SI: A working system for including your people in the management of your civilization

[The Joker]

The EC3 showed it all. Kroeze’s Domestic politics idea was among the very top vote recievers.

Another sign was Raingoon’s collumn on why he didn’t want SE in Civ3.

I hope that many of you have read or will read the two concepts.

Most of us can agree on this. Although the Social Engineering system of SMAC was far better than the governments of Civ2 it is far from perfect. Somehow it seems as if we, the player, simply has too much control over the population. Not only do we decide every change there is, we can also pick what values your civ has. Not only is this unrealistic, it is also less fun, compared to what it would be to have a people that actually thought for themselves, had their own agenda and might just revolt against you if they didn’t like what you were doing.

But, although we have brought up a lot of ideas about this subject, they have all been very vague descriptions of how we would like Civ3 to be like. Concepts like ”Give the people a will of their own” and ”The people should be involved in the SE process” are ones that many of us can agree on, and yet none of us has been able to make any concrete suggestions to how we would like this to be done. I hope the following system can change all this.

While working on a revision of my old SE system, to see what people liked of it, I began wondering how this could be done. How we could have the people involved in the SE process. And slowly things began to evolve. Soon I didn’t just had a vague idea, I had a working system with just a few unknown parameters. Of cause this system is far, far from perfect. It has many flaws, but with a constructive debate here on the forum it can come far. I therefor hope that as many people as possible will take part in the constant revivion of this system that could go on here. Ideally people will begin making their own systems, and hopefully ones better then mine. Together I hope that we can achieve what noone else has done before: Give the people of Civ, the CIVilians as Raingoon called them, a will of their own.

Join the debate!

[The Joker]

SOCIAL INTERACTION SYSTEM VERSION 0.5

Before I begin I must say that although this system makes a lot of sence in my head, this is the first time I am writing it down. This may mean that I have left something out. So if you think that anything is missing or that something just doesn’t make sence then please let me know and I will try to explain it!

Now let’s get going:

This system only involves the Government category of the SE system. The other categories can easily be chosen without interfering with this system, and still be subjective to it.

The Social Interaction (SI) system basically involve 2 categories: Your absolutity and who you are supported by.


Your absolutity:
This defines how much you can do without having to negotiate with your people. It is done with a slider bar, that goes from 0 (you must get your people’s support on everything) to 10 (you can do whatever you want without asking your people. They should work so that both extremities would be very unlikely and that they would never have occured historically. I have chosen to call the degree of absolutity for the Legislature level (leg level). So if you have leg 1 you are not very absolute, and you can not operate individually, where if you have leg 8 you are pretty absolute. You would of cause want as high a leg level as possible, but unfortunately you wouldn’t decide this on your own.


Supported by:
This is where the system becomes interesting. You can not just rule because you feel like it. You need to be supported by someone. The groups you can be supported by is a representation of this. They each have a certain ”strength” over your civ (shown as a percentage of the ”strenght” of the total of all the groups. One group might have strenght 41% where another might have strenght 3%), and the ”combined strength” of the groups you are supported by need to be a certain percentage (50% perhabs?) of the ”strength” of all the groups in your civ. Following is a list over each of the groups you can be supported by. In the parenthesis is how their individual strength is defined (of cause the numbers of each groups strength are not directly comparable – how could you compare the percentage of the people in your civ that a strong believers of a religion with the number of units in your civ? In other words all these numbers would have to be multiplied with a certain factor for each group to make it all balanced, and so it will be possible to compare the strength of the army with that of the religion).

The religion (number of people that are strong believers in that religion) – each religion in your civ (apart from atheism) would be an individual group that you could base your power on.

The army (number of units)

The ”ancient Greece/Rome type city based wealthy people that have earned their money on slave based farms” (?? – Food production? Number of slaves?)*

The ”medieval type rural based agricultural wealthy people” (percentage of people working in food production?) – the nobility*

The ”city based industrial bourgeoisie” (percentage of people working in production/factories?)*

The ”information age wealthy people” (percentage of people working in service/information professions if such are included?)*

The intelligentsia/philosophers (science output? Percentage of people being scientists?)

The bureaucrats/administrators (percentage of people working in the administration?)

The labour unions (percentage of people organized in unions?)

The police (your civs police rate?)

The coorporations (production?)

Organized crime? (corruption in your civ?)

The people directly (overall living standards, education levels and more)

The people representatively (overall living standards, education levels and more)


You would have to choose who to base your support on from all these groups. Each group would become availible after a certain tech (the religion and the army would come almost immediately in the game where the labour unions would be availible pretty late the people directly would as the only one be there from the beginning, but in most cases it should pretty soon become less powerful than the other groups). This is of cause very chaotic, but it could be done so that you can support your power of several groups, and that you choose your support in ”10% intervals”. This would mean that you could be supported by: 40% on the army, 20% on the coorporations, 10% on the administrators and 30% on the people representatively.

The key to this system is how it is chosen who you base it on. To make my idea workable each group would need a (very simple) AI. When choosing how to base your government you would make sort of a negotiation with all these groups. Each group will look after their own interests, and they will try to get as much power as possible. You could think of it as being like when a government is being made. The person trying to become prime minister (which in this case is you) want to get enough support to be able to form a government. Each group is like a party, and they want to get as much power as possible. The power of the group is like the number of seats a party has in the parliament. They want to get as many of their people becoming ministers as possible. Here this is described as the percentage you are basing your power on. The higher percentage a group gets the more power it gets (this will be described late). So each group want to get as high a percentage as possible. You on the other hand want to be supported by as many as possible, so you actually want to give each group as low a percentage as possible. This would mean that when you enter the SI screen each group is displayed with their power, and with a demand for how many percentages they want. The religion might demand 30% for it to support you where the intelligentsia might demand 20%. For this to work the groups need to have an idea on how strong they are, so that they don’t all demand 100%. So the very weak groups would be more than happy just to get 10% and actually have some power where the powerful one would deman much more. Your leg level is showing how much you can do without having to get the support from your support groups. The groups would therefor want you to have as low a leg level as possible, as this also means more power to them. You would be able to interact with the groups, so you could offer them things, like ”no you can not have 40% of my governing being supported by you, but if you accept 20% I will go down from leg 6 to leg 4.” They would then interact with you, as they would accept or deny your proposal. It should work so that if your leg level is low enough then virtually every group will accept just 10% support.

This system is of cause a model, so some things are not included. The relationship between the individual groups are not included. In stead it is based on a ”pool” model of political decissions. Each group is a billard ball, rolling around on the table. The stronger groups are bigger balls, so they are more likely to push the weaker ones away, while heading for their goal. The player could be like the pool player. In the beginning he has no idea how to make the balls do as he likes, where the very advanced player could manipulate them to do as he pleases. This system should work the same way, although a player should need to be extremely good to just make all the groups work for him.

The larger a percentage of the ”power” in your civ that is supporting your rule, the more stability there would be (the less likely would there be chance for the government to collaps – you could never be sure that this would not happend, but the higher stabilitity the lower the chance - or for cities to breake loose of your civ) and the less corruption there would be (as most people would support your civ). Of cause both stability and corrupion would be determined by other things than just this.

You would therefor need to balance a lot of things when making your government. Not only would you like as high a leg level as possible, you would also want to get the support of as high a percentage of the power in your civ as possible. The more powerful a group is the more it could demand from you (again it needs to be aware of it’s powers). For instance, in the western world today the people would be by far the most powerful group in the civ. This could not only let them demand a high percentage of your support, it could also allow them to demand that you have a low leg level. You have to accept, as you simply need the people’s support to make a working government. This can explain why the leaders of the western countries have very little absolutity. On the other hand if there are a lot of equally strong groups in your civ you would be in a position to demand a lot from them just to let them get any power, as you would just be able to shoose someone else. In such a scenario you could get perhabs 10% support from 10 different groups and get a very high leg level. This would not only give you lots of stability and low corruption, it would also let you work more or less autonomously from your support groups.

A group should possibly also be able to negotiate with foreign powers, and you should be able to negotiate with groups in foreign powers. All civs on the globe having 14 AIs in them besides from the civ itself (especcially with more than 30 civs, as most of us want) means a lot of AIs. But again I don’t think the groups would need advanced AIs. In stead they would just be very simple forms, able to just figure out a few things. They would not have any city management, unit movement or even any overall strategies. They just need to be able to take a few concrete, short run decisions, based on a few parameters.


Making decisions:
This would all not give any sence if if wasn’t because you would need all these groups when making decisions. The lower your leg level the more you would have to consult your supporting groups when making decisions. Making this work, however, is the tricky part, and one of the main reasons why we have not yet been able to make a system in which you don’t have absolute control possible.

There are many possible ways to do this. Unfortunately it seems as if the most easy-to-implement ways are also the ones that are the worst. You could, for instance, have it so that if your leg level was 6 then 6 out of 10 times you made a decision then you would decide, and 4 out of 10 the computer would decide. This is, of cause, an incredibly poor solution, offering none of the things we want a system which interacts with the people to do.

I have not found an absolute answer to this problem, but I have found something that works, is realistic and playable. You would have to involve the people when making SE changes (economic, structure, laws etc), when changing diplomatic relations with other civs and when building things in your cities. Unit movement and city ressource management (although I hope you wont have to move workers around on the city squares in Civ3) would be done by you alone.

Each group would have an agenda. This should not be oversimplistic, but would also adabt to the overall status of your civ. If you had just been in a destructive war then not many groups would want to start a new one. On the other hand it should DEFINATELY not be so that the people would always want peace. In stead this would be decided by their militarism rating (described later). Each group would have some favorite things to build. The army would always want more units, so if you want to build a tank you could count on it’s support. The religion would want to build tempels, the coorporations would want to build factories, the intelligentsia would want to build libraries etc. Some of the agenda’s of the different groups would sometimes be the same. Both the coorporations and the industrial bourgeoisie would want to build factories, both the people and the intelligentsia might like libraries, where the religion might agree with the army on the need to go to war with a civ of another religion.

It means that if your leg level is 7, then you need to get 30% (100%-70%) of the 100% you are supporting your power on to support this thing. So if you have leg 7 and you are based on 50% people 20% coorporations 10% army and 20% administrators then you need 30% of these to support you in EVERYTHING you do! You could do this by having the people support your desicion (this would give 120%, which would just be the same as 100%), by having the army and the administrators to support it or something else. This gives the advantage that the system is easy to overview (no complex rules on when you have to negotiate with the people), that you always know how many ”votes” you need to do stuff, and that the higher your leg level is, the easier it will be for you to get what you want. The disadvantages of this system is, that a more elegant sollution could possibly be found, and that you always (except if you have leg 10, which should almost never happen) have to get your people’s support, even if you have a very high leg level. None the less I have chosen to use this system. If anyone can think of a better one please post it, as I would like to hear about it, but for now this is what I will use.

Besides this there should be a way of using propaganda and such to get the permanent support from one group. This would mean that you could spend some money on propaganda directed at the people. This might give lower stability in a few turns, but if it is succesful then it will make it so that the people would always support your desicions (so they will not demand that you do anything to support you – this would of cause only work if you were basing your power on the people). This would continue for a few turns. If you want to always have your people’s permanent support then you would need to permanently use money for propaganda. A similar thing could be done to the other groups. If you are basing your power on the administrators then you would be able to make some sort of purge in the administration (meaning that you removed people that didn’t support you and put people loyal to you in the leading positions). Again this would give unstability for a few turns, but afterwards you would get always get the support of the administration. Similar things could be done in the army (although the US has a large army it is unrealistic to think that the army has a very important position in the country. In stead the government has made sure that people loyal to them are at all the important positions, and therefor the army is not an individual power) and possibly in all the groups. You should be able to do these propaganda/purge things in both groups that you based your power on, and in groups that you weren’t. If you used it on a groups that you weren’t basing your power on then it would simply mean that this group would not cause any unstability and that it would not try to begin a revolution. Each group would cost different things to use propaganda on. The people directly would be easy and cheap to use propaganda against, where other groups like the intelligentsia would be far more expensive to get permanent support from.

You should also be able to give money to a group, which would give it more power in your civ. This could be workable if the groups you are basing your power on are not quite strong enough to secure a working government, and you don’t want to begin a revolution. You could then give some money to a group, and thus giving it more power which would make your government more stable. Of cause the effect of these money would be pretty limited, and if there is a powerful overall tendency that a group is weakening then you could do little to make it more powerful. Giving money to groups would mostly be for the short run.

Every groups should have some number (possibly just from 1-10) that described how much they liked your policy. This number would be determined by counting how many times you had done things following that particular group’s agenda. So if you were basing your power on the intelligentsia but never built any libraries and had all science things at a very low priority then this goup would have a low number – it wouldn’t like your policy. The lower this number is the larger the chance would be that this group would simply stop supporting you. It could make an ultimatum like ”You start the construction of 5 libraries now or we will stop supporting you and send the country into anarchy and civil war”. You would then have the choise of either doing what they want or try to make a new government with a period of anarchy in between. The same could be done by all the other groups. If you were basing your power on the army but never were in any wars it could demand that you started a war with civ x or it would stop supporting you (finally a way to be forced into a war). On the other hand, if the group really liked your policy then it would, if you were not basing your power on it, not cause unstability and not try to throw over the government, and if you were basing your power on it then it would be likely to accept it if you raised your leg level. This would mean that if you were supporting your power on the coorporations and you switched labour unions off (with or without their support) then the coorporations would be likely to accept that you raised your leg level.

This would mean that when you are choosing your groups to base your power on then you would not only have to make sure that these groups had enough power to make the government stable, you would also have to try to get as high a leg level as possible AND you would need to choose groups that had an agenda that worked with the policy you wanted to go with.

Militarism: Would be an indicator of how much your people would support war. If it is high then there would be low unhappyness for units away from the city, and the people (if you supported your power on them) would be more likely to support a war. It would be determined by a lot of things. A succesful war with low casualties would rise it, where a destructive war with lots of civilians killed would lower it.

Individualism: This would be an indicator for how much your people liked individual freedom in an economic sence. If it is low then a capitalist system would not give much trade (as the people would not work well in such a system) and a communist system would give a lot of unhappyness. If it, on the other hand is high then a capitalist system would give a lot of trade, and a communist system would give a lot of corruption. It would be determined by different things. If you had a communist economic system for a long time then this would lower it, where a capitalist system would rise it. But at the same time a lot of poverty in your civ (there should be some indicator of poverty) either due to your civ just being poor or because of the economic system creating an economically very polarized population, would also lower it.

Accept of distance to power: This was originately a part of Individualism, but I chose to make this, the political individualism, it’s own indicator. It would show how much the people would accept an undemocratic government. If it was low then the people, if you support your power on them, would demand that you only had a low leg level. They would be harder to use propaganda against, and they would create more unstability if they were not in the government. If it is high then it should be possible for the people to accept that you had a high leg level (they would want to have someone to lead them), they would be easy to manipulate via propaganda and they would not create much unstability if they weren’t in the government.

* I have chosen to have 4 types of wealthy people, as I had chosen one for each type of society: Slave society, feudal society, industrial society and information society. Each society had very different ways of getting wealthy, and a very different lifestyle, so they should be replaced by different groups. This is also needed if the system is to describe a french revolution type scenario: before the revolution the king’s power is based on the feudal wealthy, but due to the industrial revolution the industrial wealthy has become stronger and stronger, and eventually strong enough to throw over the government with the support of the people. Unfortunately for them it all ended with an army based dictator (Napoleon) getting a pretty high leg level.

I think I have been through it all. This is the first draft, and it propably seem a bit disorderly. But with a lot of constructive feedback I think it can be made pretty good.

Now it is up to you!

[amjayee]

Joker:

Wow, you have given a lot of thought to this. It gave me a lot of ideas, yes, I think it was good.

I'm personally most interested in implementing these ideas in Openciv3, so I'm sorry if these comments cause unhappiness in a civ3 forum. Here are some ideas how I think it could be made possible in oc3. Though I think these could work as well in civ3.

The only thing that troubled me in your ideas was, that it suggests the player is a real person, a leader. But since a civ game lasts for several millennias, the player should rather be a "spirit" leading one of the tribes in the world. Not the God, but a "sub-God", a loyal servant of God who is given a power to lead one nation as he likes. Of course there's no need for any New Age crap, but this describes it pretty well... but of course the player could as well be an immortal leader. But doesn't that sound as silly?

Anyway, the player would try to lead his tribe to glory. He would not have a total control of the people, he would only direct their development, and control the leading group. He would choose what kind of leadership he wants to favor. But, your people has possibility to overthrow your chosen leaders. Then you could adapt to that, or try a counter-revolution until things are as you like... but all that would weaken your people.

So, the player chooses what kind of government he wants, and what group he likes to be in the rule; the groups could be the ones you listed, they were good. Also player could choose the absolutity of the leader(s) and what groups the leaders favor as you suggested.

The need for more complex AI could be solved to make only one AI for each civ; but, the people would be divided to the groups, each with its own interests. (Like the population system in oc3 - the professions btw) There would be a number of properties for each group, like their number and power, the loyality to the leader, etc. Then, the civ AI would go through all the groups one by one and solve what they will be up to, what they need etc., and set the priorities for them. This way, we would have only a slightly more complex civ AI, rather than a number of ai's for each civ.

I don't know if this makes any sense. Hope it gives you some further ideas. But I definitely like it. I don't know about civ3, but it will be in oc3, somehow. I will give more comments when I have had more time to digest all that.

[The Joker]

amjayee:

Thanks. I was kinda hoping it could be the basis of what we could use in OC3, as Firaxis is propably too conservative to add anything this different.

Anyway, I think you should be whoever is in charge of your people. You shouldn't have some god-like power over them, as they would demand things from you (like being happy) in return of supporting you.

I think the SE and leadership of your civ should be decided by you, but you would need the support of your people in your decisions. It would be sort of a synergy. An entire civ doesn't have the same goal. They actually have pretty different goals, which is described by the different groups there. The factory owners don't have the same agenda as the labour unions. This is why I have included these groups, to make it possible for you to be supported by someone, thus adabting to their agenda, and at the same time supress others.

The people could overthrow their leaders, but if you were a democracy (or somewhat democratic - even if you were only basing your power on the army, but had a low leg level) the people could also simply want you to change policy in a peaceful manner, which is why I seperated the stability SE factor and the legislatur SE factor.

I also think it should be possible to be supported by several groups, which all had their own "share" or power. No country has ever just been supported by one group.

I tryed to make this model as realistic as possible. It makes it possible to portray very different, and yet realistic gov types.

About the absolutity this is what should definately not be shosen by you alone. That would just always make you want a high level. This is where the power and support of the groups would be most important.

AI: Yeah, I guess that could work. I don't know anything about programming, so I sort of hoped that you would just figure out a way to work it out.

BTW: are you making an OC3 AI, or are you simply copying one from some other place? I would guess it was pretty hard to make an AI, so perhabs we should just take that from, say, Freeciv, and concentrate on the game untill we have a playable prototype. Afterwards, when we are a huge succes with thousands of players we can start working on our own AI.

[amjayee]

Joker:

The player doesn't need to have any divine powers or things like that, just the old ways of controlling the people. But the player shouldn't be any specific person, but perhaps rather the leading group of the civ. What that group is, would depend on the government type.

Both the people and you would be able to throw revolutions to change the government. You would still be in charge, but with different possibilities. Like you suggested, you would need the support of your people. And yes, most often the support would be needed by several groups.

About absolutity, you could choose it, but in certain cases, it would be disfavorable to set that very high. Your people would become very unhappy, if you want much absolutity in modern times. Also having high absolutity would give benefits there, and penalties there. I tend to favor not to restrict the player choices too much; he has to find the best solution to every situation.

About AI, there are some things we can copy or adapt from others, but most things have to be made specifically for our game. But we are not going to make the ultimate ai first, then the game. We will make a simple ai, that is easily extendable and modificable (for programmers, of course) and start building it gradually when the game is otherwise almost complete.

[Mark_Everson]

The Joker:

I like your model, it has a great amount of detail. I think it has a lot in it that would give fun gameplay, at least for the people who are interested in the internal dynamics of civilizations. But of course, you're right, Firaxis would never go for it. One thing that I didn't see, although I might have missed it, is the affect of geographic (actually communications) distance from the capital to a given city. IMO not only should you get the usual corruption etc. penalties, but such cities should be much more likely to rebel under despotic regimes. It's a lot easier to get a revolution going when you're far from the seat of power (and where the troops mostly are).

Our governmental model in The Clash of Civilizations is somewhat similar, and I thought we might be able to help each other's models along by swapping ideas and criticisms. Here is a reference to our government model. (My apologies for the plug, but I think it's relevant here...) The complete model linked to on that page is actually a little over-complicated, and a new guy is working on streamlining it and including some other features. One of the main things Rodrigo is trying to do is to give the different political classes individual agendas like the ones that are in your model. I hope I'm not imposing, I seriously think the stuff on the web page, and the threads discussing it, might be of use to you.

Anyway, let me know if you are interested in talking shop. However, if we do we should probably move it to the OC3 threads.

And amjayee also... I think some closer collaboration in general between the projects might be interesting... if any of your other more progressive models are interested in getting a dialog going, please let me know.

[Jon Miller]

look over my government model

I beleive you would find it interesting

Jon Miller

[The Joker]

Mark:

quote: One thing that I didn't see, although I might have missed it, is the affect of geographic (actually communications) distance from the capital to a given city. IMO not only should you get the usual corruption etc. penalties, but such cities should be much more likely to rebel under despotic regimes. It's a lot easier to get a revolution going when you're far from the seat of power (and where the troops mostly are).

That should of cause be in. I haven't included it in my model, as I tryed to focus it on the basic mechanism it should include. Of cause an algorithm including stability, police, communications distance from the capital and the power of the groups in the individual city is needed to find the chance of a city revolting. Another thing should be nationality: If you have a large foreign nationality they should have a chance of revolting. This chance would depend on the stability, the amount of units you have there, police and propably most importantly your overall strength compared to that of the opressed nationality. If you are in a huge war with some other civ, which is using most of your ressources then an opressed nationality could use your weakness to revolt against you.

I would definately be intereseted in some government model debate with you, and I will check out your model. Unfortunately I haven't got time for it today. But I will do it tomorrow or the day after. Looking forward to it!


Jon:

Actually I have. A long time ago. It was what made me include the militarism and individualism ratings. But I never got to read it all. I looked over it quickly just now. And they're really alike. I guess that just means that it is a good model, doesn't it?

[Snarfangel]

Just a quick suggestion: You should be able to set your civ's *tendancies* at the beginning of the game -- whether they are warriors, builders, scientists, whatever -- and then modify them based on experience. If you win many battles, your civ becomes more warrior-like -- lose battles, and you become more pacifist (hey, no one likes to lose). If you build a science wonder, you attract scientists, if you do a lot of trading your civ becomes more merchant oriented, etc.

Just a suggestion .

[Par4]

I'm 1/2 dead from Benadryl or whatever because I'm out of allegra but I like it, anything that takes the power away from you and gives you Civs(we need something like sim city has Sims what about Civies I don't know) power and a will of their own. I would reconmend 3 groups not just 2 for each age.

The Joker is in demand and you got your idea posted on the Civ3 page!!

------------------
I use this email
(stupid cant use hotmail)
gamma_par4@hotmail.com
Don't ask for golf tips
Your game will get worse
HappyLand

[Jon Miller]

yes, it means I agree with you

you have done better than I, in all probility (I am not going to reread it now)

Jon Miller

[raingoon]

Great model -- just when you thought they'd all been thought of!

I would hope the spirit of what your suggesting is not too much for Firaxis to adapt in Civ3. As a vocal opponent of SE -- as you so rightly point out -- I can say you've given me food for thought.

Why couldn't they adapt the SMAC SE engine to Civ 3, change the categories slightly, then link each category to a social subset along the lines you're suggesting?

It would be helpful to see a simple list of the possible social subsets. I think it makes sense that, barring the right tech advance, those subsets are NOT compatible. That is, aligning with one alienates the other, etc., until you discover knowledge that allows you to synergize the two? Or decrease the power of one. Anyway, maybe you said this somewhere and I missed it.

If Firaxis plans any kind of SE model, than they certainly should be looking at Joker's SI Model to keep the game feeling alive.

[amjayee]

Mark:

I'd be glad to discuss some things. I'm sort of running the design things of oc3 for now. I plan to make an html design document. When that is well underway (some time soon) I will send you some mail. It's true we can cooperate more.

[Par4]

Hehehe I was really screwed up, I read the post wrong, I'll do it right this time

quote: Originally posted by The Joker on 06-03-2000 09:48 AM SOCIAL INTERACTION SYSTEM VERSION 0.5 Before I begin I must say that although this system makes a lot of sence in my head, this is the first time I am writing it down. This may mean that I have left something out. So if you think that anything is missing or that something just doesn’t make sence then please let me know and I will try to explain it! Now let’s get going: This system only involves the Government category of the SE system. The other categories can easily be chosen without interfering with this system, and still be subjective to it. The Social Interaction (SI) system basically involve 2 categories: Your absolutity and who you are supported by. Your absolutity: This defines how much you can do without having to negotiate with your people. It is done with a slider bar, that goes from 0 (you must get your people’s support on everything) to 10 (you can do whatever you want without asking your people. They should work so that both extremities would be very unlikely and that they would never have occured historically. I have chosen to call the degree of absolutity for the Legislature level (leg level). So if you have leg 1 you are not very absolute, and you can not operate individually, where if you have leg 8 you are pretty absolute. You would of cause want as high a leg level as possible, but unfortunately you wouldn’t decide this on your own.

Me gusta me gusta! I've been reading about Tropico and whatever that russian republic game is called where you have to keep your popularity up or you die! Maybe you could release things to people, give speeches, throw parties(midnight at the colosseum! be there or be thrown to the lions next week!) A people interaction=people trust you=you do what you want=+++absolutivity, absolutivity should come from basic trust in you by the people, religions and stuff if you back them a lot will give you a big boost too, but that can be dangerous if that religion opposes another and loses pop support.

quote: Supported by: This is where the system becomes interesting. You can not just rule because you feel like it. You need to be supported by someone. The groups you can be supported by is a representation of this. They each have a certain ”strength” over your civ (shown as a percentage of the ”strenght” of the total of all the groups. One group might have strenght 41% where another might have strenght 3%), and the ”combined strength” of the groups you are supported by need to be a certain percentage (50% perhabs?) of the ”strength” of all the groups in your civ. Following is a list over each of the groups you can be supported by. In the parenthesis is how their individual strength is defined (of cause the numbers of each groups strength are not directly comparable – how could you compare the percentage of the people in your civ that a strong believers of a religion with the number of units in your civ? In other words all these numbers would have to be multiplied with a certain factor for each group to make it all balanced, and so it will be possible to compare the strength of the army with that of the religion). The religion (number of people that are strong believers in that religion) – each religion in your civ (apart from atheism) would be an individual group that you could base your power on.

I want to be able to support a religion and have it back me completely and give its percent to me, lowering the religion percent and highering my percent.

quote: The army (number of units)

Army's support is big, very very big as big as religion, more so in modern times. If your not losing a lot of people in wars in recent history, if are advancing military units to stay with level of other nations near you, some other stuff you will have military support and it will tend to back you. If it goes real bad, like you piss off the public but you have been real good to the military you could install marshall law, but if you haven't been good to the military too, then they might turn rebel too and fight. Military clought in government for units, increase in budget, wars to continue, stuff like that.

quote: The ”ancient Greece/Rome type city based wealthy people that have earned their money on slave based farms” (?? – Food production? Number of slaves?)*

Slave masters, goes pop group away if you vote for abolition of slavery. Former Slave masters around to be against you for 100 years. Agenda against you, not sure former slave masters oppose anything you say.

quote: The ”medieval type rural based agricultural wealthy people” (percentage of people working in food production?) – the nobility*

Nobility is different from rural population, 2 categories in different ages. Serfs never had political power. rurals don't like pollution and drastic changes, nobility likes having power away from the people.

quote: The ”city based industrial bourgeoisie” (percentage of people working in production/factories?)*

blue collars in industrial age up. Guilds as political political power in colonial age. Trade Guilds and production guilds are different. Pro trade and industry, don't like cutting down on trading and cuts in industry.

quote: The ”information age wealthy people” (percentage of people working in service/information professions if such are included?)*

White collar workers, don't mind industry, are pro service/information move in industry.

quote: The intelligentsia/philosophers (science output? Percentage of people being scientists?)

Philosophers in ancient through middle ages, industrial they lose power somewhat and turn into scientiest but 2x research. Pro research, want money, labs stuff like that. Don't like wars and stuff like that.

quote: The bureaucrats/administrators (percentage of people working in the administration?)

Government workers, mainly affects budget, they might want pay raises or for you to nationalize hospitals. Generally support you.

quote: The labour unions (percentage of people organized in unions?)

Unions, depends on system of economy, if you don't allow unions but unions take control then they won't like you, you like unions corporates won't like you. Speed construction up. May want minimum wage, worker rights laws.

quote: The police (your civs police rate?)

um I don't really get this

quote: The coorporations (production?)

Affect production, against unions so if you back unions they won't back you as much. Can work other way. Corporations support should lower costs for things. No minimum wage, no worker rights, no environmental laws. Can give lots of money in lobby.

quote: Organized crime? (corruption in your civ?)

Mob behind you, good. You against mob, bad but less corruption, everyone else likes you more. Mob can give you lots of money but disrupt inferstructure a lot if you turn on them. Not sure for agenda.

quote: The people directly (overall living standards, education levels and more)

Direct wants of people? not really sure whats the diffence between this and thing below?

quote: The people representatively (overall living standards, education levels and more)

Ideals, religion, economy(jobs), wars, everything affects how they see the government, even effiency they don't like waiting in courts for years. Generally a combo of white collar/blue collar/religion, pro anything that makes life better plus these groups agendas.

I want to see stuff like lobbies with lots of money or support come to you too, so shift support from corps to unions for 20mil, or keep support in corps

quote: You would have to choose who to base your support on from all these groups. Each group would become availible after a certain tech (the religion and the army would come almost immediately in the game where the labour unions would be availible pretty late the people directly would as the only one be there from the beginning, but in most cases it should pretty soon become less powerful than the other groups). This is of cause very chaotic, but it could be done so that you can support your power of several groups, and that you choose your support in ”10% intervals”. This would mean that you could be supported by: 40% on the army, 20% on the coorporations, 10% on the administrators and 30% on the people representatively.

Good simple, just move the sliders or whatever around to back support.

quote: The key to this system is how it is chosen who you base it on. To make my idea workable each group would need a (very simple) AI. When choosing how to base your government you would make sort of a negotiation with all these groups. Each group will look after their own interests, and they will try to get as much power as possible. You could think of it as being like when a government is being made. The person trying to become prime minister (which in this case is you) want to get enough support to be able to form a government. Each group is like a party, and they want to get as much power as possible. The power of the group is like the number of seats a party has in the parliament. They want to get as many of their people becoming ministers as possible. Here this is described as the percentage you are basing your power on. The higher percentage a group gets the more power it gets (this will be described late). So each group want to get as high a percentage as possible. You on the other hand want to be supported by as many as possible, so you actually want to give each group as low a percentage as possible. This would mean that when you enter the SI screen each group is displayed with their power, and with a demand for how many percentages they want. The religion might demand 30% for it to support you where the intelligentsia might demand 20%. For this to work the groups need to have an idea on how strong they are, so that they don’t all demand 100%. So the very weak groups would be more than happy just to get 10% and actually have some power where the powerful one would deman much more. Your leg level is showing how much you can do without having to get the support from your support groups. The groups would therefor want you to have as low a leg level as possible, as this also means more power to them. You would be able to interact with the groups, so you could offer them things, like ”no you can not have 40% of my governing being supported by you, but if you accept 20% I will go down from leg 6 to leg 4.” They would then interact with you, as they would accept or deny your proposal. It should work so that if your leg level is low enough then virtually every group will accept just 10% support.

I like, but give religions a few major ones, very important that different ones in your country. I would like to see power shifts, and catch 22s like pick corps or unions, or military or green peace.

quote: This system is of cause a model, so some things are not included. The relationship between the individual groups are not included. In stead it is based on a ”pool” model of political decissions. Each group is a billard ball, rolling around on the table. The stronger groups are bigger balls, so they are more likely to push the weaker ones away, while heading for their goal. The player could be like the pool player. In the beginning he has no idea how to make the balls do as he likes, where the very advanced player could manipulate them to do as he pleases. This system should work the same way, although a player should need to be extremely good to just make all the groups work for him.

I like starting out with no idea which religions will come out on top, wheter supporting the military but neglecting the people will turn out well, gives flavor to the game.

quote: The larger a percentage of the ”power” in your civ that is supporting your rule, the more stability there would be (the less likely would there be chance for the government to collaps – you could never be sure that this would not happend, but the higher stabilitity the lower the chance - or for cities to breake loose of your civ) and the less corruption there would be (as most people would support your civ). Of cause both stability and corrupion would be determined by other things than just this.

I think if support for you falls below 50% in a government a revolution happens and you will have to cope with a new government and lots of power in the people changing stuff, lowering industrial capacity, lowering the military budget, power to the power and political groups!!

quote: You would therefor need to balance a lot of things when making your government. Not only would you like as high a leg level as possible, you would also want to get the support of as high a percentage of the power in your civ as possible. The more powerful a group is the more it could demand from you (again it needs to be aware of it’s powers). For instance, in the western world today the people would be by far the most powerful group in the civ. This could not only let them demand a high percentage of your support, it could also allow them to demand that you have a low leg level. You have to accept, as you simply need the people’s support to make a working government. This can explain why the leaders of the western countries have very little absolutity. On the other hand if there are a lot of equally strong groups in your civ you would be in a position to demand a lot from them just to let them get any power, as you would just be able to shoose someone else. In such a scenario you could get perhabs 10% support from 10 different groups and get a very high leg level. This would not only give you lots of stability and low corruption, it would also let you work more or less autonomously from your support groups.

Yes different governments with different power bases is needed realism. Having moderation is realistic also so evenly displacing power is a good idea. Corruption should have short term benefits in helping the mob but lose stability later will hurt a lot.

quote: A group should possibly also be able to negotiate with foreign powers, and you should be able to negotiate with groups in foreign powers. All civs on the globe having 14 AIs in them besides from the civ itself (especcially with more than 30 civs, as most of us want) means a lot of AIs. But again I don’t think the groups would need advanced AIs. In stead they would just be very simple forms, able to just figure out a few things. They would not have any city management, unit movement or even any overall strategies. They just need to be able to take a few concrete, short run decisions, based on a few parameters.

Cooperation between certain groups like corporations and unions and religions, religions traverse country borders, combined groups need to have more power, and have clought from a foreign civ too.

quote: Making decisions: This would all not give any sence if if wasn’t because you would need all these groups when making decisions. The lower your leg level the more you would have to consult your supporting groups when making decisions. Making this work, however, is the tricky part, and one of the main reasons why we have not yet been able to make a system in which you don’t have absolute control possible. There are many possible ways to do this. Unfortunately it seems as if the most easy-to-implement ways are also the ones that are the worst. You could, for instance, have it so that if your leg level was 6 then 6 out of 10 times you made a decision then you would decide, and 4 out of 10 the computer would decide. This is, of cause, an incredibly poor solution, offering none of the things we want a system which interacts with the people to do. I have not found an absolute answer to this problem, but I have found something that works, is realistic and playable. You would have to involve the people when making SE changes (economic, structure, laws etc), when changing diplomatic relations with other civs and when building things in your cities. Unit movement and city ressource management (although I hope you wont have to move workers around on the city squares in Civ3) would be done by you alone. Each group would have an agenda. This should not be oversimplistic, but would also adabt to the overall status of your civ. If you had just been in a destructive war then not many groups would want to start a new one. On the other hand it should DEFINATELY not be so that the people would always want peace. In stead this would be decided by their militarism rating (described later). Each group would have some favorite things to build. The army would always want more units, so if you want to build a tank you could count on it’s support. The religion would want to build tempels, the coorporations would want to build factories, the intelligentsia would want to build libraries etc. Some of the agenda’s of the different groups would sometimes be the same. Both the coorporations and the industrial bourgeoisie would want to build factories, both the people and the intelligentsia might like libraries, where the religion might agree with the army on the need to go to war with a civ of another religion.

I agree, I think we are on the same page pretty much, I see the SI in my head too

quote: It means that if your leg level is 7, then you need to get 30% (100%-70%) of the 100% you are supporting your power on to support this thing. So if you have leg 7 and you are based on 50% people 20% coorporations 10% army and 20% administrators then you need 30% of these to support you in EVERYTHING you do! You could do this by having the people support your desicion (this would give 120%, which would just be the same as 100%), by having the army and the administrators to support it or something else. This gives the advantage that the system is easy to overview (no complex rules on when you have to negotiate with the people), that you always know how many ”votes” you need to do stuff, and that the higher your leg level is, the easier it will be for you to get what you want. The disadvantages of this system is, that a more elegant sollution could possibly be found, and that you always (except if you have leg 10, which should almost never happen) have to get your people’s support, even if you have a very high leg level. None the less I have chosen to use this system. If anyone can think of a better one please post it, as I would like to hear about it, but for now this is what I will use.

I see Leg level as a trust in you and if they like you, getting to know the people will give you a higher level in a democracy, supporting corporations for a long time will and if they stay powerful will give you leg level raises. Goes for any group, sometimes they lose power then you lose power too, especially if they are a big supporter.

quote: Besides this there should be a way of using propaganda and such to get the permanent support from one group. This would mean that you could spend some money on propaganda directed at the people. This might give lower stability in a few turns, but if it is succesful then it will make it so that the people would always support your desicions (so they will not demand that you do anything to support you – this would of cause only work if you were basing your power on the people). This would continue for a few turns. If you want to always have your people’s permanent support then you would need to permanently use money for propaganda. A similar thing could be done to the other groups. If you are basing your power on the administrators then you would be able to make some sort of purge in the administration (meaning that you removed people that didn’t support you and put people loyal to you in the leading positions). Again this would give unstability for a few turns, but afterwards you would get always get the support of the administration. Similar things could be done in the army (although the US has a large army it is unrealistic to think that the army has a very important position in the country. In stead the government has made sure that people loyal to them are at all the important positions, and therefor the army is not an individual power) and possibly in all the groups. You should be able to do these propaganda/purge things in both groups that you based your power on, and in groups that you weren’t. If you used it on a groups that you weren’t basing your power on then it would simply mean that this group would not cause any unstability and that it would not try to begin a revolution. Each group would cost different things to use propaganda on. The people directly would be easy and cheap to use propaganda against, where other groups like the intelligentsia would be far more expensive to get permanent support from.

Yeah support special groups on laws, increased industry or other things will raise their support for you. People will be easier and easier as mass media comes around, TV should basically give you the support of the population but they could be part of political groups like Unions that will lower your support from them. Say you make Unions mad and they are 15% of population, population not power, then 15% of the people in the people rating aren't going to support you.

quote: You should also be able to give money to a group, which would give it more power in your civ. This could be workable if the groups you are basing your power on are not quite strong enough to secure a working government, and you don’t want to begin a revolution. You could then give some money to a group, and thus giving it more power which would make your government more stable. Of cause the effect of these money would be pretty limited, and if there is a powerful overall tendency that a group is weakening then you could do little to make it more powerful. Giving money to groups would mostly be for the short run.

I see sort of a trade thing, like
Union-we give us this bill for higher minimum wage then we give you support(1 level up in leg level) and 1 million dollars
You-Ok but this will make the corporations mad and hurt the economy possibly.

quote: Every groups should have some number (possibly just from 1-10) that described how much they liked your policy. This number would be determined by counting how many times you had done things following that particular group’s agenda. So if you were basing your power on the intelligentsia but never built any libraries and had all science things at a very low priority then this goup would have a low number – it wouldn’t like your policy. The lower this number is the larger the chance would be that this group would simply stop supporting you. It could make an ultimatum like ”You start the construction of 5 libraries now or we will stop supporting you and send the country into anarchy and civil war”. You would then have the choise of either doing what they want or try to make a new government with a period of anarchy in between. The same could be done by all the other groups. If you were basing your power on the army but never were in any wars it could demand that you started a war with civ x or it would stop supporting you (finally a way to be forced into a war). On the other hand, if the group really liked your policy then it would, if you were not basing your power on it, not cause unstability and not try to throw over the government, and if you were basing your power on it then it would be likely to accept it if you raised your leg level. This would mean that if you were supporting your power on the coorporations and you switched labour unions off (with or without their support) then the coorporations would be likely to accept that you raised your leg level.

Yes I was just thinking of this thing pretty much exactly this before I read it!!

quote: This would mean that when you are choosing your groups to base your power on then you would not only have to make sure that these groups had enough power to make the government stable, you would also have to try to get as high a leg level as possible AND you would need to choose groups that had an agenda that worked with the policy you wanted to go with. Militarism: Would be an indicator of how much your people would support war. If it is high then there would be low unhappyness for units away from the city, and the people (if you supported your power on them) would be more likely to support a war. It would be determined by a lot of things. A succesful war with low casualties would rise it, where a destructive war with lots of civilians killed would lower it. Individualism: This would be an indicator for how much your people liked individual freedom in an economic sence. If it is low then a capitalist system would not give much trade (as the people would not work well in such a system) and a communist system would give a lot of unhappyness. If it, on the other hand is high then a capitalist system would give a lot of trade, and a communist system would give a lot of corruption. It would be determined by different things. If you had a communist economic system for a long time then this would lower it, where a capitalist system would rise it. But at the same time a lot of poverty in your civ (there should be some indicator of poverty) either due to your civ just being poor or because of the economic system creating an economically very polarized population, would also lower it. Accept of distance to power: This was originately a part of Individualism, but I chose to make this, the political individualism, it’s own indicator. It would show how much the people would accept an undemocratic government. If it was low then the people, if you support your power on them, would demand that you only had a low leg level. They would be harder to use propaganda against, and they would create more unstability if they were not in the government. If it is high then it should be possible for the people to accept that you had a high leg level (they would want to have someone to lead them), they would be easy to manipulate via propaganda and they would not create much unstability if they weren’t in the government.

I like, I see this in the system!! I see the light

quote: * I have chosen to have 4 types of wealthy people, as I had chosen one for each type of society: Slave society, feudal society, industrial society and information society. Each society had very different ways of getting wealthy, and a very different lifestyle, so they should be replaced by different groups. This is also needed if the system is to describe a french revolution type scenario: before the revolution the king’s power is based on the feudal wealthy, but due to the industrial revolution the industrial wealthy has become stronger and stronger, and eventually strong enough to throw over the government with the support of the people. Unfortunately for them it all ended with an army based dictator (Napoleon) getting a pretty high leg level.

I like, changes in policy and backing of groups will change societies gradually. They have to happen slowly. rich, poor, middle class too, not just wealthy.

quote: I think I have been through it all. This is the first draft, and it propably seem a bit disorderly. But with a lot of constructive feedback I think it can be made pretty good. Now it is up to you!

I think we are on the same page, if I misinterperated something tell me. I like this idea and something a lot of my ideas have to have to work.

------------------
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gamma_par4@hotmail.com
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HappyLand
[This message has been edited by Par4 (edited June 07, 2000).]

[The Joker]

Snarfangel:

I think that the Individualism, the Militarism and the Tolarance of distance to power levels should all be in the middle - 5 - in the beginning of the game. Depending on your SE settings and your actions it would not take long (20 turns or so) for them to change radically.

As for the power of each group I think that in the beginning you could only base your power on the people directly. The other groups would come along the way.


Par4:

Thanks! But what do you mean about having 3 in stead of 3 groups per age.

BTW I just saw that my idea is on the Civ3 page. HOW COOL!


Raingoon:

Perhabs you are right that some combinations shouldn't be availible in the beginning. But sufficient advances should make all combos possible.


Mark:

I think I will open an Government thread in the alt civs forum. I will begin to read your model today, but I'm not sure I will have time to post any replies at this moment.