more likely for the workers to get to such an unhappiness level. Also, factors such as education of the lower classes should play a role in whether the lower class revolts.

In a communist government, such a social structure does not exist at all. For a communist government, it should be set so that the workers have the most power and the upper classes and the church having none (as they will have disappeared). Some of us (including me) have hope that someday classes will not exist. The game should allow for this to happen at some point.

I think that until fairly recently in history, say the industrial revolution, most revolts of substance originated in the upper and military segments of society. So, at least in my view, the proposed model is correct. Now, in more recent history, the working classes influence has certainly been much more important than before. But this will be in the system...

Your points about communism may be true for some sort of utopian communist state, but none of those have occurred in history. Communist states as they recently/currently exist surely do have upper classes, they are simply the higher echelons of the party IMO.

I think the system will be able to handle both communism as it has happened in the world, and utopian communist states too.

The way you'd handle a "classless" society (the design isn't quite up to it yet, but close) would be for the workers and minority/dependents classes have 100% of the power. There would still be a "principal" and "upper classes" but they would have no effect on the politics unless like a strong-man tried to have a revolt or coup to take over the government.

Glad to hear your support!

I agree we should try to simplify the models as much as possible.
I try thinking of something different from an MAS, but I can't get good stuff. My idea
is that if we try to have only a global model for everything concerning the "social"
model (everything modelling the people, including the cultural model), it would very
complicated, very rigid and sensitive - or it would be too "stereotyped".... Maybe I'm
wrong, I'm still thinking about that.
The other way would then try to build an MAS simple and supple enough to fit our
needs, both in terms of realism, smooth evolution and performance.

I have a problem with agents based on classes only. It would be more difficult to
treat real cultural problems, such as religious or nationalist, cause this would mean
we would have to split the agents when such things occur. Moreover, I think managing
the different cultures only through ratios in a given class would mean loss of
suppleness and quite a sophisticated software mechanics to handle the ratios and
effects. In fact, I think the whole behviour of the people should be embedded
together, I mean not seperating the quite stricly political behaviour of a class
(revolting or not) from the social and cultural facts. Through this, we could simulate
revolts, strikes, religious/nationalist wars etc.. with some coherence - IMHO these
facts are rarely disjoint...

About your ideas :

I think you have a good idea with the one/many-rulers model with factors. I think u
have to precise some points :
- how far will the player have control on the government shape, on moreover on the
government changes : real government changes rarely occurded by the Will of the
ruler...
- how the control of the player will be implemented, I mean : will he namely choose
such factor in such gov form, or will his discrete actions in a given gov. form set,
unset or modify the attributes of the gov. (for exemple, in a Monarchy, he could
namely hire a governor for a province, choosing him between a Noble or one of its
administrators, such shaping wether a centralized or a feudal Monarchy type.)
- Back to the particular case of gov. change. First : will there be a "Revolution"
Button like in CivI/II or Ctp, or will the revolution be the result of the
inadequation between the gov form and the social mood/aspirations at a given point? In
this last case, will the ruler have direct choice for the succeding gov. form (this
should be, assuming that as soon as the revolution has occured - and succeeded, the
player takes the place of the winner and thus decides of the new gov. form). However,
will there other prerequisites than tech for a given gov. to be available after a
revolution, for exemple social prerequisites?

- Concerning the Class support point, if we finally turn out to use agents, all this
should be embedded in the agents. This way we could mix social/political/cultural
behaviours. Maybe we could use a separate slider for the political involvment case - a
good idea IMO - or just compute the stuff through other sliders. This way, fe, the
involvment of the religious class would be linked to the state/Church relationship,
not only on quite-random factors.

OK, that's all for now. Back on the cultural model...

PS : one historical point : if we only consider the "citizens", the Ancient Greece was
a Democracy, not a Republic. Moreover, with a very rigorous definition, this is the
only ever democracy. All contemporary gov forms we use to call democracys are not
democracies, only different forms of representative governments.

> Hi Hrafnkell.
>
> Glad to hear your support!
>
> I agree we should try to simplify the models as much as possible.
> I try thinking of something different from an MAS, but I can't get good stuff. My idea
> is that if we try to have only a global model for everything concerning the "social"
> model (everything modelling the people, including the cultural model), it would very
> complicated, very rigid and sensitive - or it would be too "stereotyped".... Maybe I'm
> wrong, I'm still thinking about that.
> The other way would then try to build an MAS simple and supple enough to fit our
> needs, both in terms of realism, smooth evolution and performance.

Manu: I think it cannot be helped that it will be stereotyped and of an Extreme
cartoonish variety. Again, I think the model you are trying to do is appropriate if the
game were to handle the Internal culture/politics of A Single Empire/Nation. IMO it is
Far too complicated for a game with the expansive nature beyond even that of Civ2.
Perhaps our Next game could be the game you're thinking of... I am Serious, it would be a
fun project, but it is not the one we are attacking at the moment. Even including
cultural effects At All is a Breakthrough for a civ-like game, leave us some room for
improvement later .

While we are brainstorming on this idea, I have a suggestion for a change. How about the
concept of doing a MAS model, but aggregated at the civ level instead of the province. We
could arbitrarily limit the number of agents Per Civ to something like 100. So there
would be something like 1 or 2 upper class agents, maybe 5 army... At least this would
limit us to 3000 agents or so in the game. (Probably still too many, but maybe doable.
At least this is contained enough to be worth talking about extensively IMO) Since there
will be about 85 worker/peasant agents you could split them out by ethnic group,
religion, etc. As economic takeoff takes place the very small middle class within the
workers would grow larger.

The only big loss here is in local effects, like that that minority x or religion y are
all concentrated in the same province. I think this problem could be solved by also
keeping track of the cultural distribution by square/province and patching things
together. By that I mean if minority x is pissed off then the threshold for them doing
something bad would depend on their concentration. The x people will only have the power
to rebel or whatever with a decent chance in places where they are a sizeable fraction of
the population.

Am I missing anything Big?

> I have a problem with agents based on classes only. It would be more difficult to
> treat real cultural problems, such as religious or nationalist, cause this would mean
> we would have to split the agents when such things occur. Moreover, I think managing
> the different cultures only through ratios in a given class would mean loss of
> suppleness and quite a sophisticated software mechanics to handle the ratios and
> effects. In fact, I think the whole behviour of the people should be embedded
> together, I mean not seperating the quite stricly political behaviour of a class
> (revolting or not) from the social and cultural facts. Through this, we could simulate
> revolts, strikes, religious/nationalist wars etc.. with some coherence - IMHO these
> facts are rarely disjoint...

Well, it needs to be majorly simplified or it won't work at all. You, as the creator get
the first chance to trim it down to size. But if it can't be Seriously reduced in
computational complexity I am virtually certain we won't be able to use it. There are
many players we will have who won't care one way or the other about this whole complicated
issue! It may be 70% of the potential players for all I know. I am interested, and you
two certainly are, but I'm just not sure who else is. So we need to keep perspective on
how much in the way of computational time we invest in this part of the game vs the
others. One other issue is AI. If the model can't be cartooned in some way, writing good
AI for the cultural part will be almost impossible. The model must be either 1)
reasonably easy to extrapolate into the future based on one long calculation, or 2) quick
to run in detail so the AI in doing what-ifs can examine several scenarios. Without one
of these two the AI problem is unsolvable with the resources we can devote to it.

> About your ideas :
>
> I think you have a good idea with the one/many-rulers model with factors. I think u
> have to precise some points :
> - how far will the player have control on the government shape, on moreover on the
> government changes : real government changes rarely occurded by the Will of the
> ruler...
> - how the control of the player will be implemented, I mean : will he namely choose
> such factor in such gov form, or will his discrete actions in a given gov. form set,
> unset or modify the attributes of the gov. (for exemple, in a Monarchy, he could
> namely hire a governor for a province, choosing him between a Noble or one of its
> administrators, such shaping wether a centralized or a feudal Monarchy type.)
> - Back to the particular case of gov. change. First : will there be a "Revolution"
> Button like in CivI/II or Ctp, or will the revolution be the result of the
> inadequation between the gov form and the social mood/aspirations at a given point? In
> this last case, will the ruler have direct choice for the succeding gov. form (this
> should be, assuming that as soon as the revolution has occured - and succeeded, the
> player takes the place of the winner and thus decides of the new gov. form). However,
> will there other prerequisites than tech for a given gov. to be available after a
> revolution, for exemple social prerequisites?
>
> - Concerning the Class support point, if we finally turn out to use agents, all this
> should be embedded in the agents. This way we could mix social/political/cultural
> behaviours. Maybe we could use a separate slider for the political involvment case - a
> good idea IMO - or just compute the stuff through other sliders. This way, fe, the
> involvment of the religious class would be linked to the state/Church relationship,
> not only on quite-random factors.
>
> OK, that's all for now. Back on the cultural model...
>
> PS : one historical point : if we only consider the "citizens", the Ancient Greece was
> a Democracy, not a Republic. Moreover, with a very rigorous definition, this is the
> only ever democracy. All contemporary gov forms we use to call democracys are not
> democracies, only different forms of representative governments.

Agreed, But a modern republic probably approximates the will-of-the-people about as well.
For one thing deliberative bodies make it much more difficult to do something that
represents the peoples will At That Instant, but which they will regret very soon after.
All IMO...

Oh, Now you tell me :-).

>I'd still like to hear what you think is so unworkable about the previous
system
>we had sketched out... I may have missed it in the 20+ emails a day I'm
getting
>on this both blessed and cursed (for my spare time project.
>

I donīt think anythingīs unworkable, it was just a lousy writeup :-). Sorry
for the misunderstanding. Iīve always felt that the system we were making
was working OK, otherwise Iīd letten you know earlier. I just thought
Manus system would in some cases be better, although much more cumbersome
of course.

The decision on whether Manus system is doable or not Iīll leave totally to
you programmers. Surprisingly, Iīm not all that comfortable talking about
something I know next to nothing about :-).

[This is from the post you sent me today]

>
>While we are brainstorming on this idea, I have a suggestion for a change.
How about the
>concept of doing a MAS model, but aggregated at the civ level instead of
the province. We
>could arbitrarily limit the number of agents Per Civ to something like
100. So there
>would be something like 1 or 2 upper class agents, maybe 5 army... At
least this would
>limit us to 3000 agents or so in the game. (Probably still too many, but
maybe doable.
>At least this is contained enough to be worth talking about extensively
IMO) Since there
>will be about 85 worker/peasant agents you could split them out by ethnic
group,
>religion, etc. As economic takeoff takes place the very small middle
class within the
>workers would grow larger.
>
>The only big loss here is in local effects, like that that minority x or
religion y are
>all concentrated in the same province. I think this problem could be
solved by also
>keeping track of the cultural distribution by square/province and patching
things
>together. By that I mean if minority x is pissed off then the threshold
for them doing
>something bad would depend on their concentration. The x people will only
have the power
>to rebel or whatever with a decent chance in places where they are a
sizeable fraction of
>the population.
>
>Am I missing anything Big?
>

Iīve got couple of questions:

1) Could we skip using a MAS model for the computer controlled states and
use something simpler for it? If so this would require fewer agents in
total...

2) Is is neccesary to have equal number of population in each agent? As
Mark says above this would mean at least 85% of the agents would be
peasants/workers and less than 5% upper class. IMHO this could make
difficulties to represent the distribution of wealth and political power in
society.

Iīm still struggling over the governmetnal thing, you where right, Mark,
when I started to flesh it out it became much too complex, most factors had
4-5 pre-requisites, some more; some made other factors
obsolete/unavailable, and so on. Iīm currently trying to make it a bit
simpler, I still think the general idea is valid.

>
>I have a problem with agents based on classes only. It would be more
difficult to
>treat real cultural problems, such as religious or nationalist, cause this
would mean
>we would have to split the agents when such things occur. Moreover, I
think managing
>the different cultures only through ratios in a given class would mean
loss of
>suppleness and quite a sophisticated software mechanics to handle the
ratios and
>effects. In fact, I think the whole behviour of the people should be embedded
>together, I mean not seperating the quite stricly political behaviour of a
class
>(revolting or not) from the social and cultural facts. Through this, we
could simulate
>revolts, strikes, religious/nationalist wars etc.. with some coherence -
IMHO these
>facts are rarely disjoint...
>

Well, I think this is just something we have to swallow, by reducing the
number of agents the system becomes simpler, there is nothing we can do
about that. Although I agree that making each class an agent makes it
harder to implement cultural changes, IMHO I think itīs OK to make each
class (agent) homogenous. Historically, many important cultural features
Did align themselves according to the class structure and those of the same
ethnic group/faith etc. Did group themselves together in one area. F.e. in
the War of Religion in France most of the protestants where in the
South-west region, in Poland the majority of town-dwellers where Jewish
well into the 19th century, in Bohemia and parts of Austria in early 17th
century the majority of the peasants/townsfolk where protestant, while the
nobles where catholic. I know this isnīt Always the case, but for
gameplays sake I think this would be OK and it wouldnīt be too far off the
realistic mark. So, my opinion is that basing agents on classes could work.

>About your ideas :
>
>I think you have a good idea with the one/many-rulers model with factors.
I think u
>have to precise some points :
>- how far will the player have control on the government shape, on
moreover on the
>government changes : real government changes rarely occurded by the Will
of the
>ruler...

I think Iīm right in saying that players donīt actualy represent the ruler
hi,self, they are some shadowy figure manipulating things behind the
scenes. So players can, if they want, make all the changes to the
government they like. All they must make sure of is that whoever is in the
ruling seat at any given time has power to do things.

>- how the control of the player will be implemented, I mean : will he
namely choose
>such factor in such gov form, or will his discrete actions in a given gov.
form set,
>unset or modify the attributes of the gov. (for exemple, in a Monarchy, he
could
>namely hire a governor for a province, choosing him between a Noble or one
of its
>administrators, such shaping wether a centralized or a feudal Monarchy type.)

This would all depend on the amount of micro-management the player wants.
Our goal is to allow players Both to set only the general course or to
manage a lot himself (by choosing general course I mean f.e. choosing a)
the preferred gov.form b) the preferred ruling class c) some short/long
term goals to accomplish (more money, more stability, better/more recruits,
etc. We havenīt done any of this yet.) The exact level of details are also
undecided yet, but the general idea I have at the moment would f.e. include
your example (although maybe in a little bit more simplified terms) on
choosing a local lord or a government agent. Iīll let you know when I got
more on this (i.e. when Iīve gotten it from my head and down on paper :-)).

>- Back to the particular case of gov. change. First : will there be a
"Revolution"
>Button like in CivI/II or Ctp, or will the revolution be the result of the
>inadequation between the gov form and the social mood/aspirations at a
given point? In
>this last case, will the ruler have direct choice for the succeding gov.
form (this
>should be, assuming that as soon as the revolution has occured - and
succeeded, the
>player takes the place of the winner and thus decides of the new gov.
form). However,
>will there other prerequisites than tech for a given gov. to be available
after a
>revolution, for exemple social prerequisites?
>

About the 'Revolution Button' the answer is yes and no. Players Will be
able to change the government, whether this happens through a revolution or
not depends on the situation (such as who is being usurped, who is the new
ruler, etc.) If f.e. a King is usurped through a Coup d'Etat staged by some
nobles the chance of a massive riot/revolt are rather slim, this would
probalby be based on the power wielded by the new ruler(s). If, OTOH, this
same King would be overthrown by dissatisfied peasants/citizens, the
chances of a bloodshed are very much increased. Now, the chances of a
Civil War occuring is very much based on the different cultures found
within the state, weīll talk about this later.
Only bad players should be taken by surprise by a revolt. Even those
who have little interest in the government aspects of the game should get
ample warnings before a revolt/rebellion breaks out, and preferably some
options in how to handle this (this is of course our, the designers, job :-)).
As I said above, the player isnīt actually the ruler himself, so yes,
players start puppet-mastering the new ruler(s) as soon as the gov.change
is through. As gov.changes most often are made by playerīs initiative they
should generally control what type of new government evolves, I havenīt
thought much about this, but now that you mention it we could include a
(small) chance that the new government isnīt the one they wanted. This
would then be based on the distribution of power in society. F.e. a
democracy is besieged by troubles and the player decides to risk going to
Communism, however, the Military Class has the same pol.power as the Labor
Class (which the Comm.gov. would be based on) and while the state is in a
turmoil the Military takes control and sets up a military Junta. Is this
what you mean?
Iīm sorry, but I donīt understand your last question, could you please
rephrase it?

>- Concerning the Class support point, if we finally turn out to use
agents, all this
>should be embedded in the agents. This way we could mix
social/political/cultural
>behaviours. Maybe we could use a separate slider for the political
involvment case - a
>good idea IMO - or just compute the stuff through other sliders. This way,
fe, the
>involvment of the religious class would be linked to the state/Church
relationship,
>not only on quite-random factors.
>

Yes, I agree. I had already envisioned using the pro/anti schematic for as
many things as possible (unrest created, administration, etc), so I think
it fits well into the agents model. As youīre more knowledgable about the
MAS, maybe itīs better you try to model it in, OK?

>PS : one historical point : if we only consider the "citizens", the
Ancient Greece was
>a Democracy, not a Republic. Moreover, with a very rigorous definition,
this is the
>only ever democracy. All contemporary gov forms we use to call democracys
are not
>democracies,