Changing culture model

[Trifna]

Cultures are changing with time. They may of course keep some broad elements through millenaries, but they DO change. Thus, the 19th century American culture doesn't have the same strengts as the actual one.

I was wondering how this could be modelized in a simple and complete way. I guess the ethos of MOO3 is an exemple, but starting from scratch, what should be look at? (The MOO3 model wasn't the simplest BTW...)

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Trifna
Cultures are changing with time. They may of course keep some broad elements through millenaries, but they DO change. Thus, the 19th century American culture doesn't have the same strengts as the actual one.

I was wondering how this could be modelized in a simple and complete way. I guess the ethos of MOO3 is an exemple, but starting from scratch, what should be look at? (The MOO3 model wasn't the simplest BTW...)

have the civ attributes represented in the SMAC way (ie, +1 production -1 commerce), and have it change over time based on several factors. for instance, early on have it based heavily on geography / terrain, later on based on how the individual manages the cities, etc.

therefore, a warmongering civ would develop more warmongering attributes, and a builder civ would develop more industrious / commercial ones.

perhaps you could have a max "base" for your civ, of say, 5 points, in either direction. so if you were a warmonger early on, and then became a peaceful builder, you would lose "warmonger traits" and gain the "industious" ones.

impliment with social engineering on top? orgasmic. mmhhh..

[Inverse Icarus]

and this is mroe civ traits, than culture. (ie, culture in civ3)

[Trifna]

Well I think we should rather look at culture traits which as an impact each have various effects on attributes (strengts and weaknesses).

For exemple, there are factors that bring a civ to get a certain level of war-culture (like Japan at a certain time) or to be ready for sacrificing more, or less (China, Vietnam...) for the whole.

What exactly brings such characteristics? How could they be included in a game?

[Spiffor]

I share the same thinking as Uber here :

Your traits should be highly dependent on your behaviour : If you build many ships and depend heavily on harbours for your food, you will become increasingly maritime. If you wage war often, you will become increasignly militaristic. Etc.

And I agree these traits should bring positive and negative attributes to your Civ, not only bonuses.

[Trifna]

I agree ENTIRELY with Uber; I even believe traits should be BASED on behaviour.

Now, how could it work in a simple and complete fashion?

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Trifna
I agree ENTIRELY with Uber; I even believe traits should be BASED on behaviour.

Now, how could it work in a simple and complete fashion?

if you go with something like my above general idea, you could have several aspects.

Geography would be a big player early on. Think of the city states of Greece versus the plains of Mongolia versus the Fertile Crescent. Geography could also influence government/social structure, but thats another debate entirely

More importantly, decisions should impact your culture the most. I suppose one of the easiest ways to do this is to monitor the build queues of each city to determine exactly what the player is going for. They would accumulate over time, so that a warmonger culture retains warmonger traits when they start building marketplaces for the money. if they moved on to several buildigns in many cities, their traits would slowly change to reflect that.

Perhaps some could also be based on other decisions, such as diplomacy, battle tactics, etc.

There could even be "classes" of traits. for example, if you focus your cities on building military, you get warmonger "city traits", and you get cheaperr units, or something. if you are a cunning diplomat warmonger, perhaps you could get soem "warmonger diplomatic traits", as irionic as that sounds. each class couold be based on decisions int he related field.

hell, we could even end up with dynamic civ2 like descriptions!!! Agressive Expansionist!

The most important fact, in my opinion, about this idea is the abstractness of it. The player should not have any direct control over it, ie, they can't say "i want +1 morale". they need to live up to their reputation they make in order to keep it.

[Jamski]

Trfina - do you mean the ethos system from MoO3 that got cut? That sounded really good, and I complained when I heard it was gone. It was a bit complicated, but the player had very little control over it, apart from the ability to oppress religions, or make some things an official part of the state. I'd love to see some kind of dynamic culture/ethos/religion model in Civ4 - I'd love that very much. As long as its possible to have some kind of effect on it, and to KNOW EXACTLY what that effect is - that is always a strength of the Civ series.

-Jam

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by UberKruX


if you go with something like my above general idea, you could have several aspects.

Geography would be a big player early on. Think of the city states of Greece versus the plains of Mongolia versus the Fertile Crescent. Geography could also influence government/social structure, but thats another debate entirely

More importantly, decisions should impact your culture the most. I suppose one of the easiest ways to do this is to monitor the build queues of each city to determine exactly what the player is going for. They would accumulate over time, so that a warmonger culture retains warmonger traits when they start building marketplaces for the money. if they moved on to several buildigns in many cities, their traits would slowly change to reflect that.

Perhaps some could also be based on other decisions, such as diplomacy, battle tactics, etc.

There could even be "classes" of traits. for example, if you focus your cities on building military, you get warmonger "city traits", and you get cheaperr units, or something. if you are a cunning diplomat warmonger, perhaps you could get soem "warmonger diplomatic traits", as irionic as that sounds. each class couold be based on decisions int he related field.

hell, we could even end up with dynamic civ2 like descriptions!!! Agressive Expansionist!

The most important fact, in my opinion, about this idea is the abstractness of it. The player should not have any direct control over it, ie, they can't say "i want +1 morale". they need to live up to their reputation they make in order to keep it.

I like some of these ideas, but I am a little concerned about things like rewarding militaristic players with cheaper units. It's easily justifiable of course, but in game it may just lead to players locking in advantages too much...........always a concern with civ.

[Jamski]

There would have to be disadvatages to being millitaristic, for exaple, to compensate. Maybe if you were millitaristic you would be less industrious, or maybe your people would get "peace wearyness" if you were not at war for a length of time.

Just an idea.

-Jam

[DrSpike]

That does make sense.........but the thing to avoid is that once you go down one road it may always be optimal to continue. Games where you start out militaristic should not lead to you having to be militaristic the entire game.

I guess what I'm saying is if these advantages are too strong then you'll have an uber-militaristic civ versus an uber-developed civ with no real common ground, and civ should be about balancing expansion, tech, and military.

The problem is a common one in my field........if the advantages are set up so that the value added decreases as more militaristic advantages are accrued (or disadvantages get bigger) then all the civs will end up being largely the same (and balancing everything) thus removing the point of the advantage structure. If the advantages are too great you get complete diversity like in paragraph 2.

Just some thoughts about practical gameplay.

[DrSpike]

Tbh I think this is why SMAC SE style is good............it provides a simplistic version of what Uber wants without falling into the traps I outlined. Whether you could make a more complex structure based on behaviour work I don't know, but it wouldn't be easy.

[Jamski]

What field is that Spikie? Are you a farmer? (hehehehe) I think it has to be a trade-off situation, so you can become very specialised in millitary, for example, but it will cost you a lot. Perhaps you can upgrade a number of areas, one upgrade costs 1 whatever, but the 10th upgrade costs 100. Sure you could be completly biased towards millitary, but at the cost of efficentcy. You could have upgraded your industry 5 times for the same cost, say. Do you want level 5 industry and level 9 millitaray, or level 10 millitary and no industry bonus. Level 10 would kick arse, of course

-Jam

[alva]

I always felt that the traits and their correspondent buildings should be resposible for the culture of any given civ.
IE a commercial civ getting culture points for building marketplaces etc, where as a religious civ would get them for building temples.
But that same civ would get negative culture points for building 'wrong' kinds of buildings.
Makes sence too IMHO, the US is more known for it's malls then it's temples, isn't it , so that is the US's 'culture'.

I know that in-game the US isn't commercial but I just used this as a convenient example

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by War of Art
What field is that Spikie? Are you a farmer? (hehehehe) I think it has to be a trade-off situation, so you can become very specialised in millitary, for example, but it will cost you a lot. Perhaps you can upgrade a number of areas, one upgrade costs 1 whatever, but the 10th upgrade costs 100. Sure you could be completly biased towards millitary, but at the cost of efficentcy. You could have upgraded your industry 5 times for the same cost, say. Do you want level 5 industry and level 9 millitaray, or level 10 millitary and no industry bonus. Level 10 would kick arse, of course

-Jam

yes, but the non-warmonger traits / bonuses would be just as equally kickass. for example, imagine if you got all improvements at -1 upkeep, or somethign to that effect?

what if your traits determined what wonders you could build? after all, wonders are the epotime of your culture, no?

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Tbh I think this is why SMAC SE style is good............it provides a simplistic version of what Uber wants without falling into the traps I outlined. Whether you could make a more complex structure based on behaviour work I don't know, but it wouldn't be easy.

well, see, ideally, we'd have the SMAC government system on top of it, governmental control of your traits. So you could be a warmonger culture with despotic communist tendencies, or you could be a builder democratic capitialism.

the flip side would be interesting as well, a warmongering despotic capitialism or what have you.

perhaps the traits you have should influence the happiness of your people in certain governments as well.

[The diplomat]

I love the idea of the player's actions affecting the civ's uniqe traits. Here is one way of doing:

if the civ gets a certain ratio of a certain city improvements compared to all city improvements, then you would get bonuses/penalties to reflect your culture:

For example:
-if 60% of city improvements are commercial type, then all cities produce 5% more gold, +5% more gold from trade treaties, -10% more unrest (comercial pursuits create social/economic divisions).
-If 60% of city improvements are military, then all mitary units are 10% cheaper to build, peace treaties cause more unrest, declaration of wars cause less unrest (warmongering culture favors war).
-If 60% of city improvements are social (ie temples, colloseums etc...), then all cities get -10% unrest, and all cities produce -10% less gold (social awareness seeks more economic equality which hurts profits).
-If 60% of city improvements are educational (ie library, university, research lab), then all cities, get +10% research, military units cost 10% more expensive (intellectual opposition to warmongering).

Numbers are arbitrary, but you get the idea.

I think this would create a sense of culture. It would also allow a civ's culture to change. As you built different city improvements to meet your specific needs, the ratios would change, and therefore you could change categories and get different bonuses.

A similar approach could be taken with units.
-If you win x battles as attacker with a certain unit, then future units would get +1 attack. ie, if I win say 15 battles as attacker with an archer unit, then all future archers, would get +1 attack.
-Same thing as defender. If I win x battles as defender, then future units would get +1 defense.
This would work with all units. So if I win x battles as attacker with swordsman, then future swordsman would get bonus, if the unit were horseman then , horseman would get bonus etc...

This would create unique units based on how the player uses a particular unit. It would be historically consistent. Civs developped special units because they became experts in using that particular unit. For example, the Romans developped the legendary legion because of how they used their swordsman.
This would also help players with starting positions that maybe lack certain strategic ressources. In civ3, if I lack iron, I can't build swordsman, and will be at a disadvantage in the early game. With this idea, I could use lots of archers, and maybe gain an archer bonus, that would help me stay competitive.
It also naturally reflects geographies. If I start in a region, with horses, but no iron, I can build horseman, I will use them, and maybe gain +1 attack for my horseman. Another civ, that has iron but no horses, may gain a bonus for their swordsman but not for their horseman.

So, I think these 2 ideas could implement what has been discussed in this thread, pretty well.

[The diplomat]

I just want to add that I think this would more rewarding to the player than fixed civ traits. It would mean that at the beginning of every game, every civ would be a blank slate. How you play, would affect your civ traits. If I build barracks right away, then I would gain the aforementionned militaristic traits which might affect how I continue. Later in the game, I might become commercial. I think this would be much more rewarding to the player.

Not to mention that it would provide a better what if situation. After all, I could play as the romans, and develop unique archers because of a war with a neighbor that involved a lot of archers, and maybe I become a social civ. Or maybe I play as the Romans and become militaristic. It would provide a better sense of what if history, that civ is all about.

[brianshapiro]

my idea was to have tech development dependent on the resources in the area, this would lead individual civs to develop differently based on geography. another idea would be to have the development based more broadly on player actions, so say, building a quota of pikemen is necessary for the development of feudalism, gathering a quota of horses necessary for the development of horseback riding, etc to generally have advancement of technology in the game more directly linked to player actions

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by brianshapiro
my idea was to have tech development dependent on the resources in the area, this would lead individual civs to develop differently based on geography. another idea would be to have the development based more broadly on player actions, so say, building a quota of pikemen is necessary for the development of feudalism, gathering a quota of horses necessary for the development of horseback riding, etc to generally have advancement of technology in the game more directly linked to player actions

Great idea too!

[Spiffor]

Good idea briansaphiro

But let me add my input here (I really find your idea good, the following post is about implementing it reasonably). We have to completely change our understanding of a 'tech tree' to apply it. I mean, if all or most techs are dependent from extra-research factors, they should not be needed for future techs.

For example, if you need to build X pikemen for feudalism, Feudalism should not be a requirement for "constitutional monarchy" or for "guild" techs, as both these techs can be wanted by players who don't crave for military power.

I'm thinking out loud, but maybe the 'tech tree' should be much more loose : there are different paths of progress which are nearly independent of each other, and the only common link between these tech-trees are "pure knowledge" advances. I am referring to the philosophical thinking of a time, that makes things possible. For example, both Free Enterprise and Modern Discipline share the 'philosophical' idea that nobles aren't always the best leaders.

Techs that have non-scientific requirements should not be necessary to other techs, OR should be able to be circumvened by other techs which do not share the requirements. For example, let's say Iron Working needs you to amass some quantity of iron first, and is a prerequisite to construction ; If there is no iron around, there must be another way to Construction (like a 'Wood Working' tech or something)

[The Strangers]

I did have a thought on culture a few days ago. I believe that every 100 turns (rather than a set number of years), a civilization should decide what their cultural emphasis should be. There would be a wide range of options for this, all with different impacts. Let's take some cultural traits from nations today as an example:

The U.S.A. :- Proud of their long standing political/legal system.
Impact on civilization :- War weariness halved when fighting nation using alternate political system, the effect of courthouses and police stations doubled.

The U.K. :- Proud of maritime military history.
Impact on Civ :- Nation supports cost of all maritime units, no unhappiness caused when citizens conscrpited into maritime units.

Japan :- Strong inherant military tradition in past.
Impact on Civ :- Units attack/defense doubled when weakened by opponent, half the country's military units supported by government.

And so on. Culture would become a way in which control the direction a nation is taking, and borders would be conrolled by the size of the civilization. The type of culture you wish your nation to have would be changed every 100 turns, because as pointed out, culture does change.

[Sirotnikov]

obviously geography is a hgue factor but it can't affect the player directly. only AI.

IE if I'm on an Island, I shouldn't be forced to become a naval exploring expansionist civilization. I would be most likely coerced into it, or out right choose it (if I were a good player) but the game shouldn't "force me".


How can we represent civilization traits?

In my idea wonders, governments, and tech-tree.

How?

Well wonders are easy - suppose you're on an Island and you want to become a naval civ. To become a naval civ you decide to build a wonder which helps you in the seas (improves your triremes, gives your ships more movement, improves trade, whatever).

If you want to be a cultural civ - you build a culture increasing wonder, etc.

That calls for many wonders for different types, and some "types" recurring each era.

The government, should also have effect. I'm talking about an advanced social workshop model, when you have several sliders, changing your civ traits.
ie:
Religious --- Atheist
Planned Economy --- Free economy
Liberal rule --- Totalitarian rule
Centralized govt --- Disperesed govt.
Rule of one - Rule of elite - Rule of senate - Rule of people
nationalist --- universalist
etc

The availability of settings is of course dependant of techs, and has impact on your research, units, cities and what not.


And technology - the technology tree should be very big, and many technologies should be unnecessary except to players who want a specific goal. For instance, you could research some extra military techs you could do without, to be better at that. Or some scientific techs.

It should be made impossible to have EVERYTHING going for you. In Civ II you pretty much explored everything except possibly dead-end techs.

I say make many strings of dead-end techs, to allow specialization.


Furthermore, resources and such should affect your armies / trade / science.

If you don't have horses you can't improve army or make fast trade...

such things.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
The government, should also have effect. I'm talking about an advanced social workshop model, when you have several sliders, changing your civ traits.
ie:
Religious --- Atheist
Planned Economy --- Free economy
Liberal rule --- Totalitarian rule
Centralized govt --- Disperesed govt.
Rule of one - Rule of elite - Rule of senate - Rule of people
nationalist --- universalist
etc

I like it. I do have one comment. The bonuses/penalties should be set in such a way that the player doesn't just put all the sliders in the middle and leave them there the whole game. Otherwise, it kinda defeats the purpose of sliders.

Id' suggest the bonus penalty choices could be something like this (where h=happiness, e=economy),

(+5h/-5e) (+4h/-4e) (+3h/-3e) (+2h/-2e) (-2h/+2e)
(-3h/+3e) (-4h/+4e) (-5h/+5e)

Note that with this scheme, there is no neutral middle, even in the middle, the player would haver to choose between either +2happiness and -2 economy or the reverse, -2happiness and +2 economy.

[Trifna]

I think that is all case there is normally a middle. But it doesn't mean to have a slider, it can simply be a bit like SMAC, with a few options that are each a "model".

[Sirotnikov]

I like it. I do have one comment. The bonuses/penalties should be set in such a way that the player doesn't just put all the sliders in the middle and leave them there the whole game. Otherwise, it kinda defeats the purpose of sliders.

agreed to some extent.

but I do think that most players will take the opportunity to change the sliders for a temporary boost (for a certain reduce in other fields)

[Trifna]

I think that if we want to see what a changing culture model would be like, it'd be a good idea to continue from Sirotnikov's post. There's everything that would be needed in it. It seems simple, convenient, and coherent with reality thus ingame.

But I would add that ANY change with the sliders shouldn't just *POOF* it changed. You should put your slider somewhere and see the change slowly going to where you put your slider.

[Cyclotron]

Should we have the sliders impacting the civilization, or the civilization impacting the sliders?

What I mean is, perhaps the most interesting way to accrue bonuses, for say, nationalism would not be to push around a nationalism slider, but to have your foreign policy actions push that slider about according to your game actions.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
Should we have the sliders impacting the civilization, or the civilization impacting the sliders?

Why not both?

You could have the player be able to move sliders, and also have your civ's culture move the sliders. Like in reality, it would sometimes be a struggle between what the leader wants and what the people want.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
Religious --- Atheist
Planned Economy --- Free economy
Liberal rule --- Totalitarian rule
Centralized govt --- Disperesed govt.
Rule of one - Rule of elite - Rule of senate - Rule of people
nationalist --- universalist

I expanded on your idea a bit. How about this:

religion
religious------atheist

economy
planned--------capitalism

politics
totalitarian-------democracy

militarism
pacifism----------warmongering

administration
centralized-----------decentralized

moral code
traditional-------progressive

social structure
tribal------------global

labor
slavery------------free