Government Model v.2

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

I have put forward an idea for the govt player interface that I think is important and would like to hear your opinion on it. I put it in my post "posted August 21, 2000 21:00" in the Beast Prototype thread. If you could please read it and the subsequent discussion I'd appreciate it.

If it gains enough support I will try to transfer it over here.

Thanks,

Mark

[roquijad]

Yesterday I had an idea for an alternative method to set govt policies. Based on comments by F_Smith (he didn't like much the "negotiation procedure" of the model) and Axi's feelings about the "machiavelean ruler effect", I felt it was worthy to think about something else. The new proposed system is a "generalization" of one idea by Mark for the tax rate.

In order to let you all (even those who don't know the math in the model) comment this proposal and analyze if it's better or worse than the current system, I'll explain briefly what's good and bad with the current system:

The negotiation procedure (current system) takes all the desires for a given govt policy from the different social classes and mix them to produce a single output (the negotiated final value). In this mix, the greater political power a class has, the closer the final value is to what the class desired and vise versa. That's how all govt policies are managed.

What's good:
1)It's very simple in the mathematical side.

2)It isn't biased to any particular type of govt. The "negotiation" can be interpreted according to the regime because it's simply an interaction of units with power and desires.

3)It provides a lot of flexibility. Since the final negotiated value is a mix of others, the govt profile can take a lot of different forms, so we can have, FE, several democratic regimes with slight differences between them.

4)Most important, it makes social classes "active" (as well as reactive). In reactive-type models, computer-handled political entities can only react to what the player does, like producing riots if they don't like what the player is doing. With an active political entity, it doesn't have to wait for ruler intervention to make a change in the govt. It doesn't need the ruler to try to pass laws or any such thing to express itself. The class uses the power it posseses to make a change in the govt. If a class has power, this is what you'd expect.

What's bad:
1)The player is encouraged to put as his preferences other values than the ones he/she really wants. He/she "lies" to the game. If FE he/she wants a CivilRights policy of 45%, then probably would have to tell the interface he/she wants 15% in order to achieve it. This is the "machieavelean ruler effect" Axi has pointed out, and means the player is forced to take more extreme positions than he/she would. The player is like cheating here because he/she understands how the procedure works, but social classes cannot counterbalance this action because they're not as smart as the human is.

2)You don't know as a player what the final outcome is going to be. You put in values, but they're gonna be mixed with others (what the classes want) so you don't know what's gonna be at the end. Maybe this can be fun for some players, but the trial&error this system encourages may frustrate others. It's also important to note here that although in F_Smith's beast changes ocurr immediatedly (one turn), it's mandatory for realism that changes ocurr slowly in several turns, so players will see the effect of their decisions only after a while, making the trial&error strategy less effective. However, this problem can be solved if we add something like a "Political Advisor" who could tell the ruler what's going to happen. This is easily implementable.

It's hard to classify the following in good or bad. I consider it good, but...:
The negotiation procedure actually makes the ruler less powerful in more representative regimes. The model was meant to avoid the player having total control of govt policies in this situations for more realism. Therefore, in a regime with low ruler's pol.power, saying "I wanted to have a CivilRights level of 34% and the procedure gave me 75%" and then complaining for that is against the overall idea of the model. It has been a goal all along to throw away the ever-all-mighty-player approach one is used to in other games. Realism in this matter has been a must. I know Mark and Axi knew (and agreed) about this. I wonder about the rest...


So what's new? The "machiavelean ruler effect" has always bothered me, but I wasn't able to create another system capable of erradicating this without losing the good stuff of the system. On the other side, even though I don't like F_Smith's system based on votes (for the tax rate in the beast), I must admit it has one very nice characteristic: you know exactly what value the policy will take (given the change is approved), which makes you feel more in control of what's going on.

So what I came up with yesterday is a system where the mach. ruler effect doesn't exist anymore and where the player can manage his decisions more directly. All without losing the good things the current system has.

The proposal is this: For a given policy, the negotiation procedure is used normally, but the ruler is NOT counted. This means the negotiation takes place only between social classes. A negotiated value comes as the outcome. Instead of saying that the final negotiated value is the one to be implemented in the civ, we transform it into a range where the ruler has to choose a particular value. For example, if the negotiated value between classes is X, then we say classes have decided the policy value must lie in the range [X-d,X+d]. "d" is a value that depends on ruler's pol.power. The more despotic, the higher "d" is. The ruler now has to choose the exact value within the range. The value the player picks becomes the official govt policy.

What does this imply?
The interpretation is classes define like a global "framework" for govt policies. Within the framework the ruler can define policies precisely.

If the ruler has little pol.power, then he has few options (small range). A policy like CivilRight would have FE a range like [66%,71%], so mainly it's the rest classes that are deciding its value, which is correct and realistic. But if the ruler has a large pol.power, the negotiated value just becomes a lousy reference. CivilRights would have now FE a range like [23%,78%], so it's mainly a ruler's decision completely.

In this situation the player doesn't have to "lie" to the interface. The values he chooses are those he wants, at least those the regime allows him. If he's still not satisfied (his really desired value is outside the legal range) then he has two options: a)simply accept he's not all mighty and live with that. b)try to get more power becoming more despotic. Of course here we're dealing with legal actions. He in fact has more alternatives to get what he wants with some questionable actions.

Once the ruler doesn't have to lie, the mach.ruler effect disappears. And on the other side the player can see directly how his decisions take place instead of going through the negotiation process. (the two goals I was seeking with this proposal)

Does this idea sound better to using simply the negotiation procedure (with the ruler counted in)? I don't have personally an inclination to what's better, so I want to know if you guys consider this proposal interesting.

It's important to say, however, that the proposal only works for policies, but not for the political structure. Normally the negotiation procedure is used too to alter this structure of power, representing negotiation between actors to define how much power each should have. For the time being I can't provide with a solution for that part. The proposal here doesn't work for pol.power variables because if the ruler cannot participate in the negotiation, it will be way too easy to steal him his power (assuming classes want that, which is not necessarily true always, but it'll be of course common many cases). And this, of course, is not admisible!

Comments?

[roquijad]

I posted the above without realizing there were two posts asking me things. Sorry.
F_Smith: Yes, at the civ level.
Mark: I'll check it.

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

As you will soon figure out, your idea two posts above is very similar to the proposal I was trying to get you to look at . I think it is much better for the player than the way we were handling it.

The only diff is I would keep the ruler pref as you had them in the guts of the system so we can have a quick way to see if the ruler is more reactionary or more liberal than the govt as a whole.

[Richard Bruns]

I like Rodrigo's new system. It is realistic, has good math, and should work well and be fun to play. I do have a few questions/comments, however:

The range listed is the "safe" range, right? The ruler can choose any number in there without causing problems, and it would be represented on the slider as the green area.

But the ruler should be able to override the desires of the other classes using "foul play", martial law, or whatever. Choosing a policy outside the range would require such actions and would not be popular. These areas would be represented on the slider as yellow and red, depending on the negative consequences that would result from the action.

My view is that the players should be able to force anything if they are willing to deal with the consequences. Instead of "You can't do this" we should have "You can do this, but if you do everyone will hate you and there will be rioting in the streets."

[Lord God Jinnai]

OK I like the new sys rodrigo posted with two minor exceptions:
1> This realates to Rich's post: The ruler should be able to set the tax rate outside the area, but only on certain conditions, ie appropriate gov type and enough political power of his own. The diff is that anything outside would be red and anything iside would be yellow/green on mark's bar (if its really low variance we could even go beyond red to purple or black for very extreme proposals).

2> The variance seems not quite right to me. It seems the variance should also be not ness X-d thru X+d, but more based on the social classes deciding what it is. FE if a majority wants very low taxes then it might be more like X-d-p thru X+d-p where p is the political pressure put on by that class to keep the rates lower.

Now about why negotiations shouldn't always work: Generally i say they should, about 90-95% of the time, but nothing is guaranteed and the ruler shouldn't always have the luxury of knowing the policies will be settled for a medium.
FE its quite possible that 2 groups that are opposite extremes (ie 0 vs 100 on everything for this example) will not tolerate each others proposal. Take also the fact that say they are very fundimentalistic and won't budge to even close to a moderate solution (quite possible) and the other groups make up so small a percentage of political power that their voices aren't heard amist the other 2 groups (also quite possible) so no matter what there would be no compromise because neither group will agree perhaps to even meet with the other group. Such situations will if not already eventually lead into internal warfare, but if it isn't already no policy can be negotiated because neither side can stand the other and the other small groups are so small that anything they propose will be drowned out by the other two (which they might likely meet temporarily to make sure that such a proposal doesn't pass).

Also on the case of a rulership like japan i mentioned earlier, even if the ruler took extreme measures compared to what his current policies were, the people would almost not likely revolt because of their sence of community and their belief the ruler was divine and his word supreme and their were also no really potential 'leaders' to rally the people against the ruler.

[roquijad]

It seems the new proposal is gaining supporters... But, I had another idea! And I feel is better (maybe I'm in an innovative streak! )
I'll tell you about it, but first a few comments on what you all say above:

LGJ: I'm not gonna comment your points 1 and 2 because I'd prefer you all to look at my new idea (below). As for your thoughts about antagonistic parties negotiating policies, I think you have a good point there. I believe you're right when you say a very heterogeneous political arena can lead to a less effective govt when it comes to negotiate policies. To generalize your idea, I think what we can do is to measure how much diversity a govt has. This is easy to do. Then we use that measure and modify the time for achieving negotiated policies. The greater the diversity, the more game turns it takes to achieve final values. I think this would be a nice feature. Opposed visions would tend to "paralyze" the govt, but not completely, of course. How does it sound? What do the rest think?

Richard: I think we see things pretty much the same way regarding what the player can and cannot do, but there may be some slight differences of importance, so I'll be more precise in what I think: I consider very important to limit player's control over the govt according to his pol.power. I don't like the idea of "safe" and "unsafe" ranges where the ruler can impose govt values outside the legal framework facing risks. This is like saying the ruler is really all powerful all the time. This converts a govt just in a matter of how much risk you want to take, but not a matter of having or not the power to do things. That's not realistic IMO. The US president can't do a lot of things, FE. Many things are simply outside the reach of his power and they've nothing to do with how popular a decision would be or if the guy in charge has or not the nerves to take a risk.

A regime for me defines the limits of ruler's intervention. If the player wants to do things he's not entitled to, then he needs another regime with more power for himself. He may use Special Actions to get more power and THEN, with a new framework, take the decisions he couldn't in the past. So I'm seeing it as a two steps move. We're not saying to players "you can't have whatever you want for govt policies", but we're saying "if you want to impose your view, then FIRST you have to get yourself a dictatorship (of some sort)". Does this sound reasonable to you all?

Mark: I don't understand well your idea with colored slides. If you say it was similar to my proposal above, then... there isn't much to say!
Your comment about the need to know ruler's preferences to see if he's reactionary or not and, in general, knowing what he stands for, is very good. You're right. We really need that. Otherwise the concept of govt and ruler tend to become one and this shouldn't happen. The truth is my proposal in my previous post isn't compatible with keeping ruler's preferences in the system. It wouldn't be possible to eliminate the machiavellian ruler effect and then the proposal has very little value. Thinking about this triggered this new idea I have.

Here's my new proposal:

As before, the negotiation procedure is used only for social classes not counting ruler's preferences. Social classes end up with a negotiated value X for a given policy. Then the game takes X and modifies it according to what the ruler wants. If the ruler was pushing for a higher value, then X is increased. And vise versa. The magnitude of the increase/decrease is given by ruler's pol.power. Example: Classes alone negotiate a Civil Rights value equal to 45%. The ruler wants 66% and he has 30% of total power. Since 66%>45%, the ruler pushes for a greater value. Let's assume his 30% pol.power allows him to alter any negotiated value by 15% at most. Then, CivilRights ends up being 45%+15%=60%. In general the system is

Govt_Policy=X+sign(ruler_pref-X)*min(abs(ruler_pref-X),F(ruler_polpower))

where F is a function TBD transforming ruler's pol.power into the maximum modifier the player could apply to the classes' negotiated value.

It's similar to the "range" approach I proposed in the other post in the sense that classes take a "preliminary" decision and the ruler then affects it, where ruler's intervention level is given by his pol.power. But in this case the ruler has to express what he wants prior to the decision-making process (as it was planned in the original system) and it's possible to differentiate ruler's intention from actual govt. Classes will now see what his intentions are, which is very important as Mark pointed out.

There's no machiavellian ruler effect. The player gains nothing if he lies to the game. Using the equation above, the best the player can do in order to achieve his goals is put exactly what he wants in the interface. Doing otherwise would only harm him. Therefore, there's no trial and error and players won't have to waste time finding how to fool the system. And this new system still has the good things: it's simple, classes can use their pol.power to influence govt values and it's sensitive to how much power each actor has.

What about pol.powers? In my proposal with ranges in the other post this part was still unsolved. The best thing about this new system is that it is also compatible with pol.power shares. We can use the same equation (slightly altered to ensure pol.power shares will sum 100%) to simulate how political entities define the political structure with good results.

Finally, for policies (that is, all variables except pol.power shares), we can still get that feeling of "more control" each time the player changes his prefs. In the example above for CivilRights, if now suddenly the ruler changes his mind and prefers a value of, say, 50%, then the govt can make the change immediate. The old govt value, 60% would be changed to 50% at once. On the other side, if the ruler changes his preference to a value of 75%, the govt value would remain at the old level:66%. With this, the type of messages F_Smith has in the beast would fit nicely here. In the first case the message would be "Our leader has decided to lower the Civil Rights level from 60% to 50%" while in the second case it'd be something like "Our leader wanted to rise Civil Rights to 75%, but was rejected by the govt's high council. The law remains at 60%!".

I wasn't very convinced about the proposal I made in my previous post, but I really like this one very much. I think is much better. What do you think?

[Richard Bruns]

I still like the range interface. I think it would be good if the game said: "This is what we will let you do. Choose any value in this range and we will be happy. You can choose a value outside of the range, but there could be negative consequences." That is a system that should be easy and fun to work with.

While I don't like the interface proposed in the new system, it seems that the math is better. The two proposals are very similar, so would it be possible to put the new math behind the range interface?

By the way, I have one word to respond to Rodrigo's comments about the political power of US presidents and their inability to do certain things:

Nixon

[roquijad]

Warning! Do not confuse! In the "ranges proposal" choosing a value inside the "green" area, as you name it, Richard, wouldn't imply happiness for classes. If the ruler has a lot of power, then the range is wide and therefore the value the ruler picks can be very different to what classes wanted.

Happiness must be computed comparing what they want to what the govt ends up being. That's all other topic. The thing to solve here is how classes and the ruler interact to set policies (a final value for each) and not what makes people happier.

The range represents the legal limits and not what's popular and what not. Of course topics are related, but don't confuse!

About Nixon... well, it's a good example... but I'm sure you don't believe the US president has total control of the govt as, FE, saddam hussein... so, how'd you make this difference in the game? And here there's ground to get confused too! Despotism doesn't mean doing things regardless of people's desires. It's just the ability to do whatever is wanted. A ruler can be despotic and good to their people. Many kings were... So, were all US presidents despotic, yet good to their people or were they really limited in their powers?

[Lord God Jinnai]

OK, yea that sounds appropriate for the most part. Few things though could take centuries also and in this case could be marked (indefinate). FE the battle in the balkans has lasted since the arabs conquered the area after the fall of the Byzantine empire. Such things are more ethnically motivated, but similar things can happen with social conditions.

I like that new proposal, though you should also consider how fudimental and agrressive each side is on their position and allow the ruler to be morseo or lesso also. Also there could be other additional ways of influencing like bribes, threats, propoganda all in special actions the player should be allowed to do during negotiations.

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

I haven't read all this carefully, and need to reflect on your new idea. But I have just a quick note to clear up a misconception. On the green - red ranges idea -- for a democratic government even the red (extreme actions) range does not necc go from 0-100% of each parameter. Suppose the people in general want 20% for some govt. parameter.
For a very democratic state the ranges might be: Green 18%-22%; Yellow 16%-25%; Red 10%-32%. And that's it! Even Extreme actions in a very democratic govt only allow so much flexibility because the rest of society is pulling against the ruler. If the player wants more power then they have to go your route of changing the govt. Or if they get caught doing something in the red range the govt might collapse anyway...

FE Nixon and many other US presidents have gotten away with a lot of things that push beyond their constitutional power. But even Nixon used extreme actions to move civil rights just a small amount (maybe a few percent on average). In no way could he have reinstituted slavery, even with the most extreme covert actions you can think of!

Does this help you better accept the idea?

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited August 28, 2000).]

[axi]

I'm back, but having goofed around for so much, has left me with a pressing schedule. Please be patient with me.

Below, I am using the term "power groups", which refers to classes for the DNPs and to ideologies for the INPs.

On the policy-setting procedure: Rodrigo's idea sounds rather good, since:

• It gets rid of the "Macchiavelian Ruler Effect".
• It is independent of the Current Govt Profile. This way, power groups that have the will and the power to do so, can be "active" instead of "reactive". As Rodrigo wrote:

  quote: Most important, it makes social classes "active" (as well as reactive). In reactive-type models, computer-handled political entities can only react to what the player does, like producing riots if they don't like what the player is doing. With an active political entity, it doesn't have to wait for ruler intervention to make a change in the govt. It doesn't need the ruler to try to pass laws or any such thing to express itself. The class uses the power it posseses to make a change in the govt. If a class has power, this is what you'd expect.

• It allows the ruler to be judged for his preferences, while the govt will be judged for the actual policies. Things like the RRF should be determined according to the ruler's profile rather than the govt profile.
• It shows to be compatible with the rest of the model.

I tried to find a proper expression for F. I am using the following abbreviations:
P=govt_policy (0-1)
R=ruler_pref (0-1)
r=ruler_polpower (0-1)

Negotiation procedure: P=X(1-r)+Rr

New procedure:
IF R > X
THEN P=X+min[R-X,F(r)]
ELSE P=X-min[X-R,F(r)]

To be equivalent, it should be:
If R > X and F(r) < R-X:
X(1-r)+Rr=X+F(r)
or F(r)=r(R-X)
which is always less than R-X because r < 1
For R < X, we have F(r)=-r(R-X)
Here we see what's wrong with the negotiation procedure: F depends from R, hence the "Macchiavelian Ruler Effect".

F(r) should be such that for r=0, F=0 and for r=1, F=max. But maxF=1-X if R > X and maxF=X if R < X. The simplest possible implementation is:
IF R > X
THEN P=X+min[R-X,r(1-X)]
ELSE P=X-min[X-R,rX]
This is the equivalent of using the negotiation procedure with the ruler always highballing to the maximum degree (always choosing 0 or 1, according to what suits him best). In other words, this is a way of "automation" of the MRE, so that the player won't get into the trouble of trying out manually to find what he should bid for. Obviously this is not the best solution, since the ruler has a clear advantage over the other power groups. Other implementations like F(r)=r, or F(r)=r² or F(r)=ar where 0 < a < 1 do not give what is expected for despotic regimes, while they are no more representative of the ruler's power.

We could of course accept that the ruler, as the initiator of the negotiation, has a de facto advantage, so his "automatic highballing" would be accepted as a feature of the game. But then the ability to initiate negotiations should be granted to other power groups too (since we agree that power groups in Clash should be active). This means that we would have to provide our system with criteria for when a negotiation should be pursued by the power groups and when such a claim should be accepted. We should also have to devise a way for the ruler to participate in such a negotiation, from a different, non-priviledged position.

These preoccupations, in accord with F_Smith's repeated statements about having a "game within a game" (which I gather is the desire of all of us; that's why we are trying to devise a political system), have led me to another idea: if we want the player of Clash to really "play politics", shouldn't we then use a "Political AI"? I feel that the power groups shouldn't be just "dumb" bodies, with certain power and certain preferences, that act or react always in the same way. I feel it would be nice for the player to know that he is facing an "internal enemy", and not just a "flock of sheep". Using the traits of their respective character-leaders (ambition, fundamentalism, ego, venture, etc ,whichever there are), each power group should have the liberty and the brains to differentiate it's actions, for the purpose of better achieving it's goals in the current circumstances; exactly like the player is expected to do. This sort of AI (internal enemy) should of course be much simpler than the military AI or the AI of a rival civ, but it should be able, within certain (severe) restrictions, to:
- Differentiate it's preferences, in order to affect the negotiations. (old negotiation procedure)
- Initiate negotiations, when it suits it. (new negotiation procedure)
- Form a coalition with another power group, to obtain majority. (election procedure)
- Organise and control PAF Events.
- Perform special actions.
- Be corrupted and taken-over by the player or one of his rivals.

As for the red-yellow-green range interface that Mark has mentioned, I feel (and I have previously mentioned) that it is a very good way to display all of the PAFs, in a place where they will be viewable during policy setting, so that the player will be able to view what kind of risks he takes. If we want, we can create Overall Risk Counters (ORCs), giving a weighted average (with weights=the respective pol.power of each power group in question) of all PAFs of a certain type, or even more general counters for each group of PAFs. The variable Empire's Stability will be a general indication of all PAFs. Certain ORCs can be directly linked to some Ruler's Govt Profile ranges and some ranges might have multiple ORCs attached (f.e. INPs should have RRF_ORC and BAF&RF_ORC attached; the first would refer to the discontent caused by the profile itself, while the second to what would happen if that was passed as a govt policy. I feel that this interface shouldn't make things too easy for the player; the real rulers are never sure of the consequenses of their actions; so these indications do not need to be precise. As for the risk and the gains from commiting special actions, this should be provided elsewhere; foul play would be encouraged and encapsulated to the normal political play otherwise, which I don't like. Finally, I am in favor of using gradient color ranges and not just R-Y-G.

What a negotiation procedure of any kind is always lacking, is what I have mentioned before as "concentrisation". I'm not sure if the term is valid, but I'm referring to the kind of political system where some sort of "majority rule" applies. It is like the various power groups are gambling their share of power, in hope of gaining it all. As it is generally advertised, this is due to the fact that it is impossible to make realistic policies through negotiation, because of the existant ideologic distances. In reality, this is just another way for the mighty to steal the power of the weak. This doesn't ness need to be the "absolute majority" (50%), but also the "relative majority" (biggest %) and all variations where the "critical percentage", or "Consensus" is different than 50% (f.e. in the Greek Parliament, to pass a law you need 50%, to elect the president you need 60% and to revise the constitution 75%, while in the general elections, the govt usually needs about 35% of the people's votes to obtain 50% of the parliamentary seats).

So I feel that the election-type system should be enhanced by a DNP called "Consensus", that will provide us with a basic "critical percentage", upon which the consensus for each individual policy should be based (f.e. it should be multiplied by a factor >1 for some DNPs like SL, ED, RD). This and the critical ideologic distance should be a measure of how cooperative the political system is and the should be derived from cultural elements. Of course, if the needed consensus is 100%, then it totally reverts into a negotiation procedure. For big numbers (like 75%), the policies will be mostly negotiated. This way, we can allow for mixed (election-negotiation) systems. I figured this out as an enhancement to my election system, if F_Smith wants to proceed into coding both ways.

To revert to an older topic: The power structure in the ideologies and the classes power structure are not the same thing. "UC power" is not replaced by "Capitalist power" (which term btw is not appropriate now, because we have assumed that power deriving from the possession of land is also lumped here, so we should probably use the term "Property power", or the term "Kapital power", which is characteristic of the way it is divided among the socioeconomic classes), nor is "LC power" replaced by "People's power". What happens is:
UCpp=Kapital_pp*UC_Kap.share+People's_pp*UC_demog. share, and
LCpp=People's_pp*LC_demog.share (+Labor_pp*LC_labor.share), while
MCpp=Kapital_pp*MC_Kap.share+People's_pp*MC_demog. share (+Labor_pp*MC_labor.share)
(Inside the parentheses are the factors added if we include Labor power, as I have proposed)
"Religion power" is not always the power of the RC, because there can be one or more other classes that provide ethics to society. The same applies to "Warrior power".

I am stressing this point because I'm afraid that F_Smith, during coding, has overlooked this fact. If this is so, this is an error in understanding the object structure of the model and must be corrected ASAP. Any ideology should be translatable to a power structure for any class system that we or the scenario creator would want to create. The best way for us to test if this is implemented as it should be, is to include the MC into the beast and to bring back the "Build new SC" capability. Custom made classes can be given power and behavior through their share of the contributions, as I have previously outlined, at least for now, until we come up with a better way of assigning behaviors. I am of the opinion that this should be our next step in advancing the Beast.

Btw, a question to all: shouldn't we consider including nobility in the way I have proposed, or in some other way?

quote: Possible implementation: Nobility could be attributed to the socioeconomic class with the higher concentration of power per capita and once instituted, it cannot change hands, unless it is reinstituted by some social reform. I feel that purely institutional classes should not have nobility because they consist of higher as well as lower members (Their power is attributed to the institutions rather than the members anyway), but at least for scenarios, nobility should be attributed to whomever the author wants. Nobility is linked with social elitism and as such, it should oppose or totally restrict intra-class mobility.

For the time being, I am not pressing neither for this, nor for "Labor power", so we can officially stick with Rodrigo's scheme for ideologies. But it's nothing that we can't change in the future, if we like.
[This message has been edited by axi (edited August 28, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by axi (edited August 28, 2000).]

[F_Smith]

Axi:

I think you're right, I didn't see the proposed system quite the way you outlined it here --

[*]So are 'uc' and 'lc' still in the game? If so, where again? I don't think we need them, if we use 'people' and 'capital'.
[*]'People' power and 'capital' power (the terms I've used in the GUI for the beast) can be used to determine the influences on the political system for all economic sectors of the pop. 'People' and 'Capital' are the two components of 'peoples political power' that would actually include all concievable 'economic' classes (UC, LC and a 'Labor' class). And it means we don't have to worry about demographics or 'capital shares' at all. So do I still need to include the specific 'economic' classes?
[*]I also don't understand the concept of 'Religion' power being seperate from the 'religious class'. Can I get a little more feedback on that?
[*]As for custom social classes, they're in the data model but not on the GUI, a situation easily remedied. But I was thinking that a custom SC would not have any political power unless a govt specifically gave it some. So to specifically create a 'Nobility', you would give the 'Nobles' social class some level of political power.[/list=a]

[axi]

F_Smith: Time is pressing on me, so I can't say much. I hope the others will help you more.

1. UC, LC and MC are socioeconomic classes. They hold K units of kapital, provide L units of labor and consist of X people each. Between them they hold all of the (private) kapital, provide all of the labor (except slave labor) and sum up to the whole of the (majorities) population. Ideologies and govt policies assign power not directly to each of those classes, but to these quantative characteristics and the socioeconomic classes share this power accordingly. By definition, for the UC it is L=0 and for the LC it is K=0. The other numbers will be given from the govtecon submodel. So who holds kapital, holds part of it's power; this means that (1-PP)% of capital power goes to the ruler + the BE (together they represent the state), according to their respective powers. If we had labor power, the power partaining to the labor of the exploited class would be also given to the state. Of course minorities do not have part of the people's power, as this line of thought would imply.

2. The specific economic classes are needed because they have an economic role, in addition to a political one. They are the ones who produce and invest and consume; they hold the kapital and provide the labor. They have different income, demographics, PAFs, investment and research preferences. Maybe the govt model alone can be abstracted enough so that it won't need classes, but the econ model cannot.

3. Social contributions like Ethics and Security cannot be measured like Kapital and Labor can. Nevertheless, we can arbitrarily say that class A provides a1% of contribution 1, a2% of contribution 2, etc. An example I have used before:

quote: We can have f.e. a holy warriors class that provides 40% of the society's security and 20% of it's ethics, while a monks class provides 60% ethics, a mandarin class with the rest 20% ethics and 100% admin and finally a generals class with the rest 60% security

So Religion power is attributed to the contribution "Ethics", and classes share this power according to their arbitrarily given share on the contribution. This, as I have stated before, allows more flexibility, chiefly for scenario purposes. But anyway, since the ideologic power structure is going to be different than the class power structure, the rational thing is to have them be seperate.

4. "Nobility", at least as I have envisioned it, should be no social class. It should be included into ideologies, along with ruler's power and people's power as the layer of power attributed to the "few", while ruler's power is power of the "one" and people power is power of the "many". It should be added to the power of a single class, but this is not official right now. A custom SC should have the power dictated by it's contributions and it's demographics.

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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[F_Smith]

Axi:

Okay, I'm going to need help conceptualizing this. Forgive me if I need more explaining than a 3 yr old . . .

[*]I am not too familiar with the econ model, only some of the 'big' ideas have sunk in. If we need demographics info for econ, I don't see that being a problem. Altho I haven't included any for the govt code, it can be easily added.
[*]Yet I still don't see it being necessary to the govt model. Altho if you want it in, just say the word. As it is, the govt model 'capital' power just refers to the power of all the capital . . . it's a level of abstraction that seems to make sense. Altho we can use specifics, instead.
[*]Stupid question time. Do I have this correct?
"The warrior class is all the groups who provide security".

"The religious class is all the groups who provide ethics".
[*]I think my main misunderstanding in all this is what you mean when you say 'social classes'.

I thought that 'nobility' would be the very quintessential 'social class'. They, in fact, are the original 'upper class'. I thought 'social class' membership was related to some organization -- Nobility, Military, Church, Guild, Society, Govt Job, etc.

What, in 'Clash' terms, is a 'social class'?[/list=a]

Perhaps what the beast needs next is more 'econ' info, so that the actual calculations for these govt numbers can have a real basis?

In there now is a primitive 'food' system. I used Mark's production and consumption #s, based upon pop and # of 'zones'. Altho they don't have to feed armies, or anything else -- yet.

But it's neat to run off a hundred years and see food in the 'bank'!