Independent groups within civs

[Trifna]

Sometimes groups that are independant from the government can give a hand or be a bunch of trouble. A good exemple of this would be these secret societies that were ploting against medieval monarchies. Another good exemple are corportions and groups form by them (sorta Recording Industries Association of America, in bigger/more important).

Exemples of groups:
- Secret societies
- Religious-based groups with influence (type Scientology on google, you'll see)
- Corporation-based groups (they could even try to take their investments elsewhere if they're not pleased)
- Citizen organizations (Greenpeace...)
- Criminal organizations
- others

Of course, it's not only about "There is an independant political force named ***" but more "The presence of this type of independant political force is ***". Maybe sometimes a single organization big enough to be named could exist... All this is about the level of organization of certain groups of all kinds.


Besides, this can include the "terrorism" idea. It includes any independent group. An independent group can even be created/helped by intelligence I guess, and it could have influences of all sorts.

Comments?

[Lemmy]

Interesting idea . How would you as the player be able to effect how the different groups react to you?
To make this interesting there'd have to be certain laws you could pass. Banning some sort of drug might make you popular with the criminal groups, while commerical groups will dislike you for taking away their market.
I tihnk civilian groups could be divided into:
- Religious/Cult based
- Environment based
- Revolutionaries/Seperatists
- Socialists (Health care + education)....
...actually, the groups in Tropico would work for this...i believe they were:
Religious
Intellectuals
Military
Communists
Capitalists

[Trifna]

I think that the first thing is to not overcomplicate all this. A little like shields and test tubes... it may represent alot of things, but it still can be represented in one neat symbol.

So I guess that there could be a list of different effects from independent groups and each independent group would have more or less of each effect.

And up to now, I gave five types of independent groups:
- Secret societies
- Religious-based groups with influence (type Scientology on google, you'll see)
- Corporation-based groups (they could even try to take their investments elsewhere if they're not pleased)
- Citizen organizations (Greenpeace...)
- Criminal organizations


Fragmentation:
But I'm not sure we should divide more than that (but this changes nothing on programmation since you still have 5 types)... Like if you have some citizen organization, it's not "You have one independent citizen org." but in fact that "you have a high level of ind. cit. org.". It's always like that since when these organizations come out, in fact the context is favorable to them so there's more than one coming out (should it be environmental, peacenik...). Like mafias, like all kinds of lobbies... But it may be an exception for religious and secret groups, for which it may happen to have one more powerful (like Al'Qaida or Scientology, even if there are many others a little less important). Its fragmentation is up to be seen, but this is mostly just what will be written for the player and gameplay.


Interaction with player:
- Problems among population that wants them out
- Problems with population that gets convinced with what they say (that your government is bad, that war is bad, that recycling is good...)
- Sabotage or other dirty tricks
- Infiltration of government, corruption, diminishing revenues (like with mafia)
- Puting criminality up
- Pushing for a specific form of government, expansion for natural ressources or else
- whattever else (like corporations is up to be seen)

Player's moves:
- I guess mny factors have effects on these, but war weariness, type of government may have effects
- Your intelligence network could have effects on them
- others

[Dauphin]

Sounds interesting, but I am always wary of anything that increases micromanagement and technical detail.

[Trifna]

Micromanagement:
I think they could be no micromanagement as they can simply be there and have an effect. They are managed by the player only when he decides to change his stance towards it: oppress it, help it, etc. So if the player simply takes a stance towards it, it can becomes an element of strategy, of general orientation choice. It's also a way to battle against another civ: try to help terrorists there, and so on. I believe it can be something else than just useless micromanagement.

It'll get technical if we get in overcomplication of the types of groups and their effects though.

[Lemmy]

i think it's still a bit to abstract for me to understand now.
How would you get 1 group to like you, and one group to hate you. And what would be the benefits of a group liking you?

[Trifna]

Well I didn't went to the workings of everything yet, just threw an idea on the forum with a few basic lines so it,d be ready to be discussed. But let's say something like this:

A group may like "this, this and that" while another something else. Same thing for what thy dislike. For exemple:

- Citizen groups may like everything going for environment and dislike what goes against it (nukes...).
- If you get them against you, they may cause unhappiness in your population.
- So your choice is to be more environmental or have more happiness. Or to go against them (spy them, put them in prison, banish them as unpatriotic or whatever)

[CapTVK]

I think you're thinking about a whole different game, it doesn't work on the level of a civ game.

[Lemmy]

I think it can work on the level of a civ game, Galactic Civilizations would be a good example of that.
Where there are political parties, each with their own preferences. If your party is in power, you get bonusses, else you get no bonusses. It's somewhat similar to Trifna's idea, but implement differently.

[Trifna]

The question is how do you believe Civ can be better. So could this be implemented to make it better? If not, why so? Personally i don't see any problem, the thing is only in HOW it could be implemented.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Trifna
Personally i don't see any problem, the thing is only in HOW it could be implemented.

Yes, but that's a pretty big 'only'. There are many examples of ideas that are good in theory, which don't fit well into an actual game. I am sceptical about this, but it's interesting to see how people think it might work.

[Mark_Everson]

Well, I think we have a fairly practical way to do this that doesn't involve too much MM in Clash. I'll put the intro to the Govt model here to stimulate discussion. anyone who wants more info (or better formatting) can check out the Government Model Page on the Clash web site. The model is mostly coded and I think you'll be able to see it for yourself in a few months in a Clash Demo.

Government Model Overview:

The model simulates what happens inside a civ's government. We'll understand "government" as all the persons who take part in the decision making. In a typical modern democracy the government includes the President and the members of the Congress. In an ancient divine monarchy it includes the King, the high members of the Church and probably some military leaders. An so on.

The model makes the members of the govt interact in order to find, based on what each want for the govt policies, a final "setting". Here, the ruler/player is seen as just one more person in these interactions. Although in the game he'll be able to do a couple of things the rest actors can't, in general he's no different from the rest.

What makes a difference between an actor and another, is the amount of power they control. The model assumes total power is divided among the actors, and then makes them interact using that power so they can try to impose each his particular view.

While that may sound perfectly right for a representative govt, but questionable for more despotic regimes, it should be clear that this way to tackle the problem allows any form of govt. A pure despotism is nothing but a division of power that concentrates 100% on the ruler (no division, actually). Even better, you can have different degrees of despotism (or any other regime), just adjusting slightly the division of power. This allows a huge variety of regimes. That's also why the ruler/player doesn't need special treatment. With enough power, he can simply overshadow the rest of the govt and do what he wants.

As said earlier, the political actors are trying to define govt policies according to what they think is best, interacting with each other to accomplish it. The policies (or laws) they are "negotiating", are very few and they represent general guidelines for different areas of the civ. A given setting of policies (final values found through the negotiation) will affect the civ in several ways, including the form of economy, religious and ethnic discriminations and the level of aggressiveness allowed in the international arena.

Furthermore, political actors are allowed to negotiate the division of power too. The Church, for example, may be looking to increase its power in the govt. Using their current power, they can try to do it and be maybe even helped by other sectors of society who consider they deserve more power. The govt structure, then, can gradually change, just slightly, or dramatically in the long run.

Of course, some times in history changes do not occur peacefully and gradually, but through revolutions and violent events. This kind of changes, though, are not modeled here. They're handled in the Riots Model, based a lot, of course, in info taken from the govt model. The govt model is only meant to simulate the gradual changes in policies and the power structure over the years and centuries.

One important characteristic of the final "negotiated" setting for the power structure and govt policies, is that it is a merged or combined solution of the initial desires of each actor. On one side, this is a way to guarantee the gradual change, avoiding "jumps" from one setting to another. And on the other, and more importantly, it's a way to achieve more realism. The combined solution reflects a lot of forms of interactions between actors, like alliances between groups or parties or things like "I give you this, and you give me that". To say it with an example, in the US the republicans have won many elections, but the nation has never had a fully "pure" republican scheme. It has always been something in between democrats and republicans, sometimes a little more republican, sometimes a little more democrat.

Of course, the power each faction (actor) has is very important for the above. While in the US there's a communist party, the govt is far from being influenced by them. The model recognizes this type of things making the final combined solution sensitive to the amount of power each actor controls. The more power an actor has, the more similar the final setting and the actor's desires will be. Again, this is why the ruler doesn't need special treatment. The final setting will be pretty much a copy of what the ruler wants if he is powerful enough.

How the player fits in here? He must insert, via an interface, what values he prefers for each govt policy and what form of power distribution he thinks is best. The model then takes these preferences and makes them interact with the preferences of all actors. According to how much power each has, the model finds a final setting. This one is considered the "Government Profile" and used in other parts of the game to affect the civ.

The player uses the interface only when he wants to change his preferences. He doesn't need to get into it every turn. The model simulates the ruler playing every turn, interacting with the other actors who control power, to every turn compute a new govt setting. The changes occur every turn, but will be smooth in magnitude, so the player really operates the govt just in "cruise" mode, making changes only every once in a while. This, in conjunction with the fact that there're few policies and they're broad, is coherent with the general philosophy of Clash to avoid micro-management. The player should not be preoccupied about govt every turn or with a large list of very specific, low-level laws and regulations.

The player also will be allowed to use bribes and threats, kill political enemies, create propaganda or ban some forms of thinking, as well as other actions that can help him get what he wants. All, of course, at some cost.

Is there any fun in this? Yes, as long as you like a challenge. If you want to have a great amount of power and through it have a tight control of your civ, you'll be able to do it. You'll face the costs, though, of a despotism. Protests, riots, rebellions, attempts to murder you, etc. can happen if the people don't like you having too much power or don't like the way you're ruling the civ. If, on the other side, you choose to share some power with others, you'll have to accept govt policies may not be exactly what you wanted. Or, you can try to stay powerful but do more as the people claims. Wisely deciding when to make changes, how to distribute power avoiding giving it to those who think differently, how much do as you want and how much as the people want, who to bribe, etc. is the difficulty to face.

[Lemmy]

And that is just the intro

But i actually read most of the models when i first heard about the Clash project, and i liked it, including the interaction with the Riots and Social Model IIRC.

[CapTVK]

Great, another monkey on my back to feed and take care of.
From my personal viewpoint this is an extra level of game management i can do without, I don't want to be an absolute ruler of an empire AND be a politican at the same time. The effects of political movements are already emulated in the forms of Republic and Democracy in Civ in the fact that you can't declare war in an instant (although you can usually find a way around this in the Civ2 model).

If you really want to do something like this keep it simple like in the form of elections every 100 turns or so. This system was used in the space strategy game Imperium. If you scored less than 50% it was game over so you had to make sure that your planets had a certain moving average happiness/wealth-level. Population figures were also factured in, so it was best to keep the high population planets contend. Even when it cost you a fortune.

[Trifna]

CapTVK: Well heck, find a way to make it simple! It's exactly what I'm searching. A few factors to look at, this is all it should include... Since now, the factors were simply changing happiness, money, corruption and so on. They could be modified by repression or by furnishing what was asked.

Is it really too complicated?



Mark: Does your model implicate independent groups? This is what I am talking in this thread but I didn't really saw it in your post...