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Groups
POPULATION – THE BACKBONE OF A CIV GAME
Government, Economy and Population Models are connected through the population of your civ.
All models are connected and can be discussed independantly up to the point where their connection with the rest of the game (other models) becomes a problem if those other parts are undefined. The problem discussed here in particular is population. I thought (and read) about it quite a lot, and this is the best solution I have come up with.
NOTE
I am using "will" form, but none of this is decided so dont take it too seriousely. At least I am not religious about my attitudes and I like to discuss them all for the benefit of the project.
CONFLICT
Conflict is big thing in this game. Actually I learned in school that drama is based on conflict between persons and that makes it interesting. In order to have a dramatic expirience in the game I think we need to have the players conflict each other, the player to conflict with his population, and also different groups in that population to have conflict between themselves. I want to stress the importance of conflict.
THE PROBLEM
There are problems with dividing game into different «models», mostly when it comes to connecting them. The world is a circular definition – where everything is affected and defined by everything else (Chaos Theory). In the game, well not everything, but level of integration of different game objects is high. This leads to some ilogicalness. I am not against history ilogicalness and inaccuracy in general, we are bound to have quite some. But the set of problems surrounding the modeling and coding population is really big and has to be dealt with.
If we have a separate religion model and a economy model then you can interact with a worker group or a religion group – separately. The problem here is that both groups get people from the same population!
THE GROUP
The group definition we take from sociology: a number of individuals having same goal and a set of procedures and customs to achieve it. There is no individualism in a group – if there is then it is not a group but just individuals that happen to be at the same place. Groups will fight with other groups (Player too, perhaps Companies?). This is very important. In order to belong to a group people need to be willing to fight for it.
THE NEED OF CHARACTERISTICS
Many attempts are made to define population – and many are insufficient because they fail in one area or another. You can see Ethnic groups, Work classes, Religion groups or just Population with lots of variables, some describing its Ethnicity, Religion etc. Since none of them (at least those I read) are coded, you need to do thought experiments to test them. Even with little experiment you can see some very obvious logic problems. Others do not have them, but are suffering from lack of things player can do with his population. Third are simply not spicy enough. Some are good but old: Civ2 population Model is an artwork of Simplicity.
But they all agree on one thing: We need to give characteristics to our population – in order to have it differentiate and allow for conflict.
THE SOLUTION
The solution fits in sociology theories too, just that it was difficult to come up with. Here it is: The groups form as a response to outside pressure. As simple as that! The pressure can be the player (government) or other groups – even enviroment may be external pressure. This means the following in game terms:
A number of people having some same characteristic can be self aware or unaware. If they are self aware then they are called a group and they get some other characteristics, but the characteristic they were formed from is their base one, and the only they are willing to fight about.
Now – if a percent of people have same characteristic but they are not under external pressure, they will not form a group.
GROUP CHARACTERISTICS
The characteristics fall into predefined Characteristic Classes or CC in short.
Population should have very few different CC with quite a few Characteristics per CC.
Characteristics Classes are (in this document):
Work – each man works. Probably the most important one in bigger part of game.
Race – people do differentiate by skin color and this leads to many interesting options.
Belief – each man has a belief and it is important to him.
Optional are: Nationality - Culture, Location, Short term ideas.
All CC are available from begining but they fill with different Characteristics with the availability of techs. Work Class will fill with Field Worker and Soldier at first but with tech comes Priests, Bureucracy and similar. The Religion Class gets filled with different religions as they appear.
THE FORMATION OF A GROUP
Each game Model takes care that a percentage of people gets some characteristic at some period of time and maintaining it. For example, the Economy Model needs to take care that with availability of tech Mass Production a percentage of people become Factory Workers. It is important to note that they are not a group! It is a percentage of people that may or may not form a group.
When do they become a Group? Only when they are exposed to outside pressure based on the characteristic that they all have. (A characteristics class (CC) needs to have at least two characteristics before groups can form). There are two ways that can happen:
1. Direct Player Action
This means that if you decide to tax Factory Workers at certain percent that is different from your average tax level, they form a group. Thus you put them under external pressure and they become a self-aware collection of people – a group. (it can also get a prominent leader – which would add to its longivity perhaps? It should not add to its cohesivness because at default it is there and no more is needed).
You may get the same effect by suppressing in other ways and other forms of action you have (laws etc). The player (government) has very much influence in formation of groups.
2. Reaction To Forming Of Others In Same Class
The formation of one group based on Work class of characteristics will (gradually or emediatelly) spark the «grouping» of other groups based on same CC. So the creation of Factory Workers will have in effect creation of Factory Owners or Capitalists (however called).
3. Enviromental Reaction(?)
A mechanism allowing for groups to form if there are no other groups available.
There is inertia in Group forming. Usually, if outside pressure falls, groups loose momentum, eventually dissapearing. But, importantly, this is not the only factor. You can not just make taxes on all Whites 88% for only one turn and lover them to normal in another – just to pick up the money. Such action would have an effect of Whites grouping – conflicting with other Races, with you, and causing trouble proportional to their power.
THE LIFE OF A GROUP
The system allows for a great variety of population (Black Muslim Swedish Factory Worker, White Catholic Sweedish Factory Worker). However, the variety of groups is seriously limited with two facts: that Groups can only conflict around the basic Characteristic they were formed around and that they can only form around one Characteristic Class.
So while certain amount of population exists as described with two above examples – they are not Groups, but Percentages. Meaining in effect that you may never have conflict between those two – you may have Blacks having trouble with Whites or Catholics with Muslims.
During the life of a Group it interactes with other Groups and the Player (and other Players). The instruments for this are described under Player – Group Interaction title.
The algorithm(s) deciding the Longivety of Group would take into account: has a Goal been achieved, has External Pressure fallen, and others things perhaps.
The time period a Group will last is not predictable, a Group will adapt to its enviroment and react to it. Therefore the name Dynamic Groups.
Groups will usually have natural deaths, but violent ones are not excluded.
Full Extermination of any Group should be extremely expensive in money and reputation. It should therefore be difficult to achieve and rarely happen.
NON – STANDARD GROUPS
Non standard groups form as a response to player action exclusively – never by themselves or other groups.
As said groups will usually form around Characteristic Classes. The exception is if you decide to exterminate White Catholic Italian Merchants for example. Since this is a very unnatural Group, it will probably have a short life span – falling apart as soon as pressure is relieved. Also, since it is not clear what was your criteria to deal with them specially there will be a possibility of any of other normal groups (CC based) to solidarize with them costing you unhapiness. For example with that group Catholics may think they are under pressure, but also the Whites, the Italians and the Merchants.
THE DEATH OF A GROUP
Group dies completely with population loosing interest in grouping around the same characteristics that formed it in the first place.
MEMORY
A "memory" of a group is kept when group is dissolved, allowing people to group to a simmilar group easier and faster.
With end of wars Nationalistics Groups fall apart usually but peoples Nationalism remaines higher then before – thus allowing them to group again around it extremely fast.
PERCENTAGES
It is obvious that for four different CCs with four Cs each (average – religions for example may be only one or two for a long time) you get four to fourth power (128) number of possibilites for different groups. Some examples:
Black Italian Muslim Burgoasie, White Italian Muslim Burgoasie, White German Protestant Field Workers ... etc. Possibilities are not endless, but they are indeed many.
It is important to note that data must be kept and maintained about all of these. We need to know exactly how much (in percent) of population are White Roman Pagan Field Workers(8%).
THE POWER OF A GROUP
In interaction with other entities (Player, other Groups) groups need to be aware of their power. The power of a group can be divided to two kinds of power that are different in their effect.
1. The Direct Manpower
This is the power of the Group which is derived from its Numbers and Per Capita Income. Here the PCI represents the ability of a group to arm itself with modern weaponry (at the time) and amount of logistics.
It is important to notice that there is no Morale – each group fights with equal will. Unwillingnes to fight for a Group is in opposition with the group definition.
The algorithm should be linear. Something like this:
TDM = NUMBERS * EQUIPPEMENT_LEVEL, where at any time in history there would be only three levels starting at one, for example: 1, 1.5, 2. The EL is calculated by taking Group's PCI and seeing is it in lower, middle or upper third of Average Civ PCI, and giving it the appropriate factor. The Military would be an exception because they do not have to pay for their equipement themselves.
Example: a Group of 3 Farmers have TDM = 3 * 1(belong to poor part of pop) while a Group of 3 Priests has TDM = 3 * 2(having money in heaps). Thus in an situation of conflict between equal number of Priests and Farmers, the Farmers lose.
2. The Indirect Manpower - Contract Power
The ability of one Group to drag others into conflict. For example, if you angry the Priests they may call it angrying the Religion and soon you are confronted with a Religion based group instead of Work based one you wanted. This needs better explanation, part of it is under next title.
THE INTERGROUP INTERACTION
As said, Groups can interact with each other. But always there can be only one characteristic (Their forming characteristic) to base their conflict on. Catholics can not fight against Blacks nor can Field Workers against Muslims. Catholics may fight with Muslims and Field Workers against Factory Workers.
The Groups will also have good relations with some other groups. This is a problematic and essential issue that needs more work.
THE PLAYER – GROUP INTERACTION
This is a partial description of actions in Group screen. This is where you would assign different taxes to groups, offer and accept deals and check different statistics of your population. Other Models will be acessible via this one for a better and more detailed view of situation.
Pick a group to deal with.
You are given four listboxes (like when you choose your country on a web site) for each CC (Work, Race, Belief, Nationality). By default they are set to [ALL]. You can play with them to get any combination you want. So the screen may look like this:
Work: [Farmers] Race: [White] Belief: [ALL] Nationality: [Babylonian] Formed as a group: NO
Leader picture Percentage of pop: 6%
Show their status towards you, happines, etc.
Tax, Supress, Negotiate
On this screen you would scroll through different percentages of population Searching for groups you want to deal with etc (there may be up to 1000 or more combinations in late game). In the current example, these people are not formed as a group, so you can not negitiate with them and they dont have an oppinion about you either.
You may offer Deals (Negotiate):
Must depend on year/technology and government form. In middle ages
monarchy, ask them to become vasals? and in democracy to support you in
parliament.
You may Request from them:
- request support to form and maintain rule
- request money
You may Offer them:
- money
- employement in state services, low level (administration, police)
- employement in state services, high level (minister positions?)
- elimination / joint fight against their enemy (other group or character)
- peace/cease fire
- lower taxes
You may Threathen:
- with level of suppression (extermninate, ban activity...etc)
- with raising taxes
They may Request:
- money
- action (crusade, war?)
- power. If their power is strong enough for it, they will demand you lower
your leg level (see thread: "Clash and OC3 - Government" and Jokers first post.
If they are not strong enough they should not dare to ask that.
This part requires an Group AI.
Each Deal is a set of IF x THEN y phrases together with Signing Time and Duration To Fulfill.
The Deals you make with groups have an effect of group lasting until deal is fulfiled. Since you are not the only one to make deals with groups ... some will have deals with other players (or a God – to allow enormous life span of religions without other factors? Or leave it to the Religion model) this is a one way to encourage froming of a Group or lasting of it. To encourage the forming - make a law aiming at some percent of population(note the distinction between percentages and Groups again. Groups are self aware). To encourage the lasting – sign a Deal.
THE SCREENS AND LEVELS
There will be different levels of player interaction – 3 the being best number: Simple, Normal and Complex. Each level giving more options for fine tuning. The duration of the game both with its complexity (difficulty) would be determined by chosing level of model access. Each model should have independent lock ability to allow playing with Complex Military (for more of a wargame feel) or Complex Economy (for more of manager flavour) or all of them (micromanaging hell).
The main screen to allow for player to interact with his population is the Groups Screen. The other screens are for showing Model statistics. All group interaction should be displayed and done in Group Screen.
THE X(4 FOR NOW) MODELS
Model is a set of algorithms describing a specific field.
Economy, Religion, Race, Nationality. Characteristics Classes are managed by Models.
These would take care population has Percentages well divided. Each needs a pie chart(s) to display the percent of people belonging to particular characteristics. Race needs to show how many Blacks are there, the Economy displays and updates the number of workers in different areas etc. They also take care of their area in Tech development and update groups with Tech discoveries – forming new percentages, forming new groups from percentages and making them available in Group screen, assigning them population and dissolving of Groups based on that particular Model. They are responsible for some of Dynamic Group Births and provide data for Group algorithms (Group model?) to decide the other other part – Dynamic Group Deaths.
Problems you encounter with a Group in particular CC will have effects described by that Model. This means that your Negotiations with a Group will have some extra options depending on the CC it is in. Also, the level of unhapiness affecting your civ will be different for different areas. Disorders in Work CC based Group may cost you much production (strikes), while in Nationality may not (demonstrations demanding action etc). The percentage of people belonging to a group is strictly determined so Production penalties can be easily calculated.
HOW DOES IT WORK – POSSIBILITIES
This system allows you to have Dynamically Created Groups that will respond to actual situation in your civ. Your instruments in dealing with Groups are many and you will use some or all on particular groups. You will learn that taxation is your strongest weapon which you will use mostly to discriminate people by work, taxing work areas differently. If you wish, you may tax religions differently, or races – groups will form there and give you opposition on everything you do. What government does all the time is discriminating people or dealing with existing differences in them.
HISTORICAL EXAMPLES AND OVERSIMPLIFICATION
What can not be described with this system? Quite a few things, so lets get started:
Woman rights movements from obvious reasons. Just kidding, the reason is we should not go as deep as having to calculate family frictions, patriarhalism levels and other important factors needed to determine the size of sex based group – a group that only was needed in one period in real history (1930es) and never again (or before).
Small groups based around small ideas: The Greenpeace, The Amnesty International, The Vegeterians etc. The population characteristics were chosen based on history – the question was: What made people fight other people, what made people fight government. In the period of last 100 years things emerged which have not been there in history: Political Parties, Ecology Movements, Student Population. Today some of these groups have a large sum of members (and power arising from that). But a group needs to have an «opposite» group to define it and most of these dont. Big part of them does not have members that are willing to fight to death against an «opposite» group – they lack cohesion to call them a group. Would Pacifists fight Militarists? Also there are so many of these that it does not make sence to implement them. Some may need to be included if game is to have long span into modernity and future – but then group forming criteria I was writing about earlier needs to be taken into consideration.
Now the questions arising are: can we have French Revolution with this? How about the Russian ones? World Wars? Riots, Coups, Liberation Movements ... Crusades.
Heh, we can not have all. Some are disqualified simply because they are not very important besides being interesting. Others have occured only once in history. I have a strong oppinion that most things that occured only once in history should not be implemented.
What we need to do is EXTRACT ALGORITHMS and decouple them from their historical data. So a Revolution Algorithm will take into account groups conflicting each other, their level of hate, tech level and government decisions. It will not have anything about France or year 1789 A.D. or Louis YII or Jacobists etc etc.
In the process we will need to not only simplify but oversimplify some aspects. Good example is economy – we will not make a stock market simulation, nor will there be included every trade good in the world.
CONCLUDED
I hope we can continue to develop other Models independently better if we have something like this decided. By having groups forming against external pressure we can have the same population, the population of our Civ group around Belief, Race and others, as need arises in a given history moment. This would help us solve «The Japanese Problem» we are having now. In Japan, as you may know, there are X% of ****oists, Y% of Budists, Z% of Christians, Q% of Pagans, all of them adding up to some 140 percent of population.
Edit: indentation
[This message has been edited by VetLegion (edited January 05, 2001).]
Government, Economy and Population Models are connected through the population of your civ.
All models are connected and can be discussed independantly up to the point where their connection with the rest of the game (other models) becomes a problem if those other parts are undefined. The problem discussed here in particular is population. I thought (and read) about it quite a lot, and this is the best solution I have come up with.
NOTE
I am using "will" form, but none of this is decided so dont take it too seriousely. At least I am not religious about my attitudes and I like to discuss them all for the benefit of the project.
CONFLICT
Conflict is big thing in this game. Actually I learned in school that drama is based on conflict between persons and that makes it interesting. In order to have a dramatic expirience in the game I think we need to have the players conflict each other, the player to conflict with his population, and also different groups in that population to have conflict between themselves. I want to stress the importance of conflict.
THE PROBLEM
There are problems with dividing game into different «models», mostly when it comes to connecting them. The world is a circular definition – where everything is affected and defined by everything else (Chaos Theory). In the game, well not everything, but level of integration of different game objects is high. This leads to some ilogicalness. I am not against history ilogicalness and inaccuracy in general, we are bound to have quite some. But the set of problems surrounding the modeling and coding population is really big and has to be dealt with.
If we have a separate religion model and a economy model then you can interact with a worker group or a religion group – separately. The problem here is that both groups get people from the same population!
THE GROUP
The group definition we take from sociology: a number of individuals having same goal and a set of procedures and customs to achieve it. There is no individualism in a group – if there is then it is not a group but just individuals that happen to be at the same place. Groups will fight with other groups (Player too, perhaps Companies?). This is very important. In order to belong to a group people need to be willing to fight for it.
THE NEED OF CHARACTERISTICS
Many attempts are made to define population – and many are insufficient because they fail in one area or another. You can see Ethnic groups, Work classes, Religion groups or just Population with lots of variables, some describing its Ethnicity, Religion etc. Since none of them (at least those I read) are coded, you need to do thought experiments to test them. Even with little experiment you can see some very obvious logic problems. Others do not have them, but are suffering from lack of things player can do with his population. Third are simply not spicy enough. Some are good but old: Civ2 population Model is an artwork of Simplicity.
But they all agree on one thing: We need to give characteristics to our population – in order to have it differentiate and allow for conflict.
THE SOLUTION
The solution fits in sociology theories too, just that it was difficult to come up with. Here it is: The groups form as a response to outside pressure. As simple as that! The pressure can be the player (government) or other groups – even enviroment may be external pressure. This means the following in game terms:
A number of people having some same characteristic can be self aware or unaware. If they are self aware then they are called a group and they get some other characteristics, but the characteristic they were formed from is their base one, and the only they are willing to fight about.
Now – if a percent of people have same characteristic but they are not under external pressure, they will not form a group.
GROUP CHARACTERISTICS
The characteristics fall into predefined Characteristic Classes or CC in short.
Population should have very few different CC with quite a few Characteristics per CC.
Characteristics Classes are (in this document):
Work – each man works. Probably the most important one in bigger part of game.
Race – people do differentiate by skin color and this leads to many interesting options.
Belief – each man has a belief and it is important to him.
Optional are: Nationality - Culture, Location, Short term ideas.
All CC are available from begining but they fill with different Characteristics with the availability of techs. Work Class will fill with Field Worker and Soldier at first but with tech comes Priests, Bureucracy and similar. The Religion Class gets filled with different religions as they appear.
THE FORMATION OF A GROUP
Each game Model takes care that a percentage of people gets some characteristic at some period of time and maintaining it. For example, the Economy Model needs to take care that with availability of tech Mass Production a percentage of people become Factory Workers. It is important to note that they are not a group! It is a percentage of people that may or may not form a group.
When do they become a Group? Only when they are exposed to outside pressure based on the characteristic that they all have. (A characteristics class (CC) needs to have at least two characteristics before groups can form). There are two ways that can happen:
1. Direct Player Action
This means that if you decide to tax Factory Workers at certain percent that is different from your average tax level, they form a group. Thus you put them under external pressure and they become a self-aware collection of people – a group. (it can also get a prominent leader – which would add to its longivity perhaps? It should not add to its cohesivness because at default it is there and no more is needed).
You may get the same effect by suppressing in other ways and other forms of action you have (laws etc). The player (government) has very much influence in formation of groups.
2. Reaction To Forming Of Others In Same Class
The formation of one group based on Work class of characteristics will (gradually or emediatelly) spark the «grouping» of other groups based on same CC. So the creation of Factory Workers will have in effect creation of Factory Owners or Capitalists (however called).
3. Enviromental Reaction(?)
A mechanism allowing for groups to form if there are no other groups available.
There is inertia in Group forming. Usually, if outside pressure falls, groups loose momentum, eventually dissapearing. But, importantly, this is not the only factor. You can not just make taxes on all Whites 88% for only one turn and lover them to normal in another – just to pick up the money. Such action would have an effect of Whites grouping – conflicting with other Races, with you, and causing trouble proportional to their power.
THE LIFE OF A GROUP
The system allows for a great variety of population (Black Muslim Swedish Factory Worker, White Catholic Sweedish Factory Worker). However, the variety of groups is seriously limited with two facts: that Groups can only conflict around the basic Characteristic they were formed around and that they can only form around one Characteristic Class.
So while certain amount of population exists as described with two above examples – they are not Groups, but Percentages. Meaining in effect that you may never have conflict between those two – you may have Blacks having trouble with Whites or Catholics with Muslims.
During the life of a Group it interactes with other Groups and the Player (and other Players). The instruments for this are described under Player – Group Interaction title.
The algorithm(s) deciding the Longivety of Group would take into account: has a Goal been achieved, has External Pressure fallen, and others things perhaps.
The time period a Group will last is not predictable, a Group will adapt to its enviroment and react to it. Therefore the name Dynamic Groups.
Groups will usually have natural deaths, but violent ones are not excluded.
Full Extermination of any Group should be extremely expensive in money and reputation. It should therefore be difficult to achieve and rarely happen.
NON – STANDARD GROUPS
Non standard groups form as a response to player action exclusively – never by themselves or other groups.
As said groups will usually form around Characteristic Classes. The exception is if you decide to exterminate White Catholic Italian Merchants for example. Since this is a very unnatural Group, it will probably have a short life span – falling apart as soon as pressure is relieved. Also, since it is not clear what was your criteria to deal with them specially there will be a possibility of any of other normal groups (CC based) to solidarize with them costing you unhapiness. For example with that group Catholics may think they are under pressure, but also the Whites, the Italians and the Merchants.
THE DEATH OF A GROUP
Group dies completely with population loosing interest in grouping around the same characteristics that formed it in the first place.
MEMORY
A "memory" of a group is kept when group is dissolved, allowing people to group to a simmilar group easier and faster.
With end of wars Nationalistics Groups fall apart usually but peoples Nationalism remaines higher then before – thus allowing them to group again around it extremely fast.
PERCENTAGES
It is obvious that for four different CCs with four Cs each (average – religions for example may be only one or two for a long time) you get four to fourth power (128) number of possibilites for different groups. Some examples:
Black Italian Muslim Burgoasie, White Italian Muslim Burgoasie, White German Protestant Field Workers ... etc. Possibilities are not endless, but they are indeed many.
It is important to note that data must be kept and maintained about all of these. We need to know exactly how much (in percent) of population are White Roman Pagan Field Workers(8%).
THE POWER OF A GROUP
In interaction with other entities (Player, other Groups) groups need to be aware of their power. The power of a group can be divided to two kinds of power that are different in their effect.
1. The Direct Manpower
This is the power of the Group which is derived from its Numbers and Per Capita Income. Here the PCI represents the ability of a group to arm itself with modern weaponry (at the time) and amount of logistics.
It is important to notice that there is no Morale – each group fights with equal will. Unwillingnes to fight for a Group is in opposition with the group definition.
The algorithm should be linear. Something like this:
TDM = NUMBERS * EQUIPPEMENT_LEVEL, where at any time in history there would be only three levels starting at one, for example: 1, 1.5, 2. The EL is calculated by taking Group's PCI and seeing is it in lower, middle or upper third of Average Civ PCI, and giving it the appropriate factor. The Military would be an exception because they do not have to pay for their equipement themselves.
Example: a Group of 3 Farmers have TDM = 3 * 1(belong to poor part of pop) while a Group of 3 Priests has TDM = 3 * 2(having money in heaps). Thus in an situation of conflict between equal number of Priests and Farmers, the Farmers lose.
2. The Indirect Manpower - Contract Power
The ability of one Group to drag others into conflict. For example, if you angry the Priests they may call it angrying the Religion and soon you are confronted with a Religion based group instead of Work based one you wanted. This needs better explanation, part of it is under next title.
THE INTERGROUP INTERACTION
As said, Groups can interact with each other. But always there can be only one characteristic (Their forming characteristic) to base their conflict on. Catholics can not fight against Blacks nor can Field Workers against Muslims. Catholics may fight with Muslims and Field Workers against Factory Workers.
The Groups will also have good relations with some other groups. This is a problematic and essential issue that needs more work.
THE PLAYER – GROUP INTERACTION
This is a partial description of actions in Group screen. This is where you would assign different taxes to groups, offer and accept deals and check different statistics of your population. Other Models will be acessible via this one for a better and more detailed view of situation.
Pick a group to deal with.
You are given four listboxes (like when you choose your country on a web site) for each CC (Work, Race, Belief, Nationality). By default they are set to [ALL]. You can play with them to get any combination you want. So the screen may look like this:
Work: [Farmers] Race: [White] Belief: [ALL] Nationality: [Babylonian] Formed as a group: NO
Leader picture
Show their status towards you, happines, etc.
Tax, Supress, Negotiate
On this screen you would scroll through different percentages of population Searching for groups you want to deal with etc (there may be up to 1000 or more combinations in late game). In the current example, these people are not formed as a group, so you can not negitiate with them and they dont have an oppinion about you either.
You may offer Deals (Negotiate):
Must depend on year/technology and government form. In middle ages
monarchy, ask them to become vasals? and in democracy to support you in
parliament.
You may Request from them:
- request support to form and maintain rule
- request money
You may Offer them:
- money
- employement in state services, low level (administration, police)
- employement in state services, high level (minister positions?)
- elimination / joint fight against their enemy (other group or character)
- peace/cease fire
- lower taxes
You may Threathen:
- with level of suppression (extermninate, ban activity...etc)
- with raising taxes
They may Request:
- money
- action (crusade, war?)
- power. If their power is strong enough for it, they will demand you lower
your leg level (see thread: "Clash and OC3 - Government" and Jokers first post.
If they are not strong enough they should not dare to ask that.
This part requires an Group AI.
Each Deal is a set of IF x THEN y phrases together with Signing Time and Duration To Fulfill.
The Deals you make with groups have an effect of group lasting until deal is fulfiled. Since you are not the only one to make deals with groups ... some will have deals with other players (or a God – to allow enormous life span of religions without other factors? Or leave it to the Religion model) this is a one way to encourage froming of a Group or lasting of it. To encourage the forming - make a law aiming at some percent of population(note the distinction between percentages and Groups again. Groups are self aware). To encourage the lasting – sign a Deal.
THE SCREENS AND LEVELS
There will be different levels of player interaction – 3 the being best number: Simple, Normal and Complex. Each level giving more options for fine tuning. The duration of the game both with its complexity (difficulty) would be determined by chosing level of model access. Each model should have independent lock ability to allow playing with Complex Military (for more of a wargame feel) or Complex Economy (for more of manager flavour) or all of them (micromanaging hell).
The main screen to allow for player to interact with his population is the Groups Screen. The other screens are for showing Model statistics. All group interaction should be displayed and done in Group Screen.
THE X(4 FOR NOW) MODELS
Model is a set of algorithms describing a specific field.
Economy, Religion, Race, Nationality. Characteristics Classes are managed by Models.
These would take care population has Percentages well divided. Each needs a pie chart(s) to display the percent of people belonging to particular characteristics. Race needs to show how many Blacks are there, the Economy displays and updates the number of workers in different areas etc. They also take care of their area in Tech development and update groups with Tech discoveries – forming new percentages, forming new groups from percentages and making them available in Group screen, assigning them population and dissolving of Groups based on that particular Model. They are responsible for some of Dynamic Group Births and provide data for Group algorithms (Group model?) to decide the other other part – Dynamic Group Deaths.
Problems you encounter with a Group in particular CC will have effects described by that Model. This means that your Negotiations with a Group will have some extra options depending on the CC it is in. Also, the level of unhapiness affecting your civ will be different for different areas. Disorders in Work CC based Group may cost you much production (strikes), while in Nationality may not (demonstrations demanding action etc). The percentage of people belonging to a group is strictly determined so Production penalties can be easily calculated.
HOW DOES IT WORK – POSSIBILITIES
This system allows you to have Dynamically Created Groups that will respond to actual situation in your civ. Your instruments in dealing with Groups are many and you will use some or all on particular groups. You will learn that taxation is your strongest weapon which you will use mostly to discriminate people by work, taxing work areas differently. If you wish, you may tax religions differently, or races – groups will form there and give you opposition on everything you do. What government does all the time is discriminating people or dealing with existing differences in them.
HISTORICAL EXAMPLES AND OVERSIMPLIFICATION
What can not be described with this system? Quite a few things, so lets get started:
Woman rights movements from obvious reasons. Just kidding, the reason is we should not go as deep as having to calculate family frictions, patriarhalism levels and other important factors needed to determine the size of sex based group – a group that only was needed in one period in real history (1930es) and never again (or before).
Small groups based around small ideas: The Greenpeace, The Amnesty International, The Vegeterians etc. The population characteristics were chosen based on history – the question was: What made people fight other people, what made people fight government. In the period of last 100 years things emerged which have not been there in history: Political Parties, Ecology Movements, Student Population. Today some of these groups have a large sum of members (and power arising from that). But a group needs to have an «opposite» group to define it and most of these dont. Big part of them does not have members that are willing to fight to death against an «opposite» group – they lack cohesion to call them a group. Would Pacifists fight Militarists? Also there are so many of these that it does not make sence to implement them. Some may need to be included if game is to have long span into modernity and future – but then group forming criteria I was writing about earlier needs to be taken into consideration.
Now the questions arising are: can we have French Revolution with this? How about the Russian ones? World Wars? Riots, Coups, Liberation Movements ... Crusades.
Heh, we can not have all. Some are disqualified simply because they are not very important besides being interesting. Others have occured only once in history. I have a strong oppinion that most things that occured only once in history should not be implemented.
What we need to do is EXTRACT ALGORITHMS and decouple them from their historical data. So a Revolution Algorithm will take into account groups conflicting each other, their level of hate, tech level and government decisions. It will not have anything about France or year 1789 A.D. or Louis YII or Jacobists etc etc.
In the process we will need to not only simplify but oversimplify some aspects. Good example is economy – we will not make a stock market simulation, nor will there be included every trade good in the world.
CONCLUDED
I hope we can continue to develop other Models independently better if we have something like this decided. By having groups forming against external pressure we can have the same population, the population of our Civ group around Belief, Race and others, as need arises in a given history moment. This would help us solve «The Japanese Problem» we are having now. In Japan, as you may know, there are X% of ****oists, Y% of Budists, Z% of Christians, Q% of Pagans, all of them adding up to some 140 percent of population.
Edit: indentation
[This message has been edited by VetLegion (edited January 05, 2001).]
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