Beast Prototype v0.01 -- Test Cases (testers needed)

[F_Smith]

I should have been asking for help via 'Test Cases' all along. My mistake. Maybe this will grease the wheels of develoment.

I'll start simple, small, to see if I'm making sense:

Beastie

* * * *

Test Case 1: The Coalition Govt Policy System

Raising taxes.

[*]Select 'edit Civilization' from the 'Edit Objects' pulldown menu.
[*]Select 'Hill People' to edit.
[*]Click the 'Edit Ruler Preferences' button.
[*]Tell King Mung to raise taxes by 10%.
[*]Follow the above steps to edit the 'Town People'.
[*]Tell Mayor Kellog he wishes to raise taxes by 1%
[*]Click the 'One Turn' button. Read the turn's events.
[*]Go back and look at Political Structures for each govt, and analyze results.
[*]Now play with changing tax rates up or down as various rulers.[/list]

That is a simplified example of a 'coalition' govt approach. All groups with power vote either yea or nay, depending on
any variables necessary.

For the sake of this demonstration,


[*]The People always favor tax cuts[*]The People are unhappy about but will not stop small tax increases (below 3%).[*]The People will fight any increases higher than 3% a year.[*]Business *always* fights an increase.[/list]

I thought about making religion always favor a tax increase . . . didn't know.

* * * *

Test Case 2: The 'Negotiated' Policy System

Stop the Hatred


[*]Select 'edit Civilization' from the 'Edit Objects' pulldown menu.
[*]Select 'Hill People' to edit.
[*]Click the 'Edit Ruler Preferences' button.
[*]Note current ED level is 5.
[*]Tell King Mung to stop the hatred, and cut Ethnic Discrimination to 3.
[*]Click the 'One Turn' button. Read the turn's events.
[*]Go back and look at Political Structurs for each govt, and analyze results. Especially the 'Town People'.[/list]

That is a simplified example of a 'negotiated' govt approach. All groups' desires are 'averaged', weighted according to
their political power.

For the ED determination of each group, the formulae from the Govt Model were used, at least if I got them right:

people's ED choice = (1/(1+(5-(culture.getNationalism()/10)))) + ((100-culture.getEthnicTolerance())/10);
capital ED choice = (1/(1+(5-(culture.getNationalism()/10)))) + ((100-culture.getEthnicTolerance())/10);
religion's ED choice = (1/(1+(5-(state_religion.getNationalism()/10)))) + ((100-state_religion.getEthnicTolerance())/10);
warriors want a hard-coded 5, for the time-being.

* * * *

Please try both methods, and play with them. They will both work, but with very different feels. Should we use both?
Only one? Neither?

I've now built the structure for both, so will almost certainly retain both as options rather than throw it away. I'll finish putting the specific calculations in the rest of the policies tomorrow night, assuming there's no objections.
[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 21, 2000).]

[Richard Bruns]

I couldn't find the "Edit Ruler Preferences" button. Where is it hiding?

[axi]

In the "Civilisation Details" window, it is the large button below the brown area. Don't worry, it can happen to anybody.

[F_Smith]

I'm sorry,

I probably should have above added "click on the 'select civ' button" on the select civ dialog box, before 'click on ruler govt prefs button'.
[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 21, 2000).]

[Richard Bruns]

I don't like the tax system at all. It requires an excessive amount of micromanagement.

I had Sir Rogin of the Forest People try to change the tax rate. At the ruler's default power, the 2% change was accepted and the 3% change was rejected. At higher levels of ruler power, there was always some cutoff point that had to be found by trial and error.

I had to experiment a bit to find out what tax change should be passed. It took me several turns before I was able to change the tax rate. If a player in the game really needed to raise taxes as much as possible, what would happen? If I were in that situation, I would save the game and enter the tax rate. If it was rejected, I would keep reloading and trying again until the maximum tax increase was passed. That would create a very annoying game situation.

The problem with yes/no systems is that a very small difference in inputs can lead to a very big change in the game. Any system that has that attribute will invite, or even require, excessive micromanagement. This is especially true if the cutoff point can only be found by trial and error.

I liked the ED model a lot better. The change in input had a linear correlation to the change in the game. After a few trials, I knew what to expect when I entered a new value.

[F_Smith]

Richard:

You didn't have to experiment. That was defined, remember?

You can tell with one look at the political structure what you need to do. You're after 51%+ of the political support. If you have that as ruler, no more questions are necessary. You can force your will thru the govt. If not, then you must try and apease the others with political power (or one of the 'special' actions -- bribes, foul play, etc).

The people will accept under 3% tax increases, but will fight higher tax increases. So if you need their support, keep it under 3%. Business will never support you (in this simple version). But all you have to do is add up the votes.

And that break-off point for people is *always* 3%.

No experimentation necessary. One glance at the power structure, and you should know exactly what change you can do. I thought I was clear how that worked?

Plus, the ED actually does *not* have a linear change. You can not know, even after quite a lot of trial and error, how it will change. To lower the result to level 3, how much do you have to raise your request? To raise it 8 how much?

With the first method, you can answer this without testing. It'll always be the same.

The second method, you can't.

Would it be possible for you to try it again, now that you know that?

Just use both methods to try and achieve a certain level. Assume you need to get to a certain level of ED for some advance, or to prevent race riots, or something.

Also, I was wondering about the 'fun' factor, the 'feel' of each method. Do you feel like your're running a country?

[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 21, 2000).]

[F_Smith]

UPDATE

All the 'directly negotiated policies' have formula now. That's 'Slavery', 'Ethnic Discrimination', 'Religious Discrimination', 'Civil Rights', 'Foreign Policies'.

The equations are exactly as they are in the Govt model. I'll list them if need be. This is the 'default' govt policy system.

Next, I'll put in the option to allow you to use the 51% system.

[Mark_Everson]

I have had a chance to run the beast through its test cases. I'm glad to see that you are a good chunk of the way to providing a testbed for the government model as it is, and as it might be. Great Progress! Here are my thoughts so far...

First of all, I think the arguments expressed here that its "easy" to predict the outcome of a proposed change in government parameters one way, and hard in another, are specious. In the interface we can easily calculate what the range of any parameter is that the player can set purely at their own discretion. It's just simple math for either proposed approach! I would do this by using the green-yellow-red coding as I suggested in the government thread earlier today. In terms of both the negotiated policy and the 51% approach, the green range would be where the player through changing settings could achieve any value in that range without extraordinary actions. The yellow range would indicate that either some small level of extraordinary actions are required, or that the people are starting to get pissed off. And red would show that attempting to push the setting to that level would require significant actions and risks.

I think the important point here is that we should skip what the setting is in terms of numbers that the player actually puts in. What the player is interested in is the Results of the process. That seems to me to be the way we should approach the interface. All I want to know as the player is whether I can achieve a tax rate of 45% or not, and what the trade-offs might be. I don't really care if I have to nominally "vote for" 55% to get it or not. This is true for both of the proposed systems as far as I can see.

So although I used both methods to change settings, I don't consider there is enough information in the beast yet to compare the two approaches in terms of either fun or realism. One thing that really bothers me about the 51% approach is that once the ruler has more than 50% power, the ruler can do absolutely anything. This seems pretty silly and arbitrary to me. This is a big extremely nonlinear effect in the system. When I have 49% power there are very real constraints on what I can do, but with 51% power there are no constraints! But as I said above, it's really too early to tell anything definitive IMO between the two systems. The nonlinear thing I talk of above is just one thing that really bothered me.

The only other thing I really noticed was the thing about that tax increases below 3% always pass... so it seems to me then that a ruler with very small power can always get to 100% tax rate if they do it in small enough increments. I did not verify this because I did not want to go through the whole routine of changing things 50 times to demonstrate it. But if that is how it works it shouldn't stay that way as far as I'm concerned.

All the minor complaints aside, this is clearly a very valuable tool, and very soon it will be providing us answers on a lot of important issues. Thanks F. Smith for all the work you've put into this!

[F_Smith]

Actually, at least from playing with the beast, I found it very difficult, if not impossible, to predict how much the final value would raise when I raised a 'preference'. While using the 51% system, I was able to control things far easier.

That's exactly why I think that playtesting will rule this out. But I'll wait for everyone else's opinion, once ya'll have use it as much as I have. Maybe it's just me.

And personally, I can't stand when you have to use unreal numbers to 'fudge' things, like setting your desired tax rate at 45% just to get the 35% you wanted. It jars me out of the game world. Again, maybe it's just me.

The ruler with 51%+ of the power still has to worry about passing unpopular laws. But only 'dictatorships' or 'kingdoms' with supreme rulers would have a ruler with 51%+ of the power. I also like that you can give people 'minority' political power, to appease them, without ever actually giving them any actual say in the govt. Just like the real world . . .

Finally, no, in the 'finished' version with real equations the people will object to a tax rate that goes too high, depending on attritubtes. Those values I just came up with off the top of my head, since there were no equations already written.

[Mark_Everson]

Actually, my proposal (haven't thought about it a lot) would be that the player never Sees the highball numbers. All they know is that the govt as a whole could be moved to some parameter (FE ED) =40 from 35 without much trouble, but that 50 will create a fuss. and 60 would require a revolution...

Anyways, my position is still that we need to look at a system where the player sees the potential Final result before we can really compare the two approaches on an even playing field. Besides, I don't want to do the 51% calculation every time I want to fiddle with the government! So the fact that your calculation is much simpler than Rodrigo's really isn't relevant to me as a player.

Whichever method we use I just want to know what my latitude is in messing with the govt. Not have to do a calculation of any sort.

Just my opinions based on incomplete testing and analysis .

[Richard Bruns]

Chaos Theory Lesson #1:

A chaotic system is any system where small changes in the inputs lead to large changes in the outputs.

Chaos Theory Lesson #2:

Chaotic systems are difficult to deal with and it is almost impossible to predict the outcome without a lot of testing and iteration.

The 51% approach is dangerously chaotic. A few percentage points of support could mean the difference between the success or failure of an important policy. This will force the player to fine-tune and micromanage the inputs to get the desired result. And if the information changes every turn like it probably will, this management will have to be repeated every turn. I do not believe this would be good.

Aside from that consideration, I simply liked the negotiation system better. I liked the way it worked and I was comfortable using it. I was always able to get within .5 of my target value by altering the ruler preference.

I agree with Mark; the player should specify results. The slider thing is a good idea; it would serve as a guide to what results can be achieved and what cannot. I think that the negotiation approach easily lends itself to the slider method:

If the result can be achieved by simply altering the ruler preference, it is green. The player enters the desired value and the ruler preference is adjusted.

Otherwise, the slider shows shades of yellow or red, indicating the magnitude of actions required to get the result. If the player chooses one of thoise results, the actions are implemented automatically and the consequences are generated.

[F_Smith]

Mark:

I like that proposal. I'm not entirely sure how to implement it, but it sounds like it would completely ease the use of the negotiation system for the player.

Let me think about how to code it, tho -- any suggestions?

I hope there's room in Clash for both systems. I think they actually fit together nicely.

Ya'll like the negotiation process because it is hassle-free, would that be fair to say? There is no chance a policy will fail to pass, you don't have to pay attention to the specifics, only set the goals.

That is actually why I don't like it. I want a game that lets me run an Empire. I want the govt part alone to be a 'game within a game'.

I want a game in which I have to work to pass unpopular measures. I want to have to build coalitions. I want to send the secret police to blackmail support from that Religious leader who is opposing my 'religious tolerance' increase. I want to make bribes, arrest labor leaders, put the hit on that great General who wants to increase the army's politcal power!

I would also like the ability to turn this off.

Both systems should be usable, I think.

* * *

Richard:

'Chaos' system would not be entirely accurate, but you do point out a key difference.

The 51%+ method does introduce uncertainty, because it is intended as a game in and unto itself. A game within a game. Policies will not always pass. Sometimes they may fail by 1 vote.

Because it's a 'government' model.

If you don't want to deal with the politics of a govt, and just want to set govt policy numbers as inputs to equations, that option is the default one.

Only crazy people like me will ever turn the other option on!

[F_Smith]

Help!

I can't seem to find where ya'll decided about how you wanted 'tax rate' calculated. I'm about finished with the basic default policy turn logic, other than that.

Q. And about ideologies. Was there a consensus on that yet?

[Mark_Everson]

F. Smith

Coding streamlined negotiation idea... Basically though the safe limits would just be found by solving the equations using ruler values 0% and 100%. (Then we'd need to add in some effects from the riot model, since sometimes even a 'legitmate' ruler-set level will cause riots or worse.) Then the player knows immediately what the scope is for 'safe' action. I'd like to hear what Rodrigo thinks on it also. I may be missing a big flaw in my own idea!

On tax rate:

I can't find it Either! And I made the recent suggestion for how to handle it that Rodrigo agreed with. Anyway, for now we are going with something like tax rate 'votes' by the classes = SP +10% ; bounded by 100% obviously. The meaning of this is that the govt needs some revenue to handle internal affairs, bureaucracy and the army. The people are generally willing to part with 10% for that (obviously we might complicate the 10% part later). Beyond that, those who want Social Programs are generally willing to pay for them. So the aggregate is SP + 10%. The ruler can put in any level they like from 0-100% and then the result is the usual weighted average.

I hope Rodrigo corrects anything here that's wrong, but I am pretty sure that's what we agreed to.

For specifics on ideologies you will have to get the info from Rodrigo.

[roquijad]

I'm just answering here to the "help!" by F_Smith....

Tax Rate: What Mark says explains how in general we'd like to do it. The idea is yet very fresh, so I don't have any equations for it. I found a little problem with what Mark suggest for a calculation in his post (very easy to solve, tho), so my suggestion would be to just let it for the moment as it was originally in the model, that is, ruler's preferences becomes the official tax rate at once. When I have a more serious equation for TR I'll let you know.

About ideologies: Nothing to worry about. The way you're coding it (with the updated version (people's pol.power, capitalists pol.power, etc)) is the one to go.