Government Model v.2

[axi]

Government Model

I. Introduction

This model tries to simulate the political games within the govt of your civ. What makes it interesting and challenging is the fact that people won't stare passively at you while ruling the empire and they won't just react to your decisions, but will be able to take decisions of their own and change things at the govt if they have the power to do so. In very despotic regimes the game will give you only people's reactions, from protests to revolutions, which is covered in the Riots Model. People reacting to your rule is by itself a more sophisticated element compared to what we're used to in games like this, giving you a more defying game, even in despotic regimes. But if your civ happens to move to other forms of governments, through violent events or peacefully, you'll have to share power with others. The masses if it's a sort of democracy, or the military maybe, or the church if a fundamentalist regime arises. Now people won't just react, they'll act. And they'll actually use their power to make whatever they think is best for the civ. Under these circumstances, having only a share of total power and having less control of the civ's future, the civ might take paths you didn't expected. Will this be for better or for worse? Will you accept sharing power with others or will you just impose your will at all cost?


II. Model Overview

There'll be a list of govt policies (or govt laws, if you prefer) affecting the civ in several ways. What is needed is to set the values for each policy. Changing policies you change the civ's behavior. The player knows what he wants for each policy, but it's those with political power the ones deciding what values policies will take. The player will always have some political power, but it can be low, high or even absolute. In fact the share of total power he has and how much other political entities have is also a matter of discussion.

Society is divided in classes. The aristocracy, the military, etc. Classes and the ruler will have to interact to define how much political power each should have and what values policies should take. To achieve this, the game will give an interface to the player where he'll be able to put in the values he thinks are best. On the other side, the model simulates what people in classes think, mostly given by the culture they posses, and through this, what they want for policies values and political power distribution. The link with culture (social model) makes people inclined to certain forms of govt and opposed to others, giving the game a more stable and true-to-life look, with no arbitrary or ridiculous govt shifts. Also, as culture slowly changes overtime, people can change their minds, so if they felt alright with a monarchy in the past, it might not be the case now.

The player is expected to move wisely when interacting with classes, choosing govt styles not too disturbing for classes, controlling how much political power he has, how much others have, specially those with opposite ideas, and even dealing with corruption. Under a more questionable strategy, the player will be able to use Special Actions, like bribing politicians, killing adversaries, closing the parliament, etc.

Two definitions are needed before continuing, only to be precise about what we're talking about:

Government: All persons who take part in defining policies. It can be the great priest and the great military leader in a small tribe or the whole senate plus the elected administration in a modern democracy.

Political power: The power or capability to influence the final value of govt policies. Any form of influence is counted in, legal or not. In a modern democracy, any party with at least one senator in the senate has political power, for example (very small in this case, though).

After reading the model you can see it working (at least most of its features) downloading this MS-EXCEL Workbook.


III. General Definitions

III.1 Govt. Policies

The following are the policies the govt. must decide on. They'll be explained and understood better later. This is list is not supposed to be complete. It contains what is felt as the minimum set of policies. According to other models' needs, the list can be enlarged.

-Tax Rate (0-100%): Tax is imposed on privates. Individuals, landowners, company owners and so on. In a pure communist regime, tax rate is irrelevant since no private sector exists.

-Civil Rights (CR): (0-100) The greater the number, the more liberties the people has concerning lifestyle, freedom of speech, etc...

-Religion Discrimination (RD): (0-5) This variable describes the relationship between govt and religion. If RD=0 the State is secular. If 1<=RD<=5, there's an official religion and people practicing other beliefs are considered minorities. The type of treatment toward other beliefs becomes more intolerant the higher RD is.

-Ethnic Discrimination (ED): (0-10) This variable defines if there's or not an ethnic group above the rest and if so, what kind of treatment other ethnic groups get. If ED=0, all ethnic groups are considered equal and the civ is said to be "multiethnic". If 1<=ED<=10, there's a preferred ethnic group (FE, romans in roman empire) and all the rest are considered minorities (this is the most common case). The type of treatment other ethnic groups get is more disrespectful the higher ED is.

-Slavery (SL): (0-2) Defines if minorities can be slavered or not. 0=Slavery is not allowed, 1=It is allowed in its most common form. This means some people in minorities is slavered with some laws regulating it like the possibility to buy freedom. If SL=2 it is the same as in SL=1, but some specific ethnic groups can be totally slavered in a more brutal way, like it was with africans. For now and until a better procedure is developed, it'll be the ruler's decision which exact tribes can be slavered this way when SL=2.

-Private Property (PP): (0%-100%) Defines what share of total economic activities lie in the hands of the private sector. The rest is owned by the State or the king himself (for ancient regimes).

-Economic Planning (EP): (0%-100%) Defines how much control govt has over economy, both private and public sector. It includes things like prices setting, limits on production, etc.

-Social Policies (SP): (0%-100%) This will define how much of a welfare state the civ has. It will include all redistribution practices, social security, healthcare, free education, etc.

-Foreign Affairs (FA): (0-100) Defines the level of aggressiveness the ruler is allowed to be in the international arena. 0 means passive/peaceful and 100 means world conquest.


The ruler/player will want a specific value for each of these policies. The ruler's preferences will be called "Ruler's Govt Profile". The real set of values the civ has is called "Govt Profile".


III.2 Majorities and Minorities

The empire can hold several ethnic groups, as described in the social model. Normally only one of them is considered the "civ's people" like romans in the roman empire. In this case romans are said to be the majorities population (not necessarily being majority in terms of demography) and all other ethnic groups are said to be minorities. In some cases, though, the govt might do no discrimination at all. In this case all ethnic groups are considered within majorities. People supporting non-official religions are also considered minorities.

For all what follows minorities are irrelevant. That's because this model simulates the political game in the govt leading to set the values for each govt policy and minorities are definitely out of the govt and have no pol.power to play this game. The political game minorities play is only at the level of protests and rebellions trying to stop being a minority or at least have a better treatment from majorities. That's covered in the Riots Model.

As will be shown, people in majorities will be able to participate in the govt depending on the regime. When they participate, they do it deeply influenced by their culture. The govt model stores cultural information of majorities from the social model in the Majorities Cultural Attributes (MCA). See Appendix 2 for more details on how info is transformed from the social model to MCA.


III.3 Classes

Majorities population (not religiously or ethnically discriminated peoples) are divided in classes:

The Upper Class (UC): The aristocracy. The people who owns the means of production. Landowners, company owners, capitalists, nobility, etc.

The Lower Class (LC): The common people. Workers, professionals, peasants, proletarians, etc.

The Religious Class (RC): High priests in command of the Church. If there is an official religion, RC represents the clergy of this religion. If there's no official religion (a secular State), the class contains all high priests from all present religions in equal conditions.

The Military Class (MC): High officers of the army. NOT the whole army. The common soldier belongs to the LC.

The Bureaucratic Elite (BE): Govt employees in key positions in the bureaucratic apparatus. They control most of the govt's administration and live an accommodated life. It's a wealthy class. The USSR had a powerful BE and no Upper Class, for example.

Each class has its own mentality (idea of how the govt should look like). UC and LC are deeply influenced by culture and have some differences about how economy should work. The religious class is mostly guided by its doctrine (taken from the social model) and shares some ideas with normal people. Appendix 2 shows how the info from the social model is transformed to create RCM (Religious Class Mentality). The BE always wants to preserve the current form of govt, since its welfare comes from the particular way the govt is currently working. As for MC, the mentality high officers in the army have is given by their origin. They can come from the LC or the UC. If they come from the LC, then are LC minded and the same for UC. In general, they come partly from the UC and partly from LC. Also, the ruler has an influence over MC mentality through "choosing the right men". The level at which each of these three factors influences MC mentality is explained later.


III.4 Political Structure & Hidden Policies

The distribution of political power among classes and the ruler is called the political structure. For example, a Political Structure might look like this:

Class___Political Power
Ruler_____25%
UC_______8%
LC_______25%
RC_______26%
MC_______6%
BE_______10%

The main role of the Political Structure is saying how much power each entity has. But, at the same time, some policies are "hidden" in the political structure. These "hidden policies" are:

-Privileges: If the relative political power held by the UC (relative to LC pol.power) is greater than its relative demographic share (relative to LC demographic share), it'll be understood as UC having special privileges over the LC. These are privileges given to the UC by law like those nobility had in middle ages. The magnitude of privileges will affect income distribution and influence over the military. Privileges are computed as:

MAX(0;UCpol.power-(UCpolpower+LCpolpower)*UCdemogshare/(UCdemogshare+LCdemogshare))


-Influence over the Military Class: As said before, the political structure partly defines what type of mentality MC has. Ruler's pol.power and privileges are used to determine MC preferences, like this:
MC share with Ruler's mentality (MC_R): Exp(-0.03*(110-Ruler_polpower*100))
MC share with UC mentality (MC_U): (1-MC_R)*(0.5+0.5*Privileges)
MC share with LC mentality (MC_L): 1-MC_R-MC_U

The term "hidden policies" does not mean people don't realize about these effects. It means we don't need a special policy like "UC Privileges" explicitly, and we can build the privileges effect from info in the Political Structure.


III.5 Political Power: Law and influences

The distribution of power among classes and the ruler (Political Structure) is built using two sets of values. The first is the "nominal" Political Structure. It's the pol.power given to each entity "by law". The second is the "de facto influence" each entity has. If the ruler uses bribes on "politicians" of other classes, FE, he has more power than his nominal value. Each class has its own level of de facto influence and a method to compute real pol.power, as will be described later in section IV.1.

III.6 Some Civ-Level Important Variables

-Dominant Religion (DR): The religion with most followers within majorities.

-Empire's Stability (ES): (0-10) This is a measure of how stable the empire is seen by the people. Events decrease ES, like losing a province, having a riot or if the ruler is being replaced by force. Every game turn ES is increased a bit, so if these events don't happen often, the feeling goes continuously upwards.

-Income Distribution (ID): How many times UC per capita income is greater than LC per capita income: UC_PCI/LC_PCI, where UC_PCI and LC_PCI come from the economic model.


III.7 Ideologies

An ideology is a coherent set of values for the political structure and some of the govt policies. The govt policies included in ideologies are:
-Economic Planning
-Social Policies
-Private Property

So, an ideology is a view about how the govt should be regarding 1)who has the power (nominal political structure); 2)economy; and 3)privileges and the composition of high military command (hidden policies). This is what an ideology may look like:

Ruler's pol.power_________70%
UC pol.power____________15%
LC pol.power_____________0%
RC pol.power_____________5%
MC pol.power____________10%
Private Property__________65%
Economic Planning_______10%
Social Policies____________5%

People will choose the ideology best fitting their desires and will use any pol.power they posses to try to impose that view in the govt. The game will have a pool of ideologies representing the most common forms of govt seen in history and some more, like this:

Ancient Despotism (warlord rule), Divine Monarchy, Monarchy, Constitutional Monarchy, Oligarchy, Republic, Capitalist Democracy, Democratic Communism, Social Democracy, Fundamentalism, Communist Dictatorship and Capitalist Dictatorship.


III.8 Types of Policies

There are 3 types of policies:

1) Ruler's Exclusive Policies: Policies the ruler/player can decide alone about. For now, only the tax rate is in this category. This category exist only because of the difficulty in finding a reasonable way to simulate what people want for them.

2) Ideologically Negotiated Policies (INP): Policies the ruler negotiates with the rest classes and where classes define what they want based on ideologies. They're:
-Hidden Policies/Political Structure
-Economic Planning
-Social Policies
-Private Property

3) Directly Negotiated Policies (DNP): Policies the ruler/player must negotiate with classes, where classes define what they want directly for each policy as opposed to choosing an ideology and from it a value for the policy. They are:
-Slavery
-Ethnic Discrimination
-Religious Discrimination
-Civil Rights
-Foreign Policies

IV. How the Model Works

IV.1 Computing De Facto Influences

In the next sections pol.power will be used by classes and the ruler to change govt policies. That pol.power is real pol.power, which counts in the nominal or by law pol.power and de facto influences classes have leading to a higher pol.power than law says they should have. De facto influences are the way this model provides inter-classes interactions, allowing the UC to bribe high officers in the MC, FE. To compute real pol.power for each class we need the nominal values from the Govt Profile and de facto influences. Here's how de facto influences are calculated:

Ruler: He can bribe other "politicians" to gain their sympathy. De facto influence is computed as a scale parameter multiplying the total spending in bribes.

Upper Class: UC de facto influence comes from its control over economy. They can bribe, they can endorse election campaigns and ask favors afterwards, use propaganda through the media or directly to their workers, etc. De facto influence is computed as 0.3*PrivateProperty*(1-EconomicPlanning).

Religious Class: RC de facto influence comes from the respect and worshiping they receive from the rest of society. The more intolerant the religion is, the more willing to use this influence is. That's because intolerant means religion sees itself as the only way to live, so it tries to impose that. De facto influence is computed as 0.2*MCA_ImportanceOfReligion*(100-RCM_ReligiousTolerance)/10000.

Military Class: MC de facto influence comes from its ability to militarily threat the govt and politicians. De facto influence in this case is a constant around 0.15.

Bureaucratic Elite: BE de facto influence comes, by its definition, from its influence on the govt from the inside and its control over administration. BE's nominal pol.power is always zero, since BE's pol.power comes only from its de facto influence. BE's power is really unwanted. It's the unwanted result of a large bureaucratic apparatus. A measure of the size of bureaucracy is used to compute BE de facto influence: 0.5*Average(1-PrivateProperty;EconomicPlanning;SocialPolicies).

Lower Class: LC de facto influence comes from labor unions and the ability to threat with labor strikes. This influence increases with higher Social Policies (which protect workers), with higher Civil Rights (which allow the formation of syndicates and allow strikes legally) and with the level of syndicating, seen as a social development in the tech tree:
0.3*(1/(1+exp(-2+10*SocialPolicies)))*(CivilRights/100)*Syndicating.
(assuming Syndicating Tech Development in 0-100% range)

For the ruler and all classes except BE, de facto power is really the capability of gaining other classes' power by some means. It represents how a class X can buy the sympathy of other classes to encourage them to use their legal (nominal) power in the benefit of class X. Because of this, all values described above should be multiplied by the total nominal pol.power other classes have. In other words, the MC cannot threat others encouraging them to do as the military want if those others cannot really help because they don't have any nominal power to please the military. That's why de facto influences are really those values given above, but multiplied by all possible nominal power the class can actually "buy" from others, which excludes the ruler (otherwise the player would be giving away power without wanting it) and excludes the power high officers loyal to the ruler in the MC have.

In the case of BE, de facto influence is its only source of power and it represents actual control over govt policies and administration. It's not, as opposed to the other entities, power to buy other classes nominal power, but power it indeed possesses. So, even when the ruler thinks he has absolute power, the BE still can have some control.

Some of the sources for de facto influences can be undoubtedly recognized as corruption. The civ will be able to fight corruption decreasing de facto influences and forcing political entities to rely only on their nominal (legal) pol.powers. Although not yet determined, this will probably be done using the media and Civil Rights. In this way, civs with a free enough society (independent media) and having a decent tech level for media and communications, will be able to reduce the level of corruption.

Once we have de facto influences, we must compute real pol.powers. BE real pol.power is directly its de facto influence, as per definition. Pol.power the BE doesn't control is what all other classes and the ruler have left. This remaining power is distributed as:

Ruler: Nominal+DeFactoInfluence

UC, LC, RC and MC: (1-Ruler_polpower)*(Class_NominalPolpower+Class_DeFactoInfluence)/(UC_nominalpp+UC_defactopp+ LC_nominalpp+LC_defactopp+ RC_nominalpp+RC_defactopp+ MC_nominalpp+MC_defactopp)

IV.2 People's Preferences

People have a clear opinion of what they'd like to see in the govt. As everything, people see things through the eyes of culture, so cultural attributes from the social model are taken in to drive people choosing what they'd want for the govt. What we need is an opinion from every person for each govt policy that needs to be negotiated (i.e. all policies except tax rate) and for the political structure.

What the people want for some of the policies can be computed straight forward from cultural attributes and individually for each policy, while others need more sophistication. This sophistication arises from the need of coherency between variables. It's necessary to avoid people from choosing at the same time RC pol.power share equal to 80% and LC pol.power share equal to 50%, since all shares must sum 100%. Or, we must avoid people choosing a politically powerful aristocracy (high UC pol.power share) and at the same time choosing economic policies producing a communist system. So, economic variables and the political structure are all in "packages". This packages are built in the game guaranteeing internal consistency between variables, so people, through culture, only needs to pick the package they see as the best. These packages are called ideologies.

Ideologies not only help doing a consistent modeling, but also add flavor to the game since now people with different ideologies can collide. For example, the french revolution was nothing but the battle of two ideologies: monarchy vs democracy.

So, before people acts in the political arena, we need to know which ideology they support and what they think about those other policies that can be analyzed individually outside the frame of ideologies (Directly Negotiated Policies). The following section IV.2.1 and IV.2.2 show how this is made.


IV.2.1 People's Preferences on Directly Negotiated Policies

The policies in this category are:
-Slavery
-Ethnic Discrimination
-Religious Discrimination
-Civil Rights
-Foreign Policies

In the following lines it's shown what the people in UC and LC want for each policy, mostly given by cultural information stored in MCA (Majorities Cultural Attributes) and what the RC members want, mostly based on religion's doctrine, stored in RCM (Religious Class Mentality). BE wants to preserve whatever value the govt currently has. What the MC wants is given by the relative influences it receives from UC, LC and the ruler, as explained earlier. So, for a given policy X, having what the UC and LC want (say, UC_X and LC_X) and what the ruler wants (from the Ruler's Govt Profile, Ruler_X), then what MC wants for policy X is
MCM*(MC_U*UC_X + MC_L*LC_X + MC_R*Ruler_X)

where MCM is a Military Class Modifier allowing MC members so slightly adapt their mentality depending on the policy and MC_U, MC_L and MC_R are the respective influences over the MC by UC, LC and the ruler.

Slavery (SL)
LC wants: SL=2*square_root((100-MCA_EthnicTolerance)*(100-MCA_Asceticism)/10000), rounded to the closest integer.
UC wants: SL=1.2*2*square_root((100-MCA_EthnicTolerance)*(100-MCA_Asceticism)/10000), rounded to the closest integer.
RC wants: SL=2*square_root((100-RCM_EthnicTolerance)*(100-RCM_Asceticism)/10000), rounded to the closest integer.
MCM=1

Formulas say slavery will tend to be accepted if there's low respect for other tribes and a high desire for wealth. Because of the latter, the UC will be a little more inclined to slavery (20% more).

Ethnic Discrimination (ED)
UC and LC want ED=(1/(1+exp(5-MCA_Nationalism/10)))*(100-MCA_EthnicTolerance)/10, rounded to the closest integer.
RC wants ED=(1/(1+exp(5-RCM_Nationalism/10)))*(100-RCM_EthnicTolerance)/10, rounded to the closest integer.
MCM=1.1

Religious Discrimination (RD)
RC wants RD=(100-RCM_ReligiousTolerance)*5/100, rounded to the closest integer.
Both the UC and LC want: RD=(100-MCA_ReligiousTolerance)*5/100, rounded to the closest integer.
MCM=1

Civil Rights (CR)
RC wants: CR=RCM_Individualism
UC and LC want: CR=MCA_Individualism
MCM=0.9

Foreign Affairs (FA)
RC wants: FA=RCM_Aggressiveness
UC wants: FA=MCA_Aggressiveness
LC wants: FA=MCA_Aggressiveness*0.9
MCM=1.2

In this case LC wants a FA policy a little less aggressive than the aggressiveness of its culture because, after all, it's them that are going to war. The military prefers a policy a little more aggressive.


IV.2.2 People's Preferences: Choosing Ideologies

Each person will look at the available ideologies (discovered/invented ideologies) and will choose one depending mostly on his culture and how good it is to his class. To do this, the model computes an attractiveness for each ideology, on a class basis. That is, the same ideology has different levels of attractiveness depending on the class observing it. This will be made for UC, LC and RC but not for MC nor BE. As in IV.1.1, MC preferences depend on what UC, LC and the ruler want and BE wants always to preserve the current form of govt.

All persons measure the attractiveness for a given ideology with these four questions:
How much power the ideology offers to the class I belong to? (Desire for Power Attractiveness-DPA)
How much the ideology reflects my culture? (Cultural Attractiveness-CA)
How good the ideology is to solve my economic aspirations? (Economic Attractiveness-EA)
How good the ideology is to solve other problems my civ is going through? (Current Circumstances Attractiveness-CCA)

Each question leads to an attractiveness level (DPA, CA, EA and CCA). Summing all four we get the total attractiveness the ideology has for someone in a given class. The following shows how to compute the four effects for a given ideology seen by class C. Variables in brackets [] represent info taken from the ideology being processed:

1) DPA=K1*[C_pol.power]
i.e., the greater the pol.power the ideology offers to class C, the greater the attractiveness.

2) CA=K2*exp(-(ABS([RCpolpower]-exp(-0.04*(105-ImportanceReligion)))+ ABS([MCpolpower]-exp(-0.04*(105-Aggressiveness)))+ABS((Individualism/100)-(0.2*[PP]+0.8*(1-[SP])))

i.e., the following cultural effects are counted in:
The higher the cultural attribute "Importance of Religion" is, the greater the attractiveness ideologies offering high RCpol.power have, and vise versa.
The higher the cultural attribute "Individualism" is, the greater the attractiveness ideologies offering capitalistic economic systems have, and vise versa.
The higher the cultural attribute "Aggressiveness" is, the greater the attractiveness ideologies offering high MCpol.power have, and vise versa.


3) EA=K3*(A1*[PP] + A2*[EP] + (A3+A4*(ID/3)+A5*(100-RCM_Individualism)/100)*[SP])
where
CLASS__A1______A2_____A3______A4_____A5
LC______3.5_____-3______-1_______0_______0
UC______0______0.5______0_______2_______0
RC______0_______0______0_______0_______4

In essence this says the UC likes an economic system with high private property, low economic planning and no too high social policies. The LC doesn't care about private property, cares something about economic planning (because this means some level of control on abusing employers) and cares very much about social policies. Indeed, LC has growing care with the more differences between rich and poor (ID=Income Distribution). RC only cares about social policies and it's a growing care the less individualistic religion is.

4) CCA=K4*[Ruler_pol.power]/ES
What's said here is people will find more attractive those ideologies with high ruler pol.power when the empire is seen unstable (ES=Empire's Stability) as if they were "looking for the ruler's leadership".


Having total attractiveness for each ideology seen by each class, each ideology is multiplied by its corresponding "Knowledge Level".

Knowledge Level (KL): How known an ideology is. It goes in the range 0-100%. If 100% it means the ideology is perfectly known by the population. When the ideology tech has not been discovered yet, KL=0%. At the moment of discovery it becomes 10%. From that point and ahead, KL increases its magnitude (up to 100%) every turn based on communications techs available.

What KL tries to do is simulate how ideologies spread through the people slowly. When an ideology exist (the tech has been discovered), it's known slowly by people at a rate given by the com techs available. This way when ideologies are discovered, no sudden changes occur. Multiplying attractiveness by KL with a low KL will turn ideology's attractiveness really small, so people won't be very enthusiastic about them. When KL=100%, people can see all the pros and cons of the ideology and it appears with its whole attractiveness.

Since the current Govt Profile can also be seen as an ideology and since the same happens with the Ruler's Govt Profile, attractiveness are computed for them too. This is like people measuring how attractive is their current govt and how attractive ruler's ideas are.

From this point ahead, only 5 ideologies are kept. The Ruler's Govt Profile, the Govt Profile and the 3 highest built-in-the-game ideologies processed. So what we have up to now is a matrix of attractiveness. Something like this:

CLASS__Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
LC_______110_______83_______94___________73_____________88
UC_______90_______117______127__________117____________119
RC_______82________63______157___________67____________103

These numbers are used to determine what share of the population in each class support each ideology. This new matrix of support shares will be called SSM-Support Shares Matrix. We'll say the support share for ideology I in class C is:
exp(W*TotalAttract_I)/sum_over_i(exp(W*TotalAttract_i))

where W is a scale parameter. Using this exponential formula, differences in attractiveness are exaggerated and classes tend to concentrate in the most attractive ideologies. For the matrix of total attractiveness of the example above, the SSM results in (with W=0.05):

CLASS__Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
LC_______46%______12%______20%__________7%___________15%
UC_______5%_______20%______33%_________20%___________22%
RC_______2%________1%______90%__________1%____________6%

So, FE, 15% of the LC likes the current state of things. 90% of the RC supports ideology3.

In this matrix MC and BE are missing. In the case of BE, we can add a row with zeroes in all cells except Govt Profile having 100%. This comes from BE definition.
For the Military Class, as said earlier, high officers mentality is given by relative influences of LC, UC and the ruler. The support share the Ruler's Govt Profile has in MC is

MC_R+(1- MC_R)*(UC_X*MC_U+LC_X*MC_L)

where UC_X and LC_X are the support shares for the Ruler's Govt Profile in the UC and LC respectively. For any other ideology I, the MC support shares are computed as

LC_I*MC_L + UC_I*MC_U

where UC_I and LC_I are the support shares for ideology I in UC and LC respectively.

Having the SSM matrix, we have what we needed in section IV.1, that is, what the people want for every single policy.

IV.3 Setting Government Policies
Knowing what people want, now we can model how they'll use their real pol.power to actually change govt policies to their convenience.

IV.3.1 Directly Negotiated Policies
Using the procedures stated in section IV.1, suppose we have each class preferences for each Directly Negotiated Policies and through a proper interface the player putted the values he wants for each, so we have something like this:

Policy\Class____________UC____LC____RC____MC____BE____Ruler
Slavery_________________1_____0______0______0_____0_____0
Ethnic Discrimination______2_____2______2______4_____3_____6
Religious Discrimination____2_____2______4______1_____2_____0
Foreign Affairs__________37____33_____21_____43____32_____40
Civil Rights_____________70____70_____44_____67____65_____85

Suppose the actual real pol.power shares are:

Class____Real pol.power
Ruler____18%
UC______12%
LC______25%
RC______26%
MC_______7%
BE______11%

To compute the final value the govt will take for the Foreign Affairs policy, we make a weighted sum of the values each entity wants, where weights are the respective pol.power shares:
FA=37*12% + 33*25% + 21*26% + 43*7% + 32*11% + 40*18% = 32

The civ's govt will have a Foreign Affairs policy of 32. The same is done for each policy. This mechanism allows each policy to take a value which is more sensitive to the desires of those with larger pol.power. In other words, the more power an entity has, the more successful it is imposing its view on each policy. The mechanism was named "Negotiation Procedure" because it simulates how different entities, having each its own view on some issue, produce a single output. This output is not one of the originals in dispute, but a new "negotiated" one, reflecting the fact that no entity was able to fully impose its opinion. The procedure is general enough to cover a scenario in which all actors have relevant pol.power shares, like in the above example, and also situations where a despotic ruler holds all power. In this latter case the procedure, without any change, makes the final govt policy value equal to what the ruler wanted.


IV.3.2 Ideologically Negotiated Policies
Again we'll use the Negotiation Procedure, but in this case classes don't have a unique value they want. A class, as shown in section IV.1.2, may have its population divided between several ideologies, so there's no way to determine specifically what a class wants, as a whole, for any of the Ideologically Negotiated Policies. That's why we'll use the Negotiation Procedure on a "party" basis. It'll be like each ideology has a party in the govt trying to impose its ideology and each party has a pol.power to do it.

To compute pol.power each party has is easy. If, for example, LC has 30% pol.power and 12% of the people in LC supports ideologyX, then 12% of LC pol.power is held by ideologyX supporters. Doing this analysis for each class and ideology we can compute all pol.power each ideology gets from different entities and then sum up. Taking the Support Shares Matrix example in section IV.1.2 and the pol.power shares in the example right above, the ideologies pol.powers would be:

Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
__8%_______8%_______36%_________27%___________21%

So, people wanting to preserve the govt as it is (supporting the Govt Profile) have 21% of total pol.power. This one is like the "Conservative Party".

You can see that the ruler, although having only 18% of total pol.power, will be able to effectively impose his position on Ideologically Negotiated Values at 27% because, as can be seen in the Support Shares Matrix, the values he proposes found followers in classes, like in the UC where 20% of them support him and therefore will use their pol.power to back ruler's view. Also, since he has influence over the military, he can also get some support from there.

The Negotiation Procedure is ready to be applied. Suppose ideologies look like these:

________________Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
Ruler's pol.power____70%______20%______20%__________20%__________25%
UC pol.power______15%______10%_______5%___________10%___________8%
LC pol.power_______0%______70%_______10%__________70%__________35%
RC pol.power_______5%_______0%_______55%___________0%__________26%
MC pol.power______10%_______0%_______10%___________0%___________6%
Private Property____65%______85%_______60%__________75%__________68%
Economic Planning__10%______25%_______45%__________35%__________36%
Social Policies______5%______35%_______55%__________40%__________43%

Using this info and the pol.powers each ideology has, the Negotiation Procedure would give us for Social Policies:
SP=5%*8% + 35%*8% + 55%*36% + 40%*27% + 43%*21% = 43%

Again, it can be seen how the Negotiation Procedure's final value tends to be closer to what ideologies with higher pol.power encourage.

It was assumed here that all ideologies were allowed to participate in the political process. This won't be always the case because through Special Actions the ruler will be allowed to ban ideologies forbidding them to participate. That's why instead of using the SSM directly to compute ideologies pol.powers, we'll use a "Representation Matrix" which is equal to SSM when no ideology is banned and it's an altered SSM when banning exists. The procedure to compute the Representation Matrix is explained in Appendix 3.

IV.4 Circular Effects
Although the Negotiation Procedure is simple to apply, we'll need to apply it several times in order to reach final values. This happens because there're circular effects involved. FE, when Private Property is changed, it is changed using, among other things, real UC pol.power. But real UC pol.power depends on Private Property through de facto influences. So a change in PP leads to a change in UC pol.power, which leads to a change in the entire Political Structure, which leads to more changes, like the relative influences UC, LC and the ruler have over the military, leading to a change in MC preferences. This might look like a mess, but it's not too bad. Some of the calculations described in previous sections must be carried on several times to achieve an equilibrium point, but there're two good things: 1) The process is needed only when negotiations are called, not every turn; 2) It takes only about 10 iterations to reach equilibrium, which is quite fast.

You can see more of this in the provided Excel Workbook.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by little green men from Mars (edited June 23, 2000).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by axi (edited June 23, 2000).]</font>

[axi]

V. Effects of the Government Model over the Rest Models

Once govt policies are finally set as described in section IV, they affect the civ in several ways. The following are the effects policies will have in general terms:

V.1. Effects over economy
Private Property, Social Policies, Economic Planning and Tax Rate will be taken in by Mark's economic model to change the behavior of economy. These variables should be able to drive the economic model from pure capitalism to pure communism.
Income Distribution will change, not only because of the above variables, but also through the existence of privileges for the Upper Class given by the Political Structure.
Finally, the existence of slavery will also affect economy, providing higher productivity at a cheap cost in slavered peoples. Hopefully, the Merchants Model will be able to take advantage of this and provide trade of slaves for further flavor in the game.

V.2. Effects over the social model
The govt defines the environment people live in through economic policies, Civil Rights and other policies. The environment will affect people's culture slowly as time advances, so culture will change influenced, at least partly, by the govt.

V.3. Effects over the tech model
Tech development in the civ should depend partly on Civil Rights and Empire's Stability. These two govt model's variables should be taken in the tech model to be used in the Research Points production process.

V.4. Effects over diplomacy
The future diplomacy model should use the Foreign Affairs policy to control ruler's activities while negotiating, so the player won't be allowed to simply declare war if FA is low.

V.5. Effects over the riots model
People will be upset if the govt isn't what they want. This, along with other things, will produce a discontent that might end in bloody events.
The existence of ideologies provides the riots model with a flavoring element to generate ideological civil wars and that sort of things.
Slavery, Ethnic Discrimination and Religious Discrimination will also play a role generating discontent on minorities and the possibility of rebellions.

V.6 Effects over the govt model (feedback)
When policies change the following conditions are checked comparing previous and new values for Religious Discrimination and Ethnic Discrimination:
1) The civ has stopped having an official religion and became secular.
2) The civ has stopped being secular and adopted an official religion.
3) The civ has no longer preference for a tribe and became multiethnic.
4) The civ stopped being multiethnic.

If any of those are true, all ethnic groups in the civ are analyzed in order to give them majorities or minorities status according to the rules explained in Appendix 1. Then, MCA (Majorities Cultural Attributes) and RCM (Religious Class Mentality) are updated as described in Appendix 2.

VI. Playing the Game and Running the Model

VI.1. What will the player do when playing the game?
Mainly, the player will use an interface to put in the values he thinks are best for each policy. Anytime he change his mind and enters new values, he will hit a "Negotiate!" button triggering the Negotiation Procedure and related calculations described in section IV. What's fun about that? Well, far beyond the govt model, he'll be affecting several things in his civ as explained in section V. The challenge is he'll have to strategically play his game trying not to upset powerful classes and trying to take away power from those classes that doesn't allow him to do what he wants. The player will have to move, or at least try to move, from despotic rules to more representative systems and vise versa as needed in order to survive and make his civ progress.

The player will also be able to make Special Actions, making the game more interesting. Special Actions will include:

-Banning ideologies: Ideologies can be banned by the ruler. All ideologies the ruler bans will have their Knowledge Levels diminished and will continue going downwards for as long as the banning persist. Representation values for banned ideologies is set to zero, which makes those ideologies unable to influence govt policies. (Representation Values and Representation Matrix are explained in Appendix 3).

-Propaganda: It's the opposite case. The ruler's govt profile or the govt profile is presented to the public as the best and propaganda is carried on to encourage people to choose it. KL for it is increased depending on total money spent in propaganda.

-Foul play: The ruler kills key politicians supporting an ideology he dislikes to keep it away from the political arena for a while. Representation value is reduced for the ideology. It has transitory effects since Representation for the ideology will slowly rise if not banned.

-Closing the Parliament: The ruler can close the parliament, setting UC and LC pol.powers to zero. If the ruler doesn't take more radical actions like this, eventually UC and LC will recover slowly their power with the help of MC and RC, since these two classes probably support ideologies where UC and LC have more than zero pol.power and will use their pol.power to make it real.

-Bribing politicians: Increases ruler's de facto influence.

-Internal Intelligence Services: In order to destroy the capabilities of the people to threatening the establishment (riot, revolutions, etc), the ruler activate these services. They'll reduce all Events probabilities in the Riots Model.

Some of the actions above should cost money or have some type of requisites. These actions are just examples of what can be done and with some more imagination others can be included.


VI.2 When does the model work?
Mainly when negotiations are called, so the model will do very little in a typical game turn. Negotiations are called when the player hits the "Negotiate!" button and when "enough" time has passed. The latter means after some time (let's say twice a century) it's necessary to update people's preferences to catch up with changes in culture, higher Knowledge Levels for ideologies and other events.

When any of these two occurs (player hitting the button or the game automatically calling negotiations with updated info), the model will compute people's preferences and apply the negotiation procedure several times until an equilibrium point in all variables is achieved. This new Govt Profile will be stored. The model will slowly move each game turn current values toward the equilibrium point, representing the political process over the years leading to a new Govt Profile. The speed of the change is given by the length in years of the game turn and the magnitude of BE pol.power. This latter appears here because BE's intention is to keep things as currently are, so the greater its pol.power, the more successful it is slowing any changes.

VII. Administrating the Empire

Previous sections explain how the govt decides the general frame for the civ (major decisions valid for all provinces). We'll assume there're always more decisions that must be taken to solve local problems in a much more detailed level, like providing a local justice system. This leads to the idea of local governments implementing both general govt policies and local solutions. This section explains how power is handled between central and local administration and the implications of it.

To generate local administration you need local infrastructure. This type of infrastructure is called Institutional Infrastructure (II) in the econ model. II provides the capability to implement global and local solutions. We'll define the Administration Effectiveness Level (AEL) as that capability in the 0-100% range. When AEL=100% it means administration is effective enough to run the province at its best, while AEL=0% means there's no real administration at all. AEL will affect people's welfare in the province reflecting the impact on population of bad or good administration. A far away province can be more difficult to run, specially under a centralized govt. A centralized administration is less sensitive to local problems in distant provinces and so, less effective. On the contrary, if local administration is managed mostly by a local governor (or any other local authority), effectiveness is increased in general terms. So, AEL will be given by:

AEL=(C*exp(-K*PI)+(1-C)*(0.8+0.2/(1+PI)))*(1-(H-II)/TPP)

where C is the centralization level (0-100%), PI is Province Isolation, i.e. a measure of how far the province is from the capital at the current level of transportation and communications techs, H is a game constant indicating the amount of Institutional Infrastructure per person needed in a province for optimum effectiveness, II is the current level of Institutional Infrastructure and TPP is Total Province Population.

The player will have to decide the value for C in each province, that is, how much he wants province administration depends on central govt employees. The closer the province is to the capital, the less important this decision is, but in distant provinces it is relevant. The formula encourages him to choose a low centralization, but this desire for better administration effectiveness has a trade off. Low centralization means autonomy, so in the Riots Model isolated provinces seeing themselves too autonomous will tend to think about independence. There should also be economic trade offs between low and high centralization, but that's still a thread to come.


Appendix 1: Discrimination Laws

ED (Ethnic Discrimination) and RD (Religious Discrimination) policies are the discrimination laws. They define what ethnic groups in the civ are considered majorities and what minorities. An ethnic group is considered minority if:
It hasn't the civ's nationality and ED>0
It doesn't follow the Dominant Religion and RD>0
It hasn't the civ's nationality and RD>0 and the Dominant Religion is a Primitive Religion (as defined in the social model)

Otherwise it's considered in majorities.


Appendix 2: Majorities Cultural Attributes and Religious Class Mentality

MCA-Majorities Cultural Attributes
MCA stores the cultural information majorities have in order to have UC and LC politically acting according to their culture. MCA values are in essence just a copy of the cultural values in the social model for attributes Individualism, Asceticism, Religious Tolerance, Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion, Nationalism and Aggressiveness. The question is from what ethnic group (EG) this info must be read.

Ethnic Discrimination and Religious Discrimination policies define what EGs in the civ are in majorities and what in minorities. MCA attributes are a weighted sum of cultural attributes of EGs with majorities status, using populations as weights. This is done for Individualism, Asceticism and Aggressiveness. For the rest a weighted sum is also used, but cultural values are altered before entering in the sum according to these rules:
1) If the EG hasn't the civ's nationality, it appears in the weighted sum having Nationalism=0 and Ethnic Tolerance=100.
2) If the EG doesn't follow the Dominant Religion (as defined in III.6), it appears in the weighted sum having Importance of Religion=0 and Religious Tolerance=100.


RCM-Religious Class Mentality
RCM contains religious attributes of the RC. The list of attributes is the same MCA has. Attributes Nationalism and Ethnic Tolerance are made equal to the values in MCA. Importance of Religion is made equal to 0.2*100+0.8*MCA_ImportanceReligion. For Individualism, Asceticism, Religious Tolerance and Aggressiveness, there're two cases:
1) There's an official religion: RCM values are equal to the values stored in the social model for the religion that happens to be official (religion's moral code).
2) There's no official religion (secular State): RCM values are the average of moral code's values of all present religions.


Appendix 3: Representation Values and Representation Matrix

Instead of using the Support Shares Matrix in section IV.3.2. to compute pol.powers for ideologies, a Representation Matrix will be used to allow the existence of obstacles to ideologies. By obstacles I mean ideology-specific difficulties imposed by the ruler or others, like forbidding a specific ideology or killing "politicians" supporting a specific ideology. In those cases, the pol.power the affected ideology has is decreased, transitorily or constantly. The idea is a govt can give pol.power to a class, but not allow it to support any ideology or do it under-represented (that is, with lower effectiveness).

To achieve this, the model uses Representation Values. There's one RV for each ideology indicating what level of imposed difficulties it is facing. If RV=100% it means nothing is artificially affecting the ideology. If RV<100%, some difficulties have been imposed on it and its supporters. RV can only decrease by special actions. Representation Values increase slowly each turn up to 100%, so any effect is transitory and the ideology eventually will recover. Banning the ideology is the only way to keep the respective RV each turn at 0%.

To build the Representation Matrix, first each column in SSM is multiplied by the Representation Value for the specific ideology, leading to a Pre Representation Matrix, like in this example:

Suppose SSM is:

_______Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
UC______46%______12%______20%___________7%__________15%
LC_______5%______20%______33%__________20%__________22%
RC_______2%_______1%______90%___________1%___________6%
MC______13%______12%______20%__________42%__________14%

and Representation Values are Ideology1-0%, Ideology2-75%, Ideology3-100% (Govt Profile and Ruler's Govt Profile always have RV=100%). The Pre Representation Matrix is:

_______Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
UC_______0%_______9%______20%___________7%_________15%
LC_______0%______15%______33%__________20%_________22%
RC_______0%_______1%______90%___________1%__________6%
MC_______0%_______9%______20%__________42%_________14%

Now, to build the Representation Matrix, each row is scaled to make it sum 100%:

_______Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
UC_______0%______17%______40%__________14%__________30%
LC_______0%______16%______37%__________22%__________25%
RC_______0%_______1%______92%___________1%___________6%
MC_______0%______10%______23%__________50%__________16%

Using this matrix instead of SSM in the negotiations ensure banned ideologies, like ideology1, won't be able to affect the govt, and ideologies having problems with their politicians being effective, like ideology2, will be less effective in changing the govt policies.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Again another good model, much better than the last gov model. Good Job!

Now for the things i have a problem/question with.
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-Religion Discrimination (RD): (0-5) This variable describes the relationship between govt and religion. If RD=0 the State is secular. If 1<=RD<=5, there's an official religion and people practicing other beliefs are considered minorities. The type of treatment toward other beliefs becomes more intolerant the higher RD is.
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OK. Here's the way i see it. 0, like u said is secular. That's fine. However, there could be an unoficcal religion in which the majority believes and thus although the gov. is secular, it seems to sometimes lean towards one partical (or more than 1) religion(s).

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-Ethnic Discrimination (ED): (0-10) This variable defines if there's or not an ethnic group above the rest and if so, what kind of treatment other ethnic groups get. If ED=0, all ethnic groups are considered equal and the civ is said to be "multiethnic". If 1<=ED<=10, there's a preferred ethnic group (FE, romans in roman empire) and all the rest are considered minorities (this is the most common case). The type of treatment other ethnic groups get is more disrespectful the higher ED is.
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There can be a whole bunch of ethnic groups the gov. perfers, but singles out one or a few it doesn't.
Also we should put class and idealogy types here too since a government can perfer one over the other. FE not caring if the lower class gets slaughtered in a war that much, or disliking scientifically-minded indivisuals.

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-Slavery (SL): (0-2) Defines if minorities can be slavered or not. 0=Slavery is not allowed, 1=It is allowed in its most common form. This means some people in minorities is slavered with some laws regulating it like the possibility to buy freedom. If SL=2 it is the same as in SL=1, but some specific ethnic groups can be totally slavered in a more brutal way, like it was with africans. For now and until a better procedure is developed, it'll be the ruler's decision which exact tribes can be slavered this way when SL=2.
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There should be 4 levels really. 0 like you have it and 1 and 2 should be 2 and 3. level 1 would be more like identured servants. IE, people who willingly put themselves into slavery for X amount of years for whatever reason. Whether or not the agreement is followed, depends on circumstances like if he gets payed, but must pay his owner and his living expenses, etc. Also slavery can go on even where legally not allowed.

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-Economic Planning (EP): (0%-100%) Defines how much control govt has over economy, both private and public sector. It includes things like prices setting, limits on production, etc.

-Social Policies (SP): (0%-100%) This will define how much of a welfare state the civ has. It will include all redistribution practices, social security, healthcare, free education, etc.
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Hmm.. seems kinda vauge. I hope somewhere down the line we can control more specifically each area, FE control prices, but not the amount of a product or give free health care to everyone, but that's it.

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-Foreign Affairs (FA): (0-100) Defines the level of aggressiveness the ruler is allowed to be in the international arena. 0 means passive/peaceful and 100 means world conquest.
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Acutally i'd say 0 would be more of subjective and around 50 would be passive.

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III.4 Political Structure & Hidden Policies

The distribution of political power among classes and the ruler is called the political structure.

The main role of the Political Structure is saying how much power each entity has
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OK. The ruler should be able to increase his ruling power and/or decrease others by granting more power to others. It would give him more power by eroding away the power of the others. It is also possible for a group to have no political power.

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-Dominant Religion (DR): The religion with most followers within majorities
-----
There can be more than 1 dominant religion. In which case how do you determine Religious power?

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-Empire's Stability (ES): (0-10) This is a measure of how stable the empire is seen by the people. Events decrease ES, like losing a province, having a riot or if the ruler is being replaced by force. Every game turn ES is increased a bit, so if these events don't happen often, the feeling goes continuously upwards.
------
There should be other ways of increasing stability if it is really low.

-----
Ruler: He can bribe other "politicians" to gain their sympathy. De facto influence is computed as a scale parameter multiplying the total spending in bribes.
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First off, bribing politicians is limited to only some types of gov, unless politicians also include nobility and similar positions.
Another thing is though, he doesn't ness. need to bribe them. Why couldn't he be like Stalin and simply murder them if they seemed to get to powerful. A reign of terror would keep people in line, espically if you didn't know if you'd live to see tomorrow because for whatever reason. Or a ruler might not be so outright cruel. He could use blackmail or other means.

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Religious Class: RC de facto influence comes from the respect and worshiping they receive from the rest of society. The more intolerant the religion is, the more willing to use this influence is. That's because intolerant means religion sees itself as the only way to live, so it tries to impose that. De facto influence is computed as 0.2*MCA_ImportanceOfReligion*(100-RCM_ReligiousTolerance)/10000.
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What in the case of multiple powerful religions such as in pre-British India where Muslim and Hinduism were both major religions?

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Knowledge Level (KL): How known an ideology is. It goes in the range 0-100%. If 100% it means the ideology is perfectly known by the population. When the ideology tech has not been discovered yet, KL=0%. At the moment of discovery it becomes 10%. From that point and ahead, KL increases its magnitude (up to 100%) every turn based on communications techs available.
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Note: Techs, and social advances, can be lost over time. Such as democracy and republic were (Romans and Athenians). So there should be a way to erode its knowledge to everyone also.

Well that's all for now.

[roquijad]

LGJ:

1)"OK. Here's the way i see it. 0, like u said is secular. That's fine. However, there could be an unoficcal religion in which the majority believes and thus although the gov. is secular, it seems to sometimes lean towards one partical (or more than 1) religion(s)."
When the state has an official religion, people not supporting this religion cannot be in majorities.

2) "There can be a whole bunch of ethnic groups the gov. perfers, but singles out one or a few it doesn't."
For simplicity we didn't take that road.

3) "Also we should put class and idealogy types here too since a government can perfer one over the other. FE not caring if the lower class gets slaughtered in a war that much, or disliking scientifically-minded indivisuals."
The govt never "prefers" an ideology, but it's built using ruler's ideology and people's ideologies (when more representative), so it only "takes" a form, depending on relative powers of each ideology, which I believe is better modeling.

4) "There should be 4 levels really. 0 like you have it and 1 and 2 should be 2 and 3. level 1 would be more like identured servants. IE, people who willingly put themselves into slavery for X amount of years for whatever reason. Whether or not the agreement is followed, depends on circumstances like if he gets payed, but must pay his owner and his living expenses, etc. Also slavery can go on even where legally not allowed."
Your new definition for SL=1 matches perfectly the current SL=1 definition. SL=1 means exactly that kind of slavery where people is not ness slavered through all their lives and not ness forced to be slaves. As I said, the widely most common form of slavery seen in the world. As for slavery continuing when not allowed, yes maybe we should include that.

5) Economic Planning and Social Policies: As Axi said it so well when we were developing the model: A welfare state is not the same as a centrally planned economy. Social Policies mean redistribution of wealth. Economic Planning means controlling economic variables and industries. A communist regime has both high. Some current european nations have low EP, but high SP. The US has a medium SP and low EP.

6) Foreign Affairs: "Acutally i'd say 0 would be more of subjective and around 50 would be passive." I agree. Let's take it like that. How we define this variable has only an impact on the diplomacy model, which BTW I don't know its current status.

7) "OK. The ruler should be able to increase his ruling power and/or decrease others by granting more power to others. It would give him more power by eroding away the power of the others. It is also possible for a group to have no political power."
Yes, the model does that.

8) "There can be more than 1 dominant religion. In which case how do you determine Religious power?"
There can't be. As defined, the religion with MOST followers in MAJORITIES. There's only one veryfing that.

9) "There should be other ways of increasing stability if it is really low."
In my opinion, no. Empire's Stability is how people sees stability, so you'd really have to work on people's minds to do so. Some sort of propaganda could maybe work, but I guess people would hardly be influenced by it if they're seeing street protest and riots right outside their houses.

10) "First off, bribing politicians is limited to only some types of gov, unless politicians also include nobility and similar positions.
Another thing is though, he doesn't ness. need to bribe them. Why couldn't he be like Stalin and simply murder them if they seemed to get to powerful. A reign of terror would keep people in line, espically if you didn't know if you'd live to see tomorrow because for whatever reason. Or a ruler might not be so outright cruel. He could use blackmail or other means."
Bribing is a ruler's decision. He might do it or not. Money's corruptive power IMO go beyond any type of regime. However, the model will include the power of the media in freer societies, so bribing will be more difficult on those cases. As for killing politicians... the models already has that. Look at Special Actions.

11) "What in the case of multiple powerful religions such as in pre-British India where Muslim and Hinduism were both major religions?"
English empire wasn't secular by that time, so those religions wouldn't be in the religious class (because are discriminated). However, supposing the english empire was secular back then, the religious class would hold all religions in equal stand and therefore Religous Class would have a de facto influence as an average of what each religion can bring.

12) Note: Techs, and social advances, can be lost over time. Such as democracy and republic were (Romans and Athenians). So there should be a way to erode its knowledge to everyone also.
True. We'll have to make something about it.

Rodrigo

[Lord God Jinnai]

1>When the state has an official religion, people not supporting this religion cannot be in majorities.
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You misunderstood my question. I'm saying that the Civ has no offical relgion and in fact is supposed to be treating all the same, but seems to grant speical benfits for whatever reason to one religion. These are not major, but small. This religious is most likely also widely accepted.

3> The govt never "prefers" an ideology, but it's built using ruler's ideology and people's ideologies (when more representative), so it only "takes" a form, depending on relative powers of each ideology, which I believe is better modeling.
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Still you can have class discrimination in additon to enthnic.

4> Your new definition for SL=1 matches perfectly the current SL=1 definition. SL=1 means exactly that kind of slavery where people is not ness slavered through all their lives and not ness forced to be slaves. As I said, the widely most common form of slavery seen in the world. As for slavery continuing when not allowed, yes maybe we should include that.
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Also I wanted to ask, what would serfdom be then?

5> Economic Planning and Social Policies: As Axi said it so well when we were developing the model: A welfare state is not the same as a centrally planned economy. Social Policies mean redistribution of wealth. Economic Planning means controlling economic variables and industries. A communist regime has both high. Some current european nations have low EP, but high SP. The US has a medium SP and low EP.
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I'm not arguing with that. Its that I may want to regulate certain aspects and not others (assuming my current level on the paramerters are 0< and >100). That's what I'm wanting to be able to do.

6> Foreign Affairs: "Acutally i'd say 0 would be more of subjective and around 50 would be passive." I agree. Let's take it like that. How we define this variable has only an impact on the diplomacy model, which BTW I don't know its current status.
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Oops...Subjective is wrong...i meant Sumbmissve *smacks himself*

8> Ummm...Refer to social model for more info. I think this part is better discussed there.

9> In my opinion, no. Empire's Stability is how people sees stability, so you'd really have to work on people's minds to do so. Some sort of propaganda could maybe work, but I guess people would hardly be influenced by it if they're seeing street protest and riots right outside their houses.
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There are other ways. FE before lets say your civ was pretty peaceful to most demonstations and such. You could start to come down hard with military force and Gestapo-type police.

10> Bribing is a ruler's decision. He might do it or not. Money's corruptive power IMO go beyond any type of regime. However, the model will include the power of the media in freer societies, so bribing will be more difficult on those cases. As for killing politicians... the models already has that. Look at Special Actions.
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And blackmailing? What about that...Also you never answered me what exactly is a politician since the politicians as they are viewed in general didn't exist until beauracracies.

11> English empire wasn't secular by that time, so those religions wouldn't be in the religious class (because are discriminated). However, supposing the english empire was secular back then, the religious class would hold all religions in equal stand and therefore Religous Class would have a de facto influence as an average of what each religion can bring.
-----
I think it should be possible to favor multiple religions like many arab countries who consider Islam "THE" religion, but will tolerate Christianity and Judaism sometimes.

[axi]

Beware! I have many things to say! http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif

Disclaimer: I did not write the models, Rodrigo did. I only helped at the govt and riots (which at the time were one) and posted them here. There are many comments I would like to make too.

1) Classes: As I made obvious in the riots thread, the UC and the LC serve an economic function and I would like to emphasise this. This explains the strange terms "proletarians" and "capitalists" that remain in the respective class descriptions although no further analysis is made. The UC and the State are the only ones possesing productive infrastructure and resource sites. The LC and the Minorities are the only ones providing labor. With the combination of both, goods are produced and then distributed among the contributors of the various productive factors. So it is not a question of money, it is one of economic role. That is why the UC, the LC and the Minorities are the only classes with a demographic share and the only ones for which a PCI is computed.

I have a unfinished document dealing with all of this, and this I must revise now and present it to Mark and the team as soon as possible. (Oh, I always talk about this and never actually do it! http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif)

2) Cultural preferences: I am the one who introduced variations in the classes preferences for DNPs and I insist that they are too light to make any difference, but Rodrigo does not agree: <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>axi- One answer to all your protests below is that we need to have more variations in the cultural profiles of the classes, so that we can make changes in the cultural values more interesting and more possible. I have often said that what makes civ-type games boring most of the time is their stability. I would love to see fluctuations, but these can only occur through clash of interests.

rodrigo- I couldn't agree more about stability being boring. A goal while writing the model was to take away from the ruler any magical power like in civ2 determining when revolutions must occur or such. The current model has at least for my taste enough things to keep the player worried about inner politics. However, we must keep numbers under reasonable lines. I'm not going to make classes collide between each other just to make the govt more unstable. Classes preferences must be in line to what they supposedly want in real life. If two or more classes tend to think equally about something, well, that's it. In this particular section of the model classes are less conflictive between each other because we're dealing with people's culture and that's something common to all peoples regardless of their class. Any difference between classes in this section must be small. Otherwise you lose the coherency and the goal of this particular section. Although the most important part of the model is the struggle between classes and ideologies, we must remember that the govt model plays a very important role in other things like how will cultural attributes evolve from govt policies, what religions will be accepted or what kind of relationship the civ will have with other civs. It's not only about aristocracy vs proletarians or fascism vs democracy.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>
Now this is a minor issue per se, but I would like to know everybody's opinion about stability. How stable should the govt model and Clash in general be?

Another issue that comes to mind is the assumption that the participation of each religious and ethnic group in each class is always equal. Rodrigo claims it is, for all groups belonging to the majorities (really belonging to them, not only typically). This is almost always true for all classes except for the two big demographic ones: the LC and the UC. Because of their economic role, special conditions have it so that there are imbalances in it. If f.e. a group which was formerly a minority is accepted into the majorities, will it have a UC worth mentioning of? Won't it consist chiefly of LC members? Or if a province is taken and it's populace is offered citizenship, will there allways be a local UC remaining? Or will they be replaced by the new masters of the province? Think about the proportion of Negroes among the upper class in South Africa for the first case and of the Tartar invasion into China for the second. This is not so important as it seems, but still Rodrigo's answer did not satisfy me.

3) EP and SP: Concerning LGJ's worries, I'll have to admit that, unless Mark has worked on it in the govt model, it is currently kinda vague what exactly these two variables will affect and how. The best use for EP is to provide, through some modifiers, a percentage of each variable that will be possible for the state to control, while the rest will be decided for by the people. This sort of thing I have already done with investment. SP will be probably used rather directly, because it expresses socioeconomic obligations rather than control. I have already used it in some experimental equations concerning the Minorities PCI and it will probably regulate expenditure levels (both public and private) in related areas, like health, education, etc.

4) Religions: Rodrigo insists that either we have no official religion, or all religions besides the DR are counted in the minorities, so they have no political rights. LGJ disagrees, as I had done, bearing in my mind the example of my country which has christian orthodox for an official religion, but all other religions enjoy full political rights for their members. In LGJ's concept of a "prefered religion" the difference would be in the formation of the RC preferences, which would have to be averaged like in the secular case, but with a certain advantage for the DR, while the spreading of religions would also be affected. In my mind it is somewhat heavier: the RC preferences are the ones of the DR and the effect on spreading would be more favorable to the DR, but the religious populations themselves would be able, through their participation in the MCA, to somewhat alter the other classes preferences. These two situations could be described by values 1 and 2 of RD, leaving 3, 4, 5 (and higher) for discriminatory situations. I'm not very interested in religion though, so don't bust my balls about it. http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif

Another issue I don't see refered to is the so called "stupid effect", which occurs when a tolerant agent (ethnically or religiously) lets into the majorities a larger and more intolerant minority and as a result finds itself reduced into minority status, through a change of dominant agent. Rodrigo was quite worried about this - is it solved now?

5) Slavery: Rodrigo should excuse me for quoting whole passages of our previous discussions, but they are really helpful for explaining some decisions. (do not expect to understaand all that is said here) <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>rodrigo- -Slavery (SL): (0-2) Slavery will be exercised with minorities, or not exercised at all. If 2, slavery is practiced towards minorities. If 1, some "soft" slavery can be practiced to minorities. If 0, no slavery is allowed.

axi- This is often called serfdom. Some consider labor in the capitalist system to be the next evolutional level of slavery, "wage-slavery", but I won't insist on this.

rodrigo- I'm happy you won't insist on that since we hardly would get to an agreement about that! http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif I'm not familiar with the term "serfdom". I think you'll have to be more precise about your critic here (if any).

axi- "Serfdom" is a the state into which the peasants of all the pre-modern societies were reduced, through constant debt to the landownwer, of whom the were totally dependant, since he provided the land, the seed, the tools and the animals they needed and took back almost everything they produced. Serfs had no political rights and the landowning aristocracy had excesive authority over them. Serfdom and Nobility have been throughout history directly linked to eachother. Now don't tell me you still don't understand; your own country was still functioning under this system well into the 20th century.

rodrigo- Probably we'll have to extend this variable range because Mark suggested it.

axi- If we need this extension to be able to represent more degrees of exploitation, I think that this is a bad way to do it. These additional degrees can be implemented through interpolation, using the MinPCI. In the equations I have provided for it, it is rendered more flexible through the influence of the SP and Hum variables. The 0-2 range for the SL variable must IMHO be kept because it allows for radical changes of the social struture (Like the abolition of slavery in the USA in 1861). TBDF?

rodrigo- Serfdom=okay. I did of course know the concept. I didn't know the word in english for that.
[Philosophical mode ON]
The whole thing about slavery needs a better definition. I'm saying this because I kind of discovered what your vision about slavery is... Under your view, we can call slavery any kind of control over people in which the chances for the subjugated ones to achieve freedom or independence is close to null. A huge level of dependence to other represent for you slavery. Seen that way I understand why you include the term serfdom in this topic or why you can see a modern new form for slavery: "wage-slavery". Your point of view, if we can say I really discovered it, is quite valid, but I'm inclined to use my view of slavery in this particular variable. My view is slavery is the possession of human peoples in the exact ways you own an animal or any other good. Although it might seem very close to your concept, the key difference is the capability to buy, sell and kill slaves just like you can do with an animal. From serfdom to your modern "wage-slavery", this didn't happen. Your employer cannot decide upon your life nor take your child and sell it to other company.
When I talk about "soft" slavery, I mean that sort of slavery seen in Greece and other places in ancient times where slaves had the chance of buying their freedom, FE. Where also becoming slaves could be a way to pay a debt and therefore the slave status ended after a number of years. In those cases, people were slaves, but some restrictions were applicable to selling/killing/buying and often also to the kind of treatment they received.
I'm not saying that my definition is better than yours, I'm saying that we're talking about different things. Your concept is restricted to the economic dependence in which serfdom and wage-dependence perfectly fit. I'm talking about the feasibility to use humans as animals, not only in treatment but in the kind of rights they posses. My concept of slavery can exist or not in a society. Yours is always present, unfortunately. The limited economic resources in the world makes impossible for us all to be economically independent, so we need to work and depend on our employer. Even in an utopic communist system, we all depend on the State and this State must force us someway or another to work and produce the goods needed. This is why I'm inclined to use my definition for this variable. The level or type of economic dependence can be seen in economic variables, but the possibility of buying and selling humans needs to be defined somewhere else because it has to do with the current code of law and therefore you can never read that info from the econ model. Once the variable is set, then it enters as input to the econ model.
[Philosophical mode OFF]
"Slavery" will define the possibility to buy/sell/kill humans as an economic good in the same way animals are used. The different levels describe if some restrictions are applied. The range will be enlarged to 0-3 for a little extra flexibility, but you're very right about keeping it on a small range for a "flavor" effect like abolishment of slavery.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> I hope this gives some answers about serfdom and for the optimum variable range.

6) Foreign Affairs: A govt setting of this variable will mean everything for the diplomacy model. this will mean what actions will and will not be allowed through the diplomacy interface. This might be an annoyance to the player, although it is just the evolution of the original civ2 concept (No tribute for democracies, etc), but I feel it will help the AI alot. We need the advice of the diplomacy guys for this.

There is a problem here, because there are multiple cultural variables (from the social model) hiding behind this. As even the primitive civ2 design has shown, aggresiveness and expansionism are not the same thing and should be differentiated. Such is the case with FA: High FA means declaring war, or creating colonies? Low FA means raising a defensive army and building castles and walls, or searching for powerful allies to protect us?

7) The Macchiavelian ruler: I have already pointed out that the weakness of the negotiation procedure is that it lets the ruler counterbalance the other classes preferences by taking some extreme decisions for the ruler's gov't profile. The things are bad enough for the DNPs, but for the INPs they are worse because of the multiple loops of the procedure. The first thing I did with Rodrigo's worksheet is to put 100% for Ruler's pol_power in the Ruler's gov't profile and the macro gave me exactly what I wanted. If this happened in the game, it would be exactly like playing civ2 after this. The obvious solution for this is to make sure that the player will not dare to give extreme RGP's, because that would cause an immediate raise to all the related PAFs and an immediate events check and would normally cost him his head (at least). This is something to be set at the riots model of course, but I have outlined it here because otherwise the whole negotiation is useless.

It could also be possible for us to restrict the negotiation to a few or only one loop per turn, so that any governmental change wouldn't take place immediately. Rodrigo insists that an equilibrium must always be reached, but if this prooves to be in any way buggy or unnatural, this could save our efforts.

8) Foul play: For all those who wonder why the name "foul play" is used, I think that this special action must not always mean an assasination. There are more civilised and less dangerous ways to neutralise an adversary that murder. It could be a "frame-up", causing a scandal, which would lead the character in disgrace, reduce the representation of the agent (less than murder of course) and, if it is an ideologic faction, reduce it's KL (since scandals always set ideologic differences aside). Of course the same means could be used against the ruler himself. Sometimes because of the nature of the character, a scandal is much easier than an assasination. This is the difference between Kennedy and Nixon, if you think about it.

9) Tax Rate: This is a minor issue which as we decided is not necessary, but, if the team likes it, could also be included. <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>For an extra effect, we may consider discriminating taxes into three types:

- Head tax: The same amount, paid by everybody. Primitive concept, but it survives to this day in the form of indirect taxes (taxes on consumption goods). It specially hurts the LC. In extreme cases in pre-modern societies, it can result to serfdom.

- Income tax: Proportionate to the income, "fair" to everybody. Most susceptible to corruption.

- Property tax: Proportional to property. Modern concept, it specially hurts the UC. Leads to redistribution of income.

These can be wrought upon taxpayers in any combination, using a three-fold percentile analogy complementary to the normal tax rate. It will help the ruler to direct the weight of taxation in order to control the LC and UC PCI; it is followed by the appropriate class specific happiness effects. This may be also kept as a player exclusive policy.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> So what do you say? Do we need this?

10) Interface: We have discussed very few things about the interface that the govt model needs, but here are some elements:

- One of the few main advisors that will be there all the time to help the ruler must be the political advisor (or the "internal affairs" advisor, the name doesn't mater). He will present to the player the approximate PAFs and the current political status. He will define possible threats to the Govt, will present the options for player's actions, both conventional and special, and will optionally give a suggestion (what the AI would have done).

- There must be 3 separate fields of political action and specialised information for the player (3 interfaces?): the political (INPs, presentation of classes/ideologies and related special actions), the cultural (DNPs, presentation of the cultural agents and related special actions) and the economic (presentation of class economic relations/statistics and the effect of PP, EP, SP on them; setting player exclusive variables like tax rate, Labor to Capital Ratios, Investment variables - This will possibly be the main interface for the econ model, displaying info for the whole civ). Specialised presentation of each of the Classes preferences factors and related civwide PAFs should be given there.

- Because of the team's decision not to use bare numbers unless necessary, I suggest that we use a set of sliders plus adjectives or numbers for the INPs and DNPs, some kind of smilies/adjectives for the classes preference factors and a gradient green-yellow-red color-coding for the PAFs.

-There must be a version of the world map called "the political map", presenting the cultural synthesis of each province and the corresponding local PAFs, for the player's civ and all the civs for which there is intelligence.

- The current govt profile, the PCIs (and the Tax Rate?) should be displayed (IMO in numbers) somewhere in the main interface. The PAFs should IMO be graphically represented somehow also.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by axi (edited June 19, 2000).]</font>

[Lord God Jinnai]

axi:

Now this is a minor issue per se, but I would like to know everybody's opinion about stability. How stable should the govt model and Clash in general be?
-----
I'm leaning more with rodrigo on this because a ruler shouldn't constantly struggle to keep his civ stable. There are going to be times when things are fine and thus he can build his infrastructure during this time. However, things shouldn't last forever.

Another issue that comes to mind is the assumption that the participation of each religious and ethnic group in each class is always equal. Rodrigo claims it is, for all groups belonging to the majorities (really belonging to them, not only typically). This is almost always true for all classes except for the two big demographic ones: the LC and the UC. Because of their economic role, special conditions have it so that there are imbalances in it. If f.e. a group which was formerly a minority is accepted into the majorities, will it have a UC worth mentioning of? Won't it consist chiefly of LC members? Or if a province is taken and it's populace is offered citizenship, will there allways be a local UC remaining? Or will they be replaced by the new masters of the province? Think about the proportion of Negroes among the upper class in South Africa for the first case and of the Tartar invasion into China for the second. This is not so important as it seems, but still Rodrigo's answer did not satisfy me.
-----
On your first part, most will be of lower class. However, there can be some upper class which pushed for the group as a whole to be considered a majority and that's why they were let in, because of their influence.
As to your second part, not ness. This mainly depends on a> having enough people you trust and can do a good job b> can put a native person there to help ease tensions hopefully and have him act as a puppet ruler.

On Taxes: I don't ness. see the need of deviding taxes, atleast like that (i mean there were far more types of taxes). I rhink tariffs and such could be placed and should be seperate since merchants usually don't stay in one place. But I would like the government to be able to levee extra taxes if it thinks it needs to.

[F_Smith]

Very nice system.

I guess I'm going to try to help do an OOA on this model, to help prepare it for coding. I only wonder if I should create a seperate thread, or keep it all here.

I'll start by putting it here, if that's okay.

Okay. I'm just starting to mull this over in my head, so point out any obvious stupidities of mine--

Objects:

Ruler (should already exist in game code)
Civilization (should already exist)
Country/Province (should already exist)
SocialClass (again, new object to be created)
Policy??? (I don't know if this should be a seperate object, or if it should be a behavior. Any thoughts?).

Behaviors:

Government (seems new to this model)
Ideology (might already exist, I don't know)


P.S. -- I'm not sure I understood from the text description if a govt was province by province only, or if there was also some sort of a 'centralized' govt. The model would work for both (scalability -- the sign of a good model), but it sounds like we might need two 'Govt' interfaces (local/single prov and 'centralized' or many provs).
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited June 19, 2000).]</font>

[roquijad]

I'll give some short answers/comments on some of the issues. The ones I consider most important at this level of discussion. You can insist later on those I don't say nothing about:

A secular State with a "preferred" religion: I agree with you this case being the most common in modern democracies. But I believe the small benefits this religion would have would be small enough so we don't have to worry about modeling them.
----------
"Still you can have class discrimination in additon to enthnic."
There's some of that in the model. First, political power shares. The Religious Class may have 70% pol.power while the Military Class can have 5%. In that case I guess we can say there's a political discrimination at the classes level. Second, Privileges. The model computes privileges for the upper class considering pol.power shares of UC and LC and their demographic shares. Privileges are those like nobility had in middle ages.
------------
Slavery/serfdom: To reduce ambiguity, I prefer to maintain Slavery strictly as the possibility to use/buy/sell/kill humans in the same way animals are usually handled. Serfdom would be the result of several contingencies. Low LC pol.power, low LC PCI, low Civil Rights, high UC privileges, slavery. This is why I prefer to not handle serfdom with a particular govt policy as it happens with slavery nor having it handled simultaneously with "Slavery" govt policy. Therefore, if these contingencies exist as a result of several govt policies, then serfdom is said to exist in the civ. Possibly showing this result in one interface.
------------
"Oops...Subjective is wrong...i meant Sumbmissve *smacks himself*"
I knew it.... http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif
------------
"And blackmailing? What about that...Also you never answered me what exactly is a politician since the politicians as they are viewed in general didn't exist until beauracracies."
I'm glad you ask about a definition for "politician". I know now I should have made a comment on that in the model. In this model, a politician is anyone who can politically act. So, for example, high officers of the army (MC members)are politicians, because the model allow them to have political power depending on the regime.
About blackmailing, I think we can add it as a Special Action increasing ruler's de facto influence.
-----------
"the stupid effect": I didn't include that in the model only to make the document easier to read and understand. It's not solved yet, but I'm really not worring too much now about it. We'll see exactly how to avoid it sometime in the future.
-----------
Foreign Affairs: I once thought too that FA wasn't clear enough. The way I see FA, and excuse me if I didn't say it this way in the model document, is regulating the civ's aggressiveness toward other civs. So, if FA is low, you can create as many colonies as you want, as long as you don't attack/conquer other civs.
------------
The Macchiavelian ruler: As you perfectly said it, Axi, the ruler can face a lot of problems in the Riots model if he chooses extreme values in Ruler's Govt Profile. Even more, there's a specific Pro-Action Feeling for this, the "Replace Ruler Feeling".
Concerning the equilibrium point of the Negotiation Procedure, if you didn't notice, I actually chose your idea! Whenever nagotiations are called, the equilibrium will be found, but not applied immediately. It will be stored and each game turn, the Govt Profile will slowly move toward eq. I think these two elements will prevent the player from being dishonest.
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Foul Play: I agree with what you say, Axi. Not only murders can be there.
-----------

Rodrigo

[roquijad]

Thanks for the interest on how to code the model, F_Smith. Why don't you open a new thread for that with that same post as a start so we can keep this one for discussing over model's features?

Rodrigo

[Lord God Jinnai]

A secular State with a "preferred" religion: I agree with you this case being the most common in modern democracies. But I believe the small benefits this religion would have would be small enough so we don't have to worry about modeling them.
----------
I have to disagree. It may not have much effect on the government, but on the social part it does have very signifigant power. By even unofically trying to promote a specific religion in a multicultural society could in theory be a very underhanded way of trying to get the culture to follow certain ideals you want. Also the culture itself will not allow itself to divorce itself from religion and state very easily. Although you as the player may consider all equal the people who represent parts of the government will not. Again I'd say 1-2 should be set aside for this, beyond you need a specific offical religion (although others can be allowed).

[F_Smith]

roquijad:

Done.

A question, tho. Will there be both a central and province govt? I assume so, but don't want just guess.

[Mark_Everson]

Quick comment on govt stability:

I think usually governments should be fairly stable (as others have said). However when the player intentionally crosses a clear boundary the civ government could enter an unstable phase. One example would be after warnings that the empire is getting too big to administer practically, the player goes off and conquers yet more land. Well, then the player must cope with the situation they created IMO. But otherwise the player should only have to act (as Rodrigo said) something like every 50 turns.


I accidentally put a comment on centralization that belongs here in the social model... so here it is.
<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>One thing I forgot...
Regarding the centralization number, what are the Effects in terms of province functioning? FE if you model a feudal society as one with a capital province with C=100 (the king's) and a number of other provinces with C=20 (king's vassals), then what effect does this have on taxation, who controls the provincial armies etc. Does only 20% of the taxes get to the central government? Can the king call on the whole army (including vassals') indefinitely or only in specified cases?

We talked about this stuff at length before, and I'm not sure if you envision this as part of the new model, or not.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>

I'll try to work up something on the ecomomics of centralization (C), but first I think we need to decide how far we want C's effects to reach. Its a big decision in terms of complexity and reality. As I asked above, should some provinces have their own troops? In the limit of low C, does each province almost have its own government? Where influences of the player are only felt at the margins? This is especially important in modeling feudal civs or those composed of groups of mostly-independent city-states.

I think your use of C as a single number associated with each province is much more practical than giving each province an 'independence setting' in numerous areas. But we need to make some basic decisions about how far it goes soon.

One other issue is changes in C. I see a decrease in centralization as something the player can do at will. However, increasing it should not be easy at all... In many cases it would lead to a revolt or other riot model action.

[roquijad]

LGJ:
I guess we're close to agreement. The main effect is in the social model. To be precise, a secular govt might have a preferred religion, but this has no significat effect because being secular the State cannot directly help a specific religion. However, people in classes politically acting at the govt can have (and will have) a preferred religion. The effect of this over the civ would be a sort of reinforcement for that religion. This will happen because the social model makes all people in the civ affected by the culture of those in the govt (majorities).
----------
Mark and F_Smith:
Yes, local vs central govt is no small decision. I believe we really just can't afford using the govt model on the central govt level and also at each province. It's not only a matter of cost, but also a matter of the complexity the player would have to deal with. That's why I chose in the model's document to say that the central govt defines the global policies and the local govt just solves local and detailed level problems, which are astract and never really modeled. This works well for a "typical" civ and for most govt forms. However, it's still unsolved how to manage those civs with feudalistic styles or city-states styles. I guess we can refine the current govt model regarding Centralization and AEL variables to include feudalistic regimes, but I believe "league of states" govt forms will be best modeled as a feature in the diplomacy model, as you once suggested, Mark.
What do you say?

Rodrigo

[F_Smith]

Roq:

Just one more question.

A 'province' level, local govt would also have to be included if it will have some potential to affect the game, even if always run by an AI, or local 'character' (governor, king, whatever). For example, differing tax-rates for different provinces would likely require a seperate govt command object for each province.

Will there be anything like this?

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

Support your take on centralization. I think we can maybe layer a few simple things on it to get the right flavor for feudalism etc if necc.

F. Smith may be right in that we might need a good place to 'plug' local govt characters in, even if things at the local level are fairly simple.

I will be on vacation (and out of contact) soon, so I will just throw out one more point....

Have you thought about special war powers? FE in a democracy during the time of serious threat to the nation usually freedoms are suspended, taxes are raised, social spending is reduced etc. If the people support the war they will generally put up with all this for the good of the 'war effort'. Do you have a way to handle this?

[roquijad]

F_Smith:
I can't give you a good answer on province level govt variables, since as you can see, it's still under discussion. Given Mark support on my crude vision regarding local govt powers, I envision at least a province level tax rate and a couple of variables for military recruitment. It shouldn't be more than that.

Mark:
War effort... I'll see how it can be handled...

[Mark_Everson]

I have been thinking in my idle moments about how to handle the interconnections between the government and economic models. I'm going to do a lot more thinking about this while I'm on vacation. Axi, if you can write up those thoughts that you have been threatening us with on the topic and post them, I will hopefully be able to read them at some point while on vacation.

Anyway, at least in my initial thoughts I have some real problems with the extreme polarization between the labor class and the upper class that was put in to drive conflict in the model. It is the assumption that the labor class controls absolutely none of the capital resources of the society that really bothers me. I think this will put too much conflict in the government model, and also do some bizarre things to the economy... I haven't thought this all the way through, but this may be my last chance to post for a week or so, so I just wanted to say a little bit about where I was headed in my thought process.

Essentially, giving the government and upper class a complete control of the capital in the economic model, and so all the benefits derived from the capital, seems to me for much of the early game to guarantee that the labor class are essentially serfs. Although this was true in a lot of the ancient world, there is also much of the ancient world where it wasn't true. In effect, you are making something Always happen that I thought should be a sign that the player had screwed up, or didn't care about the economy!

So at the point where I am in trying to unify the government and economic models, it appears to me we need to do one of two things. Either let the labor class control some of the capital in the society, or put in a middle class that can do the same. (But even when a middle class exists, the labor class should be able to control some of the capital resources of the society IMO). I am kind of leaning toward us putting the middle class in, even though it complicates the model a bit. One reason, is that everyone already knows the term. And most people know that the economy is generally more advanced as a larger percentage of the population is in the middle class... So IMO we can use it as a gauge of how advanced an economy is (Axi, I know you're not gonna like this http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif )

In a related note, I think the different kinds of taxes that Axi proposed is a good idea, and I had in mind to do something similar. However, we should probably not worry about it just at this point. When things get further along we can start a thread just on taxes, and narrow the list of probably 20 or more types of taxes that will get proposed down to something of order five or so.

Rodrigo, Axi, and others... What do you think about these general points?


<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited June 22, 2000).]</font>

[roquijad]

On Mark's thoughts:

Well, I know I once said something like "adding the middle class would be a pain in the ass" when discussing this model via e-mail with Axi before being posted. I see it now as a easier task if we really want to go that way. Anyway, before taking this road, I'd love to know what parts exactly in the econ model become complex/bizarre with the absence of the middle class. If we can find a way to solve those problems, I think that'd be much more convienient than adding a middle class, because, as you know, when adding the middle class we must add a behavior for it in the govt and riots models, which isn't cheap.

That's the most important difficulty when adding the middle class. What about the pro's? 1)More true-to-life; 2)It can help modeling ending of feudalistic regimes and risings of representative regimes (modern and ancient), because the middle class is by far the most important factor in those processes. 3)It helps modeling migrations from country-side to cities and the modern role of cities as THE major productive units in these times.

Measuring the civ's progress by the size of the middle class... you bet Axi won't like it!! http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif (me neither)
One thing is very very important when discussing about the Upper Class, Lower Class and a possible Middle Class: They must be defined according to their role in society and not according to their (relative) PCI. The latter is the intuitive first choice (it was the one I chose initially), but Axi was very clever realizing the fact that class behavior can be modeled much better and coherently when you instead look at their economic role. I'm saying this only to avoid this discussion going in the wrong way.


As for taxes, I, as a player, wouldn't like to handle more than 2 rates...

[Richard Bruns]

I would like to say that I think modeling the middle class is very important. For almost all of Western history since around 1600, the middle class was an important influence on politics and economics. In the modern era, the majority of the population has been considered middle class.

I don't think it is fair or accurate to put all of these people in the lower class. By the current definition, a neurosurgeon making $300,000 a year and a migrant farm worker making less than minimum wage would both be considered lower class. These people will have very different mentalities, and it would hurt the game to lump them together in a single class.

A good working definition of the middle class is "educated, skilled labor." In the economic model, they would usually provide services. The size of the class would increase as the civ creates more educational infrastructure. They would affect the technology model, creating more RP's per capita than any other class. And in the social model, their mentality and values would be different than the upper and lower classes.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited June 25, 2000).]</font>

[F_Smith]

Pardon my nose, but I'm trying to get a handle on this model to prototype it, so ya'll can play with the numbers.

Now ,If I'm off base, please tell me, but the various 'social class' choices are already going to be more than just 'upper class' and 'lower class', won't they? I'm thinking of 'noble class', 'religous class', 'warrior class', (no class -- for people like me), etc.

In other words, 'social class' would be similar to 'culture' and 'religion' -- people objects will have different societal behaviors, each person will be commanded by their own 'Social Class' behavior.

Every turn, the code will run a 'turn()' method in each person's 'Social Class'.

So you can have as many different social classes as you want . . . Does this fit in with ya'lls plans?

[roquijad]

F_Smith:
No! The number of classes is no minor thing. We'll have the Upper Class, Lower Class, Religious Class, Military Class and Bureaucratic Elite Class and maybe, depending on where this thread lead us, a Middle Class. No more than that, no less. We can't afford having just ANY number of classes because modeling their behavior is tough. It will also have impact on the riots model, so adding classes increases the game's complexity several times.

Richard and Axi:
As time passes, I'm more and more inclined to the idea of having a middle class. So, let's talk about how it can be added. I see Axi's approach as the more general way to handle an "economic-political society", where each person earns money through providing some level of labor and through providing some level of capital and having returns for it. But, doing it as general as that gives us as many classes we'd like to have, because it's a continous space of possibilities. Therefore, I prefer to define classes like this:
Upper Class: They provide only capital (land, factories, etc).
Lower Class: They provide only labor.
Middle Class: They provide labor and capital.

When adding the Middle Class in the govt model, only the calculations for Ideologies Attractiveness needs a closer look, so this class would evaluate each economic system as a merged view between LC and UC. No major change is needed in the model. Probably the Income Distribution would have to change and become really two variables (two rates).
The problems I see are two. First, demography. This is an issue still not solved even for the current model, because I wanted this to be an outcome of the econ and govt models interactions. However, adding the middle class makes it a bit more complex, because the demographic share of the middle class shouldn't depend only on the current economic system, but also on the size and tech level of cities, where the middle class really exist. And second, computing correctly a PCI for each of these three classes. I imagine it isn't too hard to do, but I'm not sure...
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited June 27, 2000).]</font>

[axi]

I don't understand why Mark and Rodrigo are so afraid of my reactions to their thoughts about the Middle Class. Do I look like a fanatic? http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif

Anyway, I have to say that it has so happened that I was quite busy last week and I will also be this week too, since it is the examinations period here and one has to study in the midst of a heat wave (my room has a constant temperature of 31 Celsius - outside it is 24 - 39 http://apolyton.net/forums/frown.gif). So it is quite reasonable that I have neither the time nor the energy to think about Clash govt or econ.

I will provide some clarifications anyway, before this issue goes astray, in an effort to simulate the external appearances of the Middle class instead of it's internal structure.

Is anybody familiar with 2-phase systems, such as chemical mixtures or alloys? This is the only analogy I can find for my concept of the clash-class-system http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif, which is more or less presented in my related quotation in the riots model (if you haven't read this, please do - allright Mr Bruns?). Every person's income is a mixture of wages and profits (if wages=0% pure UC, if profits=0% pure LC), and through their analogy he can be placed in any social layer. But in reality, no other class than the LC and the UC is a real class, it is just an alloy. Everyone's political profile can be derived in the same way as his income, since the double source of his income causes every "middle class" member to have conflicting interests. We would only have to use the simple cantilever rule to refer any middle class populationXincome group to a couple of respective UC and LC groups. I think this approach is more programmer friendly, but I am ignorant of such things.

The only problem we would have to deal with is the reverse process, or how to simulate the existance and characteristics of a middle class through LC - UC interpolation and I feel that this is what Mark brings forth. We only have:

1)The mean PCI of the UC and the mean PCI of the LC and also of course their ratio = ID (income distribution) variable, all of them determined from the internal provincial market system (modified by state intervention, either fixed (use of SP) or determined by the player (use of EP)), which will split all surplus value into wages and profits.

2) The historical (given from us, the game developpers) function between consumption vs. investment and income.

3) (possibly, if Mark's econ model isn't incompatible with this) The LCR (Labor to Capital Ratio) for each economic sector, which will tell us how many capital units must be used for every labor unit into production, giving us both a rough estimate of which is the income needed for a producer to be independent (his capital employing his own labor, f.e. a farmer) and also of the advancement of the economy (don't you think so Mark?). It is widely accepted that the capital intensive economies are more advanced than the labor intensive ones. This of course has nothing to do with the size of the middle class but with it's independance; if overall LCR is low as in the advanced economies, it is more difficult to be independent.

What I am not exactly sure of is how are we going to combine all this data to give us a representation of the economic importance of the middle class. I feel that as ID increases and LCR decreases, the size and influence of the "Middle class" would decrease. I also think that a high percentage of private investment over consumption would mean an increase in the demographic shares of people in the upper classes, due to larger profit shares.

I think this is an issue well studied in macroeconomics (I think it is the Keynesian theory), but these are deep waters for me, so it would be helpful if someone more proficient in such matters would explain things to us.

------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[roquijad]

It's not that easy, F_Smith. When I say "class behavior" I refer to the way a social class sees the world and the way it reacts to it. It's a rather philosophical issue. If you take, for instance, the military class and you want to know what kind of things it wants, you'll find there're several problems. For example, you can find military dictatorships in the world, but they can be fundamentalistic, fascist or communist. MC seems to be obsesed with power in some countries, while they appear more non-political in others. So, for a given civ, what kind of mentality the military class have? Each time you want to add a social class, you have to sit down and think a lot about how people in it should behave and why. We need to decide what the class WANTS to produce values ad hoc for it in the different parts of the model, and that's no easy task. It's not like just adding objects to the model.

[F_Smith]

Rodrigo:

I am sorry if I implied it might be quick and easy to decide on what 'behaviors' to give other social classes. It will take thought, and discussion.

A 'SocialClass' command object has a vector of 'policy' objects (key-value pairs of strings and integers: "Capital Investment" "20"). Which is, incidentally, also how 'Government' and 'Culture' work. And there will be default values for each needed type of 'Policy'. So when making a new SocialClass (or Government or Culture) a person only will have to look at the default policies and then decide how to alter those values.

In this way, if Clash becomes popular, a vast number of Government, Culture and Social Class types will hopefully be made by the legions of players.

[F_Smith]

Rodrigo:

That's fine, for now, I suppose.

But remember, you don't have to define all the social classes' behaviors now. An object model like this is flexible, upgrade-able and scalable. Additional new social classes can and will be up to others, later. What would be wrong with someone deciding to add, say, an 'IntellectualElite' social class? Or a 'MediaElite' one? Since the 'SocialClass' interface they'll implement will tell them all the behaviors they'll need to define, is there any actual extra work to be done to the model itself?

I don't see any . . . it will fit right in.

But for now, we only really need one social class, to test the basic model structure. So no problem-o.

P.S.-- there is actually no reason not to allow all social classes to contribute labor, capital and anything else, at varying levels defined by the 'social class'. The code will loop thru it all on a turn-by-turn basis anyway, and get from each person his contributions (taken from his social class) . . . so it's a quick and simple thing to have the 'LowerClass' (UnderClass, maybe?) contribute, say, x percent of it's total net worth (which could be next to nothing) while the 'upper class' contributes a higher percentage of their net worth (which will be considerably higher, of course). Or you can define the 'LowerClass' as returning 0 when you ask for their 'capital contribution'. But it's up to ya'll.

Just don't avoid this because you think it'll be difficult. It's already in. It's just up to you whether or not you use it.

[roquijad]

I wouldn't be so optimistic about classes behaviors being easy to change, F_Smith, but, well, we'll see...

[Mark_Everson]

I'm at home for a day, and then off to a conference. But I think I can be annoying based on my quick scanning of what has been discussed since I left http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif. Also, I have been working on integrating the government and econ models, and have come to some revelations which I will discuss his briefly as I can manage. I am just kind of going to go through the posts since I left, but this will hopefully be coherent.

Although axi's definitions of the classes are attractive from a fundamental point of view, I don't think they can really work at least as far as the economic model is configured. The basic reason for this is that axi's definition does not allow for poor free farmers (as opposed to serfs). The reason is simple. If the upper class owns all land and capital investment by definition, then farmers near subsistence level will never earn enough to feed themselves and avoid starvation. Essentially, the upper class would always take something like one-third to one half the food that the subsistence farming produces, therefore the peasants would starve. So I think all classes need to be able to own arbitrary fractions of land and capital. This is the actual way that it was at many points in history, so I really objective a whole model being screwed up just so that Axi can have ideological purity http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif in the model. I think it is Much better to have it that way anyway, because you get some realistic game play out of it, like when the Roman Republic free farmers evolved into laborers working for the upper class (or just being unemployed). Now there is fertile ground for social strife...

I think having the middle class is less essential than the point above. But because of its historical significance I think it is worth including. Rodrigo, I like your basic ideas on how to implement a middle class into the model. And as Axi points out, we could indeed make a "synthetic" middle class by adjusting the labor and capital possession of the upper and lower classes. I just think that everyone is so familiar with the notion of a middle class that we might as well put it in, and we will probably later think of uses for it that completely escape us now.

On the coding, F. Smith has a very good point in that the objects in the code need to be flexible. For instance, a scenario designer that wants to do a far-future version of Clash, might want to have a different number of rather different social classes. Ideally we should put all this in his initialization file so that if the scenario designer wants to define new classes with new relationships and new ideologies they can do so.

Axi:
there is some difference in the labor to capital ratios in the different sectors. And certainly the labor to capital ratios will change dramatically with per capita income. I'm not sure if we can include all the factors that you talk about in your most recent post, but I had had similar thoughts.

[Lord God Jinnai]

The ability to have more classes for scerio designers could also be useful if we ever had someone who wanted to create a magical clash world for a later port.

[F_Smith]

Just wanted to verify my understanding here, before I go further with the coding . . . forgive me if this is redundant:

A MapSquare will hold a single Government and a collection of EthnicGroups. And EthnicGroups will contain a collection of 'SocialClasses'. And a 'SocialClass' will contain a population number, a 'Culture', and a collection of policy objects (key-value pairs).

I'll be posting code to this effect tonight, unless ya'll point out any gross misunderstandings I've gotten to.

Then, I think, it's time to put out the prototyper that allows us to build these objects so we can see how easy it will be to customize this game as much as a scenario designer wants . . . you want a 'Wizard' class? Or an 'Empath' class? You can design one yourself!!!

[Mark_Everson]

Hey F_Smith:

The overall plan sounds cool. It will be really fun to play around with a demo.

One clarification. Government is a one-per-Civ item AFAIK. So each Civ should have but one Government object. Possibly Provinces should have a ProvGovt object for tweaking at the provincial level as I mentioned either in this or a related thread.

[F_Smith]

Govt -- one per civ, gotcha.

Altho, will that force a single tax rate thru your 'empire'? That, at least, seemed to require some govt info stored at the province level.

Am I mistaken?

[Mark_Everson]

Yep, different tax rates per province would be one of the several things that would go in ProvGovt. I expect we will think of other things to go there also as time goes by.

[roquijad]

F_Smith:
1)One govt per civ. Eventually will have some sort of ProvGov object, but leave that aside for the moment because it's unclear yet what exactly to do there.
2)Each mapsquare contains a collection of ethnic groups with (until now) only one info: population. I'm leaning to the possibility of adding a couple more variables at that level, but all cultural attributes and all other ethnic info is at the civ level (as info stored in ethnic groups objects), not at the square nor province level.
3)It's "majorities" that's divided by classes, not ethnic groups. Classes objects should be treated at the civ level, maybe as a sub-object of a "majorities object". The majorities object would be what in the govt model is called MCA (see govt model appendices).
4)Each class doesn't holds a "culture". Cultural info is stored in ethnic groups objects and majorities also holds some info too.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited July 07, 2000).]</font>

[F_Smith]

I'll go ahead and include a minimal 'Govt' object at the province level, for now. If only to hold tax rate. But it does leave open the possiblity to be able to model a 'city/state' confederacy type of Civ like the Ancient Greeks, in which each city/state has it's own, very different type of govt. Otherwise, there's just no way to fit Sparta and Athens in the same Civ . . .

Rodrigo:

Considering 'culture': In the code I have, you can, as scenario designer, choose to default all SocialClass Culture attributes to that of the 'Civ'-level culture. But you aren't forced to do so.

About the next, I'm confused. I don't see how the code can work this way, actually, but I probably missed something.

Each turn, all people in a mapsquare must be 'looped thru' only once. That means a 'hierarchy' of encapsulation, to my mind, is a must. I have assumed so far that in a turn we will:

1) Loop thru all EGs in a MapSquare.

2) Loop thru all 'SocialClasses' in an EG, and do 'turn' logic on those people.

There is not really a need for a 'majority' object, on the code level. 'EthnicGroups' are sub-divisions of that object, so the EG collection functionally *is* the 'Majority'. So that info, when needed, can be assembled. And the possibility for more control is there, for later.

Finally, each smallest group of people to be looped thru (SocialClass, in my assumptions above) will by necessity have to hold a reference to the Cultural attributes they will use during turn logic, for turn logic purposes. These can all be to the exact same 'Civ' level cultural attributes, as I said, in keeping with your vision.

But that is not the only possible way. More depth is available. The code will allow you to have an EG with 1000 people in a 'Warrior' class, 1000 people in an 'Asthetic' class and 1000 people in a 'Laborer' class, each with their own, distinct culture. Each with their own wants and needs. So you may be forced (if a scenario designers so chooses) to balance the wants and needs of these divergent groups of people.

Or, they can all simply be 'Etruscans', and use 'Etruscan' Cultural attributes, for gamers that want the simplicity.

Is this acceptable?

[axi]

The heat wave is raging here in Greece (today we reached 46 Celsius in Athens) and this virtually keeps me away from my computer, since the room is not air-conditioned. My summer vacations period commences on Saturday, so I may be generally more availiable, or I may be gone for a month; I have not made plans yet. On to the point:

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>This is the actual way that it was at many points in history, so I really objective a whole model being screwed up just so that Axi can have ideological purity in the model.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>
I will have to repeat myself, in order to make things clear. <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>I don't understand why Mark and Rodrigo are so afraid of my reactions to their thoughts about the Middle Class. Do I look like a fanatic?
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>
I did not create this model, so I would not have any rights of mental ownership on it, even if I aknowledged the existence of such rights. What I was trying to underline is the real IMHO cause for the existance of classes in a society, which is the differences in economic role rather than in the income. I think that this point is well understood, so if there is a Middle Class after all, it's origine will not be in the range of it's income but in it's source. I have already described in which way a whole social spectrum, ranging from the lowest income to the highest can be divided in as much as four sections, the middle two consisting the so called middle class. In order that the income range has any meaning in class repartitions we have to assume the same consumption/investment ratio, the same labor to capital ratio, the same revenue for capital invested for everybody inside the spectrum and finally that nobody works more than he needs to pay for his consumption, even if he is able to do so. If all these conditions are met, then income is the sole factor that determines in which class a person belongs.

This accounts for all kinds of historical references that one can imagine. The peasants of Mark's example, since they are independent, they are actually Middle Class, belonging to the third group of the spectrum (according to my definition), although their income is at subsistence level. This happens because the primary sector has (had) a much higher labor to capital ratio than say the tertiary sector. All the peasants needed was the land (which in the primary sector may be considered as the natural resources of the production function), a little infrastructure and tools (the capital) and lots of working hands (the labor). He who can provide, by himself or by trading what is missing, all three factors, owns the machine. These people were independant farmers - they owned their farms. If they were seamen, providing transportation for merchant activities (services, ala tertiary sector), their production function would require more capital (a ship) than what they could afford, so they couldn't own the enterprise. The shipowner would provide the capital needed and would pay the seamen for their labor. He would then be true UC (if he were just the owner) or independent MC (if he were the captain, working - by need, not by whim - in his vessel). A company executive, with the same income with the captain, would also be MC (since he will undoubtadly have stocks or sth - in other words capital invested), but will in the same time be dependent, since he lacks the capital to open his own firm, so he needs to work for others. His only difference with his employees would be that they have no stocks - no capital. As you can see, LCRs can be very different from time to time and from trade to trade, even in the same sector.

Now, how do we turn this into a game? When it comes to wrap things up in a code many questions rise. FSmith, from a programmer's point of view, has bumped up a few. How do we define classes and how many do we need? Is class distinction only based in economy? How do the other classes stand up to this - how do we define their roles? What is their contribution and what distinctions can be made, based on the different social contributions of each class? Shouldn't we keep the class system a bit flexible, so that alternative societies can be modeled by other visionaries?

What can belong in this system? With italics is what we have decided so far.

Contributions
Labor - Economic contribution, needed by the production function.
Capital - Economic contribution, needed by the production function.
Sites - Economic contribution, needed by the production function, but only for the primary sector, since the secondary needs only extracted resources and both the secondary and the tertiary have unlimited sites.
Administration - Social contribution, providing guidance and decision making, according or opposing the society's values.
Security - Social contibution, needed to assure the society's survival and independance.
Ethics - Social contibution, needed to form and maintain a set of values and beliefs.
Innovation - Social (?) contribution, needed for the progress of the society, socially and technologically, which affects economy as well, throught the production function.
More???

Classes
a) Plain
Labor Class - Provides only Labor
Capitalist Class - Provides only Capital
Military Class - Provides only Security
Religious Class - Provides only Ethics
Bureaucratic Elite - Provides only Administration
Landowning Nobility - Provides only Sites
Scientific Elite - Provides only Innovation[/i]
b) Complex
Upper Class - Provides Capital + Sites
Middle Class - Labor + Capital + Sites
Intellectual Elite - Innovation + Ethics
Enterpreneur Class - Administation + Innovation
Feudal Nobility - Sites + Administration + Security
Religious Warriors Class - Security + Ethics
More???

Note: As an afterthought, doesn't this seem deja-vu? These seven contributions I just mentioned, and the corresponding plain classes, don't they seem familiar? You see, this reminds me very much of SMAC (original) and it's seven factions. If you grant that the Hive represents Labor and the Gaians represent Sites, all the others are obvious. It seems like the classes from our model found out their differences on their way to AC and, led by extremists, formed the seven warring factions (in a very kitch - american way I must add http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif). I think that Brian Reynolds and his team subconsciously tapped into the essence of the powers that be in the world. In some societies, some contributions are considered much more important than others. So how can the same model represent two elementally different societies, such as the Middle Ages (where Land was everything) and the 21st century (where Science will be everything)? But on with my main line of thought...

These lists could be extended indefinitely, especially if we were to add more outlandish contributions such as Magic (Mysticism). The fact is that if there is no class specialised for it, the contribution would be considered common. If f.e. there is no class providing Ethics, then everybody is considered to develop his own, if no class provides Capital, there is common ownership of the means of production, if no class provides Administration, there is anarchy (in the primitive or the utopian sense) and so on. In every case, the number of classes should remain at a minimum. Including Plain Classes (or complex that have a monopoly on all their contributions such as the UC until now) is an easy task. Including Complex Classes would be a very tricky in the details and in the best case it will be as hard to do as with the Middle Class. The problem with non-economic contributions and non-demographic classes (classes whose contributions are economic) is that there is no production function with which to evaluate their contributions and derive their revenues. And if we cannot derive their revenues, we can have no demographic share for them, no PCI, nothing but a nominal + a de facto Political Power, a cultural profile and some PAFs. Then we admit that not all classes are essentially the same and we divide along the lines of social/economic contributions, which feels bad. Because if we lived in a spiritual rather than material society, social contributions would be valued more than the economic ones.

In order to prevent Rodrigo and/or Mark from totally freaking out, I will surpass this issue from the time being and concentrate on the MC (Let this be the abbreviation for it from now on, the Military Class can be known as Warriors Class - WC http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif). The problem is how do we divide the income spectrum, so that it's form corresponds to the attributes of the classes. I have tried to achieve this with the two Plain Classes, but I still don't know if this works. Below I present one case of class distribution, along the line of percentile contribution of Labor and Capital to their income, which is more correspondent to the political profile than the plain income range (the cantilever rule applies). The spectrum in these examples consists of 5 groups, but one could have much more, if one wants to do number crunching. The population is 50 heads (50.000 people) and I assumed ID=8.
_____________________________________________________________
000% - 18 (18-0) -------- LC=36%
025% - 14 (10,5-3,5) ----------------------- LCdem=70% --- wages=22,6% --- LCpci=0,32xPCI
050% - 10 (5-5) ---------- MC=60%
075% - 06 (1,5-4,5) ------------------------- UCdem=30% --- profits=77,4% --- UCpci=2,58xPCI
100% - 02 (0-2) ---------- UC=4%
_____=50_____________=100%__________=100%_________=100%

The problem is that in our game the spectrum will not be given but required. I also think that ID will not be given too, what will probably be given by the econ model is the wages/profits analogy and from that, in combination with the essential demographic shares, ID and the PCIs will be derived. But how can the existance of the MC also be derived from this? I am still pretty confused about this.

------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by axi (edited July 07, 2000).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by axi (edited July 07, 2000).]</font>

[Mark_Everson]

Axi:

Good luck on being productive in the heat!

Middle class at subsistence level seems wrong to me because of my notion of what MC means... But we have to cut some corners, and I think your approach will work, and give most of the benefits we want. It would handle the class dynamics of my Roman example ok IMO. Rodrigo, what do you think?

I didn't really understand the example breakdown of the WC fully. The general idea seems valid, although I'm not sure all the detail is necessary.

[F_Smith]

Feedback wanted, please:

Clash Object/Scenario Editor, Mark I


http://home.austin.rr.com/lostmerchant/Clash/Editor/ClashEditor.html

Just a test for compatability. Please hit this page, and if you experience any errors or bugs, post them in one of the 'coders' threads.

Not any real functionality yet, other than being able to add a basic 'Ethnic Group' to a few basic 'MapSquares'. But updates coming along soon.

[axi]

Mark: Could you please send me that spreadsheet modelling production in clash?

I am currently making a draft of what could be the socio-politico-economic aspect of the game in a spreadsheet of my own (in two versions - with or without the Middle Class) and I want to verify it's compatibility.

As it seems, introducing one or more Middle Classes is not so difficult after all, it just involves more number crunching for the computer to do. The trickiest part is to agree to a definition of what is the Middle Class.

More on this later...

PS: It is still hot over here, but thanks to the wind, it ranges below 40 Celsius. But, because of the wind, there are some large forest fires raging uncontrollable. One can't have everything...

------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[roquijad]

F_Smith:
That's a toy I think we'll enjoy playing with... Great! http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif I didn't find problems playing with it, as long as the edit/build buttons on the left were meant to do nothing at this time...

I'll answer coding things in the other thread.

Axi:
1)You don't look like a fanatic. I'm not either affraid of your reactions. I actually enjoy many of them.... http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif It's your kind of socialistic ideology that gives these topics a greater flavor and makes us predict what you like and what not... http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif

2)I didn't understand well the table of your example.

3)military=WC... simply a genius! http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif


Everybody:
I'm going to merge in this post some coding issues with the current discussion on the middle class. I've problems organizing things in my mind, so expect some chaos and rumbling...

Here I go: The govt model has a great weakness in "expandability". While developing it, I (and I guess Axi too) never thought about the posibility of having an arbitrary number of classes or to add/change/remove classes. After seeing OC3 govt model approach, I realized some people might desire to have lots of classes. In OC3 they're already talking about "large farmers", "small farmers", etc, which for my taste is too much detail, but it doesn't look bad for others. On the coding side, it won't be easy for a scenario developer to create other classes and their behavior, and most of times it would need extensive coding by the scenario designer himself, which is not my mental idea of scenario designing. This happens because in the current govt model classes' behavior is not created straight forward and in the same fashion for all of them. UC and LC behavior is given by a set of cultural characteristics called MCA, while the RC takes values from another set called RCM. Each, MCA and RCM, are computed using very different procedures. Also, the military class uses UC and LC values plus a special mathematical formulation for choosing ideologies. So, almost each class have its own way to compute its behavior, and this not only includes different variables, but also very different procedures. This usage of different modeling for each class makes deeply harder an attempt to create a totally new political environment. Adding a new class can be an imposible task for a model developer, unless it's very similar to one of the already existent classes.

On the other side, how the model uses "ideologies" presents another problem. Ideologies have fixed values and they should cover all the relevant regimes the game is expected to have. If a scenario designer chooses to have 10 classes instead of the original setting, the number of ideologies needed for the minimum flavor increases Extensively.

Ideologies have yet another problem. For representative regimes, pol.power shares must go according to demographic shares. Since pol.power shares are fixed in ideologies, this means the ideology itself needs to determine demographic shares, so coherency can be obtained. This isn't much of a problem with the current classes we're dealing with (excluding middle class) if we accept demographic shares are given by the values of PP, EP and SP, but if now one imagines adding/changing classes, then the relationship between demographic shares and ideologies can be very complicated.

IMO the govt model is simply not expandible. If this characteristic is a must in the team's view, then a radical change is needed in the model. I never thought about expanding classes, so it's my mistake.

I agree with Axi about "plain" and "complex" classes. Having the plain classes you guarantee the game has what's needed as a minimum, while having/adding complex classes is tricky and it's unclear where to cut and stop adding classes, because the possibilities are endless.


Now, about adding the middle class to this fixed, not expandible model, I think we can find a way to do it. But I'm having second thoughts about it. First, why do we really need it? Mark, you said there can be some problems in the econ model. What are they? Second, the typical concept of the middle class won't match with the modeling. This happens because I agree with Axi about defining class behavior based on econ role and not on income, while the typical idea of the middle class is an income category. Defining classes behavior based on econ role is IMO a must. In a kind of socialism where the govt forces UC and LC income to be more similar, it won't be true their mentalities would become similar too, so income doesn't define behavior. Third, if econ role defines behavior, then the middle class provides capital and income. The exact amount it provides of each will be an arbitrary decision. Depending on this decision the middle class would have different behaviors and then I wonder what flavor are we looking for this class to add.

I'd be happy to see more arguments on the real need for the middle class.


On another note, probably names of classes should be changed so people can see clearer their role. Instead of UC and LC, we should call them something like Aristocray and Labor Force, FE.

[Lord God Jinnai]

rodrigo:
-----
Here I go: The govt model has a great weakness in "expandability". While developing it, I (and I guess Axi too) never thought about the posibility of having an arbitrary number of classes or to add/change/remove classes. After seeing OC3 govt model approach, I realized some people might desire to have lots of classes. In OC3 they're already talking about "large farmers", "small farmers", etc, which for my taste is too much detail, but it doesn't look bad for others. On the coding side, it won't be easy for a scenario developer to create other classes and their behavior, and most of times it would need extensive coding by the scenario designer himself, which is not my mental idea of scenario designing. This happens because in the current govt model classes' behavior is not created straight forward and in the same fashion for all of them. UC and LC behavior is given by a set of cultural characteristics called MCA, while the RC takes values from another set called RCM. Each, MCA and RCM, are computed using very different procedures. Also, the military class uses UC and LC values plus a special mathematical formulation for choosing ideologies. So, almost each class have its own way to compute its behavior, and this not only includes different variables, but also very different procedures. This usage of different modeling for each class makes deeply harder an attempt to create a totally new political environment. Adding a new class can be an imposible task for a model developer, unless it's very similar to one of the already existent classes.

On the other side, how the model uses "ideologies" presents another problem. Ideologies have fixed values and they should cover all the relevant regimes the game is expected to have. If a scenario designer chooses to have 10 classes instead of the original setting, the number of ideologies needed for the minimum flavor increases Extensively.

Ideologies have yet another problem. For representative regimes, pol.power shares must go according to demographic shares. Since pol.power shares are fixed in ideologies, this means the ideology itself needs to determine demographic shares, so coherency can be obtained. This isn't much of a problem with the current classes we're dealing with (excluding middle class) if we accept demographic shares are given by the values of PP, EP and SP, but if now one imagines adding/changing classes, then the relationship between demographic shares and ideologies can be very complicated.

IMO the govt model is simply not expandible. If this characteristic is a must in the team's view, then a radical change is needed in the model. I never thought about expanding classes, so it's my mistake.
-----
IMO some kinda balance is needed. It doesn't haveto be as customizable as the technology model is (which you can add/delete/change any application tech and probably and basic tech, pretty much anything but the technology engine itself).

You said yourself you don't want scerio designers to get frustrated at designing new kindof classes for scerios. IMO if you want to design a class for a scerio that cannot be done any other way, you should be able to do that. FE: One might want a small, but non-the-less important "Gestapo" type class or in an expansion for magic and such a wizard class (which i want and if there was an add-on for this could probably boost clash's userbase alot, atleast the people i know,but that's for later since right now were working on clash in the real world).

-----
I agree with Axi about "plain" and "complex" classes. Having the plain classes you guarantee the game has what's needed as a minimum, while having/adding complex classes is tricky and it's unclear where to cut and stop adding classes, because the possibilities are endless.
-----
Here's an idea: Have the 7 basic classes be unchangable in the program itself, ie scerio designers haveto work with that (expasions maybe might add pyschic and wizard classes, but like i stated earlier, that's FAR down the road). Then if they want more classes, they can make them from the more complex class part. Just an idea, so if it can't be done oh well.

[F_Smith]

Agreed, 'Ideology' is a problem.

I'm stuck on trying to code that now. I'm thinking on my feet, but how about this, it's very similar to what you have above, but reorganized --

Each SocialClass has/chooses an Ideology, as above.

An Ideology holds:

1) Tolerance for ruler absolutism (a %?).
2) Their preference on govt spending (econ, social, military).
3) A list of Social classes the ideology has an opinion about. If no opinion, then a 'default' value will be used.

Then a Govt has a 'PowerStructure' object, which defines which SocialClasses have which level/percent of political power in that govt?

Then using these two, you could achieve all you asked above, and still expand it to include any number and type of Social Classes.

Perhaps I'll try this. Maybe it'll fail miserably. I'm just not sure how else to proceed, and I feel like coding. What the heck, I'll give it a spin.

That's what a prototype is for, eh? So that after seeing what you don't want, it'll be more obvious what the right way to do it is!

[roquijad]

STOP THE WORLD!!! I WANT TO GET OFF!!

Yes, ideologies are a problem for model expandability, but you're taking a rather dramatic way out! If you change what an ideology is (holds), you're changing one of the cornerstones of the model... I simply cannot imagine what am I going to do with your invention! For a start, the main reason for introducing the concept of ideologies in the model was that it was going to hold a political structure (classes and their respective pol.powers). Now you put totally different info. You also are making each class choose an ideology, while several ideologies can be supported by the same class. Your prototype will be something totally different from what I planned!

SOMEBODY PLEASE STOP F_SMITH !!! http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif

[Lord God Jinnai]

If u think ideologies are the core problem to expandibility, then perhaps u should rethink how the are implimented, but still your right about F_Smith.

[axi]

Rodrigo:

1) I didn't understand the table of my example either. http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif It is now obsolete so forget about it. It has grown since... I have everything in an Excel spreadsheet and I am finishing details. (btw, can you help me with a macro I want to make, to make turns pass?)

2) Currently, the definition of the MC that I am using is being economically independant, possesing the capital to employ their own labor. That means that they will lean ideologically from time to time towards the UC or the LC, while in an earlier approach, their income was strictly 50-50, and so would be their profile. Any more ideas are welcome, after you all have seen my progress.

3) It's a hard time for us commies my friend... http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif

[Mark_Everson]

Hi everybody:

Man, there has been a lot of action since I was last here... I'm going to respond to the coding debate in the other thread.

Unless I'm missing something, the only other thing that I really need to respond to is Rodrigo's question about the problems in the Econ model when there is only a lower and upperclass. (And also taking as the definition that the lower class cannot control any capital or land.) I have already described the problem in my post of July 5. I will elaborate on it a little bit here. The main problem comes near subsistence. If we assume that the UC controls all capital and land, it is natural to assume that they get a part of the profits proportional to the capital and land value in the production process. So I have assumed in trying to match the economic and government models that the class that controls a particular input to the production process gets a proportional amount of the production to call theirs. To figure out the value of each input to the production process (labor, capital, and land in the farm sector for example) I assume that the marginal productivity due to that resource indicates its value in the production process.

To make this concrete, the values that are at the top of the Econ spreadsheet for the very poor low-tech province show the extra amount produced if adding a single unit of each of labor, land, and capital in the farming sector. These amounts are 3.68 for labor, 0.93 from land, and 0.81 from capital. So if we assume that the UC gets all the food produced due to its contributions (both land and capital) in the current model it will get (0.93+ 0.81)/(3.68+ 0.93+ 0.81) = 32% of the food credited to it. Only the remaining 68% would be what the LC could call its own. So even Before Any Taxation the food left to the LC would be 68% x 5.27 = 3.6 units of food. This is on the brink of catastrophic starvation! (4 units of food per head are required for minimal nutrition and no net population growth) At this level of food the population will be declining approximately 1% per year! And this is a province with pretty good agricultural land, it would be much worse in a less well-endowed province.

So that is why I think we need one of two things, either an LC that allows for some control of capital, or a middle class. I think Axi's suggestion about calling free subsistence farmers middle class is basically a good one... We could also mess around with the way the Econ model works to avoid this problem, but the Econ model also has a lot of work in it, and is somewhat difficult to balance. I have already cited numerous other arguments for why a middle class is, I think, a good idea, and I won't repeat them here.

[axi]

Mark: Thanx for sending me the econ spreadsheet. There are some big issues about it's compatibility with the govt model. I will discuss them presently. Hang on for a couple of hours...

Ok, I sent my work to Mark and Rodrigo and I posted my comments and explanations in a new thread. I am going to be away for the weekend. I hope that you can cope without me for a while.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by axi (edited July 14, 2000).]</font>

[roquijad]

I don't see a real need for the Middle Class, but I guess we can just go for it so everybody is happy. I find more interesting Mark's proposal to find a way to build class' behavior in a more general way to increase flexibility. I think it can be done and I'll see how to do it.

As for the discussion about ideologies, I believe the concept is right, so we need ideologies in the model somehow. Ideologies fix the problem of classes caring only about themselves, so you can find a happy WC in a regime with low WC pol.power if they actually believe that's good. Ideologies are IMO the most important ingredient we added compared with the old model and they provide several other good features such as a true-to-life modeling of revolutions. Maybe actual implementation can be changed, preserving the concept, so more classes can be added without destroying the core of what they're giving us now. I'll think about other ways to implement them. If you can give it a thought too, Axi, it'll be appreciated.

[roquijad]

Hi F_Smith,

I tried to play with the beast last night and windows crashed while doing it. I'll try again tonight to give you more feedback.

As for the questions you rise now,

1)It's perfect how you have it now. We haven't invented a way (in terms of equations) to make a class choose a desired tax rate. Probably it won't be ness. either. Keept it how you have it.

2)There're some good reasons for the ranges I chose. It has to do with the outcomes needed. Preserve ranges as they're.

3)Job? I don't know what you mean, but if it's something you'll keep hidden and I can still be thinking of our regular social classes, I don't mind.

4)Yes, they have to sum 100%. The numbers come from a math process considering cultural values, ruler's preferences and ideologies values. If for the moment you prefer to keep it editable so we can put whatever numbers we want, that's alright. Implementation of the math process can come later.

[F_Smith]

Hi, Rodrigo:

Oh, god, I'm sorry it crashed Windoze. That's not suppose to happen with Java, altho using IE as the platform can create problems. If it happens again, please let me know. Do be warned, the GUI stuff is *very* slow to load . . . my webspace is the freebie space that comes with my cable modem, and it's poor. Altho on my machine here at home it loads in about 15-20 seconds (at work it takes about 30-40 seconds).

The downloadable zip (which doesn't have the newest stuff yet, maybe I'll put that together tommorrow) has an application that alleviatest that problem, if you don't have a cablemodem yourself.

I am dying to get your feedback. I'm sure I've missed the boat on a few things, and I'm anxious to finish this baby and get on to other models.

Just f.y.i. -- for 'filing' purposes I've seperated the 'economic classes' (uc/mc/lc/slaves) from the 'job/social classes' (religious, military, govt, etc). They'll act the same, from ya'lls standpoint.

[F_Smith]

Okay:

The beast is about ready to be put to work. After some cosmetic cleanup, I'll be spending time on the turnhandler code tonight. Which leaves me with a few questions:

<ol>
Tax Rate -- Right now, the govt's tax rate policy automatically becomes the ruler's tax rate pref after one turn. I was wondering if the majority EthnicGroup (in the proportions of the govt's power structure) should have a say in taxation.
Numbers -- As I look at and play with this, it is slightly confusing for slavery and a few others to not use the 0%-100% range. Might just be me, but should we standardize the numbers?
Economic Class v. 'Job' -- it made most sense, from a data storage viewpoint, to seperate these two. But this will be seamless and invisible to the player. The values will cumulate and look exactly as ya'll have laid out.
Political Power Structure -- right now, the player can set the %'s. I assume that they have to add up to 100% total (might have been in the text and I missed it)? I think perhaps I'm suppose to have a selection of govt types (the ones in the 'ideologies' section of the govt post) for the player to chose from? If so, anyone want to come up with values there?
[/list=a]

[roquijad]

GOVT MODEL UPDATE


For the last weeks I've been considering how to increase flexibility and scalability concerning social classes. This was triggered by F_Smith and others who wanted to see more classes than the ones I and Axi considered originally for the model. Unfortunately, I don't bring good news. I decided to change a couple of things to allow some more flexibility, but it's far from being what some of you wanted.

In order to let you all know why adding more classes is no easy task, I'm gonna enter in some details. Hopefuly this will help understanding the problem.

From the computational point of view, it's quite easy to add any number of social classes. You just have to add more objects and that's it. The problem comes in modeling classes' behavior. Objects hold two things. Data and procedures for the data. Procedures take data and process it with some equations to produce something we call "class' behavior", which is nothing but another set of numbers we interpret as classes' decisions. In order to have an arbitrary number of classes AND their behaviors, we need equations (procedures) that are common to all of them. Having common equations for all social classes is what makes possible scalability, because if you need to code new procedures for new behaviors each time you add a social class, then you have to admit there's no real scalability.

Having a common set of equations for all social classes assumes their behavior is similar. In that case it's the data (class' attributes) that produces the small differences. This is FE what we see in the military area. Each time we want to add a new unit, we just specify its attributes (attack strength, speed, etc) and the game engine uses the same procedures with these new numbers to generate the unit's behavior in the battle field. And this is good because military units are indeed very similar. Having a common set of equations for all units (of most of them) makes sense and therefore you have scalability.

Unfortunately this is not the case with social classes. If one starts to imagine classes like "farmers", "scientists", "religious warriors", "land-based aristocracy", "trade-based aristocracy", "freed slaves", "greenpeace fighters", "jedi knights", "elves", "robots", and a very long "etc", then it's pretty obvious that behaviors can get to be very different. If you try to create a set of equations valid for all of them it becomes a monumental task. Having a set of equations common to all classes was very problematic when I was developing the model and I only had 5 classes! I actually didn't achieve it. I found that to have a reasonable and believable class behavior for each of them I needed class-specific procedures in many parts of the game. Generic (or parametric)equations are hard to create, specially if you want social classes to have a sophisticated behavior like the one we're trying to implement.

Equation sophistication is just a part of the problem. Data input you need for behavioral equations will not be entirely held in classes' attributes. Scientists will be interested in tech variables, aristocrats in economic data, greepeace in ecological data, etc. A generic class behavior equation would actually have to access all available info in the game!

It's the nature of human behavior that complicates things. It can be so complex and different from group to group that it's ambicious to resume it all in a few equations, even if you are focusing only in some aspects of behavior.

Coding will allow us to create any number of social classes we want, but we have to realize this coding flexibility doesn't mean game flexibility. When a new social class is added, it will use the same procedures older ones used and so, class' behavior will be almost the same. The new social class is useless and senseless. It will behave as the others do, which means the game hasn't really changed. You can add 20 more classes and the same happens. We'd be fooling ourselves if we trust that adding more social_class objects will bring us new and different scenarios.

So, I'm sorry to say it, but the model doesn't have the capacity to scale up. One solution is to change the model and create a new one with a much simpler behavior for social classes. Simple enough so we can have generic procedures for all classes. But I wouldn't take that road. On one side the model will lose flavor and in the other it implies a more homogeneous behavior for all classes (as it happens with military units), and homogenity is the greatest enemy to social classes, because the fun in having more classes is having new behaviors.

The other solution is to allow scenario designers to code new behaviors. Add a class and code whatever it feels good for the class behavior. But, well, if players can get into coding, the word "game flexibility" takes another meaning...

This ends my explanation. Now I present to you the update to the govt model. It will allow having an arbitrary number of the so-called "economic classes". The model originally included the Upper Class and the Lower Class. With this update we can (if we want) include the Middle Class and as many other economic classes we want without reducing behavior flavor we have till now. The model, then, will have N economic classes, plus the Warriors Class (formerly known as Military Class), the Religious Class and the Bureaucratic Elite.

The update replaces UC and LC behavior equations with a generic set of behavior equations for "Socio-economic classes" (I hope the word "socio-economic" exists in english). I prefer the term "socio-economic" to simply "economic" because class behavior will be given by economic role AND cultural info. The scenario designer and we (when creating the "by default" game setting) have to choose a number of socio-economic classes and for each of them need only to specify 1)the degree in which the socio-economic class controls kapital and 2)the degree in which it provides labor. The exact measure in which both variables will be handled is still TBD depending on how they best serve the econ model. Political and economic behavior for socio-economic classes will be given using these two variables and cultural info from the social model. Equations for socio-economic classes' behavior will wait until we decide how variables for provision of kapital and labor will be measured. Equations shouldn't be a problem once that is solved.

One of the problems of adding more classes was ideologies. Ideologies were meant to have a list of all social classes and their respective political powers. Adding more social classes would make the list longer, which isn't a problem, but would complicate defining how any govt type should look like regarding pol.power distribution and would also encourage the introduction of an important amount of extra ideologies. To solve this, instead of a list of all classes, ideologies will posses this info:

Ruler's pol.power
People's pol.power
Capitalists pol.power
Religious Class pol.power
Warrior Class pol.power

(if you don't know why the Bureaucratic Elite doesn't appear here, refer to the model document)
This means Upper Class pol.power and Lower Class pol.power were replaced by People's pol.power and Capitalists pol.power. People's pol.power is pol.power granted to the masses in terms "one man, one vote". This means a social class has access to this pol.power proportionally to its demographic share. The RC and WC are very small because they're respectively the religious leaders and the high officers of the army. Then, demographically they're assumed to have a share of 0%. Then, only socio-economic classes have relevant demographic sizes and therefore only them have access to People's pol.power. Demographic shares for each socio-economic class are given by a TBD procedure currently in discussion in the govt-econ thread.

Capitalists pol.power is the pol.power granted to socio-economic classes that provide kapital. These classes have access to this pol.power proportionally to the amount of kapital controlled.

Having ideologies defined like this implies that socio-economic classes have a total pol.power computed as the sum of the People's pol.power granted in terms of demography (which may be interpreted as "votes") and the Capitalists pol.power granted because of its control over kapital (which may be interpreted as aristocracy privieleges).

Just as an example, the ideology for a democracy would look like this:
Ruler's pol.power___________20%
People's pol.power__________80%
Capitalists pol.power_______0%
Religious Class pol.power___0%
Warrior Class pol.power_____0%

Even though Capitalists pol.power is null, socio-economic classes providing kapital have pol.power anyway through People's pol.power, but only proportionally to their demographic share. In this way, you can see why Capitalists pol.power can be considered a priveledge. It gives more power than the demographic share.

Finally, this change in how ideologies are defined implies a change in how Warrior Class' mentality is computed. It was formerly computed as partly influenced by the Upper Class and partly by the Lower Class. It will be now computed using People's pol.power, Capitalists pol.power, demographic shares and kapital shares in a way I won't detail now.

One advantage of the new way to specify ideologies is that computing demographic shares can be (if desired) totally independent from ideologies themselves (that is, independent from the economic variables ideologies specify). In the old system, it was very "advisable" to compute demographic shares using ideologies info to achieve consistency.

It should be said that in order to make this update useful, the govt-econ interactions must be able to manipulate an arbitrary number of socio-economic classes. Since that thread is still under development, I guess we're still on time to get that done the right way.

Comments?

[Lord God Jinnai]

I think there is a need for the scientific class. Either that or drop the religion class because you are unfairly treating those 2 by giving one the ability to have a ruling class and the other not. This is very important as we move into the future because there are many cases where scientists who would have much political clout in a system could increase spending for new technologies and that. Not doing this you are saying its not possible for the scientific elite to have power like their usual rivals in religions. This i believe will be very unbalancing as there are things only scientific elite that have control of part of a society can produce or direct the civs progression into the future.

Bottom line: Either drop the religion class (which i doubt you will) or add a scientific one. This is more than me just asking for more flavor, but actual gaming mechanics of how the model will effect stuff.

[F_Smith]

rodrigo:

I like it. I like it a lot.

I have to disagree, what you've built scales nicely and would allow a large number of different types of 'social classes' to be defined that acted very differently. Varying the values of the ideology produces a very different social class behavior.

I like 'ruler', 'people', 'capital' as an object design for political power. Then including any collection of 'social classes' defined for that game is fine.

We can define yours as the 'basic' social classes, for now -- in fact, I'll do that soon, in the beast.

And other 'social classes' with their own ideologies can be defined. Adding a 'Scientific community' social class can be a matter of defining it's ideology.

Or am I wrong?

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

Obviously you thought about this a lot. Great solution!

I don't want to muddy the issue any, but I had one vague thought. For arbitrary class behavior of the 'scientist' type we might be able to use the tags that the tech system already has. If mostly using the tags some simple system that fit with your existing equations could be designed, then all you would have to do is interface with the 'hard science' tag (don't think there is one...). We are trying to keep the list of tags down to 10-20 or so, but still that would give potentially 10-20 additional classes that could be added based on tags. FE farmers... The Elves are clearly on their own http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif

I don't mean to push, this is more in the line of brainstorming http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif

[Richard Bruns]

Mark: How would you use the tech tags to determine class behavior? They would be a good guide for determining what the class would invest in, but I cannot imagine how they would determine all of the behaviors of a group of people. They were never designed to do that.

[roquijad]

All:
It seems my proposal for having an arbitrary number of socio-economic classes is finding support. That's fine. But I was also seeking your agreement about the imposibility of having an arbitrary number of social classes (elves, etc). Did I convince you?

About the scientific class: If we accept the number of classes is a key decision, then we can start discussing about it. If, as a team, we feel a sci class is needed, then I have no problem generating equations for its behavior. Just please let's focus first in the arbitrary vs fixed number of social classes. IMO this is a more important subject and relevant for coding matters.

F_Smith:
Based on your comments above and some you gave in the object builder thread, I believe you have a little confusion with ideologies. I'll give a brief explanation below about them. If this confusion of your was only in my imagination, just ignore me.

Class behavior and ideologies:
Ideologies are a description of how the govt should work, regarding 1)who has the political power, and 2)what economic regime to implement. Variables describing an ideology are the same for all of them. Only numbers change from one to another. FE, a capitalist democracy ideology and a communist dictatorship ideology:

Variable__________capit.democr______comm.dict.
Ruler's pol.power__________20%_________70%
Capitalists pol.power______0%__________0%
Religious Class pol.power__0%__________0%
Warriors Class pol.power___0%__________30%
People's pol.power_________80%_________0%
Private Property___________90%_________0%
Social Policies____________15%_________100%
Economic Planning__________X%__________Y%

(I didn't put values for EP because we're not sure anymore how to handle this variable and it's likely to disappear from the game)

Just like the two examples above, we'll have around 20 ideologies in the game covering all the govt types we've seen in history. The values for each ideology are fixed during gameplay. Ideologies will be discovered as techs, just how in civ2 you discover "monarchy", "communism", etc.

Each social class has a behavior (or mentality). A social class has NOT an ideology. A social class' mentality covers several things, like its preference about slavery (not covered in ideologies as can be seen). As a part of social class' behavior, class members choose the ideology of its preference (among those discovered). FE, Lower Class members in western countries would be inclined to choose democracy as their preferred ideology. The model actually allows classes to be divided. Some class members may choose democracy while others choose communism. FE, the following is possible:

Class______communism_____democracy____monarchy
WarriorClass___5%_____________85%________10%
LowerClass___26%____________71%________3%

which means, FE, that 26% of the people within the lower class supports communism.

Class preferences for available ideologies vary depending on things like culture. Because of this, as culture changes, preferences do too. People can support monarchy in ancient times, but dislike it in modern ages.

The above shows that behavior/mentality is not equal to ideology. That's why a phrase like "Adding a 'Scientific community' social class can be a matter of defining it's ideology." is not correct. The sci class has a behavior which may include things like a preference for scientific investements. The sci class can choose, as only a part of its wider behavior, an ideology. This choice represents the sci class preference for govt type. In fact, several classes can choose the same ideology and still have different behaviors in other aspects.

Class behavior/mentality and the concept of ideology are different things.

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

I was not suggesting the scientists class as something that should be in the basic game. Rather it was just an example of something a scenario designer might like to do. I did not mean to throw off the discussion of the basic system you outlined, which I think is really good, with my comments about flexibility. My idea was simply one that to model a "landed aristocracy" class that one could basically use something that extends the behavior of the UC. So our landed aristocracy class would simply be a class that behaves like the UC in most ways, except that some fraction of its happiness with the government would involve increases in economic behavior related to "farming" tags in the technology model.

I agree with you completely that the classes that you outlined should be all there is for the basic game. I just thought I would get my suggestion in about the flexibility part well you were still thinking about it. That way if the suggestion worked, we wouldn't have to backtrack yet again.

[Richard Bruns]

Elves would be a seperate race, not a different social class. The population model is designed to create and model nonhuman races. The Elven race would probably contain the same social classes the Human race would.

I think I understand the difficulties involved with creating an arbitrary number of social classes. In addition to interacting with things like the economic model, the classes interact with each other. Thus, the complexity of the system increases exponentially as more classes are added.

However, I think we should include the functionality anyway. The ability to design custom social classes is a powerful design tool. Perhaps the designer of a modern scenario would want to take out the Military Elite and replace it with Entertainer Elite. It would be hard to do it properly, but if the good Civ 2 scenarios are any indication, some people are willing to put lots of time and care into scenarios.

My General Policy: If the programmer says it is feasable and the model lead can add it to the model without much trouble, I say go for it.

[Lord God Jinnai]

My view is we should stick with what we have (except for adding a scientific Elite, which i stongly think we need...i'll explain why later), but allow those really adventuresome people out there the ability to make new social classes. This doesn't haveto be something an average Joe can do, but someone who is good at working with the scerio already and knows a little of scripting language perhaps. Anyway such things aren't uncommon for varying levels of complexity in designiong scerios in games, in fact its quite common because it gives new people a chance to explore the process of making a scerio while more advanced users can get more into the guts and add stuff others never thought of.

But if that can't be the case, I'll go for a fixed set vs more arbitrary (so long as there is the sci elite)...besides most of the stuff was either ethnic groups or races which are handled elsewhere.

[F_Smith]

Rodrigo:

I think I do understand. Let me verify:

I need to give each civ a collection of known 'ideologies', correct?

Then each 'social class' needs to pick from among those available 'ideologies', and store it's choice?

Should the ruler also chose an 'ideology'?

P.S. -- I still think custom social classes will be far easier than you realize. It's all based upon variables that can be manipulated. But that is certainly for later.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 15, 2000).]</font>

[Richard Bruns]

F_Smith: Was that a typo, or were you asking me about the social model? I had nothing to do with the guts of this model; I am only doing the demographics.

[F_Smith]

Richard:

Oops -- yes, that was suppose to be to Rodrigo.

Sorry.

[Lord God Jinnai]

This was copied from the social tech thread.

Yep you did point out a glaring flaw in my ideology design. Your right we should have 2 basic idea stuctures for ideologies, social and economic, but under social there can be more than 1. I'll take your example of a democratic military rule. Those are both social ideologies, each one seperate. So what we need is to define certain groups for each, FE you cannot want a momarchial oligarchy...that just doesn't make sence.
Right now there are 3 possible 4 groups for idelogies.
Group 1: Economic Ideology
Group 2: Ruling Class Ideology
Group 3: Ruling Style Ideology
Group 4: Misc (Maybe Ethical Ideology(ies))

Group 1 is basically how you want your ecomic situation to be done, planned or not.
Group 2 is what class should predominatly rule the society. This may seem to be redudant as each class would think itself should rule, but there are things like no one/everyone and in a few cases a class may think it best not to rule (with rulership comes responsibility after all). A RL situation is Afganistan (i believe thats the country) where there was a Military Coup. Anyway the military doesn't want to rule, but it doesn't want a corrupt civilian government to rule like was the case before. They are looking out for what is best for the nation, not themselves. Ir is the plan for them to stay in power only so long as nessasary. Things might change, but that is the ideology currently.
Group 3 is the method they rule by such as demorcary or fundimentalism
Group 4 is more of an on/off switch thing right now for things that don't fit clearly into the picture for this. Constitutions are an example. Like Rich stated, almost any, if not any, form of government can have a constitution of some sort. And the oppsoite is quite true also. One doesn't need a constitution for democracy or republic though all have them today. Rome and Athens didn't. That's what the plan i have so far, of course this is just my idea.

[roquijad]

F_Smith:

You got it. Just remember classes don't pick just one ideology. Whithin classes can be division as in my example above.

The ruler doesn't pick an ideology. At least human players won't. I don't know how AI players will be handled. (still unsolved). Players will put in the values for each individual variable in ideologies instead of picking the whole pre-set thing.
Allowing the player to choose each value for each of the variables in ideologies gives a huge of flexibility to the game. Even having a fix number of ideologies in the tech tree, the number of different govt types will be vast thanks to player intervention.

Mark (and all):
The thing is where the limit is drawn. We can have the landed aristocracy if behavioral equations take food production (for example) in consideration. A scientific class can exist if equations consider tech info. And so on. I know scenario designers can be interested in things like a sci-class or whatever. I'm saying we can't provide that flexibility without extremely complex equations accessing all sorts of info from other models. Richard said "My General Policy: If the programmer says it is feasable and the model lead can add it to the model without much trouble, I say go for it." I agree completely. But I have to say we cannot have whatever social class a designer may imagine.

If you all want a scientific class, I think we can make it. If you all want economic classes with some more specific behavior (traders class, land-aristocracy class, etc), I think we can make it too. What I'm saying is we can have several more classes, but each one (sometimes with luck, each family of classes) needs time to be developed (creating equations for them). So we have to draw a line. We need to decide what classes will be there (in all games, not only the "basic" game).

All I'm saying is the model has no flexibility (almost not at all). The social classes we choose, those will be there in every game. The only flexibility the model has now is allowing an arbitray number of socio-economic classes. But all games will have socio-economic classes (one or more).

[Lord God Jinnai]

I think if we're not going to have flexibility, then we need to have a sci elite class because this will be emensily important in future societies in some cases. I'm not going to push for anything beyond my models i know a lot about (such as mark's land aristorcracy) without knowing how it impacts the model and how it can't be handled otherwise. So if anybody wants something in, describe how it works and how it can't be achieved w/o it.

I'll now take my own advice:
Sci Elite is differnet from other classes currently out there is that it has one goal for the most part, to further the knowledge of science. This can me adapted to fit whatever the circumstances are, such as within religious tolerance, etc. But that is first and foremost and will usually go against such things.

Anyway sci elite don't care about ecomic situations, unless it directly effects them. Whereas most of the others are in for the short term gain, sci elite rarely are. They are willing to do whatever they can to further the knowledge of the universe and beyond. That isn't to say they don't have other goals, but that is what differentiates them from other classes, something no other class can really mimic, the devoting to learning more about science and technology, even if it is not culturally, politically or economically viable right this minute or in the near future.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited August 15, 2000).]</font>

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

I admit to not being familiar with all the mathematical guts of the model. If you say we can't have flexibility, then we can't have it. In my example of the landed aristocracy class, I was only citing them as an example of flexibility. I don't think they in particular are more necessary than any of a handful of other possible classes I might select as important.

I support Rodrigo's classes as they are for the base game, which is what we are going to be working on for a Long time. For the "economic classes" I think we should stick to upper, middle, and lower class at least for the first round of playtesting of the model.

I very much disagree that we should have a "scientist" class specifically. If we were going to add one more class there are 10 or 15 more important ones IMO in terms of history. And I'm a scientist! The fact is that scientists have had extremely little political power over almost the entire sweep of history. LGJ, I think I and most of the other members of the project view Clash as primarily a historical game. If we could have the flexibility to add lots of classes, I certainly think scientists for future scenarios should be among them. But it looks as though that is not going to be possible. At least without some very clever footwork by scenario designers.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well that's the thing. If its all or nothing, we should put in now what we forsee the player may want to use. We can't forsee everything ofcourse, but we atleast try.

I mean i would also say adding a wizard class would be good then as an option soley for scerio designing. Either that or make a scripting language where they can.

[F_Smith]

1) For now, I'm moving the beast on without ideologies. We don't need them yet.

First, we're going to worry about how the govt policies play out. For now, we'll allow the tester/player to simply choose the govt type at will, without worrying about the people's govt choice. So you've got time to keep thinking along these lines.

2) This is just a suggestion, please don't take it as a challenge or anything -- but perhaps this type of 'ideology' object isn't really the proper way to handle a govt choice by the people during a popular revolution?

It doesn't seem to reflect how things actually happen. I don't think that the people of the French Revolution were screaming for Democracy, they just were dissatisfied and demanded change. Which in large part explains what happened.

I think that how it works even today is that when people are unhappy, they sieze on any change available. We must do something, this is something, therefore we must do this.

The actual direction of the change is entirely dependant on the individual that ends up with the most public support. Napolean. George Washington/Thomas Jefferson/etc. Lenin/Stalin.

The biggest difference between these revolutions was the goals of the men that lead them.

So, to sum up, I think that if people are "happy" (well fed and prosperous, and feel somewhat 'involved' in the national debate), they will not want govt change. Don't change horses in midstream, and all that. Only the ruler/rulers will attempt to affect change.

Until the people are unhappy. And then, they pick leaders (perhaps based upon nationality/religion/whatever). And those leaders set the course.

At least, that's what I see around me even today.

Please be kind in disagreeing . . .

[axi]

Wow! There is a major overhaul planned here and luckily I'm back to prevent it from going totally astray. http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif Rodrigo's line of thought needs a bit of expansion. This is my vision of a possible implementation. If my line of thought seems too messy, I beg your pardon; it is due to the slight fever. http://apolyton.net/forums/frown.gif

Rodrigo's idea to include a "People's power", shared by any demographic class, is really great. What really dissapointed me is the "Capitalist power" thingy which seems to be able to represent only a capitalist society, like the modern ones. As a Marxist, the first thing that came to my mind after reading the update is the case of a communist revolution: Marx has taught us that, during the transitional stage of communism, a "dictatorship of the proletariat" should be established, so no other economic class but the LC should hold pol.power (ideally, the LC should hold ALL the power, but in most known cases, the largest part of power was held by the ruler, the WC and the BE). But if we, in Clash, made people's power=100%, then the UC and the MC would hold some power too; while communism, in the transitional stage, is NOT democratic, so the correct value would be people's power=0%. Democratism exists, but only because the ruling class is the majority of the population instead of the minority, so it assumes democratic forms instead of oligarchic ones. At the final stage of communism, classes are abolished, so all people participate equally in public affairs and democracy is restored (people's power becomes 100%).
Although these proccupations may seem trivial to you, IMO this demonstrates the inconsistency of Rodrigo's model. To lift this inconsistency, a "Labor power" should have to be incuded along with the "Kapital power".

After this, another thought came into my mind: How about Sites? If power can be attributed to factors of production such as Kapital or Labor, why not attribute it to Sites too? Until the industrial revolution, the ruling class was the Landowning class. The capitalist class (the bourgeois) had in many cases to resort in revolution in order to take over political power from the hands of the landowning aristocracy. Of course capitalists and landowners were competing social classes for only a relatively short period of social history. In ancient economies, because of the prevalence of the primary sector and of low technology, the role of kapital was relatively insignificant and the nobility owned both land and capital. For the first time in classic antiquity (Greece and Rome) and then again during the Rennaisance, advanced merchant activity led to an enlargment of the secondary and (chiefly) the tertiary sector and to the emergence of a bourgeois class. During the industrial revolution, because of the prevalence of the secondary sector and of high technology, the bourgeois class became dominant and, after a while, it engulfed the landowning class, so that today, in the modern economies, the class distinction between landowners and capitalists is again abolished. So, IMO, "Landowner's power" should be also included.

How about the Middle Class? I believe that further flexibility concerning the economic classes should be avoided., because it increases complexity enormously (specially if we consider the economic system as 3fold, with power attributed to all 3 production factors: S, K, L), without providing us with novel behaviors. IMO, all we need is a single Middle Class, defined as follows: The Middle Class is economically independant: it posesses enough Sites and Kapital to employ it's own Labor. Thus the MC will be in the center of a 3fold socioeconomic system and it's power will derive from the power attributed to each economic factor, weighed according to the ratios demanded by the production function.

Where I believe that flexibility is really needed is in the "pure" social classes ("job" classes according to F_Smith, "non-demographic" or "institutional" classes according to me; how should we call them?). We can do that because institutional classes are much simpler; they have only a political role and not an economic one; they don't have demographics. Political power should be attiributed to each of the social contributions as well as to each of the economic ones; simple or complex institutional classes can be defined according to the type and analogy of their contributions (We can have f.e. a holy warriors class that provides 40% of the society's security and 20% of it's ethics, while a monks class provides 60% ethics, a mandarin class with the rest 20% ethics and 100% admin and finally a generals class with the rest 60% security). Their pol.power can be derived from the power attributed to their contributions. Their research and investment profiles can also be derived from their contributions, using the research tags and infrastructure classes related to their contributions. Their cultural profiles should derive from the majorities cultural profiles, differentiated by arbitrary bias, set by the author. Of course, (as Rodrigo has pointed out before) there is the ecxeption of the RC which relates it's cultural attributes to an independant religion submodel (RCM instead of MCA), but, as F_Smith has once stated, this type of behavior can be used by other classes too (wizards of different "spheres", scientists of different "philosophic schools", etc). Their (the institutional classes) ideologic profiles should derive in the same way, as it already happens in the formula given in Rodrigo's govt model.

I also feel that even mixed classes are possible for scenario creating purposes. Whole or part of a social contribution can be arbitrarily attributed to one of the given economic classes, so that it's power will be respectively augmented (Landowners that are also warriors and administrators are more powerful than simple landowners; that's the difference between Feudalism and Aristocracy). But no matter how mixed the classes are, the economic classes will never be more than 4 (That means that you can't have simple landowners AND feudal lords at the same time).

What we only need strict control of is the social contributions included in the game, because it will be them (and not the actual social classes) that will be directly related to the gamedata. Compartmentalisation of the game would help us alot, but I sincerely doubt that a scenario editor would simply be able to add a novel contribution to the system without editing the whole game. We should make provisions for some more possible contributions, even if they do not make it to the standard game. This is a list of possible areas that could be associated with a social contribution and be related to one or more institutional classes:
Ecology/Nature/Environmentalism
Media/Informations/Communications
Entertainment
Science/Education
Wizardry/Psionics
Just as a reminder, the standard list of social contributions contains:
Ethics
Security
Administration

So an ideology in a standard game should hold the following (the actual names are TBD)
Autocratic power
Democratic power

Landowner power
Capitalist power
Labor power

Administrative power
Religious power
Military power

Private Property
Social Policies
Economic Planning

Then, according to the classes that exist in the game, the ideologic structure should be translated into a class power structure. Democratic power is distributed according to demographics. Landowner, Capitalist and Labor powers according to the percentage of each factor's units that each class provides. Administrative, Religious and Military powers according to the percentage of each contribution that a certain class is stated to provide to society. With this layered approach (3 layers of power: political, economic and social), any ideology can be related to any class system.

I also think that this way we do not really need to distinguish between nominal and de facto pol.powers, but we have to discuss that a bit, since I'm not sure about this. Maybe the formulae for the de facto powers could provide us with some minimums for the powers of the respective contributions. The powers of the contributions seem more of the de facto type to me, although there is a multitude of historic examples of legal sanctions for these powers.

It is interesting to notice that, by autonomising the ideologies from the class system, we can achieve the creation and the destruction of social classes according to social evolution; we can achieve a dynamic class system, instead of a static one. http://apolyton.net/forums/cool.gif We can start the game with a landowner class and, once kc (kapital per capita) surpasses a certain limit, we can generate a bourgeois class; once the Kapital to Sites ratio rises above another limit, we can merge the two classes anew. We can start the game with a RC and, once IR (importance of religion) drops below a certain point, abolish the RC. After RP per capita production has reached a certain level, we can introduce a scientist class. Even complex classes can be created (in an otherwise standard game) if cultural conditions allow it. This sounds like flexibility to me much more than the ability to have N middle classes. http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif

I will adress other issues later, in their respective threads...

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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by axi (edited August 16, 2000).]</font>

[Mark_Everson]

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font><font size=1>Originally posted by F_Smith on 08-15-2000 11:51 PM</font>
1) For now, I'm moving the beast on without ideologies. We don't need them yet.

First, we're going to worry about how the govt policies play out. For now, we'll allow the tester/player to simply choose the govt type at will, without worrying about the people's govt choice. So you've got time to keep thinking along these lines.

<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>

So what exactly are you testing???

On your revolutions idea, clearly people being fed up with the current system is among the most important. And what comes out of a revolution is not easy to predict. But I think the underlying ideologies of blocks of the people Does influence strongly who comes out on top. So I think the truth lies between 'social determinism' and 'individual determinism'.

Axi:

Our inability to model the minor details of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is IMO not important. I agree your point about land-power (or resource-power) is a good one. But in many cases capital and land power go hand in hand, at least after some transition period. We just need to ask our selves if the added complexity is worth it. I am not sure either way yet...

Versatility is good. But have you looked over all Rodrigo's equations and seen how such an idea can work within the system? He thinks you can't do it, so you will probably have to give specific examples of how it can be done.

Although a dynamic class system is intriguing I think it may confuse a lot of players... Even if its more realistic, I'm not sure its such a good idea.

[F_Smith]

Mark:

We'll be testing 'govt policies' turn logic code this weekend.

The beast now saves and loads

1) ruler govt prefs.
2) govt policies
3) political structure
4) Cultural Attributes details

All I have to add in tonight is the 'religion' details. Then the playtesters can either

A) change the ruler's govt prefs, and watch how it affects the actual govt's policies

B) change the govt type/political structure, and watch how that affects the govt policies

C) change the 'Cultural Attributes' of a civ's people, and watch how that affects govt policies

D) change the 'Religion' details of a civ's people, and watch how they affect govt policies

Or any combo of the above.

For the moment, the tester can just set the political structure values at will. Later we can work in ideologies to exert a change in the govt political structure at the appropriate times.

Lisa, my wife, goes out of town on Friday. Friday night I will be hammering on the code for the turn logic, and sometime late Fri or early Sat I'll need some critique/help.

We'll be sticking to the scenario 4000bce, which is now loaded with basic data (all data is an off the wall guess -- any requests/suggestions/corrections on values please let me know).
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 16, 2000).]</font>

[axi]

I knew it was a bad idea to use the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as an example, but unfortunately this is how my line of thought got to the conclusion that I tried (unsuccessfully as it seems) to express in my last post: Labor and Sites are, as factors of production, equally entitled to be the vessels of political power as Kapital is. Why should the capitalist class have the chance to be the ruling class, but not the labor class? Giving the capability for "extra" political power only to the holders of Kapital sounds inconsistent to me.

Anyway, labor power has it's place in more ideologies than just the "dictatorship of the proletariat". It has it's place in a "meritocracy", where everybody's income depends on the quality of his work. It also belongs to an utopian "libertarian" society (where free market rules); there should be no democratic power and all power should be divided among the 3 factors of production according to their "market value" (remember the econ model's marginal profits). Do not also forget that in the current implementation, the MC generally provides more labor than the LC, because of it's higher education level (skilled labor), so granting power to labor would greatly affect MCpp as well as LCpp. If one proceeds to more liberal thoughts, one can also grant power to the labor of the exploited class, which of course will not be theirs, but be attributed to their owners/employers, which would be the state (ruler and BE) and the UC. So the slaveowner's pp may be enhanced by the labor of their slaves.

As for the contrast between landowners and bourgeois, I believe that, apart from the reasons of pure model consistency, there are severe gameplay reasons that dictate the use of both classes instead of the UC and, more important, the use of a dynamic class system. This contrast has been the motive power behind the social changes during the most interesting part of human history so far. So, if we do not include more than one middle class, (which I repeat that we don't need to) and keep the economic classes hardcoded into the design so than nothing more can be done upon them except the overlaying of parts or wholes of one or more social contributions, then we can achieve the desired simplicity and compatibility.

Flexibility concerning the institutional classes is totally feasible at the grade I have prescribed, given that the whole collection of contributions is either preset by us or provided for by us in advance. This flexibility doesn't make so much sense in a standard game, but it is desperately needed in scenarios, so that the author can create whatever class he wants. Notice that this kind of flexibility would be unattainable if the institutional classes were not devoid of economic and demographic data. Rodrigo's concerns about the complexity of the formulae are reasonable, but if the collection of existant and possible contributions is limited, there will be no problem. The formulae will have to be a little bit more orthologic than they currently are (f.e. we will have to readress the behavior of classes that provide security, like the WC), but the basic forms of class behavior are there (It was F_Smith who first made such a statement in some other thread). Of course, behaviors of complex classes will obviously be the weighted averages of the behaviors dictated by the respective contributions.

As you can see, in contrast to Rodrigo's suggestion, I propose that the flexibility is needed for the institutional and not for the economic classes. The funny thing is that Rodrigo's suggestion will mean more work for me, while my suggestion means more work for him. http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif But of course my suggestion is way, way better... http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif

------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[roquijad]

Several "hard" comments to the govt model... I must say that I LOVE that type of comments! http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif It's then when real discussions start!

To the point...

F_Smith:
Your suggestion that maybe what matters are leaders and not ideologies is quite clever. It sounds great for an alternative govt model. I really think so! However, there're two things to say:
1) Ideologies are not the elements preventing greater flexibility. They can be changed and adapted preserving their role to accomodate more classes. I've already done it concerning economic classes, as you saw. The problem with flexibility is at the behavior level. Creating more classes leads to creating more behaviors, not more ideologies. So, I think ideologies are not the center of attention by now.

2) Even if we go for the leaders approach (believing it's better than using ideologies), we'll get to the point of how people choose their leaders. I disagree if we say "if upset, people take whatever leader they find". In the 60's in the US there was a lot of discontent, but the masses never took Malcom X's ideas and founded an islamic regime... Choosing a leader would be the key in this alternative model and we'd probably end agreeing that people choose leaders more or less inclined to what the leader proposes as a solution for current problems. But a leader's "proposal" is nothing but an ideology, in essence. Leaders like Lenin or Jefferson had a vision and they tried to "sell" that vision to the masses (successfully in those two cases). Russians and Americans followed them for what they offered and Americans didn't follow Malcom X for what he offered. And the "offer" is a vision of how things should be. The "vision" is in its core the same thing ideologies are. So, I believe we would end up just where we're now if we took the leaders approach.
----------------
F_Smith: I'll comment your list about the beast in the other thread.
-----------------

Axi:
You have expressed you ideas very nicely. That's maybe the best post I've seen from you http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif

As a matter of fact, much of your analysis matches perfectly with my own thinking (off-forum) when considering flexibility issues. Here are my answers/comments:

1) I did consider putting the "Workers Class" (Labor providers) in ideologies like I did with capitalists. But it's redundant, so I took it away. I know you're concerned about (Marx's) communism and having it well modeled, even though it has never been implemented IRL. Believe me: I care a lot about it too. But your line of thoughts which takes you to the conclusion that my proposed update can't handle communism is wrong. During a communist revolution, kapital (and here I'm considering all kapital: land + infrastructure) is taken away from capitalists. By force, according to Marx. In Clash this means PP goes to zero. If PP=0%, then demographically there's NO upper class or middle class (or, in general, all economic classes that provide kapital disappear). Then, only the Lower class exists. Whatever level of People's pol.power the revolution ends up with is therefore controled solely by the LC. This shows why your analysis was wrong.

However, it can be argued that a workers class is still needed to simulate regimes where there ARE classes providing kapital and yet they have LESS power than classes that provide labor. This type of govt has for sure never existed and to me sounds extremely weird. Therefore, no need for a workers class.

Having the Capitalists and People Classes explicitly in ideologies let us model any type of govt known AND the never-implemented "real" communism. Sci-fi stuff out of the question (at least for now).


2) I share your thoughts about landed-aristocracy vs merchant/factory-based/service-based aristocracy. That part of history is for me very interesting too. But I'm sure you agree that what's really interesting about that part of history is how nobility found its end. And we must not get confused here. We could have, if we want, economic_sector-specific classes (like land-based aristocracy) if we sit down for a while to develop them. But this won't model nobility because nobility wasn't simply a land-based aristocracy. l-b aristocracy exists today in western countries while nobility doesn't. "Landowning", as you mention in your post, doesn't imply nobility. What made nobility what it was, was not its economic control of the land, but the military control of it. Nobility existed because feudalism existed. Feudalism existed because there was no real military and political control by a unique authority (unique govt). Each noble was actually the ruler in his land.

So I'm saying two things here:
a) Creating economic classes specific to economic sectors is IMO feasible, but useless. The behavior of those who produce apples and those who produce cars won't be different enough to add any flavor to the game. Also, this doesn't solve the nobility thing.

b) Nobility is something I'd like to model, but I'm not sure how. Maybe as a class... but then it doesn't make sense in my mind a noble participating in a non-existent central govt about policies that don't affect him. Nobility/feudalism is something that since the beggining of the model development bothered me. A territory ruled by a bunch of warlords instead of a centralized govt and where the king is nothing but a figure of weak union with close to null control beyond his feud is something I haven't solved and I feel it's more complicated than simply adding a nobility class.

Anyway, I'm saying this only to propose we have no economic_sector-specific classes. At a glance you have just seen one of the most secret unsolved parts of the model... http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif


3) You tend to separate land and infrastructure/equipment and call kapital only the latter. I find this division unnecessary. I feel you do it because of the nobility thing. I hope the lines above encourage you to include all in kapital.


4) Middle Class and socio-economic classes: I feel too it's enough with the middle class. I only tried to give the model some more flexibility under everybody's preassure to do so.
Anyway, with the update players will be able to have:
>>Just one socio-economic class (if not interested about the conflict between them... boring right? http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif )
>>The original model's two classes, UC and LC,
>>The extended, "Mark-styled" http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif , LC, UC, MC
>>More than three (who knows what for)

I like this modest flexibility.


5) Real flexibility:
Your speech was fantastic! You have a very good vision of what the problem is about. As you stated, we can have an arbitrary number of classes if we have only a few "pure" classes and their behaviors based on what you call "contributions". Any class is then created as a mix class with mix behaviors. It's such a good idea that I thought about it too! http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif I'm happy you wrote all that, so people can see things I had already dicussed with myself without any writting of my own http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif

Here are the problems of that approach (and why I believe it's not useful):
a) Behaviors cannot be derived from contributions. The economic classes, FE, are based on econ role PLUS cultural info. Contributions are very poor variables to generate a behavior. The best example is the WC. Can the amount of tanks or any such measure produce a realistic behavior? I'm sure you remember our off-forums discussions about how difficult was to give the military a realistic behavior. Once one accepts that this info is not enough, then you have to think what is needed for better modeling. And in this process you end up creating a behavior that's very specific. The equations we have for WC behavior currently are useless to model low-rank soldiers, mercenaries, samurais and other military-related classes we can come up with. It's not an accident the model has almost one set of equations for each class. Behaviors we developed for each of them makes them interesting, but at the cost of being very specific and hardly usable for other classes.
In short, when adding a new class you'll be running way too short in defining its behavior via "contribution" parameters. It will act pretty much the same as the others you already have. This is, btw, why you find so boring having a lot of middle classes...

b)the approach tends to make inevitable the usage of a dynamic class system as you mentioned. I like this, but it forces you to control when classes appear and when fade away for historical consistency (so you won't have "holy warriors" in modern times). Since you have to make the class existence dependant on other variables like Importance of Religion, like you suggested, you'll find there're no general solutions (in fact you showed it with examples in your 2nd post). IR may work for holy warriors, but what about the "scholar monks class"? you know, those who were copying books and teaching math at the monastery's backyard... I don't think it was IR that took them out of business, but tech development. So in this case class existence must be refered to tech variables... and that's just a simple example. Imagine the "warrior middle class"! http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif


So, contribution-based behaviors run too short and in the other side, complex (mixed) classes can arise and fade away depending on too many different things.

You know in detail the model, Axi, so if you really think this approach can work and want to insist, please, as Mark says, give me more (math) details on how to do it.
----------------

All:
I'm affraid I can be appearing as totally opposed to flexibility/scalability or to any change to the model. It's not of course my intention. The model has shown to be very rigid if one decides to keep its good things. I still believe is a good model for a historical game, but if any of you has a great idea for a totally different govt model, just name it and we'll discuss it.

[F_Smith]

Rodrigo:

Cool. It was just a suggestion.

Perhaps as an alternate choice, later. I was thinking that the leader gets chosen by the people also. But I was thinking that the leader choice would base first on 'shared' values -- an EthnicGroup would follow the leader that shared their etnicity, religion, Group Attributes and Tendencies -- and based upon a 'charisma' variable in the leader's 'GameCharacter' stats.

Axi:

Boy, would I like to talk about this over some beers and snacks.

I have a lot of questions and comments about Marxism that might be out of place here. For now, please don't take any of this as an attack, it is merely my silly opinion.

I'll just say that I believe 'Labor workers who don't own the capital produced from their labor' by definition will never have any real political power, regardless of what the political system claims/pretends to give them. Because 'capital' is power, even to 'pure communist' governments/systems. Even tho they pretend it isn't. There is no way around that rule -- 'he who has the gold makes the rules'. When a resource is scarce, the govt managers in charge of distributing that resource becoming their own 'priviledged' class -- by definition.

That's yy problem with Marx's theories -- they in no way reflect reality as I observe it. I am certain that's why no one has ever made one happen. It's as impossible as saying 'can't we all just get along'?

In summary, I would say that Rodrigo's system already allows a 'Communist' system. It just faces the game govt trying that with the same realities that a real 'Communist' system would have. Giving the vote to people who have no control over any assets will always be a hollow gesture, since those who do control scarce resources will use that control to twist the system (corruption/hoarding/refusal to comply/etc).

One good example would be the collectivisation of farms that has happened in various places from time to time. The people/govt never gain real control over the farms output. Hoarding and corruption always ensue. And the govt workers with access to scarce goods become their own 'priveledged' class.

[axi]

F_Smith: I am eager to reply to you, but this is adressed solely to Rodrigo, so you will have to wait for the next post. http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif

Rodrigo:
<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>Several "hard" comments to the govt model... I must say that I LOVE that type of comments! It's then when real discussions start!
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>You're the one who started it, you should know I would respond. You were just lucky I was out of town.

From your original post: <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>Finally, this change in how ideologies are defined implies a change in how Warrior Class' mentality is computed. It was formerly computed as partly influenced by the Upper Class and partly by the Lower Class. It will be now computed using People's pol.power, Capitalists pol.power, demographic shares and kapital shares in a way I won't detail now.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>I'm interested in the WC behavior and you know very well than I'm not afraid of details; I'm all ears.

Concerning the "dictatorship of the proletariat": From a strictly economic point of view, it works as you say it does; with their kapital taken away, the UC and MC are forced to work, in order to survive and so, economically, there is nothing but LC. People's mentalities on the other hand do not change from one day to another and these people remain politically UC and MC. So if power is distributed to them too, democratically, they will try to use it, in order to revert to the old regime. They are counter-revolutionary agents and as such, they have to be suppressed. That is why Marx said that all the power was to be given explicitly to the proletariat and not to the people in general. So the UC and MC are actually reduced to the state of minorities (although technically they belong to the majorities population). This happens at the transitional stage of communism, where the old class structure is abolished externally but not internally, in the people's mentalities. After one or more generations, the mentality will be uniform and communism will enter it's final stage, where society will be truly classless and power will be distributed evenly to the whole population.

It is a general fact that the socioeconomic classes, during transitional politicoeconomic stages, can have one demographic percentage in economic matters and another in political outlook. This is what leads to counter-revolutions (like the Restauration of 1814 in France) and causes contrasts like "new money" vs "old money" and, in the grand scale, landed aristocracy vs bourgeoisie (although in that case the Sites vs Kapital factor intervenes). This separation seldom lasts more than a couple of generations (say 50 years), but while it exists, it is one of the largest driving forces in the political scene. Depending on the scale of the game, this might not matter very much (f.e. when a game turn lasts 50 years), but usually (and specially when radical changes, like revolutions, occur), it is important enough to question the consistency of the political system. In the govtecon field (in other words my spreadsheet), there is and there should be no inertia; during a revolution the UC will instantly dissapear. While in the political field (the govt model), it is inadmissible that large masses of population should change preferences instantly. If the UC didn't manage to supress the revolution this turn, it should at least be given a chance to revolt against it next turn.

If we indeed recognise a problem here, the solution shouldn't be very hard to accomplish. According to the length of the turn, a transitional stage of n turns should be declared and the class demographics used by the govt model should be the old ones (before the political change), converging (linearily?) to the new ones. For demographic changes during normal times, maybe the govt model should be one turn behind the econ model. Intra-class mobility is recorded anyway. I think that you have dealt with transitional stages in the govt model before, haven't you Rodrigo?

Nobility: You are right in your claim that nobility isn't tied to land ownership. Nobility is instituted where and when too much power stays in the same few hands for too long. Nobility is nevertheless linked with a certain social or economic contribution, whatever that is, the possesion or procuration of which is a hereditary right (land, capital, security and ethics have been under such hereditary rights in human history). When I was writing my original post, I considered of including "Nobility" or "Oligarchic power" between "Autocratic power" and "Democratic power", where it would naturally fit (inside the political layer of the power structure), but I thought I was stretching it too far. Now that I know it is concerning you too, I am mentioning it.

Possible implementation: Nobility could be attributed to the socioeconomic class with the higher concentration of power per capita and once instituted, it cannot change hands, unless it is reinstituted by some social reform. I feel that purely institutional classes should not have nobility because they consist of higher as well as lower members (Their power is attributed to the institutions rather than the members anyway), but at least for scenarios, nobility should be attributed to whomever the author wants. Nobility is linked with social elitism and as such, it should oppose or totally restrict intra-class mobility.

Classes per sector: I don't think we need them either, but, judging from the amount of options that will finally be available in Clash, they will probably be optional. As for Landowner power, I based this not on the (doubtful) nobility of the landowners, but at the inherent power held by the land (Sites), as a production factor, in correlation with the power attributed to Kapital and Labor. The econ model is using in general a production function of the style Y=A*R^a*K^b*L^c, where A is the tech factor, R is generic resources (#of sites in the primary sector, #of resources units in the secondary and 1 in the tertiary) and a+b+c=1. Although it is applicable only in the primary sector, Sites is a factor of production, so why shouldn't it be the vessel of political power (of the economic layer). Of course such an approach is complicating things very much, specially in what concerns the product distribution (which should have to be 3-fold) and it certainly invites us to do classes by sector. It would also appeal for a dynamic class system, so that we won't have capitalists in 4000BC. Each option here has it's pros and cons; I don't know what to support. What do you say?
- Classes per sector (9 classes)+Landowner power?
- Landowner power+Dynamic class system (3-4 classes)?
- The current system (unique UC (3 classes) + land and kapital bagged together)?

N Middle Classes: Their power would be proportionate to their demographics and to the share of total Kapital they hold (and to the Labor they produce, I would say), but how do we define them? Even the single Middle Class, which has a somewhat good definition, causes us big problems. I wouldn't want to define them by their income. They could be defined according to education level, which acts as a multiplier for labor (skilled labor, like in Imperialism), but I have my reservations about that.

Btw, your reference to "middle-class warriors" has reminded me a case where we find both that and 4 discrete (rated according to income) socioeconomic classes: the Athenian Democracy of the 5th century BC, where we had:
Pendakosiomedimnoi, >500, charged with the maintenance of a trireme each. Fought as ship captains.
Hippes, 300-500, charged with the maintenance of a warhorse. Fought as horsemen.
Zeugitai, 150-300, charged with the maintenance of a pair of oxes. Fought as hoplites.
Thitai, <150, with no economic responsibilities. Fought as sailors and light warriors.
(Income is counted in medimnoi of wheat per annum: 1 medimnos=52 litres)

So there was no MC (even the generals got picked by chance) and the military contribution was distributed among the socioeconomic classes. Since it was firmly tied together with tax collection (everyone had to pay for his weapons), the class distinctions were extended upon military organisation. Neat, isn't it? http://apolyton.net/forums/cool.gif

Mixed and complex classes: You are insinuating that in real life the mixture rules do not apply; the scholar-monks will not have the average behavior of scientists and priests, but something quite different, so we should have to invent a new behavior for them. I aknowledge this problem of course, but that's (their behavior) not what we want them for. From a historic point of view I find them less boring than the N Middle classes. I foresee them to be the absolute must for scenario creators, who will demand historical accuracy rather than realistic behavior from their classes. I expect that scenario creators will have the capability to set class behaviors at pretty much what they expect it to be, overriding the system. Most of them I guess will leave quite a few liberties to the political system, or totally freeze it, like in some civ2 scenarios where you can't change the govt type. As for the normal games, I think that the standard should be to have only simple classes, which will be able to have the realistic behavior they are having now. What is great in attributing the pol.power to contributions instead of classes is that it gives us unlimited flexibility in the typical-historical context, while having exactly the same effect in the political arena. If we could invent a trustworthy and realistic dynamic class system, it would be even nicer in appearance, but I wouldn't expect it to make class warfare more interesting.

Before we move to details on behaviors, we should decide what alterations should be made with the socioeconomic classes.

[roquijad]

F_Smith's comment on communism invites to passioned discussion! http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif Even tho, if a (more philosophical) conversation about communism and capitalism is about to take place, let's do it in another thread so we can still advance in this one, ok?

Axi:
You're very right about mentalities staying the same when capital is taken away. I overlooked this fact. Your solution of keeping an inertia for mentalities sounds attractive. For sure the model now needs an update on that part after this very clever comment of yours and I'll be thinking about how to do it starting now.

I'll skip the dicussion about nobility to concentrate on class flexibility.

Classes per sector: Your comments only reinforce my opinion of not having them.

Middle Class(es): Although I found your MC definition very good some time ago, I find unnecessary to restrict its econ/political behavior with a definition. The scenario designer (or us) has to specify how much K it provides and how much WH it provides. The econ model multiplies WH by class' skill level to generate L. And that's it. I don't see a need for a rigid class definition.

quote:"I foresee [mixed behaviors classes] to be the absolute must for scenario creators, who will demand historical accuracy rather than realistic behavior from their classes."
jeee... what are you saying here? Any time someone wants to add a class is because he/she wants the specific beauty and flavor of it. Like LGJ desiring the scientific class. He expects that if he adds that class, then it will behave as scientists do. He'd be very upset if after adding the class, it ends up behaving as the military! Your words seem to suggest players should be able to add classes just for cosmetic reasons. That is, having the class, but the class having no effect in the game in terms of what the class was supposed to do (historical accuracy but no realistic behavior). I find this totally useless.

Scenario designers won't achieve better historical accuracy adding classes if those classes don't do as historicaly they did.

quote:"I expect that scenario creators will have the capability to set class behaviors at pretty much what they expect it to be, overriding the system."
How... without getting into coding? Mixed behaviors cannot do the job. Mixing very specific behaviors (such as BE behavior, FE) will produce a very strange hybrid class.

quote: "What is great in attributing the pol.power to contributions instead of classes is that it gives us unlimited flexibility in the typical-historical context"
Sure, but we can't create realistic behaviors with contributions only. Contributions can only help.

It seems that you're leaning toward losing realistic behaviors in order to achieve more scalability in the number of social classes. This would be valid as an option if this choice in fact would give you MORE social classes. It's tricky, but simpler behavior allows you to have more classes, but in time makes classes very homogenous (like the military units example I gave in my "govt model update" post). This increased homogeneity makes you lose the desired scalability because what makes a class interesting is those little-details-that-matter. Just look at your greek classes you mentioned. Their differences are just details, yet are what makes them different. Losing in realistic behavior actually makes you lose "real" scalability.

I prefer to have realistic behaviors for a few classes than very vague and homogenous behaviors for lots of classes.

[F_Smith]

Rodrigo:

I know that this analysis might rock some boats, but I actually think it is highly relevant to this discussion.

'Class' is defined by 'control of capital', agreed?

The Middle Class and Upper Class are seperated from the lower class by the difference in the capital they control.

In a 'pure' communist system, the capital is controlled by the govt buearacrats.

Which is why those Govt 'commisars' become, by definition, the 'upper' or 'priviledged' class. The Govt worker in charge of handing out housing assignments has power, and is 'priviledged'.

The current system can already model a 'communist' system, and will in fact confront a 'pure' communist system with the realities of what capital is. A 'communist' system in the game will have the same difficulties that such a govt faces in the real world.

We can not make a model that will allow an impossible govt to exist.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 18, 2000).]</font>

[Lord God Jinnai]

First off I'm with Axi on more classes. I do want to say however though that a class should be something thas has some inpact on the game. FE the "scholarly monk class" rodrigo refered to wouldn't. All he'd do is pray and generally copy books (not enough to have an impact on the economy of books either). Anyway he might discuss some philisophical ideas and such, but generally most won't go beyond his place of worship.

I do understand Rodrigo's concern for realistic classes vs. many classes that might seem not to be quite realistic, but I would perfer more classes. Perhaps explaining how each of the social classes works currently might help expalin some stuff.

Also as far as combining things is concerned, we could do it with priorities or levels which would offset some of the unrealistic behavior that might occur. I mean check out how I figured out some ideas for personalities for the Character Model. Sure these aren't indivisuals, but we are modeling all the people molded together to act like a indivisual entity which amounts to similar ideas since it would either be the average of everyone's ideas in that class or the ideas of the dominant members of that class anyway.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I read the entire post between you(Axi) and rodrigo. I'm wanting to know how one comes up with the final negotiated result as there are people who are more willing to budge than others. Also must there always be a successful result? That seems highly unrealistic.

Another thing I really didn't understand why things must alwasys be negotiated with for a medium, why it can't be yes/no on changing with no middle ground.

Finally if you give anti-feelings for extreme mesaurs you should also give pro-feelings for rulers or groups that try to stand the middle ground or go with what the people want.

Also as far as revolts happening with extreme views insn't ness likely. Take pre-war Japan during the latter part of the Mejii Restoration. By this time anyone who critized the government or possibly would was killed (or banished if a foriegner). This is also coupled with the fact that the countries main religion, Shinto (specifically State Shinto) said the Emperor was devine and couldn't be contradicted or replaced because of his descions. This makes his policies when putting something through not ness for negotiation because anyone who doesn't like them is killed. Also revolts won't happen because those who would've started them have been killed.

Also Hitler did something similar. When he was denied things earlier on, he simply took the few minority people who agreed with him and taught the younger generations after seizing the government. Such policies would still need to be negotiated for atleast say 20 years, but after that, negotiation is irrelavant almost.

I'm just saying extreme views if a population grows up believing in them, shouldn't result in violence. Instead it should be more if they are related to the EGs views which can varry.

[F_Smith]

Lordy -- and everyone else:

We need immediate help in the 'bug reports' thread on this exact issue.

Please check there, and comment.

[roquijad]

LGJ:
"must there always be a successful result? That seems highly unrealistic."

I don't know what you mean by "successful result"
---------
"Another thing I really didn't understand why things must alwasys be negotiated with for a medium, why it can't be yes/no on changing with no middle ground."

We could do it, but Mark was worried bout the difficulties of having good AI for discrete variables, so in general terms we tried to keep all variables in a continous range.
-------------
Anti-feeling: This concept doesn't exist anymore. In some of the quotations by Axi it appears, but only because at that time there was no riots model an we were working with Hranfkell's concept of Anti-feeling.
------------
About your thoughts regarding "extreme" positions, Axi was referring to extremes compared to what classes want, not extremes per se. If people in Japan liked their all powerful monarch, then this wouldn't be considered an extreme position. If you try to set a fundamentalist govt in the US, then it'd be extreme and protests and other stuff would ocurr.

[axi]

As I had warned, I moved all the OT quotations from the Object Builder thread to here, where they are really relevant.
------------------------------------------
F_Smith wrote: <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>If I want to raise a value in a negotiated policy, I have to 'high-ball' the pref choice -- ask for way more than I want to get what I want. It's kinda wierd, and wasn't much fun.

It kinda seemed like a loophole that allows you to manipulate the system.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>

In our initial discussions, I had pointed out the problem. The quotation is from the part of the model referring to CNPs. <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>Rodrigo: For every variable discussed above we have what each class wants. The ruler/player has given already his opinion putting the values he thinks are best in a proper interface (ruler's govt profile), so the PC has values for each variable too. The final policies will be a weighted sum of the desires of each class, in which weights are their pol.power shares.

axi: There is a MAJOR problem here. Because of the weighted sum, the player will be compelled to support more extreme policies than these that he intends, in order to tip the scales to his favor. You might call it a feature - I call it a bug, because such dishonesty would never work in real politics. Your example below is most enlightening:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Example:
Suppose the political structure is RC-10%, MC-5%, PC-25%, UC-40%, LC-20%. Suppose values classes want are:
UC:2
LC:2
PC:1
RC:0
MC:2

Now each class use its pol.power to try to make the govt. policy equal to its desire. The calculation is:
(RC) 10%*0 +
(MC) 5%*2 +
(UC) 40%*2 +
(LC) 20%*2 +
(PC) 25%*1 +
=1.55. Since the variable can take only integer values, rounded we get "2", so negotiations at the govt have given a Religious Tolerance equal to "2" (all religions allowed).
-------------------------------------------------------------------
axi: The PC here voted "1" and he got "2". If he were smarter, he would have voted "0", so his share would be 25%*0 and the final outcome 1.30 rounded to 1. Then he would get what he actually wanted.
One way to adress this is to penalise unpopular suggestions with anti feeling too and not just policies, but this would complicate things too much. Another is to modify the decision making system, introducing two rounds, (like in the municipal elections):
Round 1: Distribute the political power between the choices. The best two get to the second round.
Round 2: Throw each of the other percentages to the closest finalist. If one is in the middle, split. Majority wins.

Rodrigo: You got me here. I knew this effect was in there and in fact we discussed it with Mark. Mark didn't care much about it and gave me a "we'll see", so I kept going, but I do dislike it. There's really no way in which we can force the player to put exactly what he wants instead of strategically choosing values. My negotiation procedure cannot fix that nor can yours. In this particular example your procedure might seem better, but in the general case the player will always be able to choose values he doesn't really want no matter the procedure used. I think the best way to solve it is, as you said above (and which is also what I proposed to Mark), including the ruler's values in the Anti feeling. In that way the player cannot go for extreme values without risking to face problems.
As for the procedure to use, I prefer mine. The reason is your 2-rounds election mechanism is an election procedure, not a negotiation one. In an election procedure, the final value for any policy is one of the initial values in the competition since the procedure only chooses one of them. If we are to simulate the politics within a govt, then the final value should be the outcome of negotiations and so this final value is not necessarily one of the initial ones but a new negotiated one. If we simulate elections instead of negotiations, we'll be strongly reducing the possible values for each policy and this is a big problem for continuos variables like Foreign Affairs. The other important problem with your method is that if the ruler has more than 50% pol.power, then the final policy value will always be exactly what he wants, so it's irrelevant how much power the other classes have. If the rest classes have a total of 0% pol.power or 49% pol.power is unimportant and in both cases the govt policy takes the ruler's value EXACTLY, which I find very unrealistic. If the ruler has 51% pol.power and wants a policy value equal to 1 and the rest classes (with 49% pol.power) want a value of 3, I think it's way more realistic the final value being around 2, than the ruler imposing his view. Having an election procedure destroys any attempt to simulate actual negotiations, which I believe are extremely important to exist in the model.
So, IMO, we should keep my negotiation procedure and just see how to push the player to be honest. MS!

axi: I only suggested an election system here because I did the same for the INPs (although I actually said the opposite), but there there are some more reasons for it. I aknowledge that here it would probably do more harm than good. If the "penalising the profile" solution is feasible, I' m all for it. Solved!
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>


In the govt model thread, in my first comment, I had said: <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>7) The Macchiavelian ruler: I have already pointed out that the weakness of the negotiation procedure is that it lets the ruler counterbalance the other classes preferences by taking some extreme decisions for the ruler's gov't profile. The things are bad enough for the DNPs, but for the INPs they are worse because of the multiple loops of the procedure. The first thing I did with Rodrigo's worksheet is to put 100% for Ruler's pol_power in the Ruler's gov't profile and the macro gave me exactly what I wanted. If this happened in the game, it would be exactly like playing civ2 after this. The obvious solution for this is to make sure that the player will not dare to give extreme RGP's, because that would cause an immediate raise to all the related PAFs and an immediate events check and would normally cost him his head (at least). This is something to be set at the riots model of course, but I have outlined it here because otherwise the whole negotiation is useless.

It could also be possible for us to restrict the negotiation to a few or only one loop per turn, so that any governmental change wouldn't take place immediately. Rodrigo insists that an equilibrium must always be reached, but if this prooves to be in any way buggy or unnatural, this could save our efforts.
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Rodrigo's reply: <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
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</font>The Macchiavelian ruler: As you perfectly said it, Axi, the ruler can face a lot of problems in the Riots model if he chooses extreme values in Ruler's Govt Profile. Even more, there's a specific Pro-Action Feeling for this, the "Replace Ruler Feeling".
Concerning the equilibrium point of the Negotiation Procedure, if you didn't notice, I actually chose your idea! Whenever nagotiations are called, the equilibrium will be found, but not applied immediately. It will be stored and each game turn, the Govt Profile will slowly move toward eq. I think these two elements will prevent the player from being dishonest.
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I had made a suggestion about a political/electoral system for INPs (which I am going to update and present it in a subsequent post) and "Rodrigo1" is his criticism. "axi1" is my reply and "Rodrigo2" is his criticism on my reply (axi1 was written as a continuous text, but Rodrigo 2 broke it up). Do not expect to understand everything.
<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
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</font>Rodrigo1: Your system is very interesting, but I think it's biased towards a modern democracy where elections happen and the ruler has to try to keep himself in charge (be re-elected). The real problem with it is explained in the next paragraph, but let me give you a comment before that: I understand why you took this road. As you said it, it should be a struggle between ideologies instead of classes and also merging ideologies should be more limited to ideologies really similar to one and other. About the first thing and as I said, there's no real difference between both views. However, I admit it's easier to understand the model seen as an ideologies struggle, so let's keep that view instead of mine for explaining purposes. About the second, the main explanation for allowing merging is given in the next paragraph, but maybe we can be more exigent with ideologies and impose some similarity level at least, but we have to be very clear about what each variable represent. I say this because it seems to me you are not understanding pol.power as I do. In your system an ideology having pol.power>0 can be left out of the final govt computation for policies, while I think this is fundamentally incorrect. If you have pol.power, then it means you can take part in govt decisions (you DO have power to do so, by definition). My guess is you treated pol.power more like "political support" or "political strength", so being low can let the ideology out of the govt, but that isn't the role of this variable. If your calculations for defining the winning ideology would have used only the Representation matrix and DIAC (but not pol.power), then at least all variables are being used in their right sense. We have to respect each variable role.

The main problem with your system is that you're simulating only the "executive" power, that is, what ideology (or ideologies coalition) wins "the presidency" (or equivalent for other govt types), while I was trying to simulate the behavior and interactions between the executive power and "the senate" or any other equivalent for less representative govts. When I say "govt" I mean the whole political scenario and not only who's in charge of administration. That's way you feel is unrealistic for different ideologies to be merged to determine govt policies and I guess that's why you saw pol.power not as power to change govt numbers but as something else. I agree there's little room for merging ideologies in an election competing for "the presidency", FE, but this is different because I don't want to know which ideology won the elections (became the executive power), but the complete struggle between the executive power and the rest powers. If we were simulating which ideology was going to be elected as the executive power, then I could have agreed with you, but that's not the case and I still believe that shouldn't be the case anyway. Clinton and his ideology, once elected, doesn't decide all govt policies, but he and his party has to deal with other parties in the senate for any fundamental policy change (law, if you will). So, policies are determined even by those not elected in the executive power. So, what I think we need is to simulate the whole political game including interactions between the executive power (PC) and the "senate". And the senate can and should be a mix between all ideologies present and the power each ideology has over final numbers is the total pol.power the ideology supporters have (mod by Representation). No elections are needed and any coalition effect is included indirectly in the negotiation procedure.
If you think we should ALSO simulate the election of the executive power (PC), then that's another matter. However, you have to realize that doing so is equivalent to define PC ideology, so that's like taking away any control from the player and therefore we have to be really careful about it. MS!
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axi1: I am obliged to accept your reasoning, although different from mine, because of the different definitions that each of us (subconsciously at first) gave to political power, political struggle and the PC. Some points need to be clarified:
1. Under your definition, where does political power derive from, if not from the capability of each class to control the legislative and executive power? How can a class alter state policies like the amount of welfare, if not from within the government? For me, executive power and policies are the same thing, while the PC can be regarded as the incorporeal "Kratos", or more conveniently as the personal will of the person or personae moving the threads of power, directly or through the people.
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Rodrigo2: I really don't know what to say here. Your questions are as far as I can see answered already. I'm afraid we're just having problems with definitions. The capability to change govt policies (at least to influence their value) is called political power in this model. That's the answer for the first question. If a class has pol.power then it's within the govt. That's the answer for the second question. "Government" in this model refers to all political institutions that take part in govt policies definition. PC is nothing but the ruler or if you prefer, the ruler plus a set of fellows who work with him to try making his ideology applied.
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axi1: 2. It is commonplace among the pluralistic types of government, that, although everyone recognised as a political agent has the right to get his view represented in the government, not all of them get represented simultaneously, because, as it is claimed, a) there are differences that are generally considered unbridgeable and b) a political synthesis can sometimes be far worse than a pure ideology. So what happens is some variation of the majority rule, otherwise referred at as "democratic concentrisation" (directly translated). I will not discuss here if this is right or wrong, only that it is common practice and that it should be represented. In autocratic regimes of course, all of this is irrelevant.
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Rodrigo2: The question is how you include within one model these types of expressions of democracy with the negotiations that takes place in ancient regimes between the great military leader and the chief priest. For almost all history no democratic mechanism like those you mention existed, so I rather simulate a negotiation procedure than an election one. Since I don't want to include an "exception rule" for democratic regimes, I'll keep the same procedure for it. If the final values turned out to be so bad for everybody, then the Anti feeling will come to our aid pushing the govt to a more radical change. I prefer to make the Anti feeling more sensitive to the difference between what's desired for policies and what exist than to try to simulate individually each type of political struggle for each type of govt form. In that way you can ensure very little mixing will exist because the Anti feeling won't let it happen without suffering revolutions and other nasty events.
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axi1: 3. From a totally technocratic viewpoint, "majority rule" is the most natural way of avoiding the merging and so giving a chance to extreme policies of ever being practiced.
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Rodrigo2: But totally unrealistic. The illusion of democratic elections is just that: an illusion. You don't just step aside if you're capitalistic and a communist govt wins the elections or vice versa. No extreme ideologies have ever reach govt by normal elections and without blood in the process (including the attempt to actually rule). There's a simple reason for that: people with extreme ideologies are too few. If a extreme ideology is pursued by the player, he'll do exactly what you mention below that's also historically accurate.
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axi1: We should not fool ourselves; the player is bound to do anything in order to get his civ under control, so we wouldn't want to force him do things that he normally shouldn't. Because to achieve this with total merging, you'd have to suppress the opposers political power to zip, giving it all to the conceding parties and this everytime you wish a change in policy, while this is definitely not the meaning of political power. (This reminds of some political bureaus of socialist regimes, where the consensus had to be unanimus, so no opposing voice was practically allowed.)
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Rodrigo2: You have just outlined the steps to follow for a player with the ambition of having an extreme ideology in the govt. You just missed some killings in between. Of course that's not the meaning of pol.power and that's fine. If you're afraid the player will do all that always to keep his civ as he wants it, you're (again) forgetting about the Anti-feeling. He just cannot do that all the time. He'll have to face too many riots and such. In no way I've trusted the players to be politically correct and use this model as good human beings. The temptation to be dictator is huge, I know. Just let the player do whatever he thinks is best, but let's see how he deals with the mess.
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axi1: Majority rule also allows for more and easier fluctuations in policy, while rendering the player willing to let two or more opposing ideologies to coexist. I have the general feeling that it provides better gameplay.

However, as you have already pointed out, we must respect the variables, so my approach can only be accepted if we are willing to redifine them. I am afraid that this is a rather philosophical matter, about which everybody has extremely vague ideas. I am also afraid that a discussion in the forum about it would really get chaotic. Feeling that there are other, way more important issues to settle, I will not (I am not entitled to anyway) veto your approach. I am only concerned about the implications of #3, which will be practical. Solved?
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Rodrigo2: You have to give more attention to the Anti-feeling. Two antagonistic ideologies won't coexist peacefully if they both have a large support. They can if one has very little support, like the communist party in any first world country today. And IMO it's reasonable to say that this minority ideologies can affect policies (which what my negotiation procedure allows). Just look how these minority parties conform alliances to be able to change laws to what they consider better. They find a way to make some little changes at least, which is well modeled through little pol.power (derived from little population support).
The world doesn't work changing from one govt form to the next through majority rules. Such radical changes occur only through violence. History is my witness. The player will need to be despotic several times and allow representative govt forms only if his people is homogeneous enough, which in time can be achieved through propaganda, murders, forced migrations, etc. It's not my fault. It's just the way it is. This is why the role of the Anti-feeling is very important and you shouldn't oversee it. It's a part of the political process.
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[axi]

I present here my forementioned suggestion for an election-type system for INPs, to be discussed (and just in case F_Smith goes on a coding spree, before I'm back http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif). Since I'm leaving tomorow, I do not have enough time to update the numbers in my example. You'll get the idea anyway. The PC is the "Primary Class", the Ruler.

These are the four competing profiles. To make things easy for me, I suppose that the current values match the de facto values for the power structure.

VARIABLE Ideo1 Ideo2 PCIdeo Current Values
PC pol.power 20% 40% 20% 15%
UC pol.power 25% 10% 25% 10%
LC pol.power 30% 5% 10% 25%
WC pol.power 15% 15% 15% 30%
RC pol.power 10% 30% 30% 20%
Private Property 60% 40% 60% 50%
Economic Planning 60% 30% 70% 50%
Social Policies 80% 20% 60% 50%

The DIAC matrix I use is also arbitrary. In this matrix it gets multiplied with the PP of each class and the sum of support for each ideology is multiplied with the Knowledge level for each ideology.

CLASS Ideology 1 Ideology 2 PC Ideology Current Values
PC 0%x15% 0%x15% 100%x15% 0%x15%
UC 26%x10% 38% x10% 22% x10% 14% x10%
LC 81% x25% 8%x25% 11% x25% 0% x25%
WC 72% x30% 13% x30% 14% x30% 1% x30%
RC 54%x20% 23%x20% 20%x20% 3%x20%

SUM 55,25%x25% 14,30%x100% 28,15%x110% 3,30%x100%
FINAL 22,14% 22,92% 49,65% 5,29%


With these final percentages, the profile variables will be negotiated. These resemble very much the results of the real world elections and should IMO be displayed on the interface, in this format. In this case, Ideology 1 has by far the largest support, but it is vastly misrepresented, which, along with a little propaganda, makes the PC ideology dominant.

Using these results, negotiations can be done in the usual way, through a weighted average, the negotiations procedure or whatever. Even in this case though, the problem that we encountered with the Culturally Negotiated Policies persists: the player is driven to dishonesty, concerning the ruler's govt profile. Of course in the INPs the PC Ideology loses support as it goes more extreme. For this reason and also because of the merging effect, I am proposing an alternative: we can use an election - type system like the one I proposed for the Culturally Negotiated Policies. In this case, the choices are the 4 (or more) Ideologies and coalitions occur with ideological distance as a criterion.

***From now on, things are different from the govt model.***

The formula that computes ideologic distance between two ideologies is simple, since we have to compare vectors with 8 elements, which have the same range (0-1):
D(Ia, Ib)=sqrt(2)*sqrt[(Ia1-Ib1)^2+(Ia2-Ib2)^2+…+(Ia8-Ib8)^2], so that 0<D<4.

So, for the 4 ideologies above, we would have the folowing (symmetric) matrix:

IDEOLOGIES Ideo1 Ideo2 PCIdeo Current Values
Ideology 1 0 1,179 0,510 0,583
Ideology 2 1,179 0 0,922 0,742
PC Ideology 0,510 0,922 0 0,529
Current Values 0,583 0,742 0,529 0

From this distance chart it is obvious that Ideology 1 will prefer a coalition with the PC Ideology rather than anything else (the funny thing here is that it is partly suppressed, but then the DIAC matrix is not real) and since they achieve an absolute majority between them, the PC will only have to negotiate with them. We should probably impose a limit to the ideological distance of the collaborating parties, D<Dc (maybe D<1 or D<0,8). As for the final result, it will be the weighted average of these Ideologies that are in the government coalition. The sum of the participant's percentages is the consensus variable, which we could optionally have influencing the Empire's Stability variable. In our case, it is:

VARIABLE Govt Policy
PC pol.power 20%
UC pol.power 25%
LC pol.power 16%
WC pol.power 15%
RC pol.power 24%
Private Property 60%
Economic Planning 67%
Social Policies 74%
Consensus 71,79%


Of course the PC ideology doesn't dominate all the time. There are the following possibilities:

a) PC Ideology > 50%. Then the player can choose between inforcing his policy as is and finding collaborators to increase the consensus.

b) Another Ideology > 50%. Two cases:
i) D<Dc. The distance between the two ideologies is small, so the PC is forced to collaborate with the dominant ideology.
ii) D>Dc. The distance between the two ideologies is unbridgeable, so the PC loses the struggle. The dominant ideology is the Govt policy.

c) No ideology > 50%. Then the two ideologies that share the smallest D collaborate. If they do not exceed 50%, the next bigger D is checked and either a third ideology is added to the group, or another couple is formed. This formation of groups goes on until:

i) Dc is reached without any group exceeding 50%. Then a Universal Consensus Government is formed, with the participation of all Ideologies.

ii) A group exceeds 50%. Two cases:
1) If the PC ideology is in the dominant group, the Govt policy is the weighted sum for this group.
2) If the PC ideology is not in the dominant group, the case is similar to case b).

What happens when the PC loses the struggle? Then according to the game settings, one of the following can happen (TBD, although I think it has been some times already):
- The player just can't influence the Govt Policy.
- The ruling Character/Dynasty changes according to LGJ's model.
- The AI undertakes total/partial control of the civ and the player has to try to take over again next turn.
- The player loses the game (if he has chosen to play the Eternal Ruler Challenge).
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by axi (edited August 21, 2000).]</font>

[Mark_Everson]

Here is a quote from an email I sent to Rodrigo at one time. It gives us a way to inform the player on which changes are 'safe' and which could be very risky etc. It could work with either the negotiation mechanism, or in a slightly different way for the 51% approach. It would IMO help players to know where the limits are - the same way an experienced political actor.

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
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</font>The player would be presented with a range of sliders covering all the things they can set a preference for. Each slider could be color-coded something like green = safe, yellow = caution, red = extreme danger. Not only would each individual preference have a color code, but they would be linked. If the player "pushes it" very far in one area, then all the other sliders might have their green range reduced extremely. This would indicate that if anything else changed, one or more classes would be likely to go ballistic! Anyway, this seems like a cool concept to me.
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[F_Smith]

Actually,

the 51% method doesn't need anything to tell you when it's safe. Whenever you pass a law that people don't like, it'll make them somewhat unhappy.

Too much unhappiness, and *then* you have a problem.

So even a despot can't just blow off the desires of the people.

[roquijad]

This post is meant to describe in brief what Axi posted. I feel very little can be understood from what Axi posted above as quotes, so I'll try to explain briefly what was all that about, so you can understand what was that he was proposing:

Axi was worried about two model's features:
1) As a result of the process of negotiations between classes, some of the govt policies end up with values that are a mix between the values of different ideologies. Axi was worried about this mixing of ideologies in the govt, specially in cases when ideologies are too different. He thought (thinks still?) it was unrealistic to mix ideologies to find a final govt policy. As an example, you can think people supporting a capitalist system and other people supporting a communist system. All this people now "negotiate" to define what system will be implemented. The negotiation procedure in the model would give us as a result something in between these systems, where each prevails depending on the relative pol.powers of each "party". If they're both equally powerful, FE, the final system is "in the middle" of the two "pure" systems. I think Axi didn't like this because he saw it as a "friendly" conclusion of a negotiation between antagonic forces that would unlikely work together. My argument was that this analysis was running short. The negotiation procedure only reflects what happens within the govt and only what has to do with the "legal" part of politics. Since no party has total power, then it's fair to say the opponents have to give away things to obtain others, so the final setting is in fact not one of the original positions, but something in between. This, however, doesn't mean people will live happily ever after. Since the final setting is different to both initial positions, people of the two parties will be upset when comparing what they wanted to what was achieved. This is made in the riots model and chances of revolts, revolutions and such would be higher. So this antagonic forces are indeed antagonic. While politicians in the govt are bounded by legal activities and negotiations, what happens in the street can be totally different. In no way mixing ideologies implies a friendly cooperation. If antagonic ideologies exist at the same time, the most probable is that wouldn't last.

2)The ruler can choose other values than those he really wants to achieve what he wants. Usually this implies a more "extreme" position than the one the ruler'd normally take. This is what Axi calls "the machievelean ruler". This is in fact what I consider the worst part of the model. To solve it, I proposed this: People will look constantly at what the ruler offers (ruler's preferences), so if he takes really extremes positions, he'd face protests or things like that. I'm not entirely satisfied with this, but I don't see another good way to proceed.

Before I gave my arguments to Axi (the ones exposed here), he developed an alternative system based on the majority rule, which is, as far as I understand, pretty much the same thing F_Smith was proposing to do. With that model he doesn't allow for ideology mixing (his preocupation) and in part eliminates the machiavelean ruler effect. I didn't like the idea because I felt it was useful only for democracies (it was an election-type method) and even in those cases it had outcomes I considered unrealistic. Even more, election-type systems take away a lot of flexibility. In an election system, as its name says it, one of the competing choices wins (is elected). Therefore, the govt takes exactly the form of one of the ideologies in competition, which in time means it's impossible to model smooth changes in the political system because changes occur in a sudden way from one ideology to another. We couldn't get things like "an ancient republic, yet a little bit monarchic" regime or that type of things that the current model does allow. As for realism, the majority rule makes, FE, a scenario where the ruler has 51% equal to one where he has 100%. He's able to impose his will exactly in the same way in both scenarios because he has the majority pol.power. I find this absurd. Majority systems also leave aside any other political agents. It'd be like saying the elected republican administration doesn't have to care about the democrats and can impose its will completely, while we know this isn't real. The majority rule systems and election systems tend to be IMO all-or-nothing systems with lack of flexibility.

Part of the discussion quoted by Axi referred to what is exactly meant with the word "government". This is important because it defines what is possible and realistic in the model and what not. In order to model all the political games in any type of regime, the definition I used includes in govt all persons and institutions who have the capability to participate in decision making regarding govt laws (govt policies). So it can be just a king, a king and religious leaders or a whole senate plus the elected administration in a democracy, FE.

I hope this helped to see what Axi was quoting.

[F_Smith]

Rodrigo:

I am ready to move on with coding more of your model. I want to add the 'Ideologically Negotiated Policies'. First I'm going to have to define 'Ideology' objects.

So please help me make sure I understand --

<ul>
An 'ideology' holds the people's prefs on 'politcial structure', Private Property, Social Policy and economic planning?

There will be a 'game level' list of all ideologies?

Each Civ will have a list of 'known' ideologies?

Each EG will have a list of 'chosen' ideologies?

'Ideologies' are going to be selected by the 'Ethnic Groups', and it is necessary to know what % of the EG supports each 'Ideology'?

The 'Religious Leaders' will *not* have an ideology?

Neither will the 'Generals'?
[/list]

Is this all correct?

P.S. -- if you ever get the inclination to try out the beast again, your 'directly negotiated policies' are all in there. As before, I used the equations from the Govt Model v.2 thread.


<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 22, 2000).]</font>

[roquijad]

F_Smith:

Q:An 'ideology' holds the people's prefs on 'politcial structure', Private Property, Social Policy and economic planning?
A:Almost correct. An ideology holds that set of variables, but it's incorrect to say they're the people's preferences. An ideology is independent from who support it, so an ideology cannot be associated with a particular class per se. Ideologies are not class-specific or ethnic-specific or whatever. They are stand alone ideas anyone can choose or let go.


Q:There will be a 'game level' list of all ideologies?
A: yes

Q:Each Civ will have a list of 'known' ideologies?
A:yes


Q:Each EG will have a list of 'chosen' ideologies?
A:Social classes have a list of chosen ideologies. We could do it on a EG base, but that'd be ambiguous. Since within an ethnicity you have different social classes with different behaviors and needs, what's important is to know what each class prefers.

Q:'Ideologies' are going to be selected by the 'Ethnic Groups', and it is necessary to know what % of the EG supports each 'Ideology'?
A: yes... but for social classes. In my mind I imagined a "support matrix" like this:

Class_______Ideo1______Ideo2______IdeoN
RC___________10%________40%________50%
UC___________25%________5%_________70%
LC___________60%________20%________20%
WC___________75%________15%________10%

where each row must sum 100%. This matrix says, FE, that the 40% of the RC supports ideology2. Of course, you don't have to code it as matrix but in the way you think is best. But that's the idea.

Q:The 'Religious Leaders' will *not* have an ideology?
A:Wrong. RC will have a list of supported ideologies like any other class.

Q:Neither will the 'Generals'?
A:Wrong. WC will have a list of supported ideologies like any other class.


A couple of comments:

1)The list of supported ideologies should include by default the "govt profile" and the "ruler's govt profile". So, if the list of available ideologies has 10, then each class can support 10+2=12 different ideologies with different support shares. This is because the govt profile (that is, the current values the govt has for the political structure and PP, SP and EP) can be seen as an ideology and therefore people is allowed to support the current govt setting. The same happens with the "ruler's govt profile", but in this case with the ruler's prefs for the same values, so the people is allowed to support ruler's "vision" like they do with normal ideologies.

2) The one class that doesn't have an ideology is the Bureaucratic Elite. To be more precise, it supports ALWAYS the "govt profile" ideology with 100%.

3) What political structure are you using? The one from the pre-updated model or the one from post-update?
The pre-update:
ruler pol.power
RC pp
LC pp
UC pp
WC pp

The post-update:
ruler pp
capitalists pp
people's pp
WC pp
RC pp

I ask because equations are there if you want to implement them, but only for the pre-updated version. For the new proposed system I'd have to change a some things.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited August 22, 2000).]</font>

[F_Smith]

Okay, so far so good.

1) Will each social class select it's Ideology choice at the Civ level?

2) I'm using the new Political Structure, altho I'm using the equations from the old one. I've substituted 'Peoples Power' for 'LC' and 'Capital' for 'UC'. I will plug in any corrections you make.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 22, 2000).]</font>

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

I have put forward an idea for the govt player interface that I think is important and would like to hear your opinion on it. I put it in my post "posted August 21, 2000 21:00" in the Beast Prototype thread. If you could please read it and the subsequent discussion I'd appreciate it.

If it gains enough support I will try to transfer it over here.

Thanks,

Mark

[roquijad]

Yesterday I had an idea for an alternative method to set govt policies. Based on comments by F_Smith (he didn't like much the "negotiation procedure" of the model) and Axi's feelings about the "machiavelean ruler effect", I felt it was worthy to think about something else. The new proposed system is a "generalization" of one idea by Mark for the tax rate.

In order to let you all (even those who don't know the math in the model) comment this proposal and analyze if it's better or worse than the current system, I'll explain briefly what's good and bad with the current system:

The negotiation procedure (current system) takes all the desires for a given govt policy from the different social classes and mix them to produce a single output (the negotiated final value). In this mix, the greater political power a class has, the closer the final value is to what the class desired and vise versa. That's how all govt policies are managed.

What's good:
1)It's very simple in the mathematical side.

2)It isn't biased to any particular type of govt. The "negotiation" can be interpreted according to the regime because it's simply an interaction of units with power and desires.

3)It provides a lot of flexibility. Since the final negotiated value is a mix of others, the govt profile can take a lot of different forms, so we can have, FE, several democratic regimes with slight differences between them.

4)Most important, it makes social classes "active" (as well as reactive). In reactive-type models, computer-handled political entities can only react to what the player does, like producing riots if they don't like what the player is doing. With an active political entity, it doesn't have to wait for ruler intervention to make a change in the govt. It doesn't need the ruler to try to pass laws or any such thing to express itself. The class uses the power it posseses to make a change in the govt. If a class has power, this is what you'd expect.

What's bad:
1)The player is encouraged to put as his preferences other values than the ones he/she really wants. He/she "lies" to the game. If FE he/she wants a CivilRights policy of 45%, then probably would have to tell the interface he/she wants 15% in order to achieve it. This is the "machieavelean ruler effect" Axi has pointed out, and means the player is forced to take more extreme positions than he/she would. The player is like cheating here because he/she understands how the procedure works, but social classes cannot counterbalance this action because they're not as smart as the human is.

2)You don't know as a player what the final outcome is going to be. You put in values, but they're gonna be mixed with others (what the classes want) so you don't know what's gonna be at the end. Maybe this can be fun for some players, but the trial&error this system encourages may frustrate others. It's also important to note here that although in F_Smith's beast changes ocurr immediatedly (one turn), it's mandatory for realism that changes ocurr slowly in several turns, so players will see the effect of their decisions only after a while, making the trial&error strategy less effective. However, this problem can be solved if we add something like a "Political Advisor" who could tell the ruler what's going to happen. This is easily implementable.

It's hard to classify the following in good or bad. I consider it good, but...:
The negotiation procedure actually makes the ruler less powerful in more representative regimes. The model was meant to avoid the player having total control of govt policies in this situations for more realism. Therefore, in a regime with low ruler's pol.power, saying "I wanted to have a CivilRights level of 34% and the procedure gave me 75%" and then complaining for that is against the overall idea of the model. It has been a goal all along to throw away the ever-all-mighty-player approach one is used to in other games. Realism in this matter has been a must. I know Mark and Axi knew (and agreed) about this. I wonder about the rest...


So what's new? The "machiavelean ruler effect" has always bothered me, but I wasn't able to create another system capable of erradicating this without losing the good stuff of the system. On the other side, even though I don't like F_Smith's system based on votes (for the tax rate in the beast), I must admit it has one very nice characteristic: you know exactly what value the policy will take (given the change is approved), which makes you feel more in control of what's going on.

So what I came up with yesterday is a system where the mach. ruler effect doesn't exist anymore and where the player can manage his decisions more directly. All without losing the good things the current system has.

The proposal is this: For a given policy, the negotiation procedure is used normally, but the ruler is NOT counted. This means the negotiation takes place only between social classes. A negotiated value comes as the outcome. Instead of saying that the final negotiated value is the one to be implemented in the civ, we transform it into a range where the ruler has to choose a particular value. For example, if the negotiated value between classes is X, then we say classes have decided the policy value must lie in the range [X-d,X+d]. "d" is a value that depends on ruler's pol.power. The more despotic, the higher "d" is. The ruler now has to choose the exact value within the range. The value the player picks becomes the official govt policy.

What does this imply?
The interpretation is classes define like a global "framework" for govt policies. Within the framework the ruler can define policies precisely.

If the ruler has little pol.power, then he has few options (small range). A policy like CivilRight would have FE a range like [66%,71%], so mainly it's the rest classes that are deciding its value, which is correct and realistic. But if the ruler has a large pol.power, the negotiated value just becomes a lousy reference. CivilRights would have now FE a range like [23%,78%], so it's mainly a ruler's decision completely.

In this situation the player doesn't have to "lie" to the interface. The values he chooses are those he wants, at least those the regime allows him. If he's still not satisfied (his really desired value is outside the legal range) then he has two options: a)simply accept he's not all mighty and live with that. b)try to get more power becoming more despotic. Of course here we're dealing with legal actions. He in fact has more alternatives to get what he wants with some questionable actions.

Once the ruler doesn't have to lie, the mach.ruler effect disappears. And on the other side the player can see directly how his decisions take place instead of going through the negotiation process. (the two goals I was seeking with this proposal)

Does this idea sound better to using simply the negotiation procedure (with the ruler counted in)? I don't have personally an inclination to what's better, so I want to know if you guys consider this proposal interesting.

It's important to say, however, that the proposal only works for policies, but not for the political structure. Normally the negotiation procedure is used too to alter this structure of power, representing negotiation between actors to define how much power each should have. For the time being I can't provide with a solution for that part. The proposal here doesn't work for pol.power variables because if the ruler cannot participate in the negotiation, it will be way too easy to steal him his power (assuming classes want that, which is not necessarily true always, but it'll be of course common many cases). And this, of course, is not admisible!

Comments?

[roquijad]

I posted the above without realizing there were two posts asking me things. Sorry.
F_Smith: Yes, at the civ level.
Mark: I'll check it.

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

As you will soon figure out, your idea two posts above is very similar to the proposal I was trying to get you to look at http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif. I think it is much better for the player than the way we were handling it.

The only diff is I would keep the ruler pref as you had them in the guts of the system so we can have a quick way to see if the ruler is more reactionary or more liberal than the govt as a whole.

[Richard Bruns]

I like Rodrigo's new system. It is realistic, has good math, and should work well and be fun to play. I do have a few questions/comments, however:

The range listed is the "safe" range, right? The ruler can choose any number in there without causing problems, and it would be represented on the slider as the green area.

But the ruler should be able to override the desires of the other classes using "foul play", martial law, or whatever. Choosing a policy outside the range would require such actions and would not be popular. These areas would be represented on the slider as yellow and red, depending on the negative consequences that would result from the action.

My view is that the players should be able to force anything if they are willing to deal with the consequences. Instead of "You can't do this" we should have "You can do this, but if you do everyone will hate you and there will be rioting in the streets."

[Lord God Jinnai]

OK I like the new sys rodrigo posted with two minor exceptions:
1> This realates to Rich's post: The ruler should be able to set the tax rate outside the area, but only on certain conditions, ie appropriate gov type and enough political power of his own. The diff is that anything outside would be red and anything iside would be yellow/green on mark's bar (if its really low variance we could even go beyond red to purple or black for very extreme proposals).

2> The variance seems not quite right to me. It seems the variance should also be not ness X-d thru X+d, but more based on the social classes deciding what it is. FE if a majority wants very low taxes then it might be more like X-d-p thru X+d-p where p is the political pressure put on by that class to keep the rates lower.

Now about why negotiations shouldn't always work: Generally i say they should, about 90-95% of the time, but nothing is guaranteed and the ruler shouldn't always have the luxury of knowing the policies will be settled for a medium.
FE its quite possible that 2 groups that are opposite extremes (ie 0 vs 100 on everything for this example) will not tolerate each others proposal. Take also the fact that say they are very fundimentalistic and won't budge to even close to a moderate solution (quite possible) and the other groups make up so small a percentage of political power that their voices aren't heard amist the other 2 groups (also quite possible) so no matter what there would be no compromise because neither group will agree perhaps to even meet with the other group. Such situations will if not already eventually lead into internal warfare, but if it isn't already no policy can be negotiated because neither side can stand the other and the other small groups are so small that anything they propose will be drowned out by the other two (which they might likely meet temporarily to make sure that such a proposal doesn't pass).

Also on the case of a rulership like japan i mentioned earlier, even if the ruler took extreme measures compared to what his current policies were, the people would almost not likely revolt because of their sence of community and their belief the ruler was divine and his word supreme and their were also no really potential 'leaders' to rally the people against the ruler.

[roquijad]

It seems the new proposal is gaining supporters... But, I had another idea! And I feel is better (maybe I'm in an innovative streak! http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif )
I'll tell you about it, but first a few comments on what you all say above:

LGJ: I'm not gonna comment your points 1 and 2 because I'd prefer you all to look at my new idea (below). As for your thoughts about antagonistic parties negotiating policies, I think you have a good point there. I believe you're right when you say a very heterogeneous political arena can lead to a less effective govt when it comes to negotiate policies. To generalize your idea, I think what we can do is to measure how much diversity a govt has. This is easy to do. Then we use that measure and modify the time for achieving negotiated policies. The greater the diversity, the more game turns it takes to achieve final values. I think this would be a nice feature. Opposed visions would tend to "paralyze" the govt, but not completely, of course. How does it sound? What do the rest think?

Richard: I think we see things pretty much the same way regarding what the player can and cannot do, but there may be some slight differences of importance, so I'll be more precise in what I think: I consider very important to limit player's control over the govt according to his pol.power. I don't like the idea of "safe" and "unsafe" ranges where the ruler can impose govt values outside the legal framework facing risks. This is like saying the ruler is really all powerful all the time. This converts a govt just in a matter of how much risk you want to take, but not a matter of having or not the power to do things. That's not realistic IMO. The US president can't do a lot of things, FE. Many things are simply outside the reach of his power and they've nothing to do with how popular a decision would be or if the guy in charge has or not the nerves to take a risk.

A regime for me defines the limits of ruler's intervention. If the player wants to do things he's not entitled to, then he needs another regime with more power for himself. He may use Special Actions to get more power and THEN, with a new framework, take the decisions he couldn't in the past. So I'm seeing it as a two steps move. We're not saying to players "you can't have whatever you want for govt policies", but we're saying "if you want to impose your view, then FIRST you have to get yourself a dictatorship (of some sort)". Does this sound reasonable to you all?

Mark: I don't understand well your idea with colored slides. If you say it was similar to my proposal above, then... there isn't much to say!
Your comment about the need to know ruler's preferences to see if he's reactionary or not and, in general, knowing what he stands for, is very good. You're right. We really need that. Otherwise the concept of govt and ruler tend to become one and this shouldn't happen. The truth is my proposal in my previous post isn't compatible with keeping ruler's preferences in the system. It wouldn't be possible to eliminate the machiavellian ruler effect and then the proposal has very little value. Thinking about this triggered this new idea I have.

Here's my new proposal:

As before, the negotiation procedure is used only for social classes not counting ruler's preferences. Social classes end up with a negotiated value X for a given policy. Then the game takes X and modifies it according to what the ruler wants. If the ruler was pushing for a higher value, then X is increased. And vise versa. The magnitude of the increase/decrease is given by ruler's pol.power. Example: Classes alone negotiate a Civil Rights value equal to 45%. The ruler wants 66% and he has 30% of total power. Since 66%>45%, the ruler pushes for a greater value. Let's assume his 30% pol.power allows him to alter any negotiated value by 15% at most. Then, CivilRights ends up being 45%+15%=60%. In general the system is

Govt_Policy=X+sign(ruler_pref-X)*min(abs(ruler_pref-X),F(ruler_polpower))

where F is a function TBD transforming ruler's pol.power into the maximum modifier the player could apply to the classes' negotiated value.

It's similar to the "range" approach I proposed in the other post in the sense that classes take a "preliminary" decision and the ruler then affects it, where ruler's intervention level is given by his pol.power. But in this case the ruler has to express what he wants prior to the decision-making process (as it was planned in the original system) and it's possible to differentiate ruler's intention from actual govt. Classes will now see what his intentions are, which is very important as Mark pointed out.

There's no machiavellian ruler effect. The player gains nothing if he lies to the game. Using the equation above, the best the player can do in order to achieve his goals is put exactly what he wants in the interface. Doing otherwise would only harm him. Therefore, there's no trial and error and players won't have to waste time finding how to fool the system. And this new system still has the good things: it's simple, classes can use their pol.power to influence govt values and it's sensitive to how much power each actor has.

What about pol.powers? In my proposal with ranges in the other post this part was still unsolved. The best thing about this new system is that it is also compatible with pol.power shares. We can use the same equation (slightly altered to ensure pol.power shares will sum 100%) to simulate how political entities define the political structure with good results.

Finally, for policies (that is, all variables except pol.power shares), we can still get that feeling of "more control" each time the player changes his prefs. In the example above for CivilRights, if now suddenly the ruler changes his mind and prefers a value of, say, 50%, then the govt can make the change immediate. The old govt value, 60% would be changed to 50% at once. On the other side, if the ruler changes his preference to a value of 75%, the govt value would remain at the old level:66%. With this, the type of messages F_Smith has in the beast would fit nicely here. In the first case the message would be "Our leader has decided to lower the Civil Rights level from 60% to 50%" while in the second case it'd be something like "Our leader wanted to rise Civil Rights to 75%, but was rejected by the govt's high council. The law remains at 60%!".

I wasn't very convinced about the proposal I made in my previous post, but I really like this one very much. I think is much better. What do you think?

[Richard Bruns]

I still like the range interface. I think it would be good if the game said: "This is what we will let you do. Choose any value in this range and we will be happy. You can choose a value outside of the range, but there could be negative consequences." That is a system that should be easy and fun to work with.

While I don't like the interface proposed in the new system, it seems that the math is better. The two proposals are very similar, so would it be possible to put the new math behind the range interface?

By the way, I have one word to respond to Rodrigo's comments about the political power of US presidents and their inability to do certain things:

Nixon

[roquijad]

Warning! Do not confuse! In the "ranges proposal" choosing a value inside the "green" area, as you name it, Richard, wouldn't imply happiness for classes. If the ruler has a lot of power, then the range is wide and therefore the value the ruler picks can be very different to what classes wanted.

Happiness must be computed comparing what they want to what the govt ends up being. That's all other topic. The thing to solve here is how classes and the ruler interact to set policies (a final value for each) and not what makes people happier.

The range represents the legal limits and not what's popular and what not. Of course topics are related, but don't confuse!

About Nixon... well, it's a good example... but I'm sure you don't believe the US president has total control of the govt as, FE, saddam hussein... so, how'd you make this difference in the game? And here there's ground to get confused too! http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif Despotism doesn't mean doing things regardless of people's desires. It's just the ability to do whatever is wanted. A ruler can be despotic and good to their people. Many kings were... So, were all US presidents despotic, yet good to their people or were they really limited in their powers?

[Lord God Jinnai]

OK, yea that sounds appropriate for the most part. Few things though could take centuries also and in this case could be marked (indefinate). FE the battle in the balkans has lasted since the arabs conquered the area after the fall of the Byzantine empire. Such things are more ethnically motivated, but similar things can happen with social conditions.

I like that new proposal, though you should also consider how fudimental and agrressive each side is on their position and allow the ruler to be morseo or lesso also. Also there could be other additional ways of influencing like bribes, threats, propoganda all in special actions the player should be allowed to do during negotiations.

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

I haven't read all this carefully, and need to reflect on your new idea. But I have just a quick note to clear up a misconception. On the green - red ranges idea -- for a democratic government even the red (extreme actions) range does not necc go from 0-100% of each parameter. Suppose the people in general want 20% for some govt. parameter.
For a very democratic state the ranges might be: Green 18%-22%; Yellow 16%-25%; Red 10%-32%. And that's it! Even Extreme actions in a very democratic govt only allow so much flexibility because the rest of society is pulling against the ruler. If the player wants more power then they have to go your route of changing the govt. Or if they get caught doing something in the red range the govt might collapse anyway...

FE Nixon and many other US presidents have gotten away with a lot of things that push beyond their constitutional power. But even Nixon used extreme actions to move civil rights just a small amount (maybe a few percent on average). In no way could he have reinstituted slavery, even with the most extreme covert actions you can think of!

Does this help you better accept the idea?

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited August 28, 2000).]</font>

[axi]

I'm back, but having goofed around for so much, has left me with a pressing schedule. Please be patient with me.

Below, I am using the term "power groups", which refers to classes for the DNPs and to ideologies for the INPs.

On the policy-setting procedure: Rodrigo's idea sounds rather good, since:
It gets rid of the "Macchiavelian Ruler Effect".
It is independent of the Current Govt Profile. This way, power groups that have the will and the power to do so, can be "active" instead of "reactive". As Rodrigo wrote: <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>Most important, it makes social classes "active" (as well as reactive). In reactive-type models, computer-handled political entities can only react to what the player does, like producing riots if they don't like what the player is doing. With an active political entity, it doesn't have to wait for ruler intervention to make a change in the govt. It doesn't need the ruler to try to pass laws or any such thing to express itself. The class uses the power it posseses to make a change in the govt. If a class has power, this is what you'd expect.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>
It allows the ruler to be judged for his preferences, while the govt will be judged for the actual policies. Things like the RRF should be determined according to the ruler's profile rather than the govt profile.
It shows to be compatible with the rest of the model.

I tried to find a proper expression for F. I am using the following abbreviations:
P=govt_policy (0-1)
R=ruler_pref (0-1)
r=ruler_polpower (0-1)

Negotiation procedure: P=X(1-r)+Rr

New procedure:
IF R > X
THEN P=X+min[R-X,F(r)]
ELSE P=X-min[X-R,F(r)]

To be equivalent, it should be:
If R > X and F(r) < R-X:
X(1-r)+Rr=X+F(r)
or F(r)=r(R-X)
which is always less than R-X because r < 1
For R < X, we have F(r)=-r(R-X)
Here we see what's wrong with the negotiation procedure: F depends from R, hence the "Macchiavelian Ruler Effect".

F(r) should be such that for r=0, F=0 and for r=1, F=max. But maxF=1-X if R > X and maxF=X if R < X. The simplest possible implementation is:
IF R > X
THEN P=X+min[R-X,r(1-X)]
ELSE P=X-min[X-R,rX]
This is the equivalent of using the negotiation procedure with the ruler always highballing to the maximum degree (always choosing 0 or 1, according to what suits him best). In other words, this is a way of "automation" of the MRE, so that the player won't get into the trouble of trying out manually to find what he should bid for. Obviously this is not the best solution, since the ruler has a clear advantage over the other power groups. Other implementations like F(r)=r, or F(r)=r² or F(r)=ar where 0 < a < 1 do not give what is expected for despotic regimes, while they are no more representative of the ruler's power.

We could of course accept that the ruler, as the initiator of the negotiation, has a de facto advantage, so his "automatic highballing" would be accepted as a feature of the game. But then the ability to initiate negotiations should be granted to other power groups too (since we agree that power groups in Clash should be active). This means that we would have to provide our system with criteria for when a negotiation should be pursued by the power groups and when such a claim should be accepted. We should also have to devise a way for the ruler to participate in such a negotiation, from a different, non-priviledged position.

These preoccupations, in accord with F_Smith's repeated statements about having a "game within a game" (which I gather is the desire of all of us; that's why we are trying to devise a political system), have led me to another idea: if we want the player of Clash to really "play politics", shouldn't we then use a "Political AI"? I feel that the power groups shouldn't be just "dumb" bodies, with certain power and certain preferences, that act or react always in the same way. I feel it would be nice for the player to know that he is facing an "internal enemy", and not just a "flock of sheep". Using the traits of their respective character-leaders (ambition, fundamentalism, ego, venture, etc ,whichever there are), each power group should have the liberty and the brains to differentiate it's actions, for the purpose of better achieving it's goals in the current circumstances; exactly like the player is expected to do. This sort of AI (internal enemy) should of course be much simpler than the military AI or the AI of a rival civ, but it should be able, within certain (severe) restrictions, to:
- Differentiate it's preferences, in order to affect the negotiations. (old negotiation procedure)
- Initiate negotiations, when it suits it. (new negotiation procedure)
- Form a coalition with another power group, to obtain majority. (election procedure)
- Organise and control PAF Events.
- Perform special actions.
- Be corrupted and taken-over by the player or one of his rivals.

As for the red-yellow-green range interface that Mark has mentioned, I feel (and I have previously mentioned) that it is a very good way to display all of the PAFs, in a place where they will be viewable during policy setting, so that the player will be able to view what kind of risks he takes. If we want, we can create Overall Risk Counters (ORCs), giving a weighted average (with weights=the respective pol.power of each power group in question) of all PAFs of a certain type, or even more general counters for each group of PAFs. The variable Empire's Stability will be a general indication of all PAFs. Certain ORCs can be directly linked to some Ruler's Govt Profile ranges and some ranges might have multiple ORCs attached (f.e. INPs should have RRF_ORC and BAF&RF_ORC attached; the first would refer to the discontent caused by the profile itself, while the second to what would happen if that was passed as a govt policy. I feel that this interface shouldn't make things too easy for the player; the real rulers are never sure of the consequenses of their actions; so these indications do not need to be precise. As for the risk and the gains from commiting special actions, this should be provided elsewhere; foul play would be encouraged and encapsulated to the normal political play otherwise, which I don't like. Finally, I am in favor of using gradient color ranges and not just R-Y-G.

What a negotiation procedure of any kind is always lacking, is what I have mentioned before as "concentrisation". I'm not sure if the term is valid, but I'm referring to the kind of political system where some sort of "majority rule" applies. It is like the various power groups are gambling their share of power, in hope of gaining it all. As it is generally advertised, this is due to the fact that it is impossible to make realistic policies through negotiation, because of the existant ideologic distances. In reality, this is just another way for the mighty to steal the power of the weak. This doesn't ness need to be the "absolute majority" (50%), but also the "relative majority" (biggest %) and all variations where the "critical percentage", or "Consensus" is different than 50% (f.e. in the Greek Parliament, to pass a law you need 50%, to elect the president you need 60% and to revise the constitution 75%, while in the general elections, the govt usually needs about 35% of the people's votes to obtain 50% of the parliamentary seats).

So I feel that the election-type system should be enhanced by a DNP called "Consensus", that will provide us with a basic "critical percentage", upon which the consensus for each individual policy should be based (f.e. it should be multiplied by a factor >1 for some DNPs like SL, ED, RD). This and the critical ideologic distance should be a measure of how cooperative the political system is and the should be derived from cultural elements. Of course, if the needed consensus is 100%, then it totally reverts into a negotiation procedure. For big numbers (like 75%), the policies will be mostly negotiated. This way, we can allow for mixed (election-negotiation) systems. I figured this out as an enhancement to my election system, if F_Smith wants to proceed into coding both ways.

To revert to an older topic: The power structure in the ideologies and the classes power structure are not the same thing. "UC power" is not replaced by "Capitalist power" (which term btw is not appropriate now, because we have assumed that power deriving from the possession of land is also lumped here, so we should probably use the term "Property power", or the term "Kapital power", which is characteristic of the way it is divided among the socioeconomic classes), nor is "LC power" replaced by "People's power". What happens is:
UCpp=Kapital_pp*UC_Kap.share+People's_pp*UC_demog.share, and
LCpp=People's_pp*LC_demog.share (+Labor_pp*LC_labor.share), while
MCpp=Kapital_pp*MC_Kap.share+People's_pp*MC_demog.share (+Labor_pp*MC_labor.share)
(Inside the parentheses are the factors added if we include Labor power, as I have proposed)
"Religion power" is not always the power of the RC, because there can be one or more other classes that provide ethics to society. The same applies to "Warrior power".

I am stressing this point because I'm afraid that F_Smith, during coding, has overlooked this fact. If this is so, this is an error in understanding the object structure of the model and must be corrected ASAP. Any ideology should be translatable to a power structure for any class system that we or the scenario creator would want to create. The best way for us to test if this is implemented as it should be, is to include the MC into the beast and to bring back the "Build new SC" capability. Custom made classes can be given power and behavior through their share of the contributions, as I have previously outlined, at least for now, until we come up with a better way of assigning behaviors. I am of the opinion that this should be our next step in advancing the Beast.

Btw, a question to all: shouldn't we consider including nobility in the way I have proposed, or in some other way? <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>Possible implementation: Nobility could be attributed to the socioeconomic class with the higher concentration of power per capita and once instituted, it cannot change hands, unless it is reinstituted by some social reform. I feel that purely institutional classes should not have nobility because they consist of higher as well as lower members (Their power is attributed to the institutions rather than the members anyway), but at least for scenarios, nobility should be attributed to whomever the author wants. Nobility is linked with social elitism and as such, it should oppose or totally restrict intra-class mobility.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>For the time being, I am not pressing neither for this, nor for "Labor power", so we can officially stick with Rodrigo's scheme for ideologies. But it's nothing that we can't change in the future, if we like.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by axi (edited August 28, 2000).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by axi (edited August 28, 2000).]</font>

[F_Smith]

Axi:

I think you're right, I didn't see the proposed system quite the way you outlined it here --

<ol>
So are 'uc' and 'lc' still in the game? If so, where again? I don't think we need them, if we use 'people' and 'capital'.

'People' power and 'capital' power (the terms I've used in the GUI for the beast) can be used to determine the influences on the political system for all economic sectors of the pop. 'People' and 'Capital' are the two components of 'peoples political power' that would actually include all concievable 'economic' classes (UC, LC and a 'Labor' class). And it means we don't have to worry about demographics or 'capital shares' at all. So do I still need to include the specific 'economic' classes?

I also don't understand the concept of 'Religion' power being seperate from the 'religious class'. Can I get a little more feedback on that?

As for custom social classes, they're in the data model but not on the GUI, a situation easily remedied. But I was thinking that a custom SC would not have any political power unless a govt specifically gave it some. So to specifically create a 'Nobility', you would give the 'Nobles' social class some level of political power.
[/list=a]

[axi]

F_Smith: Time is pressing on me, so I can't say much. I hope the others will help you more.

1. UC, LC and MC are socioeconomic classes. They hold K units of kapital, provide L units of labor and consist of X people each. Between them they hold all of the (private) kapital, provide all of the labor (except slave labor) and sum up to the whole of the (majorities) population. Ideologies and govt policies assign power not directly to each of those classes, but to these quantative characteristics and the socioeconomic classes share this power accordingly. By definition, for the UC it is L=0 and for the LC it is K=0. The other numbers will be given from the govtecon submodel. So who holds kapital, holds part of it's power; this means that (1-PP)% of capital power goes to the ruler + the BE (together they represent the state), according to their respective powers. If we had labor power, the power partaining to the labor of the exploited class would be also given to the state. Of course minorities do not have part of the people's power, as this line of thought would imply.

2. The specific economic classes are needed because they have an economic role, in addition to a political one. They are the ones who produce and invest and consume; they hold the kapital and provide the labor. They have different income, demographics, PAFs, investment and research preferences. Maybe the govt model alone can be abstracted enough so that it won't need classes, but the econ model cannot.

3. Social contributions like Ethics and Security cannot be measured like Kapital and Labor can. Nevertheless, we can arbitrarily say that class A provides a1% of contribution 1, a2% of contribution 2, etc. An example I have used before: <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>We can have f.e. a holy warriors class that provides 40% of the society's security and 20% of it's ethics, while a monks class provides 60% ethics, a mandarin class with the rest 20% ethics and 100% admin and finally a generals class with the rest 60% security
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>So Religion power is attributed to the contribution "Ethics", and classes share this power according to their arbitrarily given share on the contribution. This, as I have stated before, allows more flexibility, chiefly for scenario purposes. But anyway, since the ideologic power structure is going to be different than the class power structure, the rational thing is to have them be seperate.

4. "Nobility", at least as I have envisioned it, should be no social class. It should be included into ideologies, along with ruler's power and people's power as the layer of power attributed to the "few", while ruler's power is power of the "one" and people power is power of the "many". It should be added to the power of a single class, but this is not official right now. A custom SC should have the power dictated by it's contributions and it's demographics.

------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[F_Smith]

Axi:

Okay, I'm going to need help conceptualizing this. Forgive me if I need more explaining than a 3 yr old . . .

<ol>
I am not too familiar with the econ model, only some of the 'big' ideas have sunk in. If we need demographics info for econ, I don't see that being a problem. Altho I haven't included any for the govt code, it can be easily added.

Yet I still don't see it being necessary to the govt model. Altho if you want it in, just say the word. As it is, the govt model 'capital' power just refers to the power of all the capital . . . it's a level of abstraction that seems to make sense. Altho we can use specifics, instead.

Stupid question time. Do I have this correct?
"The warrior class is all the groups who provide security".

"The religious class is all the groups who provide ethics".

I think my main misunderstanding in all this is what you mean when you say 'social classes'.

I thought that 'nobility' would be the very quintessential 'social class'. They, in fact, are the original 'upper class'. I thought 'social class' membership was related to some organization -- Nobility, Military, Church, Guild, Society, Govt Job, etc.

What, in 'Clash' terms, is a 'social class'?
[/list=a]

Perhaps what the beast needs next is more 'econ' info, so that the actual calculations for these govt numbers can have a real basis?

In there now is a primitive 'food' system. I used Mark's production and consumption #s, based upon pop and # of 'zones'. Altho they don't have to feed armies, or anything else -- yet.

But it's neat to run off a hundred years and see food in the 'bank'!

[F_Smith]

Double trouble.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 28, 2000).]</font>

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well as far as i know warriors and religions don't ness each provide only ethics and only security. Well maybe religion only provides ethics, but warriors can provide both, such as knights and samari

[Richard Bruns]

Green Range: If the green range does not imply happiness, then the slider color system wouldn't make sense. I think that green should mean "safe." Otherwise the player gets confused. I asked about this in an earlier post, and assumed that this was the case because I was not corrected.

Power Limits: I understand now. Before, I had assumed that the red range would include things like the declaration of martial law and the use of the army to enforce things. But I see now that the model considers such a drastic step to be a change in government. If you do this, you are essentially switching to despotism, and the range increases. That makes sense.

Just to clarify things:

The center of the distribution and the green range are chosen by the other social classes. The size of the yellow and red ranges are determined by the ruler's political power. The player sees this range and then inputs a value representing the desired policy.

I would like the interface described above. Is this close to what we are doing?

[axi]

F_Smith, are you kidding me? This is from your post of 27 June, in this thread: <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>P.S.-- there is actually no reason not to allow all social classes to contribute labor, capital and anything else, at varying levels defined by the 'social class'. The code will loop thru it all on a turn-by-turn basis anyway, and get from each person his contributions (taken from his social class) . . . so it's a quick and simple thing to have the 'LowerClass' (UnderClass, maybe?) contribute, say, x percent of it's total net worth (which could be next to nothing) while the 'upper class' contributes a higher percentage of their net worth (which will be considerably higher, of course). Or you can define the 'LowerClass' as returning 0 when you ask for their 'capital contribution'. But it's up to ya'll.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> The whole concept of economic and social "contributions" and the idea to define Social Classes according to their contributions, originated from this paragraph of yours and was introduced by me in my post of July 10. Rodrigo came up with the original idea of linking power with contributions, by assigning power to kapital and to population, in August 14. In my post of August 16, I tried to generalise this idea for all contributions, both economic and social, but, for the time being and correct-me-if-I'm-wrong, my view got accepted only for social contributions. This is all the progress the govt model has made for the last 2 months!

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>Stupid question time. Do I have this correct?
"The warrior class is all the groups who provide security".
"The religious class is all the groups who provide ethics".
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> Buzz! Wrong answer! http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif
The RC and WC will exist only in the default game, where there will be the only classes providing ethics and security respectively. Obviously, in a scenario with monks, mandarins, generals and samurais (classes which provide all of the ethics and security in the specific scenario), there will be no RC and WC. Do not confound Social Classes with OO-Classes; monks and samurais are objects of the same OO-class as the RC and the WC ("pure social classes", or "institutional classes") and NOT instances of the OO-classes RC and WC respectively.

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>I thought 'social class' membership was related to some organization -- Nobility, Military, Church, Guild, Society, Govt Job, etc.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> It's either this (membership in an organisation or institution) or an economic role that differentiate social classes. In the first case, we're talking about "institutional classes", in the second, about "socioeconomic classes". Only Nobility is somewhat ambiguous; it is in fact a socioeconomic class that has become an institution. As for society, as long as capitalism exists, it is not organised into a functional body; people are divided along economic lines. But pray, let's not get into this discussion, if we can.

[roquijad]

What a chaos, baby!

I think we should refrain ourselves from discussing so many subjects at the same time. It's too confusing.

Please let's forget for a moment about how to include nobility, "ethic" and "security" contributions, etc and let's focus on what we want for the setting-policies method.

Only to clarify possible F_Smith's misconceptions, I've written the following part to him. All the rest can skip it and go to the "POLICY-SETTING METHODS" part of this post.

-----------
The following is for F_Smith:
Axi is right when he says it's not as easy as simply replacing the Lower Class for People and the Upper Class for Capitalists. It's the same thing I told you some posts ago: a change is needed in equations to fully implement the update that creates the concepts of "People" and "Capitalists" from the old rigid UpperClass and LowerClass you find in the govt model document. But it's not so important now. Just imagine for now we're still using only the UpperClass and LowerClass as in the original system until I see what exaclty needs to be changed in equations. Don't worry about this.

Axi mentions a lot of things like "ethics contribution", "security contr.", "consensus", etc. They're all in the area of "still under discussion" and that's why you get confused. You're free, of course, to code whatever pleases you regarding this concepts in your "alternative" political system if you understand what Axi is saying. As for the "official" or "default" model, all those are alien concepts and should not be coded. The only change so far to the govt model document regards the political structure, replacing UC and LC for Capitalists and People. So, you can rely on the document on anything else. Whatever is not mentioned there, is still under discussion and you shouldn't code it in the "default" system.

The nobility stuff Axi brings up is within the discussion about flexibility for the number of social classes. I'm avoiding the subject for now just to let us all focus on the method for setting govt policies.

You ask if Capitalists and People eliminate UpperClass, LowerClass, MiddleCLass, etc. And you ask a definition for socialclass. Here's the thing:

A social class is a group of people with the same behavior. That's it.

A socioeconomic class is a socialclass whose behavior is given by the culture it belongs to and the amount of Kapital and Labor it provides. For developing purposes we'll have just 3 of them: UpperClass, LowerClass, MiddleClass.

The concepts "People" and "Capitalists", which are novel, are not socialclasses and refer to all social classes matching a given criteria, so they don't eliminate classes UC, LC, etc. When we say "People", we refer to all social classes. In terms of procedures, socialclasses will be aggregated (their preferences, that is) to have them acting politically. The weight each class will have in this mathematical aggregation is given by its demographic share, so demog.shares are relevant for this model (and the econ model). Of course, if a demog. share for a given class is too small, it will practically not affect the math. aggregation, so in fact "People" will be an aggregation only of all "demographic-intensive" classes. The Religious Class, the Warriors Class and the Bureaucratic Elite are all, by definition, irrelevant in terms of demography. This means "People", really, are only an aggregation of socioeconomic classes.

"Capitalists" refers to all socioeconomic classes controlling kapital. Each socioeconomic class has a level of kapital. Again, in terms of political procedures, we'll aggregate socioeconomic classes' preferences with K>0 to know what preferences Capitalists have as a whole, but in this case it will be the relative posession of K the variable defining the weight in the math. aggregation.

So, what a scenario designer (or we, for the default game) has to do is to define how many socioeconomic classes he wants, and for each, how much Kapital and Labor it provides. A procedure TBD will dynamicly, as the games evolves, assign demographic shares to each socioeconomic class the designer defined using, among other things, K and L. The player, therefore, will experience a game with:
N socioeconomic classes
1 Religious Class
1 Warriors Class
1 Bureaucratic Elite

while the political structure consists of (always, regardless of "N"... which provides the very-modest extra flexibility):
People's pol.power
Capitalists' pol.power
Ruler's pol.power
Religous Class' pol.power
Warriors Class' pol.power
Bureaucratic Elite's pol.power

So, when we use the "negotiation procedure" (or whatever policy-setting method we'll end up with) to set a policy value, we take preferences from the respective aggregations (People or Capitalists), the respective class itself (RC, WC, BE) and ruler' pref.

Is it any clearer?
-----------------

POLICY-SETTING METHODS

F_Smith: I haven't seen any thoughts from you regarding my two proposals in previous posts to replace the negotiation procedure. Since you're maybe the most reticent to use the current system the govt model uses, I'd like to know your opinion.

All:
It seems each one of us understood a different thing for the colored sliders interface Mark suggested! http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif What's red, yellow or green depends, of course, on what we want to tell players with that. What I mean is we should first be clear about how our policy-setting method is going to work and only then care about how different player's options will be displayed. But it seems to me you prefer to do things the other way around: Imagining how you'd like to interact with the game and leave the inner math that makes that interface possible to me! http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif It's alright. Maybe it's better that way.

Richard and Mark have proposed systems based on colors, but I'll ask you two to please now make a proposal with a definition of exactly what is understood by each color to avoid confusion. All the rest can make proposals too, of course.

Just for a reference, I'll repeat here my last proposal briefly: For a given policy, the player chooses the value he wants. Classes negotiate between them a value X for that policy. Value X is then modified according to what the ruler wants and how much power he has to achieve a final value. The more despotic, the more he is able to modify the value and the closest this final value will be to what he wanted. And vise versa. THIS IS THE LEGAL PART. On a different interface, probably with buttons just like F_Smith has it in the beast, the player will find several special actions for "illegal" activities. These are the ones already envisioned:

Bribing/threatening politicians: It's main effect would be making classes "vote" more in line with ruler's prefs, moving "X" toward ruler's values.

Assesinations/Ideology Banning: Lower or eliminate politicians with mentalities opposite to what the ruler wants from the political arena, which, again, will tend to move "X" to what the ruler wants.

Clossing the Senate: The ruler takes away People's power and makes it his own. He's actually changing the regime here. With more power the player will probably get his prefs imposed.

Propaganda: Will influence mentalities of classes making them more alike with ruler's intentions. It will make possible more affinity between "X" and ruler's pref.

Depending on ruler's pol.power:
a) These actions can be done without any scandal. They're not really "illegal" (despotism)
b) These actions are considered illegal, but the ruler can still do some of them "undercover" facing a scandal. (low despotism)

Classes' happiness or ruler's popularity are handled somewhere else (riots model) comparing what they want to what the govt ends up being and how the ruler behaves.
---------------
All:
Just a quick poll. Please respond.

"The lower ruler's pol.power is, the more limited he should be in his control over govt policies". Do you agree with this statement?

---------------
Axi: I won't comment your ideas for "F" because I feel that's too detailed for the moment. As for your idea for a "political AI", I find it very ambicious. I'm sure we can find a simple method. This isn't THAT difficult.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi everyone:

Its a complicated week at work so I don't have much time.

Rodrigo's new proposed system...
I am with Richard, the math and behavior looks basically good, and it eliminates some problems, but the interface needs work. So I agree we should go with the new system.

"The lower ruler's pol.power is, the more limited he should be in his control over govt policies". I Agree

Interface:
The colored slider was meant to be a synthesis of in what ranges the player can attempt to set policy, and what the possible repercussions are. Personally as a player I don't care if its 'legal' by the govt model or not! If I can change something and there are likely no repercussions (nothing should be completely certain) then its 'green'. So IMO green generally means Both legal and not causing large amounts of unhappiness. In some cases, because of general unhappiness in the body politic, there will be no green zone at all. FE an ideological battle where the country is split 50-50 between two vastly different ideologies. No matter what the player does there will be substantial chance of serious riots or even revolt. Here even though the ruler can do many things that are legal, there is still a good chance things will blow up, and the player must know about it!

I haven't written down specifics because all the happiness stuff depends on the numbers in the riots model, and extraordinary actions aren't quantified in their effect either. For now, in testing, the green could just be legal actions, yellow if it requires some moderate 'extraordinary' actions and red if it requires a lot of them.

As a rule of thumb I would say its green if you can do it with <1% chance of something bad happening in the short run. Yellow <10%. Red >=10%. But these exact breakpoints would have to be figured in playtesting.

[Richard Bruns]

I agree with Mark's post above.

Rodrigo, I am not asking for a new math system. The math in your most recent proposal is good, but it does have one problem. It asks the player to input a value at the beginning, before the player knows what the other classes want. If the players are blind like that, they could unwittingly cause riots. The players should be able to see what the other classes want before they input the desired values. That is why I liked the proposal before the most recent one, and it is also the reason I really like the slider interface.

The player should know roughly what the consequences of the decisions are before the decisions are made. This might not be entirely realistic, but IMO it would make a more fun game.

[F_Smith]

Axi:

No contradiction -- it is a simple thing to do, as I said above. I'm just pointing out that theres no need to do it for the current govt system, as I see it, altho we *certainly* can do it that way.

Since 'people' and 'capital' are aggregates of all economic classes, that is.

Rodrigo summed up perfectly what my understanding of a 'social class' is -- any group with similar behavior. As such, 'uc', 'mc', 'lc' would not seem to be 'social classes', since the poor don't all act alike, the rich don't share any similarities, etc. A 'socioeconomic' class would have 2 parts -- social and economic. I think that's what the 'uc/mc/lc' are, the 'economic' classes. So 'nobility' would be a 'social' class, because they act different from other 'uc' people.

At least, that's what I thought.

* * *

Rodrigo:

Yeah, I believe Axi is talking about the 'econ' model. For the govt-system's purposes, 'social classes' don't matter, except as a provider of input values. They're just 'variables', so to speak.

I'm just trying to understand what page he's on, so I can move in that direction soon. But no, none of this is getting coded yet.

Oh, personally, I'm staying out of the discussion on the 'negotiated' political policy system mainly because I'm not fond of it. I'm sorry.

I think that when a ruler changes a policy, it will pass unless the powers that be are against it (a 'politics' vote system). I don't believe policies are 'negotiated' in this manner, even today. The politicians have always just tried to gather 51% of all the power. Once they have that coalition, they don't need the other groups with political power, and can ignore them. It doesn't make sense to me that a ruler with 80% of the political power can't pass any policy he/she wants. It just doesn't sound like govt as I understand it.

The people who hold the majority of the power get to do what they want, regardless of those in the minority.

People with minority power in govts get over-ridden. Here we have had various groups with some minority political power, yet they have absolutely *no* effect on the final results that come out of Congress.

The 'aggregate' system will work fine, don't get me wrong, it's just not a 'political' system, as I understand it. But it's better than what other games have had, by far.

To sum up, I think that if you're going to negotiate, you should probably use your first system, in which the ruler's power counts exactly it's percentage. But don't go by my advice, since I'd almost always use the 'politics' system.

[Richard Bruns]

F_Smith: It is my understanding that if the ruler has at least 51% of the power, the slider goes from 0% to 100%. But there can be negative social consequences associated with forcing something through. If most of the people want 10% something and the player orders 90%, there will almost certainly be riots and civil unrest.

So the pass/fail system works fine with the slider syatem. If you have the power and are willing to deal withthe consequences, you can do anything. If you don't have the power, you are limited to a certain range on the slider.

I have an idea for the interface. Hopefully it can combine F_Smith's and Rodrigo's systems so everyone is satisfied:

Initially, the allowable range on the slider is any policy that can get support from any combination of groups with at least 51% of the power. For example, if the ruler has 30% of the power, the MC has 30%, and the RC has 40%, then any range supported by the RC or MC is on the slider as a chouce for the ruler (player).

Even if the proposal has 51% support and is passed, it could cause social problems. The riots model would estimate the consequences of the ruler's choice and color the bar accordingly. However, is if the desires of the other classes overlap, the overlap range will almost certainly be green.

I do have two questions about that situation, however. Suppose that the RC wants 20-50% and the MC wants 40-60%. In this case, the player can choose any policy from 20% to 60%. Suppose the player wants 20%. Then, there would be two policies that are supported by 70% of the power: 20% and the 40-50% range. Which one would be selected?

The second question is: What would happen in the above situation if the ruler had 25% of the power and the MC had 35%? The 20% proposal (the one the player wants) would have 65% support and the 40-50% proposal would have 75%. Which proposal would be selected?

Another consequence of this system is that the choices could be discontinuous. If the RC wants 20-40% and the MC wants 70-90%, then those ranges are allowed but nothing in between is. Choosing either of these policies will almost certainly make someone seriously unhappy, so both ranges would be red. However, a strict 51% system allows no compromise.

The previous part of the proposal used F_Smith's ideas, and while being more accurate it can lead to thorny problems. The second part of the system is as follows:

The player can ask for negotiations. This would most likely be done when the other classes' ranges do not overlap. It would have to be done if no proposal is supported by 51% of the people.

If the classes with power agree to negotiate, then everyone bargains as per Rodrigo's most recent proposal. In this case, I would not oppose asking the player to input a value ahead of time, because the player has already seen the initial slider and can make an informed political choice. After the negotiations, the policy is selected.

I think that most choices can be made in the initial 51% system. Usually, the culture would be mostly homogeous and there will be some range that satisfies everyone. But the negotiations are always there as an option for the times that the 51% system would not work well.

I think that this system removes the chaotic tendencies of the 51% system. I also think that while initial slider choices are not real negotiations, they have the good interface characteristics of the negotiation/slider system.

Questions? Comments? Cuss Words?

[Lord God Jinnai]

You are forgetting something with your 51% power. Your considering each gov. as though it were run like a democracy or republic. That's not true. Even if the ruler has 1% power he can issue any orders he wants if he is considered the "ruler." The problem is iimplementation. Take the last emperors of China FE. They were considered "the ruler" of china, but their "rule" ended at the edge of the Forbidden City. He could issue whatever order he wanted, but no one had to impliment it beyond that point. The same is true if a ruler has 51% of the power, with or without coalitions. He can't do anything unless a signifigant portion of the ruling people agree with his policies and are willing to impliment them, even if grudginly. Even at 100% power he still has to have people to back him up or any decree he makes is worthless. That's why the 51% rule won't work for most governmental types.
Also even in the democracies and replublics, the ruler hasto usually give something to gather the votes needed to pass a law or bury it. Thus, negotiation happens anyway, just it happens prior to the bill coming to vote. And with 51% there they still haveto worry about the other 49% because that is still a signifigant portion of the people, enough to cause a bloody civil war or enough to gather strength outside the political area to force a few votes to go the other way after a few months or so. That's what politics is. You haveto worry about the minorites as well as the majorities otherwise those minorities could end up screwing you over, espically if you passed something they absolutley hated.

On another note, what about my proposal about perosalities (for lack of better word) for the groups such as how stubborn they are, how forceful, how moral, etc. Haven't heard anything and i proposed it twice, not even a 'yes that's good.' 'no that sucks' or 'we already plan on having/not having it''

[F_Smith]

Wait:

The 'political' system option runs like this:

1) Someone in the political system proposes a change to a policy.

2) All parties 'vote' yea or nay.

3) The measure passes or fails.

4) The effects of the change are applied.

For the time being, only the ruler can propose changes. That will be enhanced later.

So, as ruler, if I want to raise or lower a policy, I go to my 'preferences' screen and set it to the number I want.

Then other groups with power look at the change. If I raise it and they also want the value raised, then they agree (as long as I don't go farther than they want). Otherwise they disagree.

So it's up to the player to negotiate with those groups beforehand, even if the player has 51%+ 'dictator' power. If the people oppose you, and you push the measure thru anyway, they will become unhappy. They have 'negotiated'. They have made their views known to you. They likely now demand a greater % of the political power, so they won't be ignored again.

That's also where the 'special orders' come in. If I need the support of the Church leaders on a measure, I can blackmail or bribe one of them. Or I can have one arrested, or even shot, to suppress the church's power.

If you pass unpopular policies, over groups; objections, those groups will become unhappy, and less loyal. So even a dictator has to worry about the effects of his policies.

So there are no 'ranges' necessary.

* * *

Lordy:

Interestingly enough, your complaints seem to be calling for the politics system. Everything you asked for is in the politics system, and not in the 'negotiated' system.

The ruler proposes. The govt model makes a game out of implementation. The player is in charge of the negotiation and implementation, as he tries to keep his people happy and productive. A bloody civil war will result from passing too many unpopular policies.

[Richard Bruns]

LGJ: I define power as "the ability to implement things." So if a ruler cannot implement anything, that ruler has no power.

F_Smith: I know how the current "political" system works. I was trying to put a GUI on it. Rather than click blindly through words and menus, the player should be able to select a value on a slider that is color coded to give the information the player needs to make a good decision.

The slider does not allow the player to input a proposal that will fail. If the player cannot get 51% support, the value is simply not an option. That eliminates the uncertainty and chaos of the system. The idea of the slider GUI is to quickly give the player good information about the political system. The player can tell a glance which values can be passed and what the consequences of the values will be.

I think that both of the current proposed political syatems are like DOS. They are good kernels, but navigating them requires a thorough knowledge of the system. A newcomer is lost in the arcane terminology and specific inputs required.

I am trying to make Windows 3.1. I want a GUI that fits over the kernels and allows a newcomer to easily navigate and interact with the political system. Like Windows, my GUI does not give the player as much power and control over the system. Power users will want to deal directly with the kernel. But I am trying to make the GUI a good way for regular users to navigate easily.

[Lord God Jinnai]

F_Smith: You're right in a sence i'm looking for a political system, but not like you described. What you descibe I'll term as a hit or miss system, either it passes and you get what you want or it doesn't and you don't. That's not how politics is. The negotiation system, is actually closer to a political system than yours is because politics is about compromise and coalitions. Coalitions must compromise on each other though, so in this case the negotiations just happen during the proposal instead of before. Also things change. Your view wouldn't allow for internal compromises to support the minority which can puts lots of pressure on the majority because even if it passes, the ruler or other groups might want their votes elsewhere so they compromise with them on issue A to get their votes on issue B. That is another reason the minority of a proposal cannot be ignored.

Rich: Then under your idea that the percentage=amount of power for the player or the group shouldn't allow for the player to set proposals as he wishes with just 51% because he doesn't have total control. Otherwise your saying if its 51+ is = to 100, which isn't right. 51 is just that, a slim majority of control of the civ belongs to the ruler, not enough to do whatever he wishes like set tax rates at any level. Even 99 isn't = to 100. If it were, why have 99 and not just say 100 instead?

[Richard Bruns]

LGJ: If you have 51% of the power, you can take on any combination of your enemies. You can do anything you want, but there will be a lot of rioting and conflict. If you have 100% of the power, then there will be almost no opposition and you will have a much easier time.

At least, that is my interpretation. I am just trying to put an interface on everyone else's ideas.

[Lord God Jinnai]

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font><font size=1>Originally posted by Richard Bruns on 08-29-2000 09:17 PM</font>
LGJ: If you have 51% of the power, you can take on any combination of your enemies. You can do anything you want, but there will be a lot of rioting and conflict. If you have 100% of the power, then there will be almost no opposition and you will have a much easier time.

At least, that is my interpretation. I am just trying to put an interface on everyone else's ideas.
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Guess we have a fundimental differance in opinion here. See my view is that even though your adveseries might be in the minority, they'd still have 49%. That's enought to cause anyone not simply to be able to trample over them at a whim. They still got big political muscles and they can be used.

See i view it as the pecentages is only how much political or ruling power you can excercize. Otherwise people will generally try to push themselves for that 51% margin and not worry about reaching for that 60% or 70%. They'd glady accept it, but the penalties once you drop below 51% are severe compared to keeping it at 51 or above. That's not anywhere near realistic and the invite heavy micromanagment by the player to make sure they never drop below that point if at all possible.

[alms66]

Rodrigo,

On the poll, I agree

On your 2 proposals, both sound good, but I'd need to playtest both to really make a decision on which is better.

All,

On the "political" vs. "negotiated" systems, I think LGJ has pretty much summed up my thoughts on the subject of what a real political system is like, I feel the negotiated system handles it better, especially when you take into account the other parts of the system, the riots and social models. IMO, you cannot look at the gov't model alone to decide if the negotiated system will work, you must look at the three models, gov't, social, and riot models as a whole (at a minimum, the gov't and riot models). If you just look at one model, it's like looking at only 1/3 of a very large puzzle and trying to figure out what the picture is, you might get it, but it's unlikely.

F_Smith,
btw, that's why I haven't posted any of my thoughts on what is going on in the beast right now, not that I haven't had a few peeks at it, it's just that IMO we're testing an unfinished system and the test results will be totally screwed up until the rest is in there.

I know I don't show my face often in these discussions, but I've been following along, it's just that 99% of the time I agree with Rodrigo, so there's no need for me to post...but this time I had to vote http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif .

[F_Smith]

Richard:

That 'uncertainty' is the goal, the 'game' part of the political system.

When a player tries to change a government policy, that should be an uncertain thing. No 'automated' governments. The player shouldn't know for sure if a policy will pass, just like they shouldn't know for sure if an army will win a battle.

<ul>
You order your special police to bribe a leader opposed to you.
You call for a vote.
You then wait until the votes are cast to see how well the bribe worked.
You realize this character you bribed has an honesty of 0, and took your money while voting against you.
Next turn, you order a hit . . .
[/list]

So it's a govt 'game'.

I think this could also help make the game a bit more interesting during those long turns when nothing much happens for a long time, which any game that sweeps thru centuries is going to have.

* * *

Lordy:

The 'politics' system is designed more along the lines of 'politics is about power'. It is built on the principle of 'coalitions'.

It seemed that '51%' has a special meaning in politics. That *is* total control. You still have to deal with the unhappiness of those out of power, don't doubt it. If you only have a slim margin like 1%, then any power play by another group can rob you of your majority. You'd need at least 60% to be secure, I'd think. Maybe more.

And hopefully the 'politics' system is designed to encourage a player to accept *less* than 50% of the power, leading him to more 'modern' governments. Because you can still build a coalition to pass changes you want. You wield the secret police, bribery funds, and the power of the military.

* * *

Ya'll:

I do enjoy chatting about this, but I do want to repeat that this is only one option, and not the default system. So I'm not sure how 'on topic' this rambling of mine is.

I will also be glad to code up several other options, too, later. Anyone that has a unique idea for a system, let's put it in!

[F_Smith]

T K:

If possible, do still post any feedback that occurs to you when you glance at the beast.

You'd be amazed at how fast those eyeballs move the development of the program along.

The reason for ya'll to look at it is to keep me on track. Like keeping an eye on a builder to make sure he builds a house exactly to your specs. You may not learn about how the system really operates until much later, true. But you will learn how the 'game' works, which is almost more valuable.

Ya'll are 'debuggers' (we call them 'Business Analysts', or BAs). You glance at what I, your programmer, am putting out once a week or so, and say 'I like that. Change that. Dump that.'.

If ya'll don't, then the software will not get written the way *you* wanted it to. It'll get written the way *I* thought it should have been, or the way *I* thought you meant it to be. And this conversation should show you that programmers like me see things *very* differently.

Can you imagine taking something as complex as these pages and pages of models and 'writing' thousands of lines of prose to describe them *exactly* to a computer . . . in your spare time, as a hobby? I'm sure I've screwed up a hundred time just last Tuesday.

Ya'll better keep a close eye on what I write. There's no telling what I put in at 3 a.m., after that 10th Mountain Dew. The caffine can make ya nuts, I swear . . .

Besides, this is not just true of me -- it's an industry joke.

<ul>
Client requested a bicycle.
Salesman sold them a motorcycle.
Architect designs a unicycle.
Programmer codes up a space ship.
[/list]

[alms66]

F_Smith,

It's kinda funny how close to home that analogy of the builder and the architect hits...I'm in school studying to be a draftsman, of which architecture is a major part. http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif

But the thing is, if you don't know already, I was developing a new social model while Rodrigo was working on the gov't model, and we worked closely together. I had to abandon the social model because of my job and school, so I already know the inner workings, although they changed somewhat, it's fairly minor, so if you're unsure what I think, like I said, 99% of the time I vote with Rodrigo.

IMO "how the game works" is not much more than a very well laid out, easy to use, interface, and "how the system operates" is what we've been working on... the models. I just personally cannot conceive of testing the gov't model until the riot model is also in place (given my knowledge of the inner workings). For an example, I played with the Beast and set everything to polar opposites of what it was at default, and got things like, tax rate = 84% when it was 43% the previous turn. This is very discouraging taken at face value. But considering there is no riots model in place it may turn out to be ok, we won't know until then. That's why I said it's an unfinished system and all results will be screwed up. With that said, there are some things worthy of being tested at this stage (like how the procedure unfolds), but the end result of policies is not one of them.

I understand that turning these paragraphs into code is no easy task, especially as a hobby, but IF we can get the code to behave the way the equations behave in mathematical tests (and please don't underplay these tests... mathematics is the basis of nearly everything nowadays, and if it works there it can work nearly anywhere), I think we'll have the perfect system.

The reason I don't like the elected approach is that it seems to glorify individual laws (pass or fail method). While I once proposed the idea to Rodrigo, I soon rejected it on such a grand-scale game as this. The thing all players must realize, is that no matter how "all-powerful" you are, you must appease someone, whether it be your God (RC), your nobles (UC, as in Fuedal times), or your populace (everyone, in a democracy). You are never as powerful as you think, and if you try to prove otherwise... you end up dead... history has proven this.

[F_Smith]

T K:

No, not testing the govt model -- testing the govt code. I need you to be a 'Business Analyst', a 'debugger' -- all of ya'll, from time to time. I'll post 'Test Case' threads, with specific instructions. Shouldn't take long to do, then please just post a quick note saying you did it, ran fine/lousy/fast/slow/etc.

Hopefully, that's what's going to seperate us from all those other teams out there that came up with grand demos, treatments and design docs but never produced an actual program. We're going to all work on and develop actual game code. This means we have to work together. It's the only way to do it.

And I must protest, if you're designing logic for a game program, I'd really like to think you would benefit from knowing something about how the game itself works, at least the basics (it's far more than 'just an interface', please believe me on that). At least take a look at the basic datastructure. That's the 'frame' of the game.

* * *

Believe it or not, we've actually got to design code that works better than the equations. You can't code a game like this procedurally, in one lifetime. You'd go mad trying.

OO design is, in many ways, more 'advanced equations', in which variables are in themselves equations with variables.

[Richard Bruns]

F_Smith: I know that the uncertainty is realistic and I know that you would like to micromanage the government. But I think that most people don't want to pay that much attention to the political games.

I do not like the uncertainty of not knowing if something will pass or fail. That makes the game chaotic and requires micromanagement. IMO all of the uncertainty should be in the consequences of the action. I think that the game should only let the player propose something that will pass. The reaction to the policy is not defined clearly, but the actions available to the player should not fail.

I, as a player, do not want to micromanage the foul play. I want it to implement automatically. If my agents can't bribe someone, they should be able to automatically go to the next step of arresting the person. If that doesn't work, they should order hits. They should keep doing things until the measure passes, and then the player should deal with the consequences of the foul play. The foul play is calculated behind the scenes, and the player should deal with the results of whatever happened. Leaders of countries do not generally tell agents exactly what to do. They just say "make them cooperate by whatever means necessary."

I would like to propose a new slider color scheme:

Green means that almost everyone will support the measure and there will be very few negative consequences.

Yellow means that the measure has at least 51% support and will pass, but that it will make some people unhappy and there will be a few more problems.

There should be a gradient from Blue to Yellow, indicating different shades of popularity. For example, 100% popularity would be dark green, 75% popularity would be yellow-green, and 50% popularity would be bright yellow.

Orange and Red mean that foul play is required. The shade of the bar shows approximately what degree of measures are required. Pure orange means only a few steps need to be taken, and dark red means that extreme measures are required.

Black means that nothing can get that policy in place. Those regions of the bar are not options.

Can I get some concrete feedback on the slider interface idea? Is it a way that you would want to interact with the system? What in the interface should be changed to fit the math better?

[roquijad]

[posted simultaneously with Richard's post above]

I'm glad to see a lot of interest in this thread. Please all of you keep saying what you think.

TK: Even if you agree 99% with me, I think it's very important to help F_Smith giving him feedback for the beast. Even comments on very tiny things are very useful. Please do it everytime you can.


Mark: You say you don't care much about what's legal and what's not, but I think it's good to have them differenciated for flavor. It's cool in game terms to do things behind the eyes of the public risking to get cought... and even cooler if you get away with it! http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif
It also makes clear to the player that in some regimes he cannot do whatever he wants and there're things he is supposed to not do.


Richard: You made comments about how informed the player is when choosing his preferences. It's my mistake. I never said anything about that. All along what I envisioned is the player having a window where he can browse the political status. As detailed as checking what each class wants for each particular policy or more aggregated info like what ideologies are more supported or an "overall" (aggregated) people's preferences for policies. I understand now that part of the discussion around colored sliders had to do with this type of info helping the ruler in what to decide. Since I was always considering the ruler had info, then I took the colored sliders proposal only as a matter of what's possible or not for the player in terms of how despotic he is. Just another communication problem! http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif What's possible and not and what's popular and not, can IMO be integrated in the same interface if we want it that way. All the info needed to take political decisions can be as sophisticated as we want (the model data can be analyzed in a lot of ways), so for me the main issue here is how policies are set assuming a well informed ruler.


Policy-setting methods:
I agree with almost all LGJ has said about politics. That's the way I understand politics too. I think it's possible to have two or more systems for setting policies in the game and let the player choose the one he/she likes the most. But, in a general perspective and beyond this particular part of the game, I believe it's good getting an agreement on how each part of the game should work. It helps a lot having everyone looking at the same thing and making an effort for that thing to become fun and realistic instead of dividing efforts just to let each one of us have his very particular point of view implemented. It will save us time and coding effort.
The beast is a good place to test different methods and I really hope it will help us choose one.


F_Smith says IRL policy setting doesn't happen via negotiations and the 51% rule is really everything. In his own words, "Once they have that [51%], they don't need the other groups with political power, and can ignore them. [...]People with minority power in govts get over-ridden [and] they have absolutely *no* effect on the final results that come out of Congress"

It's of course a matter of opinions. If that's your vision of how real life works, there's really no much I can do. I see things differently and maybe all I can do is try to convince you a negotiation system is more realistic... can I try? Let me try! http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif


The 51% rule IRL can or not be total control. It's not a fundamental law of nature. Maybe the US senate works like that. I'm not that familiar with it to know it. But there're several other systems. The 51% rule is the "absolute majority" rule. The "simple majority" rule is another. The "quorum restrictions" is another, where things can be changed only if, FE, 75% of all votes support it. The list is long and we can also include other features like the ability to veto a proposal. Even more, in many countries more than one of these systems is used depending on what is being decided. So, the 51% rule is just one system out of many and shouldn't be seen as THE law by which politics must be driven.

We can of course simply choose one of these and work with it, but if realism and flexibility is what we want, then it doesn't sound good to me to take how a particular nation works and apply it to all civs. It would be more general and realistic IMO if we can implement a system where interactions take place in a more abstract, less precise fashion.

You say it sounds unrealistic if a ruler having 80% power couldn't implement anything he wishes. That's only because you're looking at it like if the "absolute majority" rule was the *only* way to go. That's understandable if that's the reality you face in your country, but you have to admit you're just being "blinded" by it. It'd be like a muslim fundamentalist saying "Islam is the only valid religion". We know that's not true.

Your statements imply a system where a person or coalition can take just two status: "in the ruling body" or "out of it" leading to two levels of control: "total control" or "none at all". I don't believe reality is like this. Democrats in the US have had less then 50% seats in congress many times, yet the country has never taken a fully republican shape. Democrats have managed to stop laws and other inniciatives in these situations, which tells me they in fact have some sort of control over what's happening.

The all-or-nothing system (law passes or not) doesn't recognize real life stuff like agreements between parties. In countries with a tradition of multiple political parties, interactions like this can take another level of sophistication: "Your party wants to increase tax rate by 5%. Our party will vote against it and you won't get it. But if you change your proposal to just a 3% increase, we're willing to support you and, together, we can make it happen". Or "our party will support you in this inniciative of yours if you support us in the voting for that other inniciative we're pushing". Democrats tend to get a little bit republicans and vise versa to make the machine work. For any given time, the US has always been partly democrat and partly republican and this tells me a sort of "mixing" between "pure" preferences is taking place instead of the "take this OR take that" outcomes the elections methods produce. Even if the country in fact works with elections!!

This mixed shape laws can take is practically unrestricted. In january we had elections in Chile. The new president comes from a coalition of parties ranging from socialists to center-right. It's pretty obvious that for this coalition to be possible, a common agenda had to be created, which means the "coalition agenda" is something in between the original "pure" preferences of each party. And that's, of course, the main direction this country is going to take in the following years. The other politically important block in Chile is the right-wing coalition. They didn't win the elections, but yet they have an important amount of seats in the senate. For some laws to be changed it will be imperative for the in-govt coalition to gain at least part of their support. And to achieve it, these laws will have to be presented to the senate somewhat more right-winged. So each side, no matter how different they're, has at least some level of influence on what the final "policy values" will be.

Laws are not simply passed or not, politicians make counter-proposals, suggest minor changes to inniciatives, accept them if others are changed, etc.

That's real politics. Contineous interactions, negotiations, arrangements, etc. It's really unnecessary to know if the actual detailed system is a 51% rule voting or what, because as a whole a govt can be seen simply as the interaction of actors with preferences and powers.

That's for democracies. What about despotism? Recently in Venezuela the new president Hugo Chavez closed the senate and in its place he putted a "Constitutional Assembly" whose mission is to re-establish "the institutional order" or something like that. To the eyes of all us it's just a move toward some sort of dictartorship, but the point is, even with that, Chavez is not as despotic as, FE, Stalin was. This is just an example showing that "degrees of despotism" should exist in our game. We can find a lot more examples, like the slowly decreasing level of despotism England's rulers experienced in the last centuries. And I feel this things are attractive for a game like this. Then, it doesn't sound good to me if a ruler with 80% can do the same things one with 100% could do. Someway we must handle these differences for extra flexibility, realism and fun.

I'm not defending the negotiation procedure particularly. All the above has as a goal simply showing why I don't see the "51% rule" system as realistic and I used several real life examples to sustain my thoughts. I believe it runs too short to what is desired and could only be called realistic in a very very particular political system. I hope some of that convinced you, F_Smith. If not, well, I had to try! http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif
---------------------


My inclination is to use a system where all the interactions are modeled in a general and abstract form for simplicity, realism and generalization (usable in a democracy and in a divine monarchy, FE). The negotiation procedure (in its lattest form) is one possibility, but I'm sure there're others and this thread is indeed showing other roads can be taken. I saw Richard's idea and it looks interesting, but the fact that negotiations only happen sometimes (and only to correct a weird effect Richard himself acknowledges as being present)is IMO not good because all the rest of time you lose all the good things of interactions between actors, not to mention the all-mighty-ruler in all the ruler's pol.power range 51%-100%, which is a characteristic derived from using the 51%rule.
-----------

LGJ: You complain about an idea for "perosalities"... I didn't find anything like that. Can you point me the post where you mentioned it?
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited August 30, 2000).]</font>

[Richard Bruns]

Rodrigo: I absolutely agree with your description of the coalition system. In many cases, the ruler has to gather support for certain things.

The slider is intended as an easy way for the player to see what kind of coalitions can be formed to get something passed. At one glance, the player can see what values can gather a coalition support.

As I outlined above, the colors of the bar represent the amount of support, or the size of the coalition that can be put together to support something. If you can get parties (or classes) with a total power of 80% to agree on something, the value is green. If you can get a coalition with 60% of the power, the slider is yellow. If you currently have a coalition of 40% and have to play dirty to get the other 11%, the slider is orange. If no one will support you and you don't have enough power, the bar is black and you cannot try to implement that value.

Do you think this is a good information/interface system?

[F_Smith]

Richard:

That color scheme works very well, I like it.

But -- if it's okay, it can not include the effects of 'variable' actions, like 'foul play'. They have to be 'variable', or unpredictable. Because that is the 'game' part that seperates this from an 'equation' -- I *want* uncertainty in the outcome of the vote. You make a move, you wait to see what happens. Just Like I want uncertainty in the outcome of a battle.

I don't want my 'people' to automatically escillate to a hit, or an arrest. I want to make the choice of how far to push, since each action will have different effects on society. Bribery would be relatively safe. A hit, a little more dangerous. Outright arrest would be critically dangerous.

Understandably, if you don't want to 'play' politics, if you don't want the outcome of a vote to be uncertain, you probably should leave the default 'automatic' system on.

The 'politics' game is designed as a game within a game, with it's own uncertainty and management requirements.

* * *

Rodrigo:

Yes, that definitely mirrors my observation about all political structures (like governments, guilds, etc) from the beginning of time -- just like your elections.

The power brokers -- your 'coalition govt' -- (those who hold the '51%+' power) negotiate amongst themselves on acceptable policies. Then the smaller groups with power make their wrath known in a 'reactive' fashion (unhappiness, lower productivity, riots, political demands, etc). Then the power brokers either take them into account next time, or decide to just live with the results (or 'fix' things in *other* ways?).

That's really the only difference between the default system and the 'politics' game. The negotiation in the default model happens automatically.

The negotiation in the 'politics' game is in the player's control.

The default system assumes everyone negotiates with everyone, and that everyone gets a seat at the table.

In the Politics game, the player decides with whom to negotiate, and whom to stiff. Then they deal with the wrath/effects of stiffing that group. If you want to negotiate with everyone, making a utopia in which all groups have a say, you are free to set the policies at that 'average' value. Altho, in this game, it won't always make everyone happy . . . people who want a 20% tax rate are not usually going to be 'happy' just because they managed to 'negotiate' you down to 50%. They may still demand a larger share of the political power, or threaten to resist/revolt.

The default system doesn't give the player a choice -- everyone with a vote gets a say.

The Politics game puts the player in the seat of that President of yours, who has to build a coalition just to hold power. Think about it -- the Politics game would let the player play that role, making politics a fun, simple yet deeep game in it's own right.

If a Prez/Player like yours wanted to pass a policy, it would have to be one acceptable to all his 'allied' groups. Sometimes you could also 'bribe' some support out of the opposition (trade backroom promises, etc), sometimes you decide to take more extreme measures . . . like Venezuela has.

Oh, and there are many forms of despotism available in the Politics system. 51% is *very* different from 75%. 90% is very different from 100%. The political outcome is not different -- both can pass just about any policy they want -- but the 'social' costs are enourmous.

Also, you actually bring up a great point, about being able to vary the % needed to pass a law. That is a definite enhancement to this politics system that should be included. A 'Political Body' -- 'Council', 'Senate', whatever -- can give a civ the power to control it's govt in that manner. Each govt who discovers the 'Political Body' tech and built a working 'Council' can control that % needed to pass laws to some degree, so some govts could be very hard to change policy in.

The base 51%+ is clearly just a simplification, based on pure 'simple' power politics, as exists in most human interaction. As it was played in human societies for most of our past. I like it . . .
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 31, 2000).]</font>

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well i haveto say F_Smith, i can't see how the player would gain advantage by letting ruler's power drop below 51% or whatever percentage is needed to pass laws. He'd could set whatever he wanted before and now he has to negotiate with someone to get only some of the stuff he might want. Sure even if he's above it he has to worry about everyone elses opinions, but if they don't like it, tough sh*t. They can revolt, if they think its possible, or be less extreme and submit a grievence to him, but he doesn't haveto worry about negotiating anying at all. And still your system only works where laws must "passed." FE Middle Ages Europe a king could pass laws, but they might not be enforced and also the Chruch could excommunicate him, but that doesn't stop him from initially creating the law.

Also another thing related to rodrigo's post. There is what is known as the "minority rule" in deciding what passes/fails. Although i can't think of any country that has it, it has been used and has had important consiquences. Remember Tianemen Square (hope i didn't really screw spelling of that up). Anyway a small minority of the students wanted to stay, but most wanted to leave when they group of chinese students had their vote. They used the afore mentioned "minority rule" and so everyone stayed.

[Richard Bruns]

F_Smith: You do have a point about limiting the actions of the player's goon squad. Players might want to set an upper limit to the foul play if their proposal is not very important. However, they should also have the option of automatic escalation. If something is really important and I want to implement it no matter what it takes, I should have that option.

So beside the slider, there could be a botton that says "foul play limits." The button opens a window where the player determines the maximum escalation of foul play. The player could tell the game to stop at bribing, or set foul play to unlimited. The game would start with the most benign actions, and if they don't work it would keep implementing more harsh actions until the objective is met or the player's limit is reached.

Cool Idea: Sometimes overzealous agents might go beyond the player's limits. Then the player would have to deal with the consequences their actions.

Of course, this interface is just an option. People like F_Smith who want to micromanage politics should still be able go into the guts of the model.

[Lord God Jinnai]

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font><font size=1>Originally posted by F_Smith on 08-31-2000 12:59 PM</font>
The ruler will be encouraged to take a 'minority' position in the govt because groups' 'happiness' will be directly related to their representation in the govt. And Happy people will perform/produce more. So the only way to have a top-flight econ is to give the people a big share of the power.

And with the 'politics' game, the player can still have some decent amount of control in a more 'modern' govt, in which the ruler is in the minority. With the 'default' system, the ruler with minority power will have very little impact at all.

For the 'Middle Ages King' you mention, in real life that king passed laws. As long as he controlled the military/police, the laws were enforced. As you said, the Church could 'excommunicate' him, re-acting, trying to force their will on the player. But they can't force the King to change a law or policy. It is up to the king/Player.

One other thing -- the 'default' system doesn't seem to work at all for groups with a definite opinion, as most groups in real life seem to have. As I said, if a ruler with 50% of the power wants an 80% tax rate, and the people with 50% of the power want a 20% tax rate, the people are *not* going to happily compromise at a 50% tax rate, as they will in the default system.

<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>
Alright I'm making this breifer cuz it crashed on me twice while sending the info (GRRRRRRRR).

1. The government may be encourged to lower his power for happiness level, but lowering to low can cause sluggishness which causes unhappiness in the people and they want someone to take more control to get things done (Julius Ceasar).

2. The ruler, if he has atleas the minimum of what is needed to pass laws or whatnot doesn't need to compromise nor worry about swing votes because he can still control the outcome. That's why the player will try to micromanage his stats to keep them at 51+ or whatever is needed. They can have otherways of keeping people happy and whatnot.

3. Explain. Anyway your system has other problems in that it doesn't allow for negotiations with other groups that might not bee needed for vote A, but neeeded in vote B, but will remember that you snubbed them in vote A and will likely snub you in vote B and since the group that favored you in vote A won't support your idea no matter what, you're screwed. Also those that won't budge, unless they have an overwhelming majority are ignored or atleast dealt with only on a superficial level because no one likes someone who won't budge. They'd be more willing to work with someone who wanted 4% tax, but was willing to negotiate then someone who wanted 20%, no ifs ands or buts.

[Richard Bruns]

I am not taking away uncertainty. I am just puttinig it in a different place. If you set foul play to unlimited and choose a red value, you cannot predict what the consequences will be. Your agents might bribe someone and get the thing passed peaefully and without much conflict. Or, they might be forced to brutally supress the opposing party, an action that leads to widespread rioting.

My view is that if a player really wants something to happen, that player should be able to get the thing to happen. For example, suppose that I really needed to raise taxes to support a last ditch defense of a valuable province. I wouldn't want to micromanage a lot of petty politics and run the risk of my vital tax increase being rejected. I would want to set foul play to unlimited and run the tax rate up into the red zone. I would want to make sure that I get my money.

Of course, I would still have to deal with the consequences of my actions, and those consequences are uncertain. The people might agree with only a little persuasion, or they could all get really mad. But if I decide that keeping that province is more important than making my people happy, I should be able to eliminate the possibility of not getting the money.

Basically, I want the uncertainty to come in the consequences of the players' actions. I don't want arbitrary and unpredictable limits on the actions themselves.

[F_Smith]

Lordy:

The ruler can indeed fight against giving power to the people. The player can keep the 51% in his hands. He'll see his civ outpaced by more 'free' countries, in production and research, but if he'd rather keep the reigns of govt for war purposes so be it.

And it actually would be a simple thing to track a group's 'opinion' of the ruler. That sounds really neat. I think I'll use it.

* * *

Richard:

If a player does exactly the same thing twice exactly the same way, should the result be the same?

To me, that's a mistake. I don't think it should.

I want a game in which the outcome of each turn is uncertain. That's what I mean by 'uncertainty'.

Remember, the seasoned player is going to know *exactly* how their decisions will turn out, in the 'default' model. Because they've played it a dozen, or hundred times. So there will be no uncertainty in their end results. You do this, it makes the people unhappy, you do something else to make the people happy again. Repeat.

Like Caesar 3, or Sim City.

[alms66]

F_Smith,

This is what I meant by you can't judge rodrigo's system without the riots model:
Quote from you, "One other thing -- the 'default' system doesn't seem to work at all for groups with a definite opinion, as most groups in real life seem to have. As I said, if a ruler with 50% of the power wants an 80% tax rate, and the people with 50% of the power want a 20% tax rate, the people are *not* going to happily compromise at a 50% tax rate, as they will in the default system."--

The people *Will* get unhappy about this...but that is covered in the riots model, not in the gov't model.

[Lord God Jinnai]

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font><font size=1>Originally posted by F_Smith on 08-31-2000 09:50 PM</font>
The ruler can indeed fight against giving power to the people. The player can keep the 51% in his hands. He'll see his civ outpaced by more 'free' countries, in production and research, but if he'd rather keep the reigns of govt for war purposes so be it.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>
Well i don't believe in arbitrarily punishing the ruler for keeping a 51% control or whatnot. More freedom doesn't ness. mean more advancement. Take post-WWII Germany. It expanded much more rapidly when there was a dictatorship then when a democracy was in place. In fact it outpaced every other country in the owrld, save japan, which also had a dictatorship. Now the US also came along and outpaced both of them combined, but the US also had tons more resources to draw on than they did.

Also in modern day look at China. Barring the recent collapse in the asian stock market which also affected democratic countries like japan, China was outpacing every other country in the world as far as how fast its economy was growing.

On the other hand, there's Russia, a democracy that is in many ways doing worse than it was during the cold war (some progress in some economic areas, but on the whole not).

So with that said, as long as the player makes wise choices he can still control enough of the power under your system to do whatever the hell he wants and still keep up with the rest of the world (cept maybe socially).

[F_Smith]

Lordy:

The ruler will be encouraged to take a 'minority' position in the govt because groups' 'happiness' will be directly related to their representation in the govt. And Happy people will perform/produce more. So the only way to have a top-flight econ is to give the people a big share of the power.

And with the 'politics' game, the player can still have some decent amount of control in a more 'modern' govt, in which the ruler is in the minority. With the 'default' system, the ruler with minority power will have very little impact at all.

For the 'Middle Ages King' you mention, in real life that king passed laws. As long as he controlled the military/police, the laws were enforced. As you said, the Church could 'excommunicate' him, re-acting, trying to force their will on the player. But they can't force the King to change a law or policy. It is up to the king/Player.

One other thing -- the 'default' system doesn't seem to work at all for groups with a definite opinion, as most groups in real life seem to have. As I said, if a ruler with 50% of the power wants an 80% tax rate, and the people with 50% of the power want a 20% tax rate, the people are *not* going to happily compromise at a 50% tax rate, as they will in the default system.

* * *

Richard:

I suppose we could have that as an optional GUI. But again, if you take away the uncertainty, there's not much point in using the politics game anyway.

I think we've stumbled onto an interesting point here -- there are, broadly speaking, two kinds of 'games' we can make here.

<ol>
A pure 'sim'. A series of equations that takes inputs and generates outputs. The player alters inputs to get different outputs.
An 'uncertainty' system. The player has a choice of several actions, each of which may or may not work as planned. The player chooses an action, then watches the outcome.
[/list=a]

I don't think we want to make a 'world' sim, here, do we? Shouldn't the always be a chance that an action by a ruler could fail? Otherwise, it isn't so much a game as a 'data engine'.

[Richard Bruns]

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font><font size=1>Originally posted by F_Smith on 08-31-2000 09:50 PM</font>
Richard:

If a player does exactly the same thing twice exactly the same way, should the result be the same?

To me, that's a mistake. I don't think it should.

I want a game in which the outcome of each turn is uncertain. That's what I mean by 'uncertainty'.

<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>
<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font><font size=1>Originally posted by Richard Bruns</font>
If you set foul play to unlimited and choose a red value, you cannot predict what the consequences will be. Your agents might bribe someone and get the thing passed peaefully and without much conflict. Or, they might be forced to brutally supress the opposing party, an action that leads to widespread rioting.

<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>
<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font><font size=1>Originally posted by Richard Bruns</font>
Of course, I would still have to deal with the consequences of my actions, and those consequences are uncertain. The people might agree with only a little persuasion, or they could all get really mad.

<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>

Like Toubabo_Koomi said, the people's reactions are in the riots model and not the government model. The player might be able to predict what the government model will do, but it is my understanding that the riots model is designed to be unpredictable.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited September 01, 2000).]</font>

[F_Smith]

TK:

Actually, right now, the people don't have any say about taxes at all. That's been left for later. Even the he ruler just sets any taxation level they want, in the default game.

I've been thru the riots model pretty thouroughly.

Unless I missed it, the 'riots' model (which should actually be renamed to something like 'happiness model') doesn't cover taxation levels. At least as of now. It makes allowances that later, the Upper Class may have a reaction to taxes, but that's it.

* * *

Lordy:

It's not 'arbitrary'. We want to encourage a ruler to develop governments like the ones that have actually come about, don't we? If we build a govt game that encourages people to keep all control in their hands, we'll end up with a game dominated by dictatorships.

Then we'll have failed to come up with a 'realistic' model.

I disagree strongly, I believe that all other things being equal, freedom produces happiness and productivity. When Germany did well after WWI (I assume you mean), it was a free country, a democracy. Japan never matched the other nations in production or creativity, when they were an Empire. China is experiencing a boom because they have instituted free market reforms. And Russia, in spite of pretending to be 'free', still is clearly in the Iron grip of the same powerful people. Putin's secret police still storm into Media offices with no cause (other than being unhappy about the coverage!).

Yes, a player could still run a happy, productive Dictatorship. It's just not going to be the most productive possible society in the game.

* * *

Richard:

But even including the 'riots' model, there will still be no 'uncertainty of outcome' once you know the rules. If you do discriminate against people, they'll get mad. If they get too mad, they send a note. If you still ignore them, they rebel.

It's designed to work like an equation, not a game.

I assume you've played Caesar 3. Or Sim City. In those games, it's a matter of learning the perfect order to do things in. Or memorizing the perfect order of moves to accomplish a task. You do this, that always happens.

A seasoned player will know exactly what the outcome of every move will be. The only 'game' part is in the combat/competition with other players/civs. If an action can never fail, the only 'uncertainty' is in the outcome of the chain of events. Once you learn the chain, the outcome is no longer uncertain.


<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited September 01, 2000).]</font>

[Richard Bruns]

F_Smith:

My GUI has exactly the same randomness as your system. This is because it is based on your and Rodrigo's systems. It has no new rules, aside from automatic escalation of foul play.

There is no way to predict what actions the goon squad will have to take. Their actions are as random in my GUI as they are in your system.

Here is the only difference:

In your system, you order a bribe. If it works, the measure passes, and if it doesn't work the measure fails.

Results: X% chance pass, Y% chance fail

In my interface, you order a set of covert actions. If the bribe works, the measure passes and people are not mad. If the bribe does not work, your people order more extreme measures, the measure passes, and people are unhappy.

Results: X% chance pass without unrest, Y% chance pass with unrest.

Note that X and Y are the same in both cases. That is because my GUI uses exactly the same equations as your system. Your system and Rodrogo's system are the things that are powering the interface I am proposing. So the GUI has exactly the same randomness as your equations.

And players will have the option to prevent escalation to the more extreme measures. So your current system is a special case of the GUI.

The only difference is that the randomness does different things. It is just as unpredictable as what you have because it IS what you have.

[F_Smith]

Richard:

Actually, the 'automation' of the 'foul play' is removing a large part of the 'randomness'.

First, you won't know if the bribe 'fails' until after the vote, after the turn. The bribee will take the money, and promise to support many times. Whether the bribee actually *does* support you is not predictable, it'll be random, based upon honesty levels, the amount of the bribe, etc. So if a bribe fails, the solution might not be escalation to more serious foul play. Maybe just try a bigger bribe next time. Or try to bribe a different leader. Or a different group entirely. Or maybe you want to put the hit on the guy for taking your money.

But it *has* to require a decision to be made *by the player*. It *can not* be automated. If it's automated, it's a puzzle, instead of a game.

If a player's action fails, the player must be in charge of the decision on how to proceed. There are choices to be made that should not be automatic.

We really have different ideas of how to make a game.

Ya'll seem to be after a 'sim' game. My idea of a game goes beyond that. Fortunately, we can put both sets of ideas in this game, if ya'll don't mind.

Again, I assume you're a veteran of Sim City, Caesar 3, etc. Have you played Railroad Tycoon 2?

Those are 'puzzle' games. What ya'll are focused on building here is another 'puzzle' game. The 'game' is played by learning the complex 'if-this-then-that' interactions of the system. Once you 'figure out' the puzzle, the game gets repetitive quickly. It's a matter of 'build orders'. If you play a scenario building exactly the same things at the same times in the same places, then the outcome will be the same.

A given set of turn inputs always produces the same output. If the output *is* always the same, then the game will get repetitive.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited September 01, 2000).]</font>

[Mark_Everson]

On dictatorship vs freer countries advancement:

I think its a pretty clear historical fact that free societies do better in the long run. Dictatorships can be better in the short run during wartimes, or when 'catching up' economically. However we could argue this forever...

The point I would make in terms of gameplay. Dictatorships clearly offer the player more scope for action. If there is no penalty for this, which is what LGJ seems to be suggesting, then everyone will want to be a dictator. Is That a fun game? Why would a player Ever want to put up with all the crap involved in being a democratic leader if there were no advantage? So I think, along with F_Smith and probably many others, that we should include penalties for dictatorships and authoritarian governments in tech advancement and many other areas. The size of these penalties should of course be determined by playtesting.


Randomness vs Determinism:

If the player can always predict what can happen then the model is a failure IMO. But I think the deterministic riots model is so complicated it may defy prediction anyway! I don't think determinism is such a sin in a complicated model, because the chance of Ever being under the exact same conditions is vanishingly small. If it is predictable, then I would vote strongly for putting randomness in it. But that is easily done if we decide its needed.

If the government model is so twitchy that the player constantly needs to have their hand on it, then its against our whole design philosophy. We want to reduce the need for micromanagement while enabling the player to drill down deep into each area if they like. The colored slider system is just one way to handle the reduced-micromanagement part of the scale.

Of course if the AI can handle the twitchiness ok, then there's no problem. But a very nonlinear system like the 51% one is Very difficult to do good AI for. Besides, the 51% system is deterministic Also. So I don't understand completely the claims that one is predictable and the other isn't.

But the most important issues are playablility and fun. We won't know the answers on those for the respective systems for quite some time.

[Richard Bruns]

F_Smith:

How many times do I have to say that the sliders are exactly the same thing that you proposed? They do not make a new system. They simply put an interface on your equations. They use your system of computing things. The sliders do not tell exactly what will happen. They simply show how much support something has. Green means that a certain size of coalition supports the thing. Orange means that a certain percent of the power supports the thing. They do not predict what will happen. They simply give the player information and serve as a quick interface.

Every time you are criticising the sliders, you are criticising your own system. The sliders are based on nothing other than what you described.

The thing you seem to object to is the automatic change in foul play. Let me try to explain why this is not a new or different thing:

If the player really needs something, that player will not tolerate failure. Suppose that I am playing a game and need to gat a lot of taxes to support an emergency military buildup. I will want to raise the most taxes possible while minimizing the amount of unrest that results.

If I did not have the automatic escalation, I would do the following:

1) Save the game
2) Set the tax increase and try the least severe action.
3) If that didn't work, reload the game and try a different action.
4) If that didn't work, reload the game and try a more severe action.
5) If that didn't work, go to step 3.

Players WILL do this. If the need for the proposal is vital and the country is in danger, they will keep trying and reloading until they get the increase with the minimum possible consequences.

The automatic increase in severity is simply an automation of this process. It is exactly the same thing that the player would do anyway. It turns an annoting and time consuming process into a quick calculation. It does exactly the same thing that your proposed interface does, but it does it in a way that causes the player less grief.

You have a good point about not knowing the outcome until after the vote. But why must there be only one vote per turn? The automatic escalation assumes that you can call many votes over a period of one turn. If the bribe in the first vote didn't work, you can submit the proposal again, pretend it is different, use different underhanded measures, and vote again.

I do not want to play political games when the country is in danger of being destroyed. I do not want a vital defense measure to fail because I didn't micromanage a few percentage points of support properly. The slider GUI is simply a way to reduce the micromanagement in your system.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited September 01, 2000).]</font>

[F_Smith]

Richard:

I am only disagreeing with the automation of 'foul play' escalation. As I said above, the sliders would work for just setting a policy, if you want them.

The player will *have* to tolerate failure. The possibility of failure is a *must*, if this is going to be a 'game'.

Yes, in single player games, some players will 'cheat', when they couldn't get what they wanted. When they fail to get a tax increase thru at a critical time, because they messed up and have to have it now, they will reload. That's their right. They lost -- but they can cheat instead of starting over. If someone wants to cheat the game rules because no one is looking, so be it. And if someone playing Chess against themselves wants to move pieces around, that is *their* right. If someone want's to cheat while playing solitaire, who am I to complain?

They couldn't do that during muliplayer games, tho.

And they can't say they 'won' the game.

Besides, the increase in severity is *not* automatic. It can *not* be what the player would do, because you don't know what the player would do. Or rather, each player would do something different. The same player might do different things, depending on mood.

The player *must* first find out if the first action was successful. That requires a turn ending, unless we're going to begin allowing multiple actions in a turn, which is a possibility. Then the player *must* select from several possible choices -- live with the results, repeat the bribe hoping things turn out differently, bribe using more money, arrest the fool, kill him, etc. There is no way to know which to 'automatically' do.

That is my idea of a game.

A choice must be made by the player. You wait until the turn is over to see if that choice worked, then you make other choices.

If you automate making those choices, you remove the 'game' part.

Finally, if you don't want to play politics, then you should probably leave the Politics game turned off, agreed?

[Lord God Jinnai]

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>It's not 'arbitrary'. We want to encourage a ruler to develop governments like the ones that have actually come about, don't we? If we build a govt game that encourages people to keep all control in their hands, we'll end up with a game dominated by dictatorships.

Then we'll have failed to come up with a 'realistic' model.

I disagree strongly, I believe that all other things being equal, freedom produces happiness and productivity. When Germany did well after WWI (I assume you mean), it was a free country, a democracy. Japan never matched the other nations in production or creativity, when they were an Empire. China is experiencing a boom because they have instituted free market reforms. And Russia, in spite of pretending to be 'free', still is clearly in the Iron grip of the same powerful people. Putin's secret police still storm into Media offices with no cause (other than being unhappy about the coverage!).

Yes, a player could still run a happy, productive Dictatorship. It's just not going to be the most productive possible society in the game.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>
<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>On dictatorship vs freer countries advancement:
I think its a pretty clear historical fact that free societies do better in the long run. Dictatorships can be better in the short run during wartimes, or when 'catching up' economically. However we could argue this forever...

The point I would make in terms of gameplay. Dictatorships clearly offer the player more scope for action. If there is no penalty for this, which is what LGJ seems to be suggesting, then everyone will want to be a dictator. Is That a fun game? Why would a player Ever want to put up with all the crap involved in being a democratic leader if there were no advantage? So I think, along with F_Smith and probably many others, that we should include penalties for dictatorships and authoritarian governments in tech advancement and many other areas. The size of these penalties should of course be determined by playtesting.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>
Ok here's what I think: As long as there isn't an arbitrary penalty at any stage for keeping a dictatorship then yes, I'll agree that a more democratic (not democracy as the gov. your talking about are republics) can lead to more speedy outcome, in the long run (BTW Germany after WWI was the only country not to see the 'boom' the rest of the world did until Hitler took over). Anyway, it is my opinion that the people might push for more power so long as they view it as benifitial to themselves. They will also push for the opposite if they see nothing being done or their security or children's is at stake. How much so is up in the air, but that's how it is.

Anyway the thing i don't like about your system is that it gives too much power to anyway so long as they have 51% without negotionating aliances or whatever. Like my example of the player who wants to keep control of everything by reaching for 51% so he can try to also keep the people as happy as possible without loosing control and will micromange to the extreme to make sure that 1% point that makes all the differance doesn't get lost. That isn't how things work and that is the only thing i see flawed with your proposal. It gives too much power to those who have a centain minimum percentage. If you come up with a way that a player still hasto negotiate for things to be done no matter what percentage, save 100%, then most of my arguments will disappear.

[axi]

You have a nice discussion here gentlemen, but, to be sincere, I'm lost. You probably have noticed that I haven't replied to this thread since 29 Aug, which is many posts ago. Well, to be frank, I was disheartened by some things I read here, by the chaos and the vanity of this discussion. I decided to wait for a while, to see what other people, except Rodrigo, me and F_Smith think about government in Clash. Now I am going to comment on what I saw:

1) F_Smith wrote (29Aug/09:36): <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>Yeah, I believe Axi is talking about the 'econ' model. For the govt-system's purposes, 'social classes' don't matter, except as a provider of input values. They're just 'variables', so to speak.

I'm just trying to understand what page he's on, so I can move in that direction soon. But no, none of this is getting coded yet.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> No, I was not talking about the econ model, I was talking about social classes as OBJECTS. As such, they have to contain all data that refer to them, regardless if they are economic or political data. Social classes will eventually end to be about the most complex object classes in the entire game, since they will contain the behavior of the people against all aspects of their life: politics, economy, investment, research, military, culture, etc. Alot of models will demand for alot of variables which are classes attributes. This is simply a prediction; you know OOD way, way better than me; if I'm wrong, just say so.

2) About the "Politics" procedure:
Richard wrote (29Aug 14:44): <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>I have an idea for the interface. Hopefully it can combine F_Smith's and Rodrigo's systems so everyone is satisfied:
Initially, the allowable range on the slider is any policy that can get support from any combination of groups with at least 51% of the power.
....
The previous part of the proposal used F_Smith's ideas, and while being more accurate it can lead to thorny problems. The second part of the system is as follows:
The player can ask for negotiations. This would most likely be done when the other classes' ranges do not overlap. It would have to be done if no proposal is supported by 51% of the people.
....
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> This reminds me very much of the election system I had proposed two weeks ago: <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>...Of course the PC ideology doesn't dominate all the time. There are the following possibilities:
a) PC Ideology > 50%. Then the player can choose between inforcing his policy as is and finding collaborators to increase the consensus.
b) Another Ideology > 50%. Two cases:
i) D<Dc. The distance between the two ideologies is small, so the PC is forced to collaborate with the dominant ideology.
ii) D>Dc. The distance between the two ideologies is unbridgeable, so the PC loses the struggle. The dominant ideology is the Govt policy.
c) No ideology > 50%. Then the two ideologies that share the smallest D collaborate. If they do not exceed 50%, the next bigger D is checked and either a third ideology is added to the group, or another couple is formed. This formation of groups goes on until:
i) Dc is reached without any group exceeding 50%. Then a Universal Consensus Government is formed, with the participation of all Ideologies.
ii) A group exceeds 50%. Two cases:
1) If the PC ideology is in the dominant group, the Govt policy is the weighted sum for this group.
2) If the PC ideology is not in the dominant group, the case is similar to case b).
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> Well, this sort of logic (it can be furtherly elaborate and improved, to assure a more active role for non-ruler ideologies) provides for coalitions and lets the player to pursue either a marginal or a wider majority.

F_Smith wrote (31Aug 00:04): <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>Also, you actually bring up a great point, about being able to vary the % needed to pass a law. That is a definite enhancement to this politics system that should be included. A 'Political Body' -- 'Council', 'Senate', whatever -- can give a civ the power to control it's govt in that manner. Each govt who discovers the 'Political Body' tech and built a working 'Council' can control that % needed to pass laws to some degree, so some govts could be very hard to change policy in.
The base 51%+ is clearly just a simplification, based on pure 'simple' power politics, as exists in most human interaction. As it was played in human societies for most of our past. I like it...
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> Surprise, surprise! F_Smith aknowledges that the 51% rule is not universal, after Rodrigo has pointed it out to him. We had just reinvented the wheel; in Aug28, I wrote: <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>What a negotiation procedure of any kind is always lacking, is what I have mentioned before as "concentrisation". I'm not sure if the term is valid, but I'm referring to the kind of political system where some sort of "majority rule" applies. It is like the various power groups are gambling their share of power, in hope of gaining it all. As it is generally advertised, this is due to the fact that it is impossible to make realistic policies through negotiation, because of the existant ideologic distances. In reality, this is just another way for the mighty to steal the power of the weak. This doesn't ness need to be the "absolute majority" (50%), but also the "relative majority" (biggest %) and all variations where the "critical percentage", or "Consensus" is different than 50% (f.e. in the Greek Parliament, to pass a law you need 50%, to elect the president you need 60% and to revise the constitution 75%, while in the general elections, the govt usually needs about 35% of the people's votes to obtain 50% of the parliamentary seats).

So I feel that the election-type system should be enhanced by a DNP called "Consensus", that will provide us with a basic "critical percentage", upon which the consensus for each individual policy should be based (f.e. it should be multiplied by a factor >1 for some DNPs like SL, ED, RD). This and the critical ideologic distance should be a measure of how cooperative the political system is and the should be derived from cultural elements. Of course, if the needed consensus is 100%, then it totally reverts into a negotiation procedure. For big numbers (like 75%), the policies will be mostly negotiated. This way, we can allow for mixed (election-negotiation) systems. I figured this out as an enhancement to my election system, if F_Smith wants to proceed into coding both ways.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> Ok, I know this wasn't overlooked on purpose, but first I had to point it out and second, I just had to rant. http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif

I feel that with these new elements (active formation of coalitions and varying consensus) the "Politics" model is mature and antagonistic of the "Negotiation" model in it's new form.

3) LGJ wrote (31Aug 10:40): <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>There is what is known as the "minority rule" in deciding what passes/fails. Although i can't think of any country that has it, it has been used and has had important consiquences. Remember Tianemen Square (hope i didn't really screw spelling of that up). Anyway a small minority of the students wanted to stay, but most wanted to leave when they group of chinese students had their vote. They used the afore mentioned "minority rule" and so everyone stayed.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> This sort of thing always happens at heroic moments in films or in real life. Obviously, the majority of the chinese students couldn't leave the square and let the minority face the military on it's own. They stayed out of solidarity for their comrades; which is a very brave thing to do. In such cases, there is always some sort of ethical dilemma, between what's logically and what's morally correct. The prevailing minority uses some sort of blackmail, even if it is in the good sense. For this to work of course, there needs to be a vast difference between the concentrisation of the body (which should be very small, meaning that the will of a majority cannot be forced upon the will of a minority) and the consensus needed by the circumstances (which should be very high, meaning that the decision must be followed by all).

Almost similar is the case of the student political organisations I participate, in the university. There is no way one can force a political line upon a minority that disagrees with it, so in the cases that we need to show up with a common line, there are fervent discussions, the outcome of which is always rather shallow politically, because it mainly consists of our common ground. We could not do things anyway else; we are not like the mainstraem political parties, which force a line unquestionably (take it or leave it) to their members. Something like this would also happen to the Clash Project if there was no Game Lead or Model Leads to take critical decisions when needed. If this is good or bad, it depends on the purpose of the body; if it wants to struggle for educational and social liberty or if it wants to perform a certain task on time.

4) Richard wrote (31Aug 19:11): <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>My view is that if a player really wants something to happen, that player should be able to get the thing to happen. For example, suppose that I really needed to raise taxes to support a last ditch defense of a valuable province. I wouldn't want to micromanage a lot of petty politics and run the risk of my vital tax increase being rejected. I would want to set foul play to unlimited and run the tax rate up into the red zone. I would want to make sure that I get my money.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> Who told you that the defense of a critical province, or any player action taken under the pressure of the circumstances will depend on politics? The govt model is supposed to have a mid term effect on the game, as the social model is supposed to have long-term effects. Critical circumstances are always short-term. Be assured that in such cases, it won't be the govt model that will prevent you from being effective, only the ineffectiveness or lack of your own preparations. Some time ago, Mark had requested that the govt model should provide for different conditions when special circumstances, such as war, occur. This post of yours has reminded me of it and I am currently working on it.

5) F_Smith wrote (31Aug 09:50): <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>The ruler can indeed fight against giving power to the people. The player can keep the 51% in his hands. He'll see his civ outpaced by more 'free' countries, in production and research, but if he'd rather keep the reigns of govt for war purposes so be it.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> LGJ wrote (01Sep 00:06): <center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>Well i don't believe in arbitrarily punishing the ruler for keeping a 51% control or whatnot. More freedom doesn't ness. mean more advancement.
.....
So with that said, as long as the player makes wise choices he can still control enough of the power under your system to do whatever the hell he wants and still keep up with the rest of the world (cept maybe socially).
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center> They are both right and wrong, but LGJ is more wrong than F_Smith. http://apolyton.net/forums/biggrin.gif The solution against the despotic ruler (51%+ power) is that the overwhelming PAFs will not let him keep his power. Clash will probably begin with 100% ruler power in 4000bce (despotism), which will diminish as time passes and more liberal ideologies gain support and the people get unhappy with the despotic ones. So the player who wishes to keep up with despotism will have huge proplems on his hands and he will risk his "life" all the time. But this doesn't mean that we have to arbitrarily punish him (IIRC, this is the first comment I ever made on Clash govt, back in January... and Rodrigo had backed me up... Ahh, these were the days! http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif). Well, maybe for research, there is a point that liberty is linked with innovation, but for production there isn't such a connection. Your examples show this well enough; sometimes "success" is achieved through oppresion and conquest (Nazi Germany), sometimes through planning (Japan, USSR), sometimes by liberty and innovation (USA as it is seen by the rich white Americans http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif), sometimes by exploration, trade and colonialism (Venice, Spain, British Empire). Most of the times though, it is achieved due to overhwelming resources and demographics and, more important, to opportunity (which is present as a factor in all of the previous examples). So won't a despotic ruler have a worse economy than a liberal one? Well of course he will, if his workers strike and revolt every other day and if his officials are corrupt and waste all his money. The riots model can take care of him allright.

Btw, we are going to have to close this thread soon, due to the 150 posts length limitation. I feel that the initiation of a new thread calls for a new summary of the govt model. Should I do this, or would you like to do it yourself Rodrigo?

------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[F_Smith]

Mark:

Even in a complicated model, determinism creates predictability. Because after you play the game a dozen times, you have seen all the combinations.

I'm sure you've played Caesar 3 . . . very complicated model. Very predictable, repetitive gameplay. It was a fun puzzle, for about a month, tho. Then 'build order memorization' sets in.

Railroad Tycoon 2, same story. StarCraft, Age Of Empires, and on, and on. It isn't the complexity of the model, it's the absolute *need* for randomness.

That's what I've been trying to get here. The current models are so predictable, in fact, we are going to use colored sliders to tell the player what the outcome will be before they ever make a choice. We're actually able to pre-compute the exact outcome.

The Politics game is *not* deterministic at all. You make the exact same choices, they will turn out differently. The bribe will work sometimes, but not others. Sometimes arresting a leader will suppress his supporters, sometimes just the opposite will happen. Randomly (within certain parameters).

That's what Richard so objects to, in fact. He wants the player to be able to know the exact effects, to know his tax increase will *always* pass.

I, personally, feel that would be a mistake.

[F_Smith]

Guys:

Since the limit is up, let's just continue any 'off topic', non-default govt discussions in that other thread I started. Then let's keep the new govt thread on the topic of Rodrigo and Axi's govt model.

I am interested in discussing this at length. I enjoy hearing criticisms of an idea, it only makes the idea stronger in the long run.

And remember -- If you don't like this politics game, you don't have to play it. I personally love it, and already enjoy playing with it, which is why I wrote it. I make games for my own enjoyment, so please forgive me if I slipped this option into Clash.

[roquijad]

I didn't know there was a limit of 150 posts...

THIS THREAD IS THEN OFFICIALLY CLOSED! http://apolyton.net/forums/wink.gif

A new one will be opened.

[Edit]
The new Govt thread is at: http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum21/HTML/000306.html?35

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited March 18, 2001).]</font>