Social model proposition

[manurein]

SOCIAL MODEL


Overview :
--------------

The social model is used to modelize the people in Clash. It will give the player a
"living" civilization/nation to rule, adding an inner-politics dimension to the game.
This model will simulate the behaviour of the people acoording to their class, their
religion and their culture. Each culture and each religion has a set of attributes which
describe them and allow for diverse behaviours and diverse situations. These attributes
will evolve with time, tech research and the various events that happen in the world.
The behaviour of the model will have impact on many parts of the game. It will fe modify
the way the people accept or refuse a new tech, a new form of government, how they
contribute to economy and production (productivity, corruption, crime...), it will also
allow for new, interesting situations like religious wars, nationalist troubles,
secession wars...
The strength of the influence of this model, as well as how it will constrain the player.
For example, this model should be able to simulate the kind of situations that have
created revolutions; in such a case, should the model create the revolution, enforcing
the player in a new form of government, calculated by the model? Or should it just
slightly worsen the genral situation of the civ and give the player clues that he should
modify its government? IMO this could be linked to the game difficulty/level like it has
been said on the forum.
This documet is intended to give you an overview of the system I plan to use. The
specific attributes and implementations features that will be used are still TBD for a
part.


General architecture of the model :
---------------------------------------------

The model deals with the following elements :

1. The civilization is the empire the player rules. It embeds every other elements.
2. The province is the one designed by Mark.
3. The classes are those designed by Hrafnkell.
4. The cultures define the general cultural background of civilization's native people.
When a grouo of people migrates, it carries its culture, allowing for different cultures
to live inside a civilization.
5. The religions are defined as independant elements, at they can exist at worldwide
level (montheistic religions); they consist of a set of values that are used to modify
the cultural attributes. Several religions can exist in a same civilization.
6. The events are messages that are sent to the people to represent their perception of
the world. Every war, econ. crisis, ruler decision... will send events that will be used
to modify the cultural attributes and compute the actions of the peole.
7. The actions embed everything that the people can do : revolts, migrations, settlements
...

At the civilization level, groups are created to group people sharing the same class, the
same culture and the same religion. The general behaviour of each of these groups is
calculated at this level, using the attributes of the class, culture and culture of this
group. This will give the civ-level behaviour of this group. It can be of two types : an
action; or a set of modifications that will be applied to tech acceptance (a modifier to
the impact of this tech); tech research (a modifier to the RP produced by this group);
econ productivity (a modifier to this group's econ output)...
If any action is triggered by a group in a given turn, then the model goes down at the
province level. Each province records demographic statistics of the people that inhabit
it. Thus, for each province you know the repartition between cultures, religions and
classes. So when an action is triggered for a given group, each province which hosts pop
belonging to this grop will compute the precise behaviour in this province, as well as
the reactions of the other groups of this province. This allows for province-level events
to appear, and to depend on the particular situation of this province.


The civilization :
----------------------

Civilization is the element that civ-level elements. The government is civ-level, so the
civilization stores the description of the classes and their political power.
Also, the civilization stores the cultures, and knows which is its "native" culture (even
if this native culture can be influenced by the other cultures it hosts).
Finally, the civilization stores copies of the religions it hosts. These copies may or
may not be different from one civ to another.
Eventually the civilization could also store legal status for each class
(privileges/human rights), cultures (apartheid), religions (official/forbidden).

The genral behaviours are calculated at the civilization level, and refines at the
province level when necessary.


The province :
-------------------

When the probability that an action will be taken by one or several groups, each province
that hosts at least one of these groups will calculate the specific action that will be
taken in this province, and the reactions from the other groups.
Thus province stores province-specific data, like wealth, health, the
class/religion/culture of the province-ruler if any, and the demographic repartition
between classes, religions and cultures. All these parameters are used to make the
computings.


The classes :
-----------------

The classes are those designed by H, thus they have a specific political power. They also
store the life-level (wealth) of the class. Plus they store a hate-slider for each of the
other classes of the civilization. This allows for class-specific actions.


The cultures :
------------------

The cultures store the following attributes (0-100 scales) :
- traditionalism; (modifies how new techs/ideas/people will be accepted)
- social rigidity (modifies how political/social modifications will be easy)
- nationalism (modifies the reactions vs other cultures)
- education (modifies quite everything, from war barbary to tech acceptance/research)
- familial shape (modifies reaction vs other cultures)
- physical appearance (idem)
- language (idem)

Also, like the classes, cultures will have hate-sliders for every other cultures they
know.


The religions :
------------------

There should be two types of religions, poytheist and monotheist.
Ideas here are only for polytheist religions.

Attributes :
- tolerance (modifes reaction vs other groups : class, religion, culture; modifies
culture's traditionalism and social rigidity)
- individualism (people live for themselves or for the community; modifes culture's
attributes like social rigidity, education, nationalism... modifies how people are
willing to sacrifice for the group; how they obey the orders and revolt...)

Also there will be hate-sliders.


The events :
----------------

Exemple of events are :
- war events (beginning, end, victory, defeat...)
- diplomatic events (treaties, encounters of new civs...)
- tech events (new techs)
- political events (new forms of governments, revolts, new laws...)
- economical events (crisis, boom ...)
- religious events (scission of a religion, appearance of a new religion, conversion of
the reuler to a new religion...)

Each event will show how they interfere with the goals of the groups, thus eventually
triggering actions from these groups.


The actions :
-----------------

Here are exemples of the actions that can be taken :

- revolts against a ruling class or the ruler (many intensities, from demands to
revolution)
- religious/cultural oppression (many intensities)
- migrations (for econ, political, cultural, religious reasons)
- secession of a province
- strikes and class struggle (diverse intensities)...

Ideas on the model/player-interface :
------------------------------------------------

First, as I mentionned it, the strength of the model on the gameplay should be dependant
on the difficulty level or something like that (there could even be different level
sliders, one for this model, the other for the strength of the IA-player ...)

IMO in this there are actions that the ruler can not ignore, and others that he could
pass.
There could be an interface like this : every turn the ruler can consult a news-paper
which tells him everything that happened (inner-politics, diplomatics, economics,
scientific... sections) and read details on any of them, or just ignore the news-paper.
But when some thing happened that the ruler can't ignore, then an advisor would pop and
tell him there is something to do.
So if the player reads carefully the news this gives him an advantage, as he eventually
can forecast events before they appear (and the advisor tells him), and he can also
eventually micro-manage in the fileds he's interseted in. If he ignores the news, he wont
miss important things since the advisor will pop.
Fe, in the case of this model, many actions will be taken that dont concern the ruler
directly (fe peasants revolts in a faraway province, handled by this province leader)
and he probably wont have to micromanage these things. But if he doesnt care at all,
maybe the disontentment will last and spread, leading to a civ-wide revolution that will
put the player in a bad position.

How the ruler will interact with the people? IMO he should be given many tools that he
will or wont use if he does or doesnt want to micromanage.
One idea is to have a simple system of law, which would give different legal stauses to
the different classes, cultures and religions. This would inculde appartheid laws,
anti-slavery laws, the problems of privileges of the upper classes that have led to the
french revolution, the laws on religion etc...
Also, the player should have +- limited control on the settlement of the people.
Through how he will control the tech tree he will also interfer with this model and the
wants of the people.

OK, this is a rough sketch of the model. Details of implementation will come later.
Suggestions and feedback welcome.

[Druid2]

I ~think~ I understand most of the principles you're working on... I have to let it soak in before I can say something useful, tho..

One concept that I've been puzzling over [and I posted similarly in the Research Model thread, because the issues are similar]...

Over most of mankind's history, military has been a factor on the war machine. Making it better/worse... causing wars... putting on pressure to get them stopped...

But more simply: how can religion have an impact on the Military in the field? Morale increases? based on what?

I think we need to find lots of ways to 'cross the lines' between the different divisions we've created to get this game going. In real life, of course, there are no artificial divisions.

[Mark_Everson]

manurein:

One quibble: Lets call them Attitude Levels rather than Hate Sliders . Two classes might actually Like each other.

Cultural Attributes:

Nationalism should also indicate tendency to unify in response to an outside threat.

In addition to education we need more dimensions of what the people value. In my econ model I've assumed that the culture indicates the desires of the people spanning many of the infrastructure types. For example, tendency to invest, desire for entertainment, cultural value of farmers vs factory workers perhaps...

Another thing needed for the government model (at least the previous version) is the Social Status of the economic classes: the Upper Classes vs. members of the Military, vs. Laborers, etc. These determine what type of government the culture "expects".

Religions:

They should also be able to modify just about any cultural aspect. For example some religions will frown on extravagence, and their adherents will need less entertainment and more religious infrastructure to keep them happy. I propose that Religions, in addition to their unique attributes have All the cultural attributes available to be modified by them. Player would probably not have any control over this unless its a state religion.

Your Events Ideas are really good. I think we may need to arbitrarily limit them a bit if they consume too much processing time...

I like your overall sketch a lot. I need to think a bit about how to "cartoon" this model so that the AI can do reasonably well with it. The reason I need a simple cartoon is so that the AI can extrapolate what the results of various decisions will be in the cultural area. I think its doable.

I liked your interface suggestions, and think you've outlined a good way for the player to be anywhere from slightly to deeply immersed in this aspect of the game. One higher level we might have is that the player just delegates the AI advisor to handle even the big events. In this case the player just constrains what they're willing to give the advisor to work with in terms of money, social standing or whatever to dole out.

-Mark

[Kull]

Social Model Comments:

Nice job manurein. The concept seems to hold together nicely, and the links with the other models are clearly stated. Just a few nits:

"Overview"

You asked: "should the model create the revolution, enforcing the player in a new form of government, calculated by the model? Or should it just slightly worsen the genral situation of the civ and give the player clues that he should modify its government?" I kind of like the first option....if it's handled correctly. FE the game shouldn't just toss a new government at you. That would cause a great deal of user frustration, I'm sure. But if your advisors warn you several times that trouble is brewing and you blithely march along with a "let them eat cake" attitude....Congratulations! I hope your head looks nice on top of that pike!

"The Cultures"

Nationalism - This cultural attribute is deeply ingrained and we see it reflected everywhere in the world around us. It seems almost as natural as breathing. But the fact is, nationalism is a fairly recent phenomenon, coming into it's own only in the last few hundred years. Until nationalism, people identified with their family, town, city, possibly even province, but that was about the extent of it. An extreme example was 1640's Germany. You'd stretch the limits of a 256 color palette to give a separate hue to every duchy, landgrave, county, principality, bishopric, and free city. Nationalism is why you can't successfully partition a Poland any longer, or trade provinces with a neighbor. If we are to model REAL nationalism, it should be removed from the equation until relatively modern times. And when it makes it's appearance, well....look to the recent past. With the collapse of a hardline authoritarian government, the Soviet Union, the world's largest empire, came apart almost overnight in a sudden nationalistic frenzy. (Much as did Portugal's in the mid 70's) At the other extreme lies the British Empire. It too no longer exists, but the dismantling was a slower and more controlled process (for the most part), largely because it was handled under the aegis of a representative style of government. Thus a warning to the "Alexander" players....beware the ticking clock!!

Slavery - As mentioned in another thread, perhaps the creation of a "slave culture" is the correct way to handle this issue. I think we all agree it should be modeled. People would be my first choice, but this approach also has a lot of merit.

"The Religions"

Just for grins, I'll reiterate a few ideas posted in a different thread:

Start of a Major Religion - Obviously, we can't start the game with all major religions already in existence. So we'll have to model their birth. In keeping with historical precedent, here's one mechanism: At one point on the map, triggered by a mechanism I haven't really thought about, a powerful religious leader appears and the message slowly ripples out from that point. Typically, this would involve a slow spread from province to province, without regard to empire/civ borders.

Change over time - Religions DO alter their character, sometimes radically. It may be difficult to model this, however.

Impact of a new religion - Some will improve (or impede) military prowess, others will help the economy, etc. There's also lots of interesting modeling opportunities here. (Read: "God help the coders!") What happens when spreading religions collide? (usually Monotheistic will overwhelm Polytheistic, but not always (ex. Hinduism)). Should it be possible to combat the spread of a religion? (It has been done, but not easily.) Are there cases where a religion cannot infiltrate your empire? (Yes, if your govt is religion based. Look at Byzantium and Europe vs. Islam) Can a religion ever die? (Sure, how many people today worship Zeus, or Ahura Mazda?) Will some religions refuse to tolerate a secular government? (On the one hand, it would be nice to recruit armies from my highly motivated and newly converted Islamic cities, but will they fight for a non-Moslem emperor?)

[Harun ar Rashid]

manurein,

I won't go to into the details like Kull did but I would like to say that your proposal is very good IMO.
Having many cultures in one civilization sounds very interesting. That each class contributes differently to your civilization regarding tech and economy is also an excellent idea.
Sorry for having no further suggestions.

[manurein]

Hey guys, thanx for the encouragements!

Mark : Let's go for Attitude sliders.
-I think u're right, we may need to add items to the cultural attributes according to the other models of the game. This said, I think we should try to stick to a relatively limited set of attributes from which we could calculate values representing particular items for the other models (I'm not very clear... I mean fe unity could be a value calculated with attributes like nationalism, social rigidity, and the Attitude sliders in culture and religion between the involved civs)
-Social status will be known by the people cause they know the political powers of the H's gov model.
- U raise an interesting point about the Religions. I have come to discover a flaw in my model : the level of influence of religions on the behaviour of the people only depends on the political power of the Religious class; this works quite well for handling religious wars/troubles evnets types. But this falls apart when used to represent the background culture of the people : the point is, IMO religions have had a great influence on the culture of the people through the centuries, and today it belongs to the civs background culture, to the collective unconsciousness, even if in some cases religions have lost all their political power and a big part of their spiritual power (Occidental Europe, fe). I'm not sure having all the cultural attributes reproduced in the religions is way to go, cause it would be a bit straightforward. My idea is to let the religions having strong influence on the behaviour of the people, and having this influence going away very slowly when the R class loses its power; in the case of religious-type events, the behaviour would be directly linked to the pol power of the R class. Another way to go would be represent the spiritual influence as an attribute of a civilization. Anyway, I do agree that there should be more attributes in the religions. I wait for ideas.
- Events. My idea is to categorize the events and to have intensities for the events in each category. This would simplfy computings a lot. I still have to think on how categorizing them, and how many levels of categories we should have. Ideas on this?
- On the interface point, u're certainly right, all will depend on the level of AI we will be able to put in the advisors...

Kull :
- The links with other models need to be defined more precisely, and I need the other designers to tell me how they envision these links with their model.
- I agree with u, but this is just how I would like to play. I'm not sure it will be the case for the other players, so IMO we shall have it set in game setup. On this point, I think we could have different setups for game difficulty : one would fe say what is the strength of the social model; another would say how strong the enemy's AI is...
- I totally agree with u on the nationalism point. One of my first ideas was to have a provincialism attribute at the beginning, which would be progressively replaced by the nationalism attribute. Another idea is to have religion act in place stronlier than provincialism/nationalism until a certain point (I mean many wars would have religious reasons before the times where nationalism becoms an important factor). We must think more about these points.
- The effects of government will be taken into account directly through H's gov models. This means that in a soviet gov type, the ruler and the Upper-classes (the party apparatchiks) have quite all the political power, so the other classes, having about no political power, have very few chances to express themselves (to act), so there would be very few chances that there is nationalism/religious troubles coming from the labour classes.
- I dont know how, but I think there should be a way to handle colonies as they have existed, and the decolonization, with the arbitrary draw a boarders that happened. This would allow for simulating much of the nationalist/religious events that have spread in the world in the second half of the 20st century.
- on the religions : I agree there should be a birth point for the religions (intersting for crusades, fe.) May be it could be linked to a character (although my ideas are very fuzzy on the characters. I guess it would have to be linked to the social model in a way or another, and I cant see clearly how)
- religions will change over time. I have not decided how, maybe it should be the result of how the behave in the different cultures.
- struggle of religions : they will clearly happen, they are an integrated part of this model.
- I know that there must be a model for early, polytheistic religions. I have no clear ideas on this at this point, so I need input. Random ideas are that they are generally very linked to the nature (the sea god, the wing god...); also they carry lots of superstitions. But how will this impact on the behaviours?

Ideas : how will the social model impact on the mil model?
- A first point : the Attitude slider between the religions/cultures involved is really important on this point. It will have strong impacts on the motivation and ferocity of the soldiers.
- the location of the war is important, combined with provincialism/nationalism : people who defend their land defend it with the strongest motivation.
- quoting Machiavel, "The Prince", the amount of mercenaries/mobilzed soldiers is important. Mercenaries dont have the same motivation as the people who fight for their country/land; they fight for the money, and may leave you as soo as u can not pay them anymore, or they have a better proposition.
- education will clearly have an impact on the ferocity of the war.
- the religious values may also have impacts : in a individual-oriented religion, people are less ready to sacrifice themselves for the group; tolerance may also have an impact.

Well, that's all for now. Manu

[Mark_Everson]

Manu:

Looking good, a couple of responses to your points.

I agree we need to look for synergies within the cultural attributes so we don't have a list of 30 things. I think the best way though is to put everyting in first, then see what is absolutely irreplacable (because of links to other models, say) and then trim everything that's left.

On social status of classes. The govt model will have the Current powers of the classes. What I thought should be in the culture is what is the 'expected' power based on history. Thus if the king is expected to have great power in the people's minds they will be more likely to tolerate that type of government. If a dictator were to somehow take power in the States today, they would have a very hard time for the first few generations because the people Expect democracy. You can look at my old government proposal on the web page to see more of what i mean.

Religion, when it modifies base culture clearly needs a strength associated with it. Religion will only modify the culture depending on its number of strong and weak adherents.

-Mark

[Brian]

The idea of having cultures affect the amount of power of each class is a good one. However, I think this expectation should vary by class. This allows the potential for class conflict. In a civilization where different classes (for example in 18th century France, where the Bourgeoisie and workers wanted more power and the nobles wanted to keep their power) expect power at the expense of the other, class conflict between the classes can occur. This should lead either to revolution or suppression of the class wanting more power.

Also, when a revolution occurs, the expectation of power must be altered. For example, after a communist revolution, even if the nobility had an extreme amount of power before, the expectation of power should be changed drastically. After the revolution has been stabilized, this expectation should continue to shift (the nobles in this case would realize they have no chance of re-establishing power).

The expectation by classes should also be affected by mass media in the modern age. The media should be used in capitalist countries for example (as it has been used in the US) to spread fear of communism.

[manurein]

Brian :
class struggle is indeed a part of this social model. The idea here is that IMO social behaviour is an aggregate of cultural, spiritual (religious) and political (classes) behaviours. Thus, this model will allow to represent every kind of social events, triggering the kind of event (political, cultural or religious) depending on the situation.
Concerning the expectations of the classes/people : my idea is to introduce here some inertia : when a given group tries to get smthg and it cant, and it is punished by more powerful groups for having tried, it wont try again before quite long time because of fear. Another idea is that the political power of a given class gives it the more chances to express themselves the more political power they have. In other words : concerning the french revolution fe, it will have a chance to occur when the bourgeois will haver gained enough political power through gaining enough economical power to have a good chance to express their angry (in this case the xpression takes the form of a revolution), and that's what happened. Then, after the revolution the political powers will have shifted from the Noble class to the bourgeois class (in terms of Clash models, this means the Labour Class), and then the nobles will have few chances to express themselves (what really happened). Moreover, if the new ruler decides to kill the former King (Louis XVI in France in 1792), this will add to the fear of the noble class and leave them further less chances to come back to power.
Last point, concerning the media : I agree media should be modeled in Clash in a way or another, although this point, from what I havent seen, hasn't been discussed yet. I guess it does not only belong to the social model, maybe it would be intersting to launch a new thread on the subject. See what Mark thinks of that.
Cya. Manu.

[Dominique]

manurein,

looks great - in fact, even I haven't much to add

Just one personal wish: Since we all agree on the idea that CLASH should be highly flexible / editable, I'd love to have an option for actual WONDERS to happen (i.e. acts of the Gods). This would be great not only for fantasy mod packs (which I love), but could be a realistic element, too: After all, in ancient times the gods were as real as magic to the people, and had grave impact on their decisions. So I could imagine a range of events which could influence religious aspects of the game (in a more "real" world) or even have direct impact (in a more "fantasy" setting).

After all, try as we might, we won't be able to simulate mankind's creativity and traditions in the game, so it might be more convincing to take some myths for real to create a believable background for the religions.

Example: At some point, computer decides that God X killed God Y (something that happened in religious history, often reflectiong the superiority of a culture), thus penalizing e.g. the happiness effect of God Y's religion.

[manurein]

News :
------

1. I plan to use one new attribute for the cultures : authority acceptance. This attribute is sligthly different from the social rigidity attribute. It is mainly used to represent the "inertia" of the people. In other words : when people try to revolt and they are punished, this attribute decreases, showing that the people are afraid to revolt again. Then it goes up back very slowly. Also, this attribute will be linked to the religion of the people to show how religion interacts with the fact that people accept the authority (more on this later). Another effect of this attribute is to show, in a way, the freedom of initiative of the people : fe, in a authoritarian/communist country, people have very few personal initiatives, where in democratic/free market countries, a great part of the scientific, cultural, intellectual and economical initiative/innovation come from the individuals/the private sector.

2. More on religions.
- first, here is a model I propose for the ancient/polytheistic religions/
Notes : first, I really know very few about early religions/beliefs, so this is a lot more a tentative to add to the gameplay than something historically realist or accurate; second, in this model I am making an arbitrary distinction between polytheistic and monotheistic religions, considering the latter as more evolved than the former. This is an arbitrary, intellectually scandalous simplification (see Hinduism fe), but this is the way I've found to make things handleable...
So, the model :
- Assumptions used to build the model : I based my thoughts on some points, the first of them being that IMO, one of the characteristics of early religions was that they were very superstition-oriented; with this I mean they were very usefull to explain extraordinary things, and those super-natural explanations satisfied the people; second, IMO many of the believes were highly linked to real, sensible things, like the nature, the sky, the stars, the water... And last, in many cases, there was a notion of gifts to the gods, often in the form of sacrifices.
So, I propose the following attributes :
- Human sacrifice : this attribute will tell how the people are prone to give offrands to their gods in the form of human sacrifices. The value of this slider will tell if the civ doesnt want in any case to sacrifice a human being or, at the other side of the slider, if they will in last chance sacrifice one of their own people for the gods. This attribute should have strong gameplay effects, as it will fe trigger wars when a civ needs some humans to sacrifice (when they can , they will sacrifice humans from other civs/rel/culture). Pre-colombian civs are good examples of what we may have with this. Also, this slider could have an effect on the overall agressivness of the civ.
- Stellar Items-oriented : this slider will tell how the sky and the stellar objects are important in this religion. A people whose religion is very sky-oriented should turn out quickly to stuy the sky and the stars, triggering important scientific advances in the astronomy and mathematics field. Examples of this are the ancient Greece or the ancient China.
Nature-oriented : in a way, this slider is the inverse of the precedent (maybe there should be only one for both). It shows that the beliefs are very linked to the near nature, like the trees, the rivers... A civ whose religion is very nature-oriented would have some skills in natural medicine, in using the natural terrein when fighting. The bad news are that they also leave very near to the nature, so they only build limited constructions, they have less developped agriculture. Examples of these are the North-american natives, or the blak-Africa tribes.
- Good/Evil gods : the divinities of a given religion may be more or less feared by their belivers. I mean, some divinities are good-willing, some other are very violent. This attribute would be important for the kind of things a god could tell, or order to its followers (see below); also, it woiuld have strong effects on the authority acceptance of the culture associated with this religion : the more the God have to be obeyed because if not they would become evil, the more the people will accept authority from a superior being, be it a god or a human authority.

Now, a few words on religion/gameplay (and an answer to Dominique's wish) :
From what I know, very often in ancient times the gods "spoke" to their belivers, through the mouth of Oracle, Shaman or any other kind of sorcerer. This way, the people who were the "communicants" with the god had a mean to give orders to the people that they couldnt refuse because they had divine origine. In some cases, the ruler was also the main communicant man. In this case, the ruler had all the powers concentrated in its only hands. IMO this could be made part of the gameplay : why not having the player using "dinine Will" to enforce the people in doing what he wants more easily? What he could do in this field would be linked to the fact that he is or not the main god-communicant, and if not it would be based on the relations he has with the RC, the fact that the RC is associated or not, and the pol power of the RC. Also, the kind of things he would be able to have the gods say would be dependant on the attributes of the religion. Fe, in a very Good God with no human sacrifice religion-type, the ruler would hardly have the gods say "Attack enemy X because I need more sacrifices" and stuff like that.
In the case of more evolved religions (in my model, monotheistic religions, even if it is only a rough simplifictation), the leader/RC can not have the gods "speak" directly; what they can do is "interpret" the offical Books (Bible, Tora...); thus, they can try to convince the people in a way or another. In terms of gameplay, I see something like justifying a war for religious reasons, or things like that.

One big problem remains : how can we represent the passage between polytheistic and monotheistic religions? IMO there something with education in this, as in my model the monotheistic religions are represented as more "spiritual" than the early religions; but IMO this isnt enough, and I wonder if in any case, a religion has been replaced by another without any kind of struggle. If anybody has ideas on this point, please tell me.
One last point, that concerns both gameplay/player interface and historical accuracy : Christianism has become the most important religion in France and, for a part in Europe, because the man who's considered the first french King (Clovis, King of the Franks) converted to christianism at the same time that he was made king. Why not, if the circumstances are (which mainly means that the religion has already spread by itself in the region), allowing the player to convert?

OK, wait for your feedback, guys.

Manu.

[Dominique]

Once again, a word of warning here regarding complexity: Don't overdo it. It's great for a player if he sees that there IS complexity in the game, but it absolutely mustn't result in the necessity to study the game for years

As with many other aspects of the game, we should have a careful look which degree is necessary to make the game more fun, NOT for it's own sake.

I'd say, don't care for e.g. the passage from polytheistic to monotheistic religions too much... remember that a government change is accompanied by major struggles, as well - so what? Simply omitting these complex developments made by setting a random number of anarchy turns did much to straighten gameplay in CIV. I feel that's the way to go: Show the player you KNOW about the struggles and put them into the game as a noticable, but in itself easy to handle aspect.

[Druid2]

manurein,

We're trying to get a start on laying the foundation for the program itself.

This area, "social issues", is one that is rather hard [for me, at least] to turn into numbers and parameters and facts, from "sentences and concepts."

Please give some thought to what kind of facts and parameters might be used to implement this model.

Things will changes as we go along, but lets start making the transition from ideas to program.

Post any ideas or questions in the Programming Thread

Thanks

-Druid2-
King of the Gypsys
Herder of Cats
Duke of Programming Coordination

[Mark_Everson]

A few thoughts/issues:

What happens when you lose to a revolt?
I'd originally been thinking that you would just lose the game. But just having the player need to cope with whatever government that comes out might be Very fun. I do strongly think that if you pick the wrong side in a revolt and lose you should be Stuck with whatever government comes out of the revolt. Then, if we decide the game is still alive, you would get back in 'control' of whatever government now exists. What do people think?

Manu:

Way in the beginning you mentioned giving people legal status improvements, etc. In the govt. system that's all rolled into the political power number. So if you grant workers some additional rights the power of the LC would go up by whatever (TBD) amount. This makes the workers happier because their real political power will now be closer to the power they feel they deserve.

Colonies:
I think colonies can behave ok with the existing rules. In the diplomacy module you can set up an independent state any time you want (so long as you have enough political power to do so). So giving colonies their freedom can work that way.

-Mark

[Theben]

Don't forget that people, classes, rulers, etc. have opinions on the classes, rulers, religions of other civs!

Mark_E,
I vote for having control of the new government. Let's face it, if you're trying to model history as accurately as possible, there WILL be revolts! No one will ever finish a game!

I also do not care too much for explicit detail on religions. I would rather have a 'generic' animist/polytheistic and monotheistic religion than ones built around existing ones. Use the events to create religious flavors. Let players name them if they want.

[Mark_Everson]

Theben:

Yep, everyone has opinions on everyone else. We just have to cut it off somewhere or you end up using all the memory just keeping track of it all . Probably we'll just cut off where it stops seriously contributing the social dynamics feeling right. IMO fairly short.

On control of the new government... Yeah, I'm getting there too.

And I am leerie about modeling real religions too. I think your approach is probably the way to go, so we don't get ourselves in too much trouble...

[Druid2]

RE: Religions

I think it is important *NOT* to make links between real world religions and the ones we put in the game. Otherwise people will be upset at how the game treats those religions.

I'd think we could have several "generic" religions, and still keep them separate from each other, without patterning them too obviously on real world religions.

[manurein]

About religions : I agree with, I've never forecasted to give names to religions (and IMO there could be the same problem if we name cultures...)
What I'm doing is just providing a framework which will aloow to model different kinds of religions (see : with only two attributes for the mono rel which are valued from 0 to 100, we have about 10,000 possible different religions...)

[Kull]

This is dangerous ground. On the one hand, we want to create a "real world" atmosphere by including religions and cultures. On the other, we don't want to offend anyone by using the names of real ones. So we'll have generic religion "X" within generic culture "Y" taking on some other generic culture/religion. It may work, but I'm skeptical.

I recommend that we make no final decisions on naming until AFTER playtesting. If users can't get excited about generics, we ought to use the real names. Will some folks get upset? Sure. But the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue generates horrified letters every year, and they haven't gone out of business!

[Theben]

I wasn't really concerned about offending anyone, more that once you develop a particular religion you will be constrained by a set of values that may not have any bearing on the what is happening in your game. FE, in real life Shintoism and Buddhism in Japan blended together nicely and it became impossible to tell them apart until 1868. Most people would agree that Christianity has not been very tolerant of other religions, but if the conditions are met in your game, why couldn't the above occur instead if you wind up with christians? If you have a "blank slate" or almost blank slate to start with, that later evolves as the game progresses, IMHO it would be more historically accurate.

[manurein]

Theben :
A priori, the Great Monotheistic religions wont exist at the beginning of the game. At the beginning, IMO there should be only early polytheistic religions.
So monotheistic religions will appear later, and IMO we should create them to match the culture in which they were born.
Note : I've said it, I repeat it : I think monotheistic religios must have a geographic origin (be it only to implement stuff like crusades).

[Theben]

Do you mean a specific point where the religion comes from or religions that have effects associated with their geographic origin?

I've been working on a rough idea for religions. The basic idea is based on the MOO2 interface for racial abilities. Religions would get bonuses/penalties to a variety of attributes; growth, warfare, morale (of the people, not your military), seafaring, tolerance of other religions, etc. When you "receive" your 1st polytheistic religion, you will receive a message (via the "newspaper"?), "A new religion has arisen amongst our people in the province of [ ]". You will get this message each time a religion is born or arrives in your lands. You will be directed to the MOO2-like interface where you will see the various attributes possible for religions. Yours will come with a set of values not of your choosing (but based on previous events and local geography). You will also be given 3 choices: encourage the religion, suppress it, or influence it, as well as being allowed to name it whatever you want (it could come with a title based on the name of your civ). Encouraging the religion will allow it to spread quickly, and probably make it the state religion. If influencing them you get to choose some other variables on the interface, but there will only be a % chance that the religion will change, lower % chance for every modification you try to make. Religions can be imported from other cultures as well (this was done often throughout history. Usually the imported religion helped "legitimize" the ruling class; i.e. "authority acceptance". BTW, this also was how some monotheistic religions pushed out polytheistic ones. Ruling class adopted, other classes later adopted to gain acceptance). Suppression will most likely make some of your people unhappy, and may not be successful. Successful suppression will remove it from your empire. Suppression will only be available when extra religions arise, are imported by your people, or are the state religion of an older regime that has been overthrown (in civ terms, changing from monarchy to republic or some such). Monotheistic religions will arrive later following the same basic pattern, OR monotheism can be an "attribute" found in the religion interface screen, which tends to arrive later in the game. Of course, all religions would evolve as the game progressed, and you will be free to encourage, suppress, or influence them as the game went on. I'd limit it to just one polytheistic religion and one monotheistic one per civ, but allow religions to mix the various nations.

[Mark_Everson]

Theben:

That sounds like a reasonable model to me. What do you think Manu? The only thing is IMO it isn't Just the player's choice whether to support a new religion. If an old religion exists that has power is should fight the player's attempts to aid the new one.

[manurein]

Theben, Mark :
Yes, the ideas here fit quite well the social model. Just a few remarks :
- I'm not sure the effects of a give religion will be so straight forward as giving direct bonus in specific fields, but this has still to be tested and decided;
- About the MOO2-like religion interface : the fact that the figures will be presented here is related to the question Mark asked in the "numbers avaiable for players poll" thread.
- About the influence : as I said it, the ruler/player may or may not be the main "shaman" for a ploy religion, or the main "priest" for a mono relgion; also, the religious class may be more or less associated with the ruler. In the case where the ruler is the main "priest/shaman", he may influence the religion quite deeply; in the case where the RC is strongly associated, he may try to influence the rel through the RC with good chances. In other cases, he would have troubles with theRC if he tried to influence the religion too deeply (he may even have no mean to influence it at all).
- suppressing the religion : this would more accuratley be represented through, for exemple, a law the leader takes that would make the new religion illegal; also, as stated Mark, if a new religion arises the officials of the anciet religion will fight the new one without ruler's help.
- encouraging the new religion : this is the contrary; it can be made through associating the new RC to the ruler and making the old one illegal, fe. It could also be done through "converting" the leader to the new religion.
- about limitations : in my first ideas, poly religions are civ-based, so there may be only one poly religion at a time in a given civ, which would be the official religion; mono religions are world-based, so they can be shared between several civs; also, when a group of people migrates, it migrates with its religion, so a given civ can host several religions at a time. It's then the responsibility of the ruler to make this new religion illegal or not. One last point : in modern times, in occidental countries, there is no official religion at all anymore (seperation between the church and the state).