New social model. Feedback wanted

[Lord God Jinnai]

Right now Richard's working on the revised tech model before he sends it back to me, but the way we have it is that all cultures will start out with some time of basic religion (ancestalism, nature worship, etc). Religion or Philosophy will be a basic tech and as a culture andvances in that tech they understand more about religion and philosophy pertaining to their culture and will advance in that direction. FE an eastern religion philosophy will advance in a diff direction than western type. Also just because u gain the advance doesn't mean it is always implimented in a religion, it is more of a new idea that starts out (atleast IMO) rather small, though can become main religion later on. (Christianity vs. various pagan religions of Europe). When a more advanced religion come in contact with a lesser advanced one, it doesn't ness. replace the older one, but ideas from the new one are absorbed into both of them, moreso into the lesser advanced ones. Note than many eastern and western religions will be on the same scale as far as having minimum requirements for those religions so as to not be biased and say Christianity is more advanced than Budhism type deal. Also when a new religion is discovered that's more advanced than urs, just like other techs u'll learn from it and advance some in ur cultures religious concept, however not equal to theirs, just like other techs. FE say there Monotheistic religion is at 40% (this measures the concepts, philosophical advancement, rituals, doctrine, etc) and ur religion is a polytheistic religion at 25% and 30% is required for monotheism to be understood. Well after a few turns ur rating goes up to say 32% do in large part to this new religion. That doesn't mean ur religion is now monorheistic, however IMO a small splinter group of ur religion has formed with a basic monotheistic belief, prob similar to Native Americans "Great Father" belief of the most powerful spirit ruling over lesser ones or a Hinduistic type where all the deities are simply representations of the main god.

I know there's some details to be worked out, but in general that's the idea and like i said the core of religion will still be handled here, the main reason it is even being handled in tech model is that some advancements in other techs require advancement of certain level in religion.

[Henrique Duarte]

Nomadic cultures

I haven´t seen it discussed anywhere. I think that every culture/province should have a nomadic value (a percentage of pop with a nomadic way of life). I think this is important, specially to simulate the so called "barbarian/mongolian invasions" and culture migration behaviour frequently seen in ancient times. It could allow for massive flight of population in face of a foe and for migrations/invasions of richer regions in time of need.

This "nomadic" value would decrease/increase according to rise/fall of agriculture and urbanization.

Appearence of strong charismatic leader would make a strong difference in the capacity of a nomadic culture to mobilize a "horde" and invade neighbours.

Also nomadic cultures should have particular social/cultural characteristics (strong clan/tribal relations, frequent feuding, fanatism? etc)

It would also add some breathing space to backward civs that weren´t able to catch up with more advance cultures because they could allways flee and could, on occasion, raise huge armies and start invasions (they should allways have one of the - character / religious / economic need - reasons to do so)

hope to ear your opinions

[Henrique Duarte]

By the way just read the beggining of Rodrigo´s text about the history of warfare...discusses tech development and nomadic-sedentary cultures...makes lots of points on importance of nomadism :-)

[Mark_Everson]

Henrique:

I think the Duke in charge is long gone... at least I haven't heard from him in quite some time. Nomadic civs are in the plan. The way I had thought we could handle them is for them to be unit-based instead of terrain based like the farming civs. To my mind there would be two types of units, military units, and everybody else in the society. Normally the two would stay together. However in some circumstances the military unit could "leave base" to raid or undertake other activity. I'm not sure how exactly we would have them be forced to move around as true pastoralists. But I'm sure we could come up with something that would simulate areas being grazed to their limit, or moving between wintering and summer areas.

[Henrique Duarte]

Mark

Squares will be 100Km wide isn´t it? turns in ancient times will be several years long right?
This way I think that nomadic population should be a fixed feature of the square.
Certain events, either natural or player triggered, should generate raiding hordes or migrant groups which would wallways be a % of the sqaure(s)/province nomadic population.
Examples of such events would be famine, enemy invasion (if attacked the population would withdraw to other "pastures"), charismatic leader raising an horde etc...

[Lord God Jinnai]

I was very bored and was looking over the social model as it stands now and found some things i think need reworking.

Mixing: I know the idea is to not overload the CPU, but i think the way it currently is doesn't allow for a true sense of cultural mixing.

Here's the modifications i propose. There is a civ with 3 cultures A, B and C.

Culture A mixes with culture B (reguardless of how far apart they are) and forms Sub-Culture AB. Culture AB is inbetween statwise of A and B, but not ness the middle.

As a sub-culture, AB cannot mix with any other culture. As AB grows in % A and B decrease. When AB reachs a certain percentage, say 10% it is considered a Race (as well as a sub-race of A and B).

As a Race, it can mix with other races. So there could be ABA, ABB, ABC now. A and B will still mix though.

Lets say B wasn't as big as A and B disappeared before A did. Well then AB would still be a race and allow to continue normally. ABA since AB and A exist would also be unaffected, as also ABC. However, ABB, if it hasn't reached the "Race" threshold point will eventually die. It will decrease at say .5-1% each turn (barring other factors such as racial cleansing) until it is no more. This allows for the acutal number to increase, but the precentage will still slide. This would help eliminate the over production of cultures.

Also once a sub-race has reached the "Race" threshold, even if it dips below that it is still considered a race.
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On religions right now it appears to be an all or nothing type deal for conversions. This is historically wrong in almost every sense and has prob never/extremly rarely happened. Also it doesn't deal with the fact that all major religions have sub-branches.

Sky awareness/nature awareness are the same thing, unless sky awareness refers to astonomy.

Also how will u be able to "ban" religions when they use arbitrary models. Say i wanted to ban a particular religion that worships nature, but only that religion, not all.
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The use of metagents is a good idea, however it should be used carefully. FE a civ goes to war and is occupied by an ememy. There would generally be three types of people in a certain category i will be using, agrresiveness. There will be very agressive (extremists), moderates and pasafists. Even if all other things are the same, u can't group the pasafists with the extremists for use in "throwing off" the outside rule.

[Richard Bruns]

I just posted a proposal on the ecology thread that involves the social model, and I'd like feedback on the social and cultural aspects of that idea. I think that the PIOC and PIB values would be a good way for the social model to influence the way things are done in the civ, but I haven't studied the social model so I don't know exactly how it would work.