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**manurein** · September 10, 1999, 05:26

(suite of the last post)

VII. Interface :

Most of this social model is hidden mechanics that will allow clash to simulate the population of a civ in Clash ; many of the interactions between the player and this model will occur through other models (for example, if an agent atkes an action which is civil war or something like that, then the military model will handle the resolution of the battles and the war).
However, if the player ahd no interactions at all with the social model itself, this model would be quite useless.
Interactions between the player and this model have two ways :
- how the player is notified of what happens in his civ regarding the social events : this means that when an action is taken by an agent, or when special conditions arise, the ruler must be notified. There may be two kinds of notification : a simple information, telling the player that something happens but that he may just let his governor handle the case, or that there is quite nothing to do. These kind of notifications will be listed in a " newspaper " that will appear at the beginning of each turn. IMO, this newspaper should present tiltes, that the ruler reads. If he finds a title relating something, he may " read " the article by clicking on the title ; he then would be given more detailed informations on this particular event. At this point, there should be a hot-key allowing him to access directly the interface allowing to take actions in response to this event if he wants to. IMO this newspaper should be used for everything, not only the social model. There may be several parts, or themes in he newspaper, for example " International ", " Our country ", " Politics ", " Economics ", " Science " … That would allow the player to focus itsattention on what he's most intersted in. There is another kind of notification, when the event is important enough for the player to focus its attention on it if he dont want to be in bad trouble. In these cases, I propose that a window pops up, showing an advisor (in our case, that would the advisor for internal affairs or some thing like that), which would give very detailed informations on the event, including why it happened and what were its results, and invinting the ruler to take a decision to solve the problem. If we achieve a good AI enough, there may also be an advice from the advisor, or eventually a propositon of action that the ruler may accept by just clicking on an " OK " button, or override by accessing the corresponding interface and taking another decision.

More genrally, I think that we could achieve a system which is able to present to the player exactly the bit of interface he needs to take a decision regarding a given event. This may mean that we build a system able to generate dynamically the interface. This may be a bit difficult, but if we can achieve it, I'm sure it would be a great tool, and moreover an intersting step in interface design for this kind of games.

- In the other way, the player must have means to act on its people and the social model. IMO, he must not be able to directly manipulate figures . With this, I mean the player will never change the value of an attribute of an agent. Rater than that, he may take decisions that may have an effect on the way its people behave ; if the ruler knows its paople, and is wise, he may achieve what he wants. If he doesn't know its people, he may achieve an effect inverse of what he intended to do. The ruler has many tools to act on the social model. First if them is the set of laws/decrees he can take. Among them are the laws that give a legal status to groups of population. For example, there may be some rules making a religion the official religions ; some rules tolerating or prohibiting some or all of its religion … Same for races, nationalities … Also, I think the ruler may be able to choose race, religion and nationality of the governors of the provinces, which would have a direct effect on how the people see the ruler and their governor in this province, and then how they react to different events. More over, there may be a " propaganda " system of some sort, allowing for example the ruler to push its people in a nationalist mood to prepare a war. Also, we can admit that the level of philo education has huge effets on many parameters. For example, a population with high philo education will tend to see its agressivness level lower, as well as its provincialism/nationalism level ; moreover, it will make transition between primitiv and modern religion easier, the modern religions having some intersting efects (like a high Books level that helps tech research in some important fields) … The ruler has direct control on this by deciding what he will spend on education, and how this education will be oriented (towards tech or towards philo).
However, any decision taken by the ruler will have an impact on the social model, and a wise ruler will be aware of that, which will give him hige advantages (if your are not supported by your people, it will be very difficult to achieve the strategic decisions you take, then winning the game will be a nightmare …)

Settings and initialization :
There are several points here. First is, how does a player chosse the characteristics of its people before the game ? Second is, how do we achieve to build a realistic repartition of the people in the world ?

The second point is quite important. IMO, two groups of people that are geographically nera from each other, should also haves similar races. This is realsit, but this also will prevent the number of races to become too huge and unhandleable. Ther may also be the salme raesonning concerning the attributes if the agents, the religions etc.
So we must have a sytem that is able to put the people in the world in a coherezt manner, just like we have a quite realsitic model for building the physical world.

On the settings of the player, I once again think that the figures should be hidden from the player. Rather than choosing a civ with attribute Agressivness with value 75 fe, I propose another system : the player reads, then chooses the " founding myth " of its civ. This founding myth would tell how that civ has been created, and maybe some of its early myths. Through reading this, the player would have clued on how his people is oriented etc… Through this choice, the game system would set the attributes of the primitive religion that civ begins with, and set the attributes of the agents in its original, capital province. If the stories are told correctly, we could set the values for provincialism, agressivness, athoriy acceptance etc .. as well as the values of the attributes of the religion (in the beginning, there is one and only one religion for each civ. Since they are primitive religions, they are unique to a civ. The modern religions will be a lot less numerous and exist in different civs, but they will appear later in the game.
I propose another choice for the player, which is the age of its civ. It would give the values of paramters like social rigidity and traditionalism, and eventually some initial settings for the government model, like the compostion of the classes, their political power, the anti/pro statuses …

Then, the model would use this information (and the same information for the other players in a MP game) to place the populations on the world, respecting some rules I quoted before.

VIII. Side ideas :

There are some side ideas, that are not directly a part of the social model, but that are linked to it and have not been evoked previoulsy.
- I propose a kind of " wonders " system. This is not a system comparible to the Wonders of Civ2 ; actually, it is an idea I've seen on the Civ3 suggestion forum, that I have adapated to Clash. The idea is to allow the ruler to build " special " structures, that are mainly real buildings (no " Cure for Cancer " wonder), that are not forecasted by the game but rather shaped by the player, and that effects on different models of Clash depending on the type of structure that is built ; in no way, a wonder is unique.
Actually, a wonder is an architectural structure that building is decided by the ruler (and the the economic model), and that is a really sepcial construction. It takes extra esources to be built, but one it is built it apperas on the map, and it gives advantages to its owner. There may be many kinds of wonders. For example, it may be a great temple. The size of the temple is decided by the ruler (and thus the extra resources it recquires, eventuallly the time it takes to be built). Once it is built, the people will enjoy it, giving more power to the RC, giving more faith to the people. Also, the province that holds it will see its rate for ppurpose of migration increase. Over time, the effect of a wonder may lower (when the people are less influenced by religion, the great temple will be of less importance) ; also, a wonder may have economic effects, such as favoring tourism in this province. There may also be another effect : if there is a tech called " archeology ", then an ancient wonder that has no more effect could be rediscovered and generate trade in modern times, through tourism.
The wonders may be of many kind : military, for example there maybe a great wall, but this time a " real " one, which is drawn on the map by the player, and then acts as a wall for the armies trying to going through. This wall would have effect as long as powerful bombardment weapons (like cannons and later artillery) are not used. There may be purely decorativ wonders, like fe an Eiffel Tower, that would mainly enhance the pride of the people (and thus their nationalism). There maybe political wonders, like a fabulous palace for the ruler, which may have effects both on the people (nationalism) and on the foreign kings who visit the palace … There maybe economical wonders, like a giant middle-age market, that would appeal marchants from allover the known world, and gretly enhance the economy in this province …
So, to sum-up, each wonder would have its own effect, depending on what it is ; and each wonder, whatever it is, would have an effect on the immigration sub-model and on the economic model. Each wonder would see its effect disappear when some conditions are reached. Then, through the archeology tech, it may be rediscovered and become an economic bonus. This may be very intersting, cause it could produce some effects like a country with many archeology sites that sees its economy boost thanks to tourism from a certain point (like is the case for Italy, fe).

Ok, let's stop this for now. What i have built is a kind of framework, which IMO expandable enough for us to put what we need in it. Particularly, what I have to do now is to design some events and the associated decision trrees and actions ; also, it would be very intersting that the people who are in charge of another model tell me what events their model may generate (for example, unrest event in the government model ; similarly, the economic model could trigger a famine event …), and how they see the link between their model and the social model (for example, what kind of inputs from this model does the military model recquire, concerning fe the motivation of the troops etc …)

Lets just add a short listing of what I need from other model dukes :
- a list of events taht may be generated by their model. For a first step, I dont need detailed events with the whole decision tree etc. All I need is the name of the event with a short description, eventually its category, and eventually the actions that it may triggered ;
- a list of the datas from their model that may be used as a part of an agent's context, at the province level ;
- a list of datas coming from the social model that may be used by their model to modify its behaviour according to the people's culture.

An example of that is the economic model :
- events : starvation, economic crisis or economic boom. These events IMO should have class category, since it's always the lower classes that suffer the most from bad economic conditions ;
- datas for context : Mark proposed to use food per capita and income per capita at the province level to complete the economic part of the agent's context ; he also proposed to use a ratio between UC and LC income as an important part of the context (I agree fully on this point).
- Datas that may be used by the economic model as input are, for example : tech education (for high tech production centers output) ; traditionalism (for low tech and food production output) ; social rigidity and authority acceptance (for general response to ruler's orders in the economic field) … Any other ideas ?

**manurein** · September 11, 1999, 00:22

Here are the details of the demographic sub-model :

Demographic submodel :

RA = mean Reproduction Age (its the length of a generation
BR = Birth Rate (number of children over a generation, continuous until death or age 50)
DR = Death at birth Rate
LE = Life expectancy
P = total Population

Dy = Number of death in a year = 1/LE

Bg = number of birth in a generation = (P/2) * BR * (1 - DR)
By = number of birth in a year = BR /G

Then :
PGy = Population Growth in a year = By - Dy (may be negative)

Just multiply that by the length of a turn in years and you have the population growth or decrease.
Add the effects of the military model (when an army is hired, I assume that the people are added to the army (and to the MC) and are deleted from the agents they come from. This allows to simulate the effects on economy of their absence, and the effects of demographics when they are outsude the province).
Add the effects of the migration sub model.

RA depends on family shape, on philo education, on traditionalism, on Books (religions), on economic datas.
BR depends on availability of contraception, on familial shape, on traditionalism, on economic datas.
DR depends on hygiena and on health level (which depends on available techs and on foundings in this field).
LE the same.

And some other precisions :

Comupting repartition :

The social model recquires quite heavy computings each turn, because in every province, the state of every agent is updated each turn, and the demographic, religious conversion, migration and mixing subb-models also recquire many computings each turn.
Beside this, some computings must be achieved each turn to treat the events. Those compuitings have to be made between the turns, because most of the events will be generated at the end of a turn when the player validates its orders, and because the reations of the agents have to be presented to the player at the beginning of the next turn.
Anyway, there will be many other computings from other models that will occur at this time, and the overall computing time between the turns has to be as short as possible.
This is why I propose to make all the computings that are not reactions to events during the turn of the player, in background. Usually, when a player is giving orders, taking informations, reading news … the CPU will not really have a lot of work, so it should be available to conduct some background computings.

**manurein** · September 11, 1999, 02:33

One other remark :
to stremline the computings, we may add rules about the rate of computins for attribute evolution. For example, we may decide that the influence exerced by religion on an agent's attributes is calculated eveery 5 turns.

This will have to be play tested, as many other things.

**Mark_Everson** · September 11, 1999, 15:28

Manu:

I've given your model proposal a thorough read-through and think you have made significiant progress in streamlining it. It makes a Huge number of things possible, and hopefully we can cope with the complexity! I like what you have done working
on the scalability of the model, and think the calculations are probably now reasonably within the scope of what we can do. Probably we need some further calculational simplifications as I note below. Of course, only real testing will tell for sure....

What do Others Think? Speak Up!

Here are some further thoughts...

III.4. Agents : I don't see insularity, or a number that says a culture is averse to merging with another. Some cultures appear to me to be malleable and willing to accept behavioral patterns from outside cultures, while others don't. Is this supposed to be in traditionalism? Since I don't think they're the same thing.

III.6. Sub models : You say "- mixing sub-model, which defines how races mix and fusion". In my opinion the mixing of cultures is even more important than that of races for modeling the world. Are you using race as a shorthand for physical appearance plus culture? If not, I think you need explicit cultural hybridization in the model.

In fact the whole model is race this, race that, which obscures the more important IMO cultural similarities or differences. Two people can be of an identical physical race, and because of their cultures, react completely differently to virtually all circumstances. Personally, I think that culture is Much more important than race, and would like to see that registered in the model. What do Others think?

III.6.2. Migrations: IMO Another big factor in whether people want to migrate to province X is whether there are Already people of the same type as those who are considering migrating.

VII. Interface : The newspaper idea is quite good, by think it needs to be handled carefully or it will require too much management by the player. I think the player needs a set of filters to apply to the newspaper stating whether they want to see particular headings, see whole articles on particular subjects, or not see anything at all in a particular area. Having to click on 14 little headings in the newspaper every turn to see what is going on would drive me insane.

Computational Load is somewhat troubling. I am especially concered about things that have to take place at turn end. There simply Can't be much of a delay here or players (esp. multiplayers) will get ticked off.

Do you have any ideas for trimming it down to give an alpha-1 implementation? That will also help in telling if the full model would be a cpu hog or not. Also were you planning on coding it, or do we need to look for someone?

Good Job

Mark

**manurein** · September 13, 1999, 08:08

Mark, a very quick answer, on the culture point only.

I recognise there may be a confusion, because of my former models.
We dont have any more a culture category in this model. Now, I assume that each agent represents a culture. This means that a culture i sunique to province/race/nationality/religion combo.
The mixing/fusion of cultures is then achieved when agents merge, because they share the same race/nationality/religion and are in the same province.
Like I outlined it, through the migration sub-model, provinces that are near each other will tend to see their agents converging with time : this will simulate culture convergence; we may add trade to this mechanics to help provinces that trade with each other to converge more quickly.
In fact, this new model is based around the culture, since agents ARE the culture.
Is that more clear?

**Lord God Jinnai** · September 13, 1999, 10:02

I've just recently visited this site and find Clash to be quite intersting....I'd like to go ahead and put in some input though.

On religions how are u dealing with new religions that emerge such as Christinanity and Buddhism from older religions? Also I've read as far as I can tell you have two types, monotheism and polytheism...I'm just wondering what about religions that don't have nessarily a "god" or more than one such as Buddhism, Confuscianism and Taoism for example. Many of these have spiritual matters, but not nessasily any devine personification.

**manurein** · September 13, 1999, 18:36

Ok, lets try to build a simple exemple :

Lets call the province Arvern.
Lets put the following agents in Arvern :
Agent 1 : nationality N1; race Ra1; religion Re1; Pop P1 : 1000.
Agent 2 : N1, Ra2, Re1; P2 : 250;
Agent 3 : N2, Ra2, Re1; P3 : 150.
Agent 4 : N1, Ra1, Re2, P4 : 100.

Arvern is a province with a major group a population of nationality N1 and race Ra1. NN1 and Ra1 re the main race and nationality of the civ (the natural, or original race and the official nationality). This group is splitted into 2 agents by religion : Re1 is the dominant, lets put official religion of the civ. Re2 is anther religion. It may have come from a previous migration coming from antoher place. The agents bringing this religion were probably from a different race, which has probably been absorved in the dominant Ra1 through the mixing submodel (long duration).
The low population of agent 4 indicates that it is probably being absorbed by the dominant religion through religious conversions.
Together, agents 1 and 4 represent about 70% of the population of Arvern.

The rest of the population is composed with two agents of race Ra2. They are split by nationality. Both agents arrived together, they are progressively given nationality N1, so they are split between those that already have the nationality, and those that are still waiting.

Distance between race Ra1 and Ra2 is small. Relationship between both are generally good, since they share the same religion and their races are very near each other. Also, there must not have been previous trouble between N1 and N2 cause it would have worse the relationship.
Relationship between each nationality, race, religion and class is marked by a number between 1 and 100. It may be province or civ level based.

Besides this, each agent has its own culture, which the set of attributes defined in the model (we may add some others like Mark suggested) : agressivness, social rigidity, traditionalism, insularism, nationalism, provincialism, tech education, philo education, authority acceptance. They have values based on the original agent, their history, their religion, and the fusions of culture that may occur when two agents are mixed after :
- a migration (agents coming from neighbouring provinces may have migrated in arvern. They have their own culture, even if they have the same race, nationality and religion as agent 1. They have been absorbed by agent 1, and the resulting agent had attributes that were :
- for each attribute :
(P1 pop of agent 1, Pm pop of migrating agent)
((P1 * attribute) + (Pm * attribute)) / (P1 + )Pm
- an agent from antoher nationality taken an agents nationality. It is absorbed the same way.
- two races merging. Attributes of the resulting agent works the same way.

So, how does all this work?
Each time there is an event, it may have one of the following category :
(each time agents are grouped to take actions, the attributes of the resulting agent are calculated with the above formula)
- nationality : this time, agents 1 ,2 and 4 of nationality N1 will be grouped and act together. Lets say that the event is : military incident between the two nations.
The relationship between the N1 and N2 is quite good, so there may be few reactions, especially if nationalism and agressivness are not two high. If both groups have few reactions, relationship will remauin quite good, and in reaction to their action, the agents' attributes involved in this action will be very slightly modified (by 0.5 over 100, maybe) in a way or another. Since agents of both nationalities will have taken similar actions, these attributes (nationality, agressivness) will be modified the same way.
- religion : agents 1, 2, 3 are grouped. Agent 4 is alone. It works the same way. Even if the religions fight each other, as they willdo the same thing, the attributes involved in this will be modified the same way.
- race : agents 1 and 4 will ve grouped; agents 2 and 3 will be grouped.
- class : all agents are grouped into 6 agents; each of these agent represent a class of the gov model; the pop for each class is given by a table at the province level. Since agent from all nationalities, races and religions are grouped and act together, their attributes evolve the same way.

As you see, actually each time agents are in a same place, their attributes tend to converge through processes of migration, mixing and change of nationality. Also, when they react to actions, there attributes also tend to evovle the same way. Then, because agents attributes represent the agents' culture, cultures mix and fusion and converge quite every turn.

I'm afraid its not very clear, its very late ...

**Mark_Everson** · September 13, 1999, 20:03

Manu:

Great! Thanks for the example. It helps a lot, and fortunately it is close to what I thought you were doing . Now we're back to my original question...

In III.6. Sub models : In the mixing sub-models then, I think you should explicitly state culture as one of the things that mix. That's what threw me off, seeing just demographics, race and religion listed.

**Mark_Everson** · September 14, 1999, 00:06

Manu:

I think I see what you're saying. But I have before on this topic, only to find out I was wrong . Can you work out an example of a province with several agents. The prov should have different racial, national, and religious types so people can see exactly what a province's agents could look like. I think an example would be an immense help.

Thanks,

Mark

**Lord God Jinnai** · September 15, 1999, 00:41

I think it might be interesting to impliment advisors who purposefully tell false information if they want to try and overthow the ruler. There'd be a way to tell they were lying such as the way they tell it or having the possibility of a talking with a local citizen in an area of the kingdom or having the use of the internal spy implementation to also check up on your advisors.

The first one shouldn't be too difficult to do since there could be a loyalty base (0-100) for example and based on that they'll be more willing to give you correct information and advice as well as more detailed (those with 100 will be more willing to go out of their way to help you and the kingdom than someone with 70). What they say should have some randomness to it. I played a game called Darklands and its sometimes boring in the fact that i know based on what they say what the outcome will be since statement a is always outcome a and statement b and c are always outcome b...There should be more ways of saying it like 5 ot 6 and maybe 1 or 2 that are general statements that u really can't tell since they'd overlap some other statement areas.

The second would be similar to an advisor except he'd never tell you a lie (although he may be vague since he'd not want his head chopped off!) Also he'd know a lot about his province or city but not of the civ. Since he'd not be trying for the throne (most likely) he'd be more willing to tell you if the people are upset and ready to revolt unless u take some actions to correct the situation.

As far the last one is concerned, u could have your network of spys operate and check up on your advisors as well as your population in general...the problem with this is what if your intelligence advisor is the one who's corrupt? Well I do have somewhat of an answer for this. You could have 1 person who acts as a secrect operative to spy on your advisors alone to check them out...he'd be loyal (you can figure out why money, debt of honor, special privlages, a secret order of those who've sworn fealty to you, etc...) the point is you CAN count on him to tell you the truth.

I'd not think all these would need to be implimented, just one.

**Mark_Everson** · September 16, 1999, 20:32

LGJ:

Its a good idea, but I think it conflicts directly with one of our main objectives... to reduce micromanagement. If you can't trust underlings to do something, or tell you the truth then you always need to check up on them. Sounds like it could Possibly be an option the player could use with the characters model. We already do have some of this stuff in there. Check out the Characters II thread.

**Lord God Jinnai** · September 16, 1999, 23:47

The players could choose whether or not to use the option when starting up. those that want more challenging and/or more realisic game would choose to, while the others wouldn't.

**manurein** · September 25, 1999, 00:11

I've written a paper giving details on the vents used by the social model.

You can consult it at this adress :

http://people.mw.mediaone.net/markeverson/events.htm

Please comment.
[This message has been edited by manurein (edited September 24, 1999).]

**Lord God Jinnai** · September 29, 1999, 02:20

Finnaly got a chance to take more than a passing glance at your event listing.

First off it is really good and covers most of the ground as far as I can tell.

There are some things I could see improv or atleast you could clarrify for me:

1> An economic boom would also affect migration, although oppsosite of a crisis.
2> In the battles what about a stalemate...Often many battles ending like this, or atleast with no immediatly clear victor.
3> What is diffused techs? Is that techs already learned and being attempting to be incorperated?
4> Also what about an event for the loss of tech?
5> I also notice you have a lot of unrest do to religion, race and political situation...what about cultural whwre none of the former situations may be a major factor.

Announcement

New social model. Feedback wanted

New social model. Feedback wanted

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