Government Model v.2

[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.

[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited July 07, 2000).]

[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:

quote: 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.

I will have to repeat myself, in order to make things clear.

quote: 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?

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 ). 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 ). 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
[This message has been edited by axi (edited July 07, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by axi (edited July 07, 2000).]

[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/lostmercha...ashEditor.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! 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.... It's your kind of socialistic ideology that gives these topics a greater flavor and makes us predict what you like and what not...

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

3)military=WC... simply a genius!


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 !!!

[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. 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...