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  • Social Model v.2

    Social Model

    I. Introduction

    The Clash of Civilizations will be a challenging game not only because of the better AI it will include, but also because the Clash world will be more complex compared to games of this type. Most of models developed in the Clash Project have assumed so far the existence of civ's cultural attributes where they can get inputs from to simulate how different cultures act in different ways and how civilizations can appear to have their own styles and histories based on social effects. It is the main role of this model to produce that necessary social base we're all counting on. This model only describes how people can be characterized through cultural attributes and which mechanisms exist to make attributes change overtime according to the civ's experiences. The effects of culture in the game are supposed to be managed in the rest models. In particular, the Riots Model will take care of major social events such as revolutions, independence attempts, etc.

    For the nature of the subject, it's possible for some people to take in the wrong way some opinions about culture and culture evolution. Audiences are encouraged to be open minded when reading the model, because, of course, the only goal here is to replicate what we've seen in history as a general trend and avoid discussions on what's good or bad about cultures.


    II. Model Overview

    The problems to solve are mainly two: How cultural attributes change as time passes by and how different ethnic groups interact with each other. Modeling the first one is obviously needed, while the importance of the second one needs an explanation: Civs won't interact with each other always like nations, each in its own space. If romans take Egypt, then egyptians end up living under roman rule and they won't necessarily will become roman citizens and support the new regime. Even more, Rome can invade just a part of Egypt, so you can find egyptians in roman provinces and in egyptian civ. In other words, the problem here to solve is the interactions between cultures when more than one occupy the same space (provinces).

    The approach I took for the model is this: Each civ can hold several ethnic groups (tribes/nationalities) in it. At a civ level, each of them is described with a set of cultural variables or characteristics. It is assumed that all people with the same nationality have the same characteristics regardless of the place where they live within the civ. This means, FE, that romans in the capital province share the same characteristics that romans living in central Europe provinces. At the province level we only need a dynamic array of the existent nationalities and the populations of each. FE, a roman province in central Europe could be something like this:
    Romans-1200
    Celts-950000
    Franks-1200000

    while in a roman province in the greek peninsula would be:
    Romans-2600
    Greeks-1700000

    The number of elements in the arrays change as migrations and other events happen. Populations will be stored on a tile/square basis. Province populations are just the sum of the populations in the tiles forming the province.

    The set of ethnic groups (EG) in one civ will be called Population Composition (PC). Each EG in the PC has the following information:
    • Nationality (FE, romans)
    • PR%: Primitive Religion (share of population who follow the "primitive religion")
    • GRW: Great Religion of the World (which GRW is followed)
    • GRW's spreading rate
    • Religiously Discriminated (dummy variable describing if the EG is discriminated or not by the govt because of religion)
    • Ethnically Discriminated (dummy variable describing if the EG is discriminated or not by the govt because of nationality)
    • Slavered (dummy variable indicating if the ethnic group is "brutally" slavered, as defined in the govt model when Slavery=2)
    • Characteristics (several variables describing the culture)

    Each turn what the model does is change the characteristics of each ethnic group in the civ according to some rules explained later and where religion plays a fundamental role. The other important factor is govt. It's a govt decision if any ethnic group is above the rest (FE, romans in the roman empire). In general, the govt will determine a level of ethnic discrimination defining how groups will interact with each other. These two factors, religion and govt, and their role in the model are discussed in the next two sub-sections below in general terms.

    It should be clear from what has been said above, that "civ" and "tribe" (or ethnic group) are not synonymous. A player plays a civ, not an ethnic group. The player playing the roman empire controls the roman govt and through it, all what happens in the controlled provinces (the civ), but romans are just one of many EGs in the civ. The romans having a special position respect to other tribes and calling the civ "roman civ" is, above all, a govt decision. The civ may indeed have a nationality of its own. FE, a player might be ruling Yugoslavia (civ's nationality=yugoslavian), while EGs in this civ, although generally referred as yugoslavians, have other nationalities (serbs, croats, etc) and there's no EG above the rest. This example also shows that in this model "nationality" means the tribe you feel you belong to, not something imposed or declared by a govt.


    II-1. Modeling Religions
    Religions are definitely needed in the game. They have given shape to culture for most of (if not all) history and they have also played huge roles in wars and politics, so they're a cool ingredient to add in Clash. The govt model handles how the Church acts in the political arena. In this section it's explained how religion affects EGs.

    A religion will be described by several attributes, many of which are the same that describe a culture. The idea is religions "dictate" to their followers how to behave, so they show the people what values cultural attributes should take. FE, if one religion has an aggressiveness of 70, then all the people who follow that religion will tend to have their cultural attribute "aggressiveness" equal to 70. So, the main role of religions in this model is being culture changers, making cultural attributes alike to religion attributes.

    There've been many religions and there're still many of them. Their evolution from their primitive forms to how they're today is a complex matter. In order to avoid the game from keeping track of a lot of religions, their birth, evolution and possible disappearance, I've chosen the following approach: The really important religions are what I've called "the Great Religions of the World". There'll be from 3 to 6 of them in the game (the number will be decided by the team, but that should be the order of magnitude). The model will manage how an EG goes from following primitive religions to following one of the GRW. What makes the difference between a primitive religion (PR) and a GRW is the "exportability" of GRW. PRs are extremely associated with the particular ethnic group that practices it, so it's very difficult for others to embrace the same beliefs and therefore these religions cannot spread. Other peoples can sometimes take elements or even the whole cult, but always adapting it to their own nationality (FE, greek religion passing to romans). If you take ancient egyptian religion or aztec beliefs, it's clear to see how religion has to do with the egyptians and aztecs respectively, but not with humanity in general. GRW go beyond the tribe, so no matter where you come from, it's sufficient to follow what the religion dictates to be part of it and therefore it can spread through the world.

    GRW will be described with several attributes shown later. The model won't keep track of PRs' attributes, only GRW.

    At the beginning of the game EGs will support a PR with 100%. It's assumed that a PR in one EG is different from one in other EG because of the relationship primitive religions have with nationality. PRs have no name (or can be called after the EG, like "egyptian cult" FE).

    The game will randomly give birth to each of the GRW after some thousands years of play. Any EG in any civ will be picked as the starting tribe to embrace it. From that point, the new GRW starts to spread as will be explained. Any EG will be allowed to support only one of the GRW. This is not true in real life because in a group of people different cults can coexist, but when we see the world we notice there's always a very dominant religion and some small groups following other beliefs, so I think the restriction I'm using is good enough and it helps keeping the model simple.

    For spreading purposes, in each civ there'll be 2*N dummy variables indicating if each of the GRW is known there and if it has followers, where N is the number of GRW in the game. These will be called "Contact Variables" as in "The civ has/hasn't contact with GRW X" and "Acceptance Variables" as in "There are/aren't EGs accepting the GRW X". FE, in one civ there's contact with christianity and Islam, but not with Buddhism, so the contact variables are CHR-1, ISLAM-1, BUD-0. But only Islam is practiced, so Acceptance Variables are CHR-0, ISLAM-1, BUD-0.

    Also for spreading purposes, each civ needs to store its level of "social contact" with the rest civs. For simplicity, that level will be given by the number of trade routes between the two civs. That info will be stored in a list (Known Civs List). Each time a trade route is created or deleted, the lists are updated for involved civs.


    II-2. The role of government
    Usually a civ's govt is related to a particular EG (a nationality) and it's also common for a govt to be related to a religion. The govt model uses the Ethnic Discrimination (ED) Policy for the first type of discrimination. ED can take the following numbers:

    0: No discrimination (uncommon. Think Yugoslavia). When ED=0 the civ is said to be "multiethnic" and the player will be asked to introduce a new name for the civ, like Yugoslavia. This is important, not just flavor. As will be shown, EGs with low Nationalism will tend to lose their identity and adopt the civ's nationality, so a player ruling an empire with many EGs with low Nationalism might choose as a strategy to use a multiethnic civ in order to unite the tribes. This is how the model makes possible the rising of new nationalities like the french from gauls, franks, celts and others. However, this strategy wouldn't work in Yugoslavia, where nationalism in the EGs present was high.

    1-9: A nationality is preferred (i.e. only one EG) and all others are ethnically discriminated (Minorities). The civ is named after the EG's nationality (e.g. Roman Civ). This is the most common case. Going from 1 to 8 gives different levels for treatment toward minorities, from respect to other tribes and their customs and the possibility to change nationality to the "dominant" one, to very disrespecting treatment (think nazis).

    When a govt chooses to be multiethnic and after a new tribe name is picked, the model merges all cultures to create the characteristics for the new people using relative populations as weights in a weighted sum of the original characteristics. This is no sudden forced culture mixing. The new tribe will have zero population. As the game advances, EGs with low Nationalism will slowly drop their current nationality and become part of the new EG.

    The govt can also discriminate via religion. If there's a govt with an intolerant official religion, EGs supporting other beliefs can be considered minorities. This is done in the govt model via the Religious Discrimination variable. Since an EG can follow two religions when the EG variable PR% is greater than 0% and lower than 100%, there's ambiguity in knowing if the EG should be discriminated or not. In that case we'll apply the rule of considering the EG as supporting the GRW alone. This is done because as will be shown, once the EG takes a GRW, it'll inevitably embrace it a 100%, so it's just a matter of time to consider the EG as totally committed with that GRW.

    Minorities, then, are all EGs discriminated via nationality and/or religion. The govt discriminates and the whole thing about discrimination has as purpose, here in the social model and in the riots model, to change the attitude of each EG and the things affecting them.


    III. Cultural Attributes (Characteristics)
    These are the cultural attributes and their role in the game. More can be added given the needs in each of the rest models. All variables are in the 0-100 range.

    Ethnic Tolerance: It represents how you see other tribes and what kind of relationship you think exists between your tribe and others. A low ET means you feel your tribe is superior and the rest hardly qualify as human beings. A high ET means you respect other tribes and you're willing to live together with them.

    Religious Tolerance: This is the tolerance of other religions (by other I mean the ones not followed by the EG). Low scores mean people feel upset about having to live with people with other cults.

    Aggressiveness: This defines how aggressive the culture is. A high score indicates a very warlike culture while a low score indicates peaceful. Leaders of an aggressive culture will find it easier to wage war against their neighbors. A very high score could also give a bonus to the efficiency of troops.

    Traditionalism: This represents the people's ties to the past. Its role is force culture to stay as it currently is.

    Nationalism: Will be defined as "The notion of being a part of something bigger than your local clan (a nation) and the people's willingness to form that nation and live under one same government of their own". This variable was sometimes known as "provincialism/nationalism". Low Nationalism means you care only about your local clan and you don't see much difference between your tribe and others. A high Nationalism shouldn't be confused with a fanatic or blind nationalism. It's only a rather strong feeling of belonging to a specific tribe and a high opposition to be ruled by other tribe. Nationalism is very low at the beginning of the game (thousands of years before Christ), with some random small differences from tribe to tribe (values in the range 1-10).

    Land Connection: This is the people's feeling of belonging to the province they occupy. The love for where they live and the idea that the land they occupy belongs to them. Initial LC will be high because the EG is assumed to have lived there for some time. It'll be used in the Riots Model.

    Asceticism: This represents the people's desire for material goods. A high score indicates a lack of interest in material goods, while a low score indicates lots are wanted. It has a role in people's behavior in the economic field.

    Importance of Religion: The highest this number, the more influenced the rest characteristics are by religion doctrine. This happens because people want to do what religion says. Importance of Religion will be in general very high at the beginning of the game for all cultures and in general terms it will decrease as time passes by.

    Individualism: This is the people's value of self. Its main role is modeling what type of economy people wants. The more individualistic, the more inclined to capitalism and vise versa.


    Initial values will be given randomly or using pre-set values defined by us and ad hoc to each historical tribe. The player will decide which option to use.

    IV. Attributes of GRW

    Each GRW has the following cultural attributes: Religious Tolerance, Aggressiveness, Asceticism and Individualism. They represent the moral code the religion tries to impose on its followers. Religion has no say about the other characteristics described above. The following attributes also exist in GRW:

    Sacrifice: The higher this score is the more is required from the followers of the religion. This is money and economic resources the clergy takes away from the people that allows the church to act. The economic model should use this variable to know how much people invest in religious infrastructure.

    Countdown: Used to determine when the GRW is born. Its initial value in the game is equal to the date the player chooses to start, doubled (FE, 4000BC implies countdown=2*4000=8000).

    Holy Land: The tile in which the religion was born (randomly picked at the moment of religion's birth). This is to model crusades and that sort of things.


    After the GRW is born, its moral code remains fixed for the game. Religions have shown to be very reticent to change their doctrines, and although we know some changes have occurred, the assumption made here is still very accurate and keeps the model simple. Sacrifice and Holy Land are also fixed and Countdown stays at zero once the religion is born.

    Primitive Religions are supposed to be described with the same variables, but the game won't store that info as with GRW. We'll assume that if you take a EG, the PR associated with it has attributes equal to the EG's cultural attributes. In other words, cultural attributes and religion attributes for PRs are indistinguishable. If you want to know what the chinese PR thinks about individualism, just look at the current individualism score of chinese EG. This is made to avoid keeping track of each of the dozens primitive religions existing and their attributes and to give GRW the importance they deserve, being much more autonomous and homogeneous through out the world. As for sacrifice and holy land, which is info we can't read from the EG attributes, holy land is never needed for PRs and Sacrifice will be assumed to be equal to the average between (100-Individualism) and Asceticism.


    V. How the model works

    Each turn we do the following:

    1. Apply the "GRW birth" sub-model to the game.
    2. Apply the "Religion Spreading" sub-model to each civ.
    3. Apply the "Nationalities" sub-model to each civ.
    4. Apply the "Cultural Evolution" sub-model to each civ.
    5. Apply the "Migration" sub-model to each civ.


    V-1. The "GRW birth" Sub-Model
    The countdown variable for each GRW is checked. If it's zero, do nothing. If it's greater than zero, it's decreased by R*L, where R is a random number between 1 and 3 and L is the length of the game turn in years. If after the decrease it's zero or negative, then set it to zero and give birth to the GRW. This means a random tile is picked anywhere in the world. If no population exist in the tile, another is chosen until a tile with people is found. If there's more than one EG in the tile, one is picked randomly. Contact Variable for the GRW in the civ where the EG lives is turned to 1. The religion's moral code is made equal to the corresponding attributes in the EG. Sacrifice is made equal to the average between (100-Individualism) and Asceticism and Holy Land is made equal to the tile's code number.


    V-2. The "Religion Spreading" Sub-Model
    For each EG in the civ:

    First: If the EG has PR%=100% (no GRW is known and accepted), the model looks at the Contact Variables and for each of them equal to "1", the religion is checked for acceptance by the EG. The EG will accept the GRW if the religion's moral code is not too different from EG's culture. A "distance" between culture and religion's moral code is computed as D=square_root( (C1-R1)^2 + ....+ (Cn-Rn)^2 ), where Ck is the EG's value of the kth cultural attribute and Rk is the religious value for the same attribute. If D is less than a given threshold (TBD), it is accepted. The GRW variable in the EG is turned to the name (or code number) of the GRW accepted and the Acceptance Variable for the GRW in the civ is made equal to 1. A GRW spreading rate is then computed for the EG as (1-Traditionalism)*(K1-D)/K2, where K1 and K2 are scale factors allowing to use D in the calculation so the more similar attributes are, the fastest people will take the religion.
    If a GRW is at the govt (i.e. it's official), it has more power to convert people. So, instead of comparing D directly with the threshold, we'll really use D*(1-G*RC%), where G is a dummy being "1" if the GRW being checked happens to be the official one and "0" if not. RC% is the political power of the Religious Class, from the govt model.

    Second: If PR% is greater than 0%, then PR% is decreased by the magnitude of GRW's spreading rate. If the final value is less than zero, it's set to zero. GRW's spreading rate is zero if no GRW is known and accepted by the EG (i.e. zero is its default value), so PR% will remain at 100% until a GRW is accepted by the EG and will decrease slowly thereafter (i.e. the primitive religion will be inevitably replaced by the GRW).

    Civ to Civ Spreading: A random civ is picked in the Known Civs List. If the level of social contact with it is greater than a given number (TBD), continue: Contact Variables in this random civ are changed to represent the contact with the followed religions in the civ being processed. Each Contact Variable in the randomly picked civ is changed to MIN(1,a+b), where a is its current Contact Variable and b is the Acceptance Variable for the same religion in the civ being processed. Example:
    "Acceptance Variables" in civ being processed: CHR:1, ISLAM:0, BUD:1
    "Contact Variables" in random civ picked: CHR:0, ISLAM:0, BUD:1
    New values for Contact Variables in random civ picked: CHR:min(1,0+1)=1, ISLAM:min(1,0+0)=0, BUD:min(1,1+1)=1.
    The example shows how the civ being processed exports practiced GRW to a civ with high enough social contact, allowing the latter to have knowledge about them, which will make possible (in the next game turn) for some EGs in it to embrace them if they're accepted. The mechanism also ensures that a civ can only export religions practiced in it, but not those it has contact with, but nobody likes.

    The first step makes possible a EG start embracing a GRW. Step two is the EG's internal spreading process leaving the PR in the past. The third step is what makes GRW to spread through the world.


    V-3. The "Nationalities" Sub-Model
    Nationalism is updated as new_Nationalism=current_Nationalism+C*L, where C is a constant depending on the case (see table) and L is the length in years of the game turn.

    ________Case______________________________C
    EG in a "barbaric province"____________________0.025
    EG in a civ with matching nationality______________0.1
    EG in a civ with different nationality________0.03*(1/(1+exp(-14+.2*current_Nationalism)))


    The rules increase Nationalism as a "natural tendency" as time passes by, making it faster if the tribe has its own civ (govt). But, under the rule of others, Nationalism goes down because it's hard to preserve identity in this conditions. However, it's much easier for tribes with already low Nationalism to lose it than those that already have a great sense of identity and that's why the exponential formula is used.

    Nationalities (EGs) with low Nationalism tend to be absorbed by the dominant culture. This happens because the tribe has no sense of itself and easily give up its identity to become something else. This mechanism allows for some tribes to be lost during the game, as it happened with saxons and many other tribes.

    The following must be done in each province for each present nationality: If the nationality doesn't match the civ's one, then a dice is rolled to see if some of its population adopts the civ's nationality. The probability of doing so is

    P=(1/(1+exp(0.06*current_Nationalism)))*exp(-K*ED)

    where ED is the Ethnic Discrimination level the govt imposes and K is a scale parameter. If the dice indicates nationality shift, a population of P*600*L is deducted from the EG's population and added to the EG having the civ's nationality, where L is, again, the length of the game turn in years. This conversion can be up to 3000 persons every 10 years or null, depending on how nationalistic people is and the attitude of the govt regarding other nationalities.
    If the population for a given EG falls down to zero, the EG is deleted from the Population Composition (the EG has disappeared at least in this civ).


    V-4. The "Cultural Evolution" Sub-Model
    This sub-model is the one that changes cultural attributes (characteristics except Nationalism). There are two questions: In which direction the characteristic should go (increase, decrease, stay) and at which speed. Modeling changes in culture is really difficult. It's not easy to answer these two questions (specially the first) in a general way. That's why I grouped characteristics in three categories according to the complexity of the variable:
    1) Land Connection
    2) Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion and Traditionalism
    3) Religious Tolerance, Individualism, Asceticism, Aggressiveness


    1) Land Connection

    LC can only rise, since it's the love for the province where you live and the notion that the EG has lived there "always". It should increase by around 1 point every 4 years.


    2) and 3)

    The approach I took is characteristics tend to a value, so in each turn we only move slightly the characteristic in the direction of that value. The magnitude of the change is given by Traditionalism, so the more traditionalistic, the slower the change. The following is made to each characteristic:

    new_value=current_value + ((100-Traditionalism)/100)*T*L*(TV_value - current_value)/ABS(TV_value - current_value) (*)

    where TV stands for "Tendency Value", T is a time-scale constant and L is the length in years of the game turn. Now the question is what is the TV for each characteristic. The difference between categories 2) and 3) is the way TV is computed.

    2) Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion and Traditionalism (TV)

    TV_ET=MAX(100-Nationalism, 60)*(1-Aggressiveness/100) (i)

    Ethnic Tolerance decreases slowly as a result of the rising Nationalism level and the need to clearly make a difference with other tribes, but Nationalism won't push it below a certain level (60). ET can go lower than this only by the presence of a high Aggressiveness level.

    TV_IR= 100-OTL*0.4-ES*3 (ii)

    The assumption here is religion's attractiveness is mostly given by the incapability of human beings to understand and control their world. Then, the importance of religion in people's daily lives goes down as science gives us new and useful explanations for our environment and as our society appears to be stable. OTL is the civ's "overall tech level" in a 0-100 range. A measure I hope we can build in the tech model. ES is "Empire's Stability", a variable from the govt model in the range 0-10.

    TV_Traditionalism=95-(CivilRights/100)*15 (iii)

    This means Traditionalism goes in the 80-95 range depending on the current value of Civil Rights, which is a government model's variable describing how free is people in the 0-100 range. I'm assuming Traditionalism always tends to be high and the differences are from high to very high, depending on freedom. IMO cultures with high freedom give more space to innovation and changes are more acceptable, so Traditionalism tends to be somewhat lower.


    3) Religious Tolerance, Individualism, Asceticism, Aggressiveness (TV)

    For all these variables religions have something to say and that influence must be merged with other existing factors. The TV will be a mix of the values different factors encourage.

    There are 3 factors:
    Religion- Through the religion's moral code, religion tries to impose certain values in these characteristics.
    Dominant Culture- Majorities tend to impose their customs.
    Environment- Effects of economy, govt and others which the people are exposed to in their daily lives. Environment values should be seen as those people would tend to as a result of the environment they live in. In other words, people tend to recreate the environment where they live, making cultural attribute ad hoc to the current environment.

    Religion's values are taken from the GRW the EG follows and from the EG's characteristics themselves for PRs. Values majorities imposes are taken from the Majorities Cultural Attributes. (The MCA is created by the govt model using majorities populations. For civs where one EG is above the rest, MCA values are equal to that EG and MCA is a weighted sum of all EGs in the civ for multiethnic civs, where populations are used as weights.) Environment values are the following:

    Individualism: You tend to be as individualistic as your environment is. The level of individualism in environment is given by the current economic system (the more capitalistic, the more individualistic) and by the current Civil Rights level, where high CR encourages heterogeneity in population (individualism). The level of individualism by the economic system the govt imposes can be computed as econ_Ind=10*(PP+(10-SP)) where PP=Private Property and SP=Social Policies (both govt model's variables). The civil rights level is given by the Civil Rights govt policy. Assuming economy counts for 70% of total environment influence on individualism, Environment value for Individualism is (econ_Ind*.7+CR*.3).

    Aggressiveness: Not yet determined, but it should be a measure of the relationship with neighbors. The more dangerous the world is and the fewer friends abroad, the more aggressive people is as a response in order to survive.

    Religious Tolerance: The tendency is to accept other mystic beliefs in the same degree other ideas and lifestyles are accepted. Using the Civil Rights govt policy as a measure of the current level of heterogeneity in population (i.e. level of acceptance of other lifestyles), we make RT_Environment=CR.

    Asceticism: Environment (Nature perhaps) imposes the need to survive and gather material goods for it. The assumption is people desire goods and more and more of them until at least a level where you have an accommodated life. We'll define a constant variable for the game: a PCI (per capita income) representing that minimum level of material goods. If the current civ's global average PCI is lower than that, then Asceticism is equal to 100*current_PCI/reference_PCI. If it's higher, Asceticism keeps its current value.

    Each of the three factors (religions, Dominant Culture and Environment) push characteristics to given values. The level at which each prevail is another matter. We'll say religion imposes its doctrine depending on the Importance of Religion variable. So, if IR=60, then 60% of the TV for any of the attributes is given by the religion's value. The rest (40%), is influenced by Dominant Culture and Environment and we'll say Environment is responsible for 80% of that:

    TV = IR%*religion_value + (1-IR%)*(0.8*environment_value + 0.2*MCA_value) (iv)

    Since an EG can support two religions (PR and GRW) each with its own value, the religion_value in the formula is really: PR%*EG_current_value + (1-PR%)*GRW_value.


    So, in short, what this sub-model does each turn for each EG is:
    1-Increase Land Connection.
    2-Compute tendency values for Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion and Traditionalism using (i), (ii) and (iii) respectively.
    3-Compute tendency values for Asceticism, Individualism, Aggressiveness and Religious Tolerance using (iv). ("3 factors approach")
    4-Apply equation (*) for Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion, Traditionalism, Asceticism, Individualism, Aggressiveness and Religious Tolerance.

    Three Comments on the Cultural Evolution sub-model:

    1) The model moves characteristics to TV as if TV were an equilibrium point. But, TV values change slowly as things happen, so during the game this "equilibrium point" is moving and characteristics are constantly chasing it.

    2) The way TV are computed for characteristics in category 3), i.e. via the three factors approach, allows the model to do at least three interesting things: a)EGs in the same civ will tend to be more homogeneous as time passes by; b)Empires can export their culture to tribes within the empire, like barbaric tribes in central Europe being "romanized" or native americans being "europeanized"; c)The influence of religion on culture will decay overtime.

    3) This sub-model is by far the one that needs more computational resources. I guess we can make the model just apply steps 1 and 4 each turn using stored TV, which is really cheap. TV would then be updated less frequently, like twice a century or so.


    V-5. The Migrations Sub-Model
    NOT YET SOLVED


    VI. Final Comments

    A lot has been lost from previous attempts to create a social model. This model doesn't have a mixing culture procedure, doesn't model races and race mixing and it's mainly managed at a civ level instead of a province level. Social changes in real life do happen at the local level and then spread, but that kind of modeling is much more expensive in computational resources, so that's why I take care of cultures at the civ level assuming all changes occur simultaneously in each province. As for mixing cultures, it's a growing problem the more nationalities and religions coexist in the same civ and there's no way to have true-to-life effects once the civ-level approach has been adopted.

    The current social model just provides a minimum set of interesting effects without making a too complex model. It will be a Clash Team decision if more complexity is mandatory.
    "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
    George Orwell

  • #2
    Great job Rodrigo and Axi!

    Your system looks very practical and flexible, and yet should inject a lot of fun into the game. I think you've done a good job in holding down the number of calculations and still getting a lot of the right flavor in the model. I just have a general bunch of comments at this point. I haven't looked in-depth at most of your equations and whatnot, since I think we need to assess the general thrusts of the model first before worrying about the details.

    So, since most things look really good, I will mostly comment on the things that I think are missing...

    I get the sense that there are some critical cultural attributes that may not be there that other model heads need.

    The one that most struck me as missing is an overall notion of the "tech level" or perhaps PCI that the culture has evolved to function with. I think this one is Very important, seeing as one of the main historical directions of cultural diffusion have been from civilizations with high tech level to those with low tech level. Even if the barbarians conquer your "high-tech" culture, they will usually end up taking over a lot of your cultural attributes, because their culture just doesn't really work very well at the new tech level IMO. Another related important criterion is education level. Probably we would combine the two of these even though the correspondence isn't always one-to-one.

    Another similarly important thing is Corruption. Does the society have an "if it's not nailed down its mine" attitude? I have read a lot about the institutional frameworks that are needed to support market economies and well-functioning democracies. And I think the corruption level that the culture is used to is the key between the societies that work and those that don't in making the transition to efficient market economies and democracies. I would like to hear everyone's thought on this. If we don't, how do we model the fact that it can take very long periods of time to make the transition to effective institutions even though the general recipes for the sorts of institutions needed are well-known. In terms of game play this would mean that you can't be a ruthless autocrat for the whole game, and then expect towave a wand and in very short order have a functioning capitalist democratic state. During your mis- rule the people will have gotten used to cheating on everything possible just to survive... this kind of thing cannot be undone over a short period of time IMO.

    One final trait that may be important is language. Language differences can make it much more difficult for two cultures to get along, that if they spoke a similar tongue.

    Another thing I thought of that you haven't included is that the player can try to affect the direction in which the culture is evolving. Of course, this shouldn't be a sure thing, but at least something they can try to do.

    I don't like the idea of just one world religion per culture. It seems with the number of variables that you dedicate to keeping track of great religions that cultures could have an arbitrary fraction of each of them without overly complicating the system. Anyway, please think about it, because I think the clashes of religious fervor within the culture could be interesting.

    I get the sense that your nationalism model needs to be much richer. I think it needs to involve critical communication distances in some ways. It should also include the education level of the populace IMO.

    I generally like the way you picked to handle new "civ cultures" that are amalgamations of the other cultures in the civ. That's a fine idea and will help out a lot in modeling the dynamics of a country like the United States IMO. My one criticism is that when you form the new culture that the new culture's characteristics should shift depending on which cultural groups choose to join it. So, for instance, if I want to form a new group out of the previous multiethnic civ composed of three cultures named smelly, noisy, and obnoxious. Now suppose the obnoxious ones have a very high nationalism. So they will never really join in the new culture, and the new culture will end up being a hybrid of smelly and noisy! So I think you need to modify the characteristics of the hybrid culture to reflect a population-weighted average of the cultures that join it, or something like that.

    To reiterate after all these criticisms... I think the model is Really Good and although the details may need to be modified, the frameworks sufficiently versatile to accommodate most of the changes anyone from another model may feel we need to make. Excellent Job!
    Project Lead for The Clash of Civilizations
    A Unique civ-like game that will feature low micromanagement, great AI, and a Detailed Government model including internal power struggles. Demo 8 available Now! (go to D8 thread at top of forum).
    Check it out at the Clash Web Site and Forum right here at Apolyton!

    Comment


    • #3
      Yeah! *Jumps up and down, until he hits his head on the ceiling and comes back to his senses.* Cool it's finally here! I've been waiting forever for this model cuz without it we can't do the final part of the coding for the tech model, ie the social advances and modifiers for social attributes for everything.

      Anyway here's what I have questions/comments on:

      -----
      There've been many religions and there're still many of them. Their evolution from their primitive forms to how they're today is a complex matter. In order to avoid the game from keeping track of a lot of religions, their birth, evolution and possible disappearance, I've chosen the following approach: The really important religions are what I've called "the Great Religions of the World". There'll be from 3 to 6 of them in the game (the number will be decided by the team, but that should be the order of magnitude). The model will manage how an EG goes from following primitive religions to following one of the GRW. What makes the difference between a primitive religion (PR) and a GRW is the "exportability" of GRW. PRs are extremely associated with the particular ethnic group that practices it, so it's very difficult for others to embrace the same beliefs and therefore these religions cannot spread. Other peoples can sometimes take elements or even the whole cult, but always adapting it to their own nationality (FE, greek religion passing to romans). If you take ancient egyptian religion or aztec beliefs, it's clear to see how religion has to do with the egyptians and aztecs respectively, but not with humanity in general. GRW go beyond the tribe, so no matter where you come from, it's sufficient to follow what the religion dictates to be part of it and therefore it can spread through the world.
      -----
      OKay what you say is fine, in and of itself, for the most part. However, there are exceptions. FE not all civs or cultures have to move toward one of the GWR. Most notably Japan and India have not and almost guaranteed will not for any length of time worth mentioning, if at all. Instead they still hold mostly to their original religion, although influenced from outside forces. In the case of Japan, as with all far eastern religions, religion isn't seen as homogenius and once can be multiple religions at the same time ephasizing differnt aspects of each.
      Also this doesn't allow for religions like Judaism which isn't major (it only has a small % of the world population), but it is very far reaching and very influential. It is however, not a GWR. The only reason it has expanded is because of the forced migrations do to the Romans and others.
      -----
      The game will randomly give birth to each of the GRW after some thousands years of play. Any EG in any civ will be picked as the starting tribe to embrace it. From that point, the new GRW starts to spread as will be explained. Any EG will be allowed to support only one of the GRW. This is not true in real life because in a group of people different cults can coexist, but when we see the world we notice there's always a very dominant religion and some small groups following other beliefs, so I think the restriction I'm using is good enough and it helps keeping the model simple.
      -----
      I think you're wrong here. When you look at the world in many areas there is no clear cut dominant religion throughout history. Also GWR tend to spring up in many of the same areas. These have noticably been the birthplaces of civilzation, but i don't think it has to be. I will use the example of China/SE Asia. Here there are 3 major religions in the area, depending exactly where you are. Islam, Christianity and Budhism (everywhere for the latter). Each of these is supported by similar groups of people for the same reason. In fact, as i mentioned above, there is quite possible people who are mixed religions of those types (in fact i know there are a few indivisuals who are). This doesn't include the native religions of Confusicanism and Taoism which are also present in this area (although Taoism to a much lesser extent).

      Cultural Attributes:

      I think there may need to be a few more:
      Exantionistic: How much your population wants to settle more land. Low values mean they are content with what they have. High values mean they want the civ to control more land. *You don't have to be agressive to be exantionistic or vise versa*

      Rigidity: How laws are in your society. The more rigid, the more laws there are (atleast enforeced) in your society. High rigiity also has very strict set of classes, while low ones may have none or very fluid set.

      Religious Tolerance could also be used for ethnic tolerance. Since if you had a low score for importance of religion, religious intolerance being high wouldn't make sense.

      Openness: This is how your society runs and treats people (usually outsiders). Closed societies distrust outsiders and will attempt to keep them away while open societies will embrace others and welcome newcommers in.


      IV. Attributes of GRW
      -----
      Holy Land: The tile in which the religion was born (randomly picked at the moment of religion's birth). This is to model crusades and that sort of things.
      -----
      Holy land doesn't have to be to specific. FE India is the birthplace of Budhism, however, it can be. Jerusalum is the birthplace of Chirstianity. Also Holy Lands shouldn't ness be limited to birthplaces. Every GWR religion has (a) site(s) that is not affiliated with the birthplace of the religion and/or more than one holy birthplace such as in Islam (Jerusalum and Mecca).

      -----
      After the GRW is born, its moral code remains fixed for the game. Religions have shown to be very reticent to change their doctrines, and although we know some changes have occurred, the assumption made here is still very accurate and keeps the model simple. Sacrifice and Holy Land are also fixed and Countdown stays at zero once the religion is born.
      -----
      If your going to do that, then there should be branches for GWR. No GWR throughout history has had a single branch for a very long time. NONE. Most branches take place 100-500 years after the birth. At most, GWR have 3 major branches so it won't get too complex. We don't have to do minor branches which would get really confusing, but not doing any IMO isn't right because it makes it too simplified and doesn't allow for the changes that have occured in GWR over time.

      On PR: I'm assuming PR is the inital religion when the game starts out? Well in that case a PR should be able to be changed into something other than a GWR, say an Avanced Religion (AR) ARs differ from PRs in that they are complex enough to withstand being absorbed by GWR much better. They differ from GWR in that they are local. They cannot be found outside the area to any major extent (Exeptions can be made for refugees fleeing homelands and such). ARs can exist in the same area as GWRs. Generally there is only 1 AR per ethnic group. ARs can be can be spread, though not very far beyond its home origin (FE Hinduism is no a PR and not a GWR, it would be a AR. Hinduism is generally limited to the land of Hindi aka India. It can however be found in minorities elsewhere, but will never reach a majority in another other area unless conquered by indian gov who supports Hinduism and prob makes a conscious effort to promote Hinduism there. Finally what causes a RR to become an AR? The insurgance of another religion, usually a GWR. People with high traditionalism will have thier PR become ARs, but slightly differntly to show the absorbtion of some of the ideas from the GWR.
      -----
      The assumption here is religion's attractiveness is mostly given by the incapability of human beings to understand and control their world. Then, the importance of religion in people's daily lives goes down as science gives us new and useful explanations for our environment and as our society appears to be stable. OTL is the civ's "overall tech level" in a 0-100 range. A measure I hope we can build in the tech model. ES is "Empire's Stability", a variable from the govt model in the range 0-10.
      -----
      OTL...I don't see anything wrong with it not being possible just avergae the Basic technolieis out. The problem is that 100 is not the limit. There is no limit. This is because Clash will be allowed to go into the future so technologies will advance beyond what they are today.

      Finally can you or do you have a religious moral codes that I can use? This is a;so ness for the tech. model.

      Also i do think we need to have cultural mixing/absorbing. As to the way social chnages happen, i like your approach better.
      Which Love Hina Girl Are You?
      Mitsumi Otohime
      Oh dear! Are you even sure you answered the questions correctly?) Underneath your confused exterior, you hold fast to your certainties and seek to find the truth about the things you don't know. While you may not be brimming with confidence and energy, you are content with who you are and accepting of both your faults and the faults of others. But while those around you love you deep down, they may find your nonchalance somewhat infuriating. Try to put a bit more thought into what you are doing, and be more aware of your surroundings.

      Comment


      • #4
        The one that most struck me as missing is an overall notion of the "tech level" or perhaps PCI that the culture has evolved to function with. I think this one is Very important, seeing as one of the main historical directions of cultural diffusion have been from civilizations with high tech level to those with low tech level. Even if the barbarians conquer your "high-tech" culture, they will usually end up taking over a lot of your cultural attributes, because their culture just doesn't really work very well at the new tech level IMO. Another related important criterion is education level. Probably we would combine the two of these even though the correspondence isn't always one-to-one.
        -----
        I'm not sure about this one.

        Another similarly important thing is Corruption. Does the society have an "if it's not nailed down its mine" attitude? I have read a lot about the institutional frameworks that are needed to support market economies and well-functioning democracies. And I think the corruption level that the culture is used to is the key between the societies that work and those that don't in making the transition to efficient market economies and democracies. I would like to hear everyone's thought on this. If we don't, how do we model the fact that it can take very long periods of time to make the transition to effective institutions even though the general recipes for the sorts of institutions needed are well-known. In terms of game play this would mean that you can't be a ruthless autocrat for the whole game, and then expect towave a wand and in very short order have a functioning capitalist democratic state. During your mis- rule the people will have gotten used to cheating on everything possible just to survive... this kind of thing cannot be undone over a short period of time IMO.
        -----
        I agree with this one. Good also for lowering nations stability and other stuff. This is generally never to high, but it is easier to make society more corrupt than less.

        One final trait that may be important is language. Language differences can make it much more difficult for two cultures to get along, that if they spoke a similar tongue.
        -----
        I think it best to let ethic differance measure language differance as it can otherwise become too complex.

        Another thing I thought of that you haven't included is that the player can try to affect the direction in which the culture is evolving. Of course, this shouldn't be a sure thing, but at least something they can try to do.
        -----
        Absoultely.

        I don't like the idea of just one world religion per culture. It seems with the number of variables that you dedicate to keeping track of great religions that cultures could have an arbitrary fraction of each of them without overly complicating the system. Anyway, please think about it, because I think the clashes of religious fervor within the culture could be interesting.
        -----
        Read my post. I also agree with you there. Also added another type of religion for places like India where there isn't a GWR nor is Hinduism a PR.

        I get the sense that your nationalism model needs to be much richer. I think it needs to involve critical communication distances in some ways. It should also include the education level of the populace IMO.
        -----
        Also should include technogy (or rather social advances) level of your civ.
        Which Love Hina Girl Are You?
        Mitsumi Otohime
        Oh dear! Are you even sure you answered the questions correctly?) Underneath your confused exterior, you hold fast to your certainties and seek to find the truth about the things you don't know. While you may not be brimming with confidence and energy, you are content with who you are and accepting of both your faults and the faults of others. But while those around you love you deep down, they may find your nonchalance somewhat infuriating. Try to put a bit more thought into what you are doing, and be more aware of your surroundings.

        Comment


        • #5
          Thanks for your nice comments, guys. Here are some answers/comments:

          All of you:
          I have really no problem adding more cultural attributes, but you have to realize this is the one most complex piece in the three "society models". When adding a characteristic, we need to figure out how its value is going to change overtime. This is terribly hard to do. Just pick one, like Individualism: What forces make it decrease, increase or stay at any given time? What variables exactly are needed from what other models to make a reasonable change in Individualism? Will whatever method I choose recreate history? Meditate it for a sec and you'll see it's damn complex.

          When I wrote the model I knew more characteristics were going to be added, so I'm all positive in finding the good method for every needed new cultural attribute, but I Strongly recommend to keep the list of characteristics short. So, let's add only those we feel are of huge importance.

          On Mark's ideas:
          Ethnic Group's Education Level: Sure, NP. I think it's very ness for the econ model and easy to model. Consider it done for a future model update.
          ------
          "Even if the barbarians conquer your "high-tech" culture, they will usually end up taking over a lot of your cultural attributes, because their culture just doesn't really work very well at the new tech level IMO"
          Let me rephrase what I think you're saying: "In order to have a high tech level, culture must take a given form". So, if an ascetic culture conquers your high tech civ, they won't be able to keep that tech level because they really don't care much about high tech machines. If that's what you meant, I feel we can have this effect if we take good care when building social-tech interactions. Here's my idea: As much as I understand the tech model, in order to just maintain your current tech level, you need to produce at least a given amount of Research Points. If the RP production process in the tech model is built considering Individualism and Asceticism, then in fact it'll be harder for the conquering civ to keep the techs they've just aquired. If we add to this your proposed Education Level, RP production would be even lesser if the conquering civ is something like a barbaric tribe. So, I believe what you want can be done if the RP production process is created using Individualism, Asceticism and Education Level.
          ---------
          Corruption: We have already been in this topic before and in fact I also believe is very important. Just to clarify things, there's a "political corruption" in the govt model in the "de facto influences" variables. Do not confuse that corruption with the one you're mentioning here. The political corruption is like bribing a senator to have a given govt policy the way you wanted, while the corruption you're talking about is like a "productive corruption" at the economic level (State held econ activities and relationship between privates and State). I used to believe too that corruption was mainly a cultural thing. But recently I heard in a conference an expert from Israel who has studied this type of corruption in places like South America and Russia. His view was "productive corruption" has everything to do with the cost of providing law and govt administration. This means that if you're a company owner with a factory polluting beyond what's legal, you can keep your illegal activity if there're no or too few "pollution inspectors" or if you can bribe them because, if caught, law just take too much or even forever to trial you. In cases like this law and govt administration is not really working, so corruption arises from govt's failure in providing law and administration. The corrupt company owner sees the cost of corruption as low. We can still say that people get used to that, so it becomes part of the culture, but I disagree. Suppose the govt starts functioning with a lot more resources and can indeed efficently provide law and effective administration, monitoring sources of income on public & private sectors and demanding results from govt employees. In this case corruption just becomes much more difficult, so even a people used to it must adapt. The cost of being corrupt are now high. The arguments of the Israel's guy really convinced me, so I'd prefer to take care of this at that level instead of the culture level. I've proposed in the govt model an "Administration Effectiveness Level" (AEL) which takes into account the amount of Institutional Infrastructure in a province and the province's population to determine how good the local govt is providing administration. My suggestion would be to create a province-level "productive corruption" based on AEL. If your civ have just messed admisnitration for too long, it'll take time for a new govt to increase AEL and reduce corruption because further investment is needed in Institutional Infrastructure and this takes time.
          ----------
          Language: Yes, but I guess it'll add a complexity of the order of religions. An ethnic group might have a language but take other depending on where it lives and whom it lives with, new languages can appear... I'd prefer to leave that out. It's not so important.
          ----------
          Only one GRW per culture: Like languages, I think this only makes things harder with little gains on the other end, and, after all, tribes do have mainly only one religion or a bunch of them very similar to each other.
          ----------
          Nationalism: Yes I believe communication techs should be included. Education level... I really don't see what it has to do with it.
          ----------
          Merging ethnic groups in multiethnic civ: I've just revised the social model and I can't belive I didn't put the formula for creating the new ethnic group! Anyway, it'll work as you mention.
          ----------

          On LGJ's ideas:
          Religions: First, Great Religions of the World are not those with huge populations following them. As defined in the model,, they're the religions that con go beyond a nationality. Because of this, they'll tend to have huge population following them, but that's not their definition. Second, all the examples you give for a lot of religions are true, but don't forget to see the grand scenario. Currenlty, if you pick Christianty, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism you're nearly taking 90% of world population! I just don't think we should make an effort modeling sects and other minor beliefs. Third, ethnic groups are not destined to embrace a GRW. It'll be possible for some of them to simply never give up their Primitive Religion, so some of your examples will happen in the game. Fourth, Judaism is a GRW because, per definition, it goes beyond nationality. You can find french jews as well as mexican jews. However, Judaism has some modeling problems because all jews are still part of the "People of Israel" and by that I don't refer to the political nation of Israel. BTW, I've never known if the english word "jew" is offensive... should I use "jewish"?
          ----------
          "I think you're wrong here. When you look at the world in many areas there is no clear cut dominant religion throughout history"
          Sure, that's why you don't have to look at "areas", but at ethnic groups. That's why I'm saying an ethnic group can only have one GRW, which is mainly true after the arguments I gave to Mark.
          ----------
          Holy Land: We can make possible for a GRW to have more than one GRW. That's no big deal. Just propose a good method to know what other places I can add in the list of Holy Places.
          ----------
          Exantionistic: Do you really think we need it? Isn't enough using Aggressiveness?
          ----------
          Rigidity: I like this one. I'll give it a thought.
          ----------
          "if you had a low score for importance of religion, religious intolerance being high wouldn't make sense."
          Yes, and the model does use Importance of Religion when calculating Religious Tolerance.
          ----------
          Opennes: I think this effect is well handled by Ethnic Tolerance.
          ----------
          Branches for religions: Yes, indeed I also was considering that. I think we should allow for a couple of branches.
          ----------
          "I'm assuming PR is the inital religion when the game starts out? "
          Yes.
          Your idea about "Advanced Religions": Why doing this? As said above, having GRW as defined and primitive religions give the game sufficient flavor IMHO.
          ----------
          OTL: It's good to hear it won't be hard to calculate. Anyway, I don't believe you have an endless list of tech advances so OTL wouldn't have a limit...
          ----------
          "Finally can you or do you have a religious moral codes that I can use? This is a;so ness for the tech. model."
          If you tell what you intend to do, maybe I can help you in a better way.
          ----------
          "Also i do think we need to have cultural mixing/absorbing. As to the way social chnages happen, i like your approach better."
          I hope you meant "I DON'T think we need to have cultural mixing/absorbing"...


          Rodrigo

          Comment


          • #6
            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 vasalls') 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.
            Project Lead for The Clash of Civilizations
            A Unique civ-like game that will feature low micromanagement, great AI, and a Detailed Government model including internal power struggles. Demo 8 available Now! (go to D8 thread at top of forum).
            Check it out at the Clash Web Site and Forum right here at Apolyton!

            Comment


            • #7
              I don't see any big problems with the model; it seems like it should work well. There seems to be some flexibility with the cultural attributes, and I think that we will see a lot more attributes spring up.

              I agree that it is very important that a tech level/education attribute be defined for the culture. High tech level cultures will almost invariably become the dominant culture when the cultures are mixed.

              I also agree that there should be a coruption variable. This should be linked with religion; people who believe that their actions will be judged after their death tend to be more honest.

              The tech model needs two variables defined:

              I represents innovation, the tendency of a culture to try new things and take risks. This variable influences the difficulty of raising technology levels. High I means more tech growth if there is enough research.

              E represents education, the ability of a culture to retain old knowledge. This variable influences the difficulty of maintaining a technology. High E means more tech loss if there is not enough RP spent on a tech to keep it constant.

              A culture with high I will usually have a high E as well, so it might be possible to describe them both with one attribute.

              The ecology model needs an attribute that describes how a culture tends to treat the environment. This will be used to calculate the willingness of the people to alter the environment. It would help if the number is equivalent to the cost that the culture sees in disrupting the environment, so an Ecology attribute of zero means that the culture sees absolutely no value in the natural world and will alter it as they see fit, while a culture with an ecology attribute of 100 would always want to protect the natural environment.

              These values, defined for the civ as a whole, could be weighted averages of the values for the cultural groups. I'm not sure exactly how they would change over time, but a good deal of the change should involve feedback from the models they relate to. For example, an environmental disaster caused by human activity will increase the Ecology attribute for most of the cultures in the civ.
              [This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited June 18, 2000).]

              Comment


              • #8
                Religions: First, Great Religions of the World are not those with huge populations following them. As defined in the model,, they're the religions that con go beyond a nationality. Because of this, they'll tend to have huge population following them, but that's not their definition. Second, all the examples you give for a lot of religions are true, but don't forget to see the grand scenario. Currenlty, if you pick Christianty, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism you're nearly taking 90% of world population! I just don't think we should make an effort modeling sects and other minor beliefs. Third, ethnic groups are not destined to embrace a GRW. It'll be possible for some of them to simply never give up their Primitive Religion, so some of your examples will happen in the game. Fourth, Judaism is a GRW because, per definition, it goes beyond nationality. You can find french jews as well as mexican jews. However, Judaism has some modeling problems because all jews are still part of the "People of Israel" and by that I don't refer to the political nation of Israel. BTW, I've never known if the english word "jew" is offensive... should I use "jewish"?

                Your idea about "Advanced Religions": Why doing this? As said above, having GRW as defined and primitive religions give the game sufficient flavor IMHO.


                First off, yes i believe "jew" is offenseive like "jap" is to a jananese.
                As to religions, there should be more than 6, unless six is the max at a time. There have been more irl than 6, 2 already dead (Greek and Zoastiriansim).
                As to AR and PR, PR differ from AR in that PR would be more flexible to change in their moral codes than AR and could more easily be abosrbed than PR.

                As to moral codes...i need them for the tech/social advances for paramater reasons
                Which Love Hina Girl Are You?
                Mitsumi Otohime
                Oh dear! Are you even sure you answered the questions correctly?) Underneath your confused exterior, you hold fast to your certainties and seek to find the truth about the things you don't know. While you may not be brimming with confidence and energy, you are content with who you are and accepting of both your faults and the faults of others. But while those around you love you deep down, they may find your nonchalance somewhat infuriating. Try to put a bit more thought into what you are doing, and be more aware of your surroundings.

                Comment


                • #9
                  I think exantionistic and agrressiveness are needed as seperate attributes. Here's why:

                  Agrressive/Expantiontic: Culture that will constrantly make wars to increase the size of its empire as far as it can, usually to far.

                  Non-Agressive/Non-Expantionistic: Would live in the "natural boundries' of their civilization. Would more willingly accept the need to move a civilization in the threat of an invasion for safety.

                  Non-Agrressive/Expantionic: Would want to expand its territory as much as it can, but not ness. by open warfare. These are more willing to set up colonies so long as it doesn't require to much defenses/offenses.

                  Agressive/Non-Expantionic: This culture constantly attacks or threatens other civilizations, but not for land, but for other reasources. These would also be the types of cultures that would be the greatest pirate generators (more than aggressive/expantionistc since most pirates don't care about land).
                  Which Love Hina Girl Are You?
                  Mitsumi Otohime
                  Oh dear! Are you even sure you answered the questions correctly?) Underneath your confused exterior, you hold fast to your certainties and seek to find the truth about the things you don't know. While you may not be brimming with confidence and energy, you are content with who you are and accepting of both your faults and the faults of others. But while those around you love you deep down, they may find your nonchalance somewhat infuriating. Try to put a bit more thought into what you are doing, and be more aware of your surroundings.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Mark:
                    About centralization, I needed it mostly because of its importance in the Independence Feeling in the riots model. However, I do want it to have an economic impact and as I said it in the model document, that's something we have to discuss. I know we've had some discussions about it, but I feel nothing is clear. You go and take the first step: What kind of econ impact do you think it should have?
                    Please remember there's a related variable, Administration Effectiveness Level (AEL).


                    Richard:
                    "I" and "E" sound good to me and I think they shouldn't be computed only looking at the cultural variables. The "Civil Rights" variable in the govt model is IMO very important, since it defines freedom in the civ. The current economic form, defined by variables Private Property, Economic Planning and Social Policies should also be in. IMO capitalistic economies can lead to higher levels of innovation because of the huge monetary benefits you can get.

                    On ecology, maybe you're right about the need for a new cultural attribute related with it. I'll give it a thought.


                    LGJ:
                    OK. I believe you have a point there in the aggressiveness/expansionistic issue. I guess we can enrich the current Foreign Affairs govt model variable with that view of yours. However, I think we really don't need an extra cultural attribute. I believe Asceticism will do just fine for this. It's reasonable to say that a very ascetic culture will tend to be non-expansionistic and vise versa.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      OK that sounds fine for aggressivenes/expanstionistic.

                      Also could u comment on the various parts on the religious part i brought up.

                      I've also sent you a revised version of the character model u asked for.
                      Which Love Hina Girl Are You?
                      Mitsumi Otohime
                      Oh dear! Are you even sure you answered the questions correctly?) Underneath your confused exterior, you hold fast to your certainties and seek to find the truth about the things you don't know. While you may not be brimming with confidence and energy, you are content with who you are and accepting of both your faults and the faults of others. But while those around you love you deep down, they may find your nonchalance somewhat infuriating. Try to put a bit more thought into what you are doing, and be more aware of your surroundings.

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                      • #12
                        I didn't mean for the I and E variables to be based only on the cultural attributes. The culture is only a part of the equation, but it is a big part and I didn't see any other attribute that could be used in the calculation.

                        Perhaps the cultural attribute that helps calculate the I and E variables could be called Technology Volatility. Low values for this mean the culture does not advance as fast but holds on to the knowledge it already has. High values mean that the culture can advance quickly but will tend to forget things that are not being used or researched at the moment.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Richard:
                          I don't think we need that "tech volatility" cultural attribute. I believe I and E can be computed using Asceticism, Individualism, Educational Level and Traditionalism.
                          ----------
                          LGJ:
                          Thanks for sending me the chars model.

                          About the moral code variables: Religious Tolerance, Individualism, Asceticism and Aggressiveness. They're all in the 0-100 range. I don't have any specific numbers for them, because actual numbers will be created kind of randomly when the game creates a GRW.

                          I'm not sure what part of the religious issue I didn't answer to you... If it's about the number of GRW: 6 is just a number giving you the order of magnitude. If it's about your idea for "Advanced Religions", I really believe we don't need them. As I said, with GRWs alone we get 90% world population so why badder about small cults.

                          Rodrigo

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                          • #14
                            On the number, i think 6 at a time is enough, but because some can die out (or close enough to it) that 6 as a maximum total for the game is too few.

                            As far as PR vs GWR, i guess that's okay but we'll need to change some stuff because of the social advances part of the tech model. FE There are more advanced religions than others and if a local religion (PR) comes up against a less advanced GWR chances are the PR will stay, maybe altering slightly, if that. Also GWR should be allowed to change somewhat. This can be dealt with though by the branching effect i mentioned earlier. PRs should also reach a sense of stability eventually also, though much later than GWR and even in stability can still be altered slightly. There will also be differn't types of religions depending on the cultural attidutes...which reminds me...we need something in enthinic attributes that will distiquish eastern/mid eastern/western etc. type people because it is important to the whole social advances structure. Some already are incorperated, but i don't know if it's enough.

                            As for moral codes i'm looking for what makes on religion differn't from another of the same type. There needs to be more than 2 variables. If you want i can come up with a religion sub-model.
                            Which Love Hina Girl Are You?
                            Mitsumi Otohime
                            Oh dear! Are you even sure you answered the questions correctly?) Underneath your confused exterior, you hold fast to your certainties and seek to find the truth about the things you don't know. While you may not be brimming with confidence and energy, you are content with who you are and accepting of both your faults and the faults of others. But while those around you love you deep down, they may find your nonchalance somewhat infuriating. Try to put a bit more thought into what you are doing, and be more aware of your surroundings.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              I and E: We could calculate them by those four attributes, but I'm worried about feedback effects. If something especially good or bad happens as a result of technological growth, the society's attitude toward growth should change. Would it be safe to change these four attributes in response to what the tech and economy models are doing?

                              Cultural technologies: I think that the tech model should be willing to change in response to the new social modelling of various things. For example, consider the Religion technology. I think that it is pretty silly to have such a thing; we only had it because other civ games have it. I think that can change. Rather than modeling religion as some tech level, we should be able to adapt to the new and much more detailed social model.

                              I don't think it makes sense to say that one religion or philosophy is more advanced than another because a civ has thrown RP's in its direction and it has a higher tech level. This isn't really fair and doesn't address the complexity of the situation like the social model does.

                              Rather than having applications depend on a religion tech level, we can have them depend on the religion attributes in the social model. So rather than having the Chivalry or Way of the Blade application/effect be given at "Religion Level 35", we can give it when the religion attributes are at a certain level and other conditions are met. This might be a bit harder to do, but I think it would give much better results.

                              Cultural technology does not fit into the linear deterministic system we have designed for the growth of scientific and technical knowledge. I think we are doing Clash a disservice my modeling it the same way. Cultural technology should be treated differently, ideally by combining the social and tech models.
                              [This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited June 21, 2000).]

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