Tweet
Government Model v.2
Government Model
I. Introduction
This model tries to simulate the political games within the govt of your civ. What makes it interesting and challenging is the fact that people won't stare passively at you while ruling the empire and they won't just react to your decisions, but will be able to take decisions of their own and change things at the govt if they have the power to do so. In very despotic regimes the game will give you only people's reactions, from protests to revolutions, which is covered in the Riots Model. People reacting to your rule is by itself a more sophisticated element compared to what we're used to in games like this, giving you a more defying game, even in despotic regimes. But if your civ happens to move to other forms of governments, through violent events or peacefully, you'll have to share power with others. The masses if it's a sort of democracy, or the military maybe, or the church if a fundamentalist regime arises. Now people won't just react, they'll act. And they'll actually use their power to make whatever they think is best for the civ. Under these circumstances, having only a share of total power and having less control of the civ's future, the civ might take paths you didn't expected. Will this be for better or for worse? Will you accept sharing power with others or will you just impose your will at all cost?
II. Model Overview
There'll be a list of govt policies (or govt laws, if you prefer) affecting the civ in several ways. What is needed is to set the values for each policy. Changing policies you change the civ's behavior. The player knows what he wants for each policy, but it's those with political power the ones deciding what values policies will take. The player will always have some political power, but it can be low, high or even absolute. In fact the share of total power he has and how much other political entities have is also a matter of discussion.
Society is divided in classes. The aristocracy, the military, etc. Classes and the ruler will have to interact to define how much political power each should have and what values policies should take. To achieve this, the game will give an interface to the player where he'll be able to put in the values he thinks are best. On the other side, the model simulates what people in classes think, mostly given by the culture they posses, and through this, what they want for policies values and political power distribution. The link with culture (social model) makes people inclined to certain forms of govt and opposed to others, giving the game a more stable and true-to-life look, with no arbitrary or ridiculous govt shifts. Also, as culture slowly changes overtime, people can change their minds, so if they felt alright with a monarchy in the past, it might not be the case now.
The player is expected to move wisely when interacting with classes, choosing govt styles not too disturbing for classes, controlling how much political power he has, how much others have, specially those with opposite ideas, and even dealing with corruption. Under a more questionable strategy, the player will be able to use Special Actions, like bribing politicians, killing adversaries, closing the parliament, etc.
Two definitions are needed before continuing, only to be precise about what we're talking about:
Government: All persons who take part in defining policies. It can be the great priest and the great military leader in a small tribe or the whole senate plus the elected administration in a modern democracy.
Political power: The power or capability to influence the final value of govt policies. Any form of influence is counted in, legal or not. In a modern democracy, any party with at least one senator in the senate has political power, for example (very small in this case, though).
After reading the model you can see it working (at least most of its features) downloading this MS-EXCEL Workbook.
III. General Definitions
III.1 Govt. Policies
The following are the policies the govt. must decide on. They'll be explained and understood better later. This is list is not supposed to be complete. It contains what is felt as the minimum set of policies. According to other models' needs, the list can be enlarged.
-Tax Rate (0-100%): Tax is imposed on privates. Individuals, landowners, company owners and so on. In a pure communist regime, tax rate is irrelevant since no private sector exists.
-Civil Rights (CR): (0-100) The greater the number, the more liberties the people has concerning lifestyle, freedom of speech, etc...
-Religion Discrimination (RD): (0-5) This variable describes the relationship between govt and religion. If RD=0 the State is secular. If 1<=RD<=5, there's an official religion and people practicing other beliefs are considered minorities. The type of treatment toward other beliefs becomes more intolerant the higher RD is.
-Ethnic Discrimination (ED): (0-10) This variable defines if there's or not an ethnic group above the rest and if so, what kind of treatment other ethnic groups get. If ED=0, all ethnic groups are considered equal and the civ is said to be "multiethnic". If 1<=ED<=10, there's a preferred ethnic group (FE, romans in roman empire) and all the rest are considered minorities (this is the most common case). The type of treatment other ethnic groups get is more disrespectful the higher ED is.
-Slavery (SL): (0-2) Defines if minorities can be slavered or not. 0=Slavery is not allowed, 1=It is allowed in its most common form. This means some people in minorities is slavered with some laws regulating it like the possibility to buy freedom. If SL=2 it is the same as in SL=1, but some specific ethnic groups can be totally slavered in a more brutal way, like it was with africans. For now and until a better procedure is developed, it'll be the ruler's decision which exact tribes can be slavered this way when SL=2.
-Private Property (PP): (0%-100%) Defines what share of total economic activities lie in the hands of the private sector. The rest is owned by the State or the king himself (for ancient regimes).
-Economic Planning (EP): (0%-100%) Defines how much control govt has over economy, both private and public sector. It includes things like prices setting, limits on production, etc.
-Social Policies (SP): (0%-100%) This will define how much of a welfare state the civ has. It will include all redistribution practices, social security, healthcare, free education, etc.
-Foreign Affairs (FA): (0-100) Defines the level of aggressiveness the ruler is allowed to be in the international arena. 0 means passive/peaceful and 100 means world conquest.
The ruler/player will want a specific value for each of these policies. The ruler's preferences will be called "Ruler's Govt Profile". The real set of values the civ has is called "Govt Profile".
III.2 Majorities and Minorities
The empire can hold several ethnic groups, as described in the social model. Normally only one of them is considered the "civ's people" like romans in the roman empire. In this case romans are said to be the majorities population (not necessarily being majority in terms of demography) and all other ethnic groups are said to be minorities. In some cases, though, the govt might do no discrimination at all. In this case all ethnic groups are considered within majorities. People supporting non-official religions are also considered minorities.
For all what follows minorities are irrelevant. That's because this model simulates the political game in the govt leading to set the values for each govt policy and minorities are definitely out of the govt and have no pol.power to play this game. The political game minorities play is only at the level of protests and rebellions trying to stop being a minority or at least have a better treatment from majorities. That's covered in the Riots Model.
As will be shown, people in majorities will be able to participate in the govt depending on the regime. When they participate, they do it deeply influenced by their culture. The govt model stores cultural information of majorities from the social model in the Majorities Cultural Attributes (MCA). See Appendix 2 for more details on how info is transformed from the social model to MCA.
III.3 Classes
Majorities population (not religiously or ethnically discriminated peoples) are divided in classes:
The Upper Class (UC): The aristocracy. The people who owns the means of production. Landowners, company owners, capitalists, nobility, etc.
The Lower Class (LC): The common people. Workers, professionals, peasants, proletarians, etc.
The Religious Class (RC): High priests in command of the Church. If there is an official religion, RC represents the clergy of this religion. If there's no official religion (a secular State), the class contains all high priests from all present religions in equal conditions.
The Military Class (MC): High officers of the army. NOT the whole army. The common soldier belongs to the LC.
The Bureaucratic Elite (BE): Govt employees in key positions in the bureaucratic apparatus. They control most of the govt's administration and live an accommodated life. It's a wealthy class. The USSR had a powerful BE and no Upper Class, for example.
Each class has its own mentality (idea of how the govt should look like). UC and LC are deeply influenced by culture and have some differences about how economy should work. The religious class is mostly guided by its doctrine (taken from the social model) and shares some ideas with normal people. Appendix 2 shows how the info from the social model is transformed to create RCM (Religious Class Mentality). The BE always wants to preserve the current form of govt, since its welfare comes from the particular way the govt is currently working. As for MC, the mentality high officers in the army have is given by their origin. They can come from the LC or the UC. If they come from the LC, then are LC minded and the same for UC. In general, they come partly from the UC and partly from LC. Also, the ruler has an influence over MC mentality through "choosing the right men". The level at which each of these three factors influences MC mentality is explained later.
III.4 Political Structure & Hidden Policies
The distribution of political power among classes and the ruler is called the political structure. For example, a Political Structure might look like this:
Class___Political Power
Ruler_____25%
UC_______8%
LC_______25%
RC_______26%
MC_______6%
BE_______10%
The main role of the Political Structure is saying how much power each entity has. But, at the same time, some policies are "hidden" in the political structure. These "hidden policies" are:
-Privileges: If the relative political power held by the UC (relative to LC pol.power) is greater than its relative demographic share (relative to LC demographic share), it'll be understood as UC having special privileges over the LC. These are privileges given to the UC by law like those nobility had in middle ages. The magnitude of privileges will affect income distribution and influence over the military. Privileges are computed as:
MAX(0;UCpol.power-(UCpolpower+LCpolpower)*UCdemogshare/(UCdemogshare+LCdemogshare))
-Influence over the Military Class: As said before, the political structure partly defines what type of mentality MC has. Ruler's pol.power and privileges are used to determine MC preferences, like this:
MC share with Ruler's mentality (MC_R): Exp(-0.03*(110-Ruler_polpower*100))
MC share with UC mentality (MC_U): (1-MC_R)*(0.5+0.5*Privileges)
MC share with LC mentality (MC_L): 1-MC_R-MC_U
The term "hidden policies" does not mean people don't realize about these effects. It means we don't need a special policy like "UC Privileges" explicitly, and we can build the privileges effect from info in the Political Structure.
III.5 Political Power: Law and influences
The distribution of power among classes and the ruler (Political Structure) is built using two sets of values. The first is the "nominal" Political Structure. It's the pol.power given to each entity "by law". The second is the "de facto influence" each entity has. If the ruler uses bribes on "politicians" of other classes, FE, he has more power than his nominal value. Each class has its own level of de facto influence and a method to compute real pol.power, as will be described later in section IV.1.
III.6 Some Civ-Level Important Variables
-Dominant Religion (DR): The religion with most followers within majorities.
-Empire's Stability (ES): (0-10) This is a measure of how stable the empire is seen by the people. Events decrease ES, like losing a province, having a riot or if the ruler is being replaced by force. Every game turn ES is increased a bit, so if these events don't happen often, the feeling goes continuously upwards.
-Income Distribution (ID): How many times UC per capita income is greater than LC per capita income: UC_PCI/LC_PCI, where UC_PCI and LC_PCI come from the economic model.
III.7 Ideologies
An ideology is a coherent set of values for the political structure and some of the govt policies. The govt policies included in ideologies are:
-Economic Planning
-Social Policies
-Private Property
So, an ideology is a view about how the govt should be regarding 1)who has the power (nominal political structure); 2)economy; and 3)privileges and the composition of high military command (hidden policies). This is what an ideology may look like:
Ruler's pol.power_________70%
UC pol.power____________15%
LC pol.power_____________0%
RC pol.power_____________5%
MC pol.power____________10%
Private Property__________65%
Economic Planning_______10%
Social Policies____________5%
People will choose the ideology best fitting their desires and will use any pol.power they posses to try to impose that view in the govt. The game will have a pool of ideologies representing the most common forms of govt seen in history and some more, like this:
Ancient Despotism (warlord rule), Divine Monarchy, Monarchy, Constitutional Monarchy, Oligarchy, Republic, Capitalist Democracy, Democratic Communism, Social Democracy, Fundamentalism, Communist Dictatorship and Capitalist Dictatorship.
III.8 Types of Policies
There are 3 types of policies:
1) Ruler's Exclusive Policies: Policies the ruler/player can decide alone about. For now, only the tax rate is in this category. This category exist only because of the difficulty in finding a reasonable way to simulate what people want for them.
2) Ideologically Negotiated Policies (INP): Policies the ruler negotiates with the rest classes and where classes define what they want based on ideologies. They're:
-Hidden Policies/Political Structure
-Economic Planning
-Social Policies
-Private Property
3) Directly Negotiated Policies (DNP): Policies the ruler/player must negotiate with classes, where classes define what they want directly for each policy as opposed to choosing an ideology and from it a value for the policy. They are:
-Slavery
-Ethnic Discrimination
-Religious Discrimination
-Civil Rights
-Foreign Policies
IV. How the Model Works
IV.1 Computing De Facto Influences
In the next sections pol.power will be used by classes and the ruler to change govt policies. That pol.power is real pol.power, which counts in the nominal or by law pol.power and de facto influences classes have leading to a higher pol.power than law says they should have. De facto influences are the way this model provides inter-classes interactions, allowing the UC to bribe high officers in the MC, FE. To compute real pol.power for each class we need the nominal values from the Govt Profile and de facto influences. Here's how de facto influences are calculated:
Ruler: He can bribe other "politicians" to gain their sympathy. De facto influence is computed as a scale parameter multiplying the total spending in bribes.
Upper Class: UC de facto influence comes from its control over economy. They can bribe, they can endorse election campaigns and ask favors afterwards, use propaganda through the media or directly to their workers, etc. De facto influence is computed as 0.3*PrivateProperty*(1-EconomicPlanning).
Religious Class: RC de facto influence comes from the respect and worshiping they receive from the rest of society. The more intolerant the religion is, the more willing to use this influence is. That's because intolerant means religion sees itself as the only way to live, so it tries to impose that. De facto influence is computed as 0.2*MCA_ImportanceOfReligion*(100-RCM_ReligiousTolerance)/10000.
Military Class: MC de facto influence comes from its ability to militarily threat the govt and politicians. De facto influence in this case is a constant around 0.15.
Bureaucratic Elite: BE de facto influence comes, by its definition, from its influence on the govt from the inside and its control over administration. BE's nominal pol.power is always zero, since BE's pol.power comes only from its de facto influence. BE's power is really unwanted. It's the unwanted result of a large bureaucratic apparatus. A measure of the size of bureaucracy is used to compute BE de facto influence: 0.5*Average(1-PrivateProperty;EconomicPlanning;SocialPolicies).
Lower Class: LC de facto influence comes from labor unions and the ability to threat with labor strikes. This influence increases with higher Social Policies (which protect workers), with higher Civil Rights (which allow the formation of syndicates and allow strikes legally) and with the level of syndicating, seen as a social development in the tech tree:
0.3*(1/(1+exp(-2+10*SocialPolicies)))*(CivilRights/100)*Syndicating.
(assuming Syndicating Tech Development in 0-100% range)
For the ruler and all classes except BE, de facto power is really the capability of gaining other classes' power by some means. It represents how a class X can buy the sympathy of other classes to encourage them to use their legal (nominal) power in the benefit of class X. Because of this, all values described above should be multiplied by the total nominal pol.power other classes have. In other words, the MC cannot threat others encouraging them to do as the military want if those others cannot really help because they don't have any nominal power to please the military. That's why de facto influences are really those values given above, but multiplied by all possible nominal power the class can actually "buy" from others, which excludes the ruler (otherwise the player would be giving away power without wanting it) and excludes the power high officers loyal to the ruler in the MC have.
In the case of BE, de facto influence is its only source of power and it represents actual control over govt policies and administration. It's not, as opposed to the other entities, power to buy other classes nominal power, but power it indeed possesses. So, even when the ruler thinks he has absolute power, the BE still can have some control.
Some of the sources for de facto influences can be undoubtedly recognized as corruption. The civ will be able to fight corruption decreasing de facto influences and forcing political entities to rely only on their nominal (legal) pol.powers. Although not yet determined, this will probably be done using the media and Civil Rights. In this way, civs with a free enough society (independent media) and having a decent tech level for media and communications, will be able to reduce the level of corruption.
Once we have de facto influences, we must compute real pol.powers. BE real pol.power is directly its de facto influence, as per definition. Pol.power the BE doesn't control is what all other classes and the ruler have left. This remaining power is distributed as:
Ruler: Nominal+DeFactoInfluence
UC, LC, RC and MC: (1-Ruler_polpower)*(Class_NominalPolpower+Class_DeFac toInfluence)/(UC_nominalpp+UC_defactopp+ LC_nominalpp+LC_defactopp+ RC_nominalpp+RC_defactopp+ MC_nominalpp+MC_defactopp)
IV.2 People's Preferences
People have a clear opinion of what they'd like to see in the govt. As everything, people see things through the eyes of culture, so cultural attributes from the social model are taken in to drive people choosing what they'd want for the govt. What we need is an opinion from every person for each govt policy that needs to be negotiated (i.e. all policies except tax rate) and for the political structure.
What the people want for some of the policies can be computed straight forward from cultural attributes and individually for each policy, while others need more sophistication. This sophistication arises from the need of coherency between variables. It's necessary to avoid people from choosing at the same time RC pol.power share equal to 80% and LC pol.power share equal to 50%, since all shares must sum 100%. Or, we must avoid people choosing a politically powerful aristocracy (high UC pol.power share) and at the same time choosing economic policies producing a communist system. So, economic variables and the political structure are all in "packages". This packages are built in the game guaranteeing internal consistency between variables, so people, through culture, only needs to pick the package they see as the best. These packages are called ideologies.
Ideologies not only help doing a consistent modeling, but also add flavor to the game since now people with different ideologies can collide. For example, the french revolution was nothing but the battle of two ideologies: monarchy vs democracy.
So, before people acts in the political arena, we need to know which ideology they support and what they think about those other policies that can be analyzed individually outside the frame of ideologies (Directly Negotiated Policies). The following section IV.2.1 and IV.2.2 show how this is made.
IV.2.1 People's Preferences on Directly Negotiated Policies
The policies in this category are:
-Slavery
-Ethnic Discrimination
-Religious Discrimination
-Civil Rights
-Foreign Policies
In the following lines it's shown what the people in UC and LC want for each policy, mostly given by cultural information stored in MCA (Majorities Cultural Attributes) and what the RC members want, mostly based on religion's doctrine, stored in RCM (Religious Class Mentality). BE wants to preserve whatever value the govt currently has. What the MC wants is given by the relative influences it receives from UC, LC and the ruler, as explained earlier. So, for a given policy X, having what the UC and LC want (say, UC_X and LC_X) and what the ruler wants (from the Ruler's Govt Profile, Ruler_X), then what MC wants for policy X is
MCM*(MC_U*UC_X + MC_L*LC_X + MC_R*Ruler_X)
where MCM is a Military Class Modifier allowing MC members so slightly adapt their mentality depending on the policy and MC_U, MC_L and MC_R are the respective influences over the MC by UC, LC and the ruler.
Slavery (SL)
LC wants: SL=2*square_root((100-MCA_EthnicTolerance)*(100-MCA_Asceticism)/10000), rounded to the closest integer.
UC wants: SL=1.2*2*square_root((100-MCA_EthnicTolerance)*(100-MCA_Asceticism)/10000), rounded to the closest integer.
RC wants: SL=2*square_root((100-RCM_EthnicTolerance)*(100-RCM_Asceticism)/10000), rounded to the closest integer.
MCM=1
Formulas say slavery will tend to be accepted if there's low respect for other tribes and a high desire for wealth. Because of the latter, the UC will be a little more inclined to slavery (20% more).
Ethnic Discrimination (ED)
UC and LC want ED=(1/(1+exp(5-MCA_Nationalism/10)))*(100-MCA_EthnicTolerance)/10, rounded to the closest integer.
RC wants ED=(1/(1+exp(5-RCM_Nationalism/10)))*(100-RCM_EthnicTolerance)/10, rounded to the closest integer.
MCM=1.1
Religious Discrimination (RD)
RC wants RD=(100-RCM_ReligiousTolerance)*5/100, rounded to the closest integer.
Both the UC and LC want: RD=(100-MCA_ReligiousTolerance)*5/100, rounded to the closest integer.
MCM=1
Civil Rights (CR)
RC wants: CR=RCM_Individualism
UC and LC want: CR=MCA_Individualism
MCM=0.9
Foreign Affairs (FA)
RC wants: FA=RCM_Aggressiveness
UC wants: FA=MCA_Aggressiveness
LC wants: FA=MCA_Aggressiveness*0.9
MCM=1.2
In this case LC wants a FA policy a little less aggressive than the aggressiveness of its culture because, after all, it's them that are going to war. The military prefers a policy a little more aggressive.
IV.2.2 People's Preferences: Choosing Ideologies
Each person will look at the available ideologies (discovered/invented ideologies) and will choose one depending mostly on his culture and how good it is to his class. To do this, the model computes an attractiveness for each ideology, on a class basis. That is, the same ideology has different levels of attractiveness depending on the class observing it. This will be made for UC, LC and RC but not for MC nor BE. As in IV.1.1, MC preferences depend on what UC, LC and the ruler want and BE wants always to preserve the current form of govt.
All persons measure the attractiveness for a given ideology with these four questions:
Each question leads to an attractiveness level (DPA, CA, EA and CCA). Summing all four we get the total attractiveness the ideology has for someone in a given class. The following shows how to compute the four effects for a given ideology seen by class C. Variables in brackets [] represent info taken from the ideology being processed:
1) DPA=K1*[C_pol.power]
i.e., the greater the pol.power the ideology offers to class C, the greater the attractiveness.
2) CA=K2*exp(-(ABS([RCpolpower]-exp(-0.04*(105-ImportanceReligion)))+ ABS([MCpolpower]-exp(-0.04*(105-Aggressiveness)))+ABS((Individualism/100)-(0.2*[PP]+0.8*(1-[SP])))
i.e., the following cultural effects are counted in:
3) EA=K3*(A1*[PP] + A2*[EP] + (A3+A4*(ID/3)+A5*(100-RCM_Individualism)/100)*[SP])
where
CLASS__A1______A2_____A3______A4_____A5
LC______3.5_____-3______-1_______0_______0
UC______0______0.5______0_______2_______0
RC______0_______0______0_______0_______4
In essence this says the UC likes an economic system with high private property, low economic planning and no too high social policies. The LC doesn't care about private property, cares something about economic planning (because this means some level of control on abusing employers) and cares very much about social policies. Indeed, LC has growing care with the more differences between rich and poor (ID=Income Distribution). RC only cares about social policies and it's a growing care the less individualistic religion is.
4) CCA=K4*[Ruler_pol.power]/ES
What's said here is people will find more attractive those ideologies with high ruler pol.power when the empire is seen unstable (ES=Empire's Stability) as if they were "looking for the ruler's leadership".
Having total attractiveness for each ideology seen by each class, each ideology is multiplied by its corresponding "Knowledge Level".
Knowledge Level (KL): How known an ideology is. It goes in the range 0-100%. If 100% it means the ideology is perfectly known by the population. When the ideology tech has not been discovered yet, KL=0%. At the moment of discovery it becomes 10%. From that point and ahead, KL increases its magnitude (up to 100%) every turn based on communications techs available.
What KL tries to do is simulate how ideologies spread through the people slowly. When an ideology exist (the tech has been discovered), it's known slowly by people at a rate given by the com techs available. This way when ideologies are discovered, no sudden changes occur. Multiplying attractiveness by KL with a low KL will turn ideology's attractiveness really small, so people won't be very enthusiastic about them. When KL=100%, people can see all the pros and cons of the ideology and it appears with its whole attractiveness.
Since the current Govt Profile can also be seen as an ideology and since the same happens with the Ruler's Govt Profile, attractiveness are computed for them too. This is like people measuring how attractive is their current govt and how attractive ruler's ideas are.
From this point ahead, only 5 ideologies are kept. The Ruler's Govt Profile, the Govt Profile and the 3 highest built-in-the-game ideologies processed. So what we have up to now is a matrix of attractiveness. Something like this:
CLASS__Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
LC_______110_______83_______94___________73_______ ______88
UC_______90_______117______127__________117_______ _____119
RC_______82________63______157___________67_______ _____103
These numbers are used to determine what share of the population in each class support each ideology. This new matrix of support shares will be called SSM-Support Shares Matrix. We'll say the support share for ideology I in class C is:
exp(W*TotalAttract_I)/sum_over_i(exp(W*TotalAttract_i))
where W is a scale parameter. Using this exponential formula, differences in attractiveness are exaggerated and classes tend to concentrate in the most attractive ideologies. For the matrix of total attractiveness of the example above, the SSM results in (with W=0.05):
CLASS__Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
LC_______46%______12%______20%__________7%________ ___15%
UC_______5%_______20%______33%_________20%________ ___22%
RC_______2%________1%______90%__________1%________ ____6%
So, FE, 15% of the LC likes the current state of things. 90% of the RC supports ideology3.
In this matrix MC and BE are missing. In the case of BE, we can add a row with zeroes in all cells except Govt Profile having 100%. This comes from BE definition.
For the Military Class, as said earlier, high officers mentality is given by relative influences of LC, UC and the ruler. The support share the Ruler's Govt Profile has in MC is
MC_R+(1- MC_R)*(UC_X*MC_U+LC_X*MC_L)
where UC_X and LC_X are the support shares for the Ruler's Govt Profile in the UC and LC respectively. For any other ideology I, the MC support shares are computed as
LC_I*MC_L + UC_I*MC_U
where UC_I and LC_I are the support shares for ideology I in UC and LC respectively.
Having the SSM matrix, we have what we needed in section IV.1, that is, what the people want for every single policy.
IV.3 Setting Government Policies
Knowing what people want, now we can model how they'll use their real pol.power to actually change govt policies to their convenience.
IV.3.1 Directly Negotiated Policies
Using the procedures stated in section IV.1, suppose we have each class preferences for each Directly Negotiated Policies and through a proper interface the player putted the values he wants for each, so we have something like this:
Policy\Class____________UC____LC____RC____MC____BE ____Ruler
Slavery_________________1_____0______0______0_____ 0_____0
Ethnic Discrimination______2_____2______2______4_____3___ __6
Religious Discrimination____2_____2______4______1_____2_____ 0
Foreign Affairs__________37____33_____21_____43____32_____ 40
Civil Rights_____________70____70_____44_____67____65___ __85
Suppose the actual real pol.power shares are:
Class____Real pol.power
Ruler____18%
UC______12%
LC______25%
RC______26%
MC_______7%
BE______11%
To compute the final value the govt will take for the Foreign Affairs policy, we make a weighted sum of the values each entity wants, where weights are the respective pol.power shares:
FA=37*12% + 33*25% + 21*26% + 43*7% + 32*11% + 40*18% = 32
The civ's govt will have a Foreign Affairs policy of 32. The same is done for each policy. This mechanism allows each policy to take a value which is more sensitive to the desires of those with larger pol.power. In other words, the more power an entity has, the more successful it is imposing its view on each policy. The mechanism was named "Negotiation Procedure" because it simulates how different entities, having each its own view on some issue, produce a single output. This output is not one of the originals in dispute, but a new "negotiated" one, reflecting the fact that no entity was able to fully impose its opinion. The procedure is general enough to cover a scenario in which all actors have relevant pol.power shares, like in the above example, and also situations where a despotic ruler holds all power. In this latter case the procedure, without any change, makes the final govt policy value equal to what the ruler wanted.
IV.3.2 Ideologically Negotiated Policies
Again we'll use the Negotiation Procedure, but in this case classes don't have a unique value they want. A class, as shown in section IV.1.2, may have its population divided between several ideologies, so there's no way to determine specifically what a class wants, as a whole, for any of the Ideologically Negotiated Policies. That's why we'll use the Negotiation Procedure on a "party" basis. It'll be like each ideology has a party in the govt trying to impose its ideology and each party has a pol.power to do it.
To compute pol.power each party has is easy. If, for example, LC has 30% pol.power and 12% of the people in LC supports ideologyX, then 12% of LC pol.power is held by ideologyX supporters. Doing this analysis for each class and ideology we can compute all pol.power each ideology gets from different entities and then sum up. Taking the Support Shares Matrix example in section IV.1.2 and the pol.power shares in the example right above, the ideologies pol.powers would be:
Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
__8%_______8%_______36%_________27%___________21%
So, people wanting to preserve the govt as it is (supporting the Govt Profile) have 21% of total pol.power. This one is like the "Conservative Party".
You can see that the ruler, although having only 18% of total pol.power, will be able to effectively impose his position on Ideologically Negotiated Values at 27% because, as can be seen in the Support Shares Matrix, the values he proposes found followers in classes, like in the UC where 20% of them support him and therefore will use their pol.power to back ruler's view. Also, since he has influence over the military, he can also get some support from there.
The Negotiation Procedure is ready to be applied. Suppose ideologies look like these:
________________Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__R uler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
Ruler's pol.power____70%______20%______20%__________20%___ _______25%
UC pol.power______15%______10%_______5%___________10% ___________8%
LC pol.power_______0%______70%_______10%__________70% __________35%
RC pol.power_______5%_______0%_______55%___________0% __________26%
MC pol.power______10%_______0%_______10%___________0% ___________6%
Private Property____65%______85%_______60%__________75%___ _______68%
Economic Planning__10%______25%_______45%__________35%_____ _____36%
Social Policies______5%______35%_______55%__________40%__ ________43%
Using this info and the pol.powers each ideology has, the Negotiation Procedure would give us for Social Policies:
SP=5%*8% + 35%*8% + 55%*36% + 40%*27% + 43%*21% = 43%
Again, it can be seen how the Negotiation Procedure's final value tends to be closer to what ideologies with higher pol.power encourage.
It was assumed here that all ideologies were allowed to participate in the political process. This won't be always the case because through Special Actions the ruler will be allowed to ban ideologies forbidding them to participate. That's why instead of using the SSM directly to compute ideologies pol.powers, we'll use a "Representation Matrix" which is equal to SSM when no ideology is banned and it's an altered SSM when banning exists. The procedure to compute the Representation Matrix is explained in Appendix 3.
IV.4 Circular Effects
Although the Negotiation Procedure is simple to apply, we'll need to apply it several times in order to reach final values. This happens because there're circular effects involved. FE, when Private Property is changed, it is changed using, among other things, real UC pol.power. But real UC pol.power depends on Private Property through de facto influences. So a change in PP leads to a change in UC pol.power, which leads to a change in the entire Political Structure, which leads to more changes, like the relative influences UC, LC and the ruler have over the military, leading to a change in MC preferences. This might look like a mess, but it's not too bad. Some of the calculations described in previous sections must be carried on several times to achieve an equilibrium point, but there're two good things: 1) The process is needed only when negotiations are called, not every turn; 2) It takes only about 10 iterations to reach equilibrium, which is quite fast.
You can see more of this in the provided Excel Workbook.
[This message has been edited by little green men from Mars (edited June 23, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by axi (edited June 23, 2000).]
I. Introduction
This model tries to simulate the political games within the govt of your civ. What makes it interesting and challenging is the fact that people won't stare passively at you while ruling the empire and they won't just react to your decisions, but will be able to take decisions of their own and change things at the govt if they have the power to do so. In very despotic regimes the game will give you only people's reactions, from protests to revolutions, which is covered in the Riots Model. People reacting to your rule is by itself a more sophisticated element compared to what we're used to in games like this, giving you a more defying game, even in despotic regimes. But if your civ happens to move to other forms of governments, through violent events or peacefully, you'll have to share power with others. The masses if it's a sort of democracy, or the military maybe, or the church if a fundamentalist regime arises. Now people won't just react, they'll act. And they'll actually use their power to make whatever they think is best for the civ. Under these circumstances, having only a share of total power and having less control of the civ's future, the civ might take paths you didn't expected. Will this be for better or for worse? Will you accept sharing power with others or will you just impose your will at all cost?
II. Model Overview
There'll be a list of govt policies (or govt laws, if you prefer) affecting the civ in several ways. What is needed is to set the values for each policy. Changing policies you change the civ's behavior. The player knows what he wants for each policy, but it's those with political power the ones deciding what values policies will take. The player will always have some political power, but it can be low, high or even absolute. In fact the share of total power he has and how much other political entities have is also a matter of discussion.
Society is divided in classes. The aristocracy, the military, etc. Classes and the ruler will have to interact to define how much political power each should have and what values policies should take. To achieve this, the game will give an interface to the player where he'll be able to put in the values he thinks are best. On the other side, the model simulates what people in classes think, mostly given by the culture they posses, and through this, what they want for policies values and political power distribution. The link with culture (social model) makes people inclined to certain forms of govt and opposed to others, giving the game a more stable and true-to-life look, with no arbitrary or ridiculous govt shifts. Also, as culture slowly changes overtime, people can change their minds, so if they felt alright with a monarchy in the past, it might not be the case now.
The player is expected to move wisely when interacting with classes, choosing govt styles not too disturbing for classes, controlling how much political power he has, how much others have, specially those with opposite ideas, and even dealing with corruption. Under a more questionable strategy, the player will be able to use Special Actions, like bribing politicians, killing adversaries, closing the parliament, etc.
Two definitions are needed before continuing, only to be precise about what we're talking about:
Government: All persons who take part in defining policies. It can be the great priest and the great military leader in a small tribe or the whole senate plus the elected administration in a modern democracy.
Political power: The power or capability to influence the final value of govt policies. Any form of influence is counted in, legal or not. In a modern democracy, any party with at least one senator in the senate has political power, for example (very small in this case, though).
After reading the model you can see it working (at least most of its features) downloading this MS-EXCEL Workbook.
III. General Definitions
III.1 Govt. Policies
The following are the policies the govt. must decide on. They'll be explained and understood better later. This is list is not supposed to be complete. It contains what is felt as the minimum set of policies. According to other models' needs, the list can be enlarged.
-Tax Rate (0-100%): Tax is imposed on privates. Individuals, landowners, company owners and so on. In a pure communist regime, tax rate is irrelevant since no private sector exists.
-Civil Rights (CR): (0-100) The greater the number, the more liberties the people has concerning lifestyle, freedom of speech, etc...
-Religion Discrimination (RD): (0-5) This variable describes the relationship between govt and religion. If RD=0 the State is secular. If 1<=RD<=5, there's an official religion and people practicing other beliefs are considered minorities. The type of treatment toward other beliefs becomes more intolerant the higher RD is.
-Ethnic Discrimination (ED): (0-10) This variable defines if there's or not an ethnic group above the rest and if so, what kind of treatment other ethnic groups get. If ED=0, all ethnic groups are considered equal and the civ is said to be "multiethnic". If 1<=ED<=10, there's a preferred ethnic group (FE, romans in roman empire) and all the rest are considered minorities (this is the most common case). The type of treatment other ethnic groups get is more disrespectful the higher ED is.
-Slavery (SL): (0-2) Defines if minorities can be slavered or not. 0=Slavery is not allowed, 1=It is allowed in its most common form. This means some people in minorities is slavered with some laws regulating it like the possibility to buy freedom. If SL=2 it is the same as in SL=1, but some specific ethnic groups can be totally slavered in a more brutal way, like it was with africans. For now and until a better procedure is developed, it'll be the ruler's decision which exact tribes can be slavered this way when SL=2.
-Private Property (PP): (0%-100%) Defines what share of total economic activities lie in the hands of the private sector. The rest is owned by the State or the king himself (for ancient regimes).
-Economic Planning (EP): (0%-100%) Defines how much control govt has over economy, both private and public sector. It includes things like prices setting, limits on production, etc.
-Social Policies (SP): (0%-100%) This will define how much of a welfare state the civ has. It will include all redistribution practices, social security, healthcare, free education, etc.
-Foreign Affairs (FA): (0-100) Defines the level of aggressiveness the ruler is allowed to be in the international arena. 0 means passive/peaceful and 100 means world conquest.
The ruler/player will want a specific value for each of these policies. The ruler's preferences will be called "Ruler's Govt Profile". The real set of values the civ has is called "Govt Profile".
III.2 Majorities and Minorities
The empire can hold several ethnic groups, as described in the social model. Normally only one of them is considered the "civ's people" like romans in the roman empire. In this case romans are said to be the majorities population (not necessarily being majority in terms of demography) and all other ethnic groups are said to be minorities. In some cases, though, the govt might do no discrimination at all. In this case all ethnic groups are considered within majorities. People supporting non-official religions are also considered minorities.
For all what follows minorities are irrelevant. That's because this model simulates the political game in the govt leading to set the values for each govt policy and minorities are definitely out of the govt and have no pol.power to play this game. The political game minorities play is only at the level of protests and rebellions trying to stop being a minority or at least have a better treatment from majorities. That's covered in the Riots Model.
As will be shown, people in majorities will be able to participate in the govt depending on the regime. When they participate, they do it deeply influenced by their culture. The govt model stores cultural information of majorities from the social model in the Majorities Cultural Attributes (MCA). See Appendix 2 for more details on how info is transformed from the social model to MCA.
III.3 Classes
Majorities population (not religiously or ethnically discriminated peoples) are divided in classes:
The Upper Class (UC): The aristocracy. The people who owns the means of production. Landowners, company owners, capitalists, nobility, etc.
The Lower Class (LC): The common people. Workers, professionals, peasants, proletarians, etc.
The Religious Class (RC): High priests in command of the Church. If there is an official religion, RC represents the clergy of this religion. If there's no official religion (a secular State), the class contains all high priests from all present religions in equal conditions.
The Military Class (MC): High officers of the army. NOT the whole army. The common soldier belongs to the LC.
The Bureaucratic Elite (BE): Govt employees in key positions in the bureaucratic apparatus. They control most of the govt's administration and live an accommodated life. It's a wealthy class. The USSR had a powerful BE and no Upper Class, for example.
Each class has its own mentality (idea of how the govt should look like). UC and LC are deeply influenced by culture and have some differences about how economy should work. The religious class is mostly guided by its doctrine (taken from the social model) and shares some ideas with normal people. Appendix 2 shows how the info from the social model is transformed to create RCM (Religious Class Mentality). The BE always wants to preserve the current form of govt, since its welfare comes from the particular way the govt is currently working. As for MC, the mentality high officers in the army have is given by their origin. They can come from the LC or the UC. If they come from the LC, then are LC minded and the same for UC. In general, they come partly from the UC and partly from LC. Also, the ruler has an influence over MC mentality through "choosing the right men". The level at which each of these three factors influences MC mentality is explained later.
III.4 Political Structure & Hidden Policies
The distribution of political power among classes and the ruler is called the political structure. For example, a Political Structure might look like this:
Class___Political Power
Ruler_____25%
UC_______8%
LC_______25%
RC_______26%
MC_______6%
BE_______10%
The main role of the Political Structure is saying how much power each entity has. But, at the same time, some policies are "hidden" in the political structure. These "hidden policies" are:
-Privileges: If the relative political power held by the UC (relative to LC pol.power) is greater than its relative demographic share (relative to LC demographic share), it'll be understood as UC having special privileges over the LC. These are privileges given to the UC by law like those nobility had in middle ages. The magnitude of privileges will affect income distribution and influence over the military. Privileges are computed as:
MAX(0;UCpol.power-(UCpolpower+LCpolpower)*UCdemogshare/(UCdemogshare+LCdemogshare))
-Influence over the Military Class: As said before, the political structure partly defines what type of mentality MC has. Ruler's pol.power and privileges are used to determine MC preferences, like this:
MC share with Ruler's mentality (MC_R): Exp(-0.03*(110-Ruler_polpower*100))
MC share with UC mentality (MC_U): (1-MC_R)*(0.5+0.5*Privileges)
MC share with LC mentality (MC_L): 1-MC_R-MC_U
The term "hidden policies" does not mean people don't realize about these effects. It means we don't need a special policy like "UC Privileges" explicitly, and we can build the privileges effect from info in the Political Structure.
III.5 Political Power: Law and influences
The distribution of power among classes and the ruler (Political Structure) is built using two sets of values. The first is the "nominal" Political Structure. It's the pol.power given to each entity "by law". The second is the "de facto influence" each entity has. If the ruler uses bribes on "politicians" of other classes, FE, he has more power than his nominal value. Each class has its own level of de facto influence and a method to compute real pol.power, as will be described later in section IV.1.
III.6 Some Civ-Level Important Variables
-Dominant Religion (DR): The religion with most followers within majorities.
-Empire's Stability (ES): (0-10) This is a measure of how stable the empire is seen by the people. Events decrease ES, like losing a province, having a riot or if the ruler is being replaced by force. Every game turn ES is increased a bit, so if these events don't happen often, the feeling goes continuously upwards.
-Income Distribution (ID): How many times UC per capita income is greater than LC per capita income: UC_PCI/LC_PCI, where UC_PCI and LC_PCI come from the economic model.
III.7 Ideologies
An ideology is a coherent set of values for the political structure and some of the govt policies. The govt policies included in ideologies are:
-Economic Planning
-Social Policies
-Private Property
So, an ideology is a view about how the govt should be regarding 1)who has the power (nominal political structure); 2)economy; and 3)privileges and the composition of high military command (hidden policies). This is what an ideology may look like:
Ruler's pol.power_________70%
UC pol.power____________15%
LC pol.power_____________0%
RC pol.power_____________5%
MC pol.power____________10%
Private Property__________65%
Economic Planning_______10%
Social Policies____________5%
People will choose the ideology best fitting their desires and will use any pol.power they posses to try to impose that view in the govt. The game will have a pool of ideologies representing the most common forms of govt seen in history and some more, like this:
Ancient Despotism (warlord rule), Divine Monarchy, Monarchy, Constitutional Monarchy, Oligarchy, Republic, Capitalist Democracy, Democratic Communism, Social Democracy, Fundamentalism, Communist Dictatorship and Capitalist Dictatorship.
III.8 Types of Policies
There are 3 types of policies:
1) Ruler's Exclusive Policies: Policies the ruler/player can decide alone about. For now, only the tax rate is in this category. This category exist only because of the difficulty in finding a reasonable way to simulate what people want for them.
2) Ideologically Negotiated Policies (INP): Policies the ruler negotiates with the rest classes and where classes define what they want based on ideologies. They're:
-Hidden Policies/Political Structure
-Economic Planning
-Social Policies
-Private Property
3) Directly Negotiated Policies (DNP): Policies the ruler/player must negotiate with classes, where classes define what they want directly for each policy as opposed to choosing an ideology and from it a value for the policy. They are:
-Slavery
-Ethnic Discrimination
-Religious Discrimination
-Civil Rights
-Foreign Policies
IV. How the Model Works
IV.1 Computing De Facto Influences
In the next sections pol.power will be used by classes and the ruler to change govt policies. That pol.power is real pol.power, which counts in the nominal or by law pol.power and de facto influences classes have leading to a higher pol.power than law says they should have. De facto influences are the way this model provides inter-classes interactions, allowing the UC to bribe high officers in the MC, FE. To compute real pol.power for each class we need the nominal values from the Govt Profile and de facto influences. Here's how de facto influences are calculated:
Ruler: He can bribe other "politicians" to gain their sympathy. De facto influence is computed as a scale parameter multiplying the total spending in bribes.
Upper Class: UC de facto influence comes from its control over economy. They can bribe, they can endorse election campaigns and ask favors afterwards, use propaganda through the media or directly to their workers, etc. De facto influence is computed as 0.3*PrivateProperty*(1-EconomicPlanning).
Religious Class: RC de facto influence comes from the respect and worshiping they receive from the rest of society. The more intolerant the religion is, the more willing to use this influence is. That's because intolerant means religion sees itself as the only way to live, so it tries to impose that. De facto influence is computed as 0.2*MCA_ImportanceOfReligion*(100-RCM_ReligiousTolerance)/10000.
Military Class: MC de facto influence comes from its ability to militarily threat the govt and politicians. De facto influence in this case is a constant around 0.15.
Bureaucratic Elite: BE de facto influence comes, by its definition, from its influence on the govt from the inside and its control over administration. BE's nominal pol.power is always zero, since BE's pol.power comes only from its de facto influence. BE's power is really unwanted. It's the unwanted result of a large bureaucratic apparatus. A measure of the size of bureaucracy is used to compute BE de facto influence: 0.5*Average(1-PrivateProperty;EconomicPlanning;SocialPolicies).
Lower Class: LC de facto influence comes from labor unions and the ability to threat with labor strikes. This influence increases with higher Social Policies (which protect workers), with higher Civil Rights (which allow the formation of syndicates and allow strikes legally) and with the level of syndicating, seen as a social development in the tech tree:
0.3*(1/(1+exp(-2+10*SocialPolicies)))*(CivilRights/100)*Syndicating.
(assuming Syndicating Tech Development in 0-100% range)
For the ruler and all classes except BE, de facto power is really the capability of gaining other classes' power by some means. It represents how a class X can buy the sympathy of other classes to encourage them to use their legal (nominal) power in the benefit of class X. Because of this, all values described above should be multiplied by the total nominal pol.power other classes have. In other words, the MC cannot threat others encouraging them to do as the military want if those others cannot really help because they don't have any nominal power to please the military. That's why de facto influences are really those values given above, but multiplied by all possible nominal power the class can actually "buy" from others, which excludes the ruler (otherwise the player would be giving away power without wanting it) and excludes the power high officers loyal to the ruler in the MC have.
In the case of BE, de facto influence is its only source of power and it represents actual control over govt policies and administration. It's not, as opposed to the other entities, power to buy other classes nominal power, but power it indeed possesses. So, even when the ruler thinks he has absolute power, the BE still can have some control.
Some of the sources for de facto influences can be undoubtedly recognized as corruption. The civ will be able to fight corruption decreasing de facto influences and forcing political entities to rely only on their nominal (legal) pol.powers. Although not yet determined, this will probably be done using the media and Civil Rights. In this way, civs with a free enough society (independent media) and having a decent tech level for media and communications, will be able to reduce the level of corruption.
Once we have de facto influences, we must compute real pol.powers. BE real pol.power is directly its de facto influence, as per definition. Pol.power the BE doesn't control is what all other classes and the ruler have left. This remaining power is distributed as:
Ruler: Nominal+DeFactoInfluence
UC, LC, RC and MC: (1-Ruler_polpower)*(Class_NominalPolpower+Class_DeFac toInfluence)/(UC_nominalpp+UC_defactopp+ LC_nominalpp+LC_defactopp+ RC_nominalpp+RC_defactopp+ MC_nominalpp+MC_defactopp)
IV.2 People's Preferences
People have a clear opinion of what they'd like to see in the govt. As everything, people see things through the eyes of culture, so cultural attributes from the social model are taken in to drive people choosing what they'd want for the govt. What we need is an opinion from every person for each govt policy that needs to be negotiated (i.e. all policies except tax rate) and for the political structure.
What the people want for some of the policies can be computed straight forward from cultural attributes and individually for each policy, while others need more sophistication. This sophistication arises from the need of coherency between variables. It's necessary to avoid people from choosing at the same time RC pol.power share equal to 80% and LC pol.power share equal to 50%, since all shares must sum 100%. Or, we must avoid people choosing a politically powerful aristocracy (high UC pol.power share) and at the same time choosing economic policies producing a communist system. So, economic variables and the political structure are all in "packages". This packages are built in the game guaranteeing internal consistency between variables, so people, through culture, only needs to pick the package they see as the best. These packages are called ideologies.
Ideologies not only help doing a consistent modeling, but also add flavor to the game since now people with different ideologies can collide. For example, the french revolution was nothing but the battle of two ideologies: monarchy vs democracy.
So, before people acts in the political arena, we need to know which ideology they support and what they think about those other policies that can be analyzed individually outside the frame of ideologies (Directly Negotiated Policies). The following section IV.2.1 and IV.2.2 show how this is made.
IV.2.1 People's Preferences on Directly Negotiated Policies
The policies in this category are:
-Slavery
-Ethnic Discrimination
-Religious Discrimination
-Civil Rights
-Foreign Policies
In the following lines it's shown what the people in UC and LC want for each policy, mostly given by cultural information stored in MCA (Majorities Cultural Attributes) and what the RC members want, mostly based on religion's doctrine, stored in RCM (Religious Class Mentality). BE wants to preserve whatever value the govt currently has. What the MC wants is given by the relative influences it receives from UC, LC and the ruler, as explained earlier. So, for a given policy X, having what the UC and LC want (say, UC_X and LC_X) and what the ruler wants (from the Ruler's Govt Profile, Ruler_X), then what MC wants for policy X is
MCM*(MC_U*UC_X + MC_L*LC_X + MC_R*Ruler_X)
where MCM is a Military Class Modifier allowing MC members so slightly adapt their mentality depending on the policy and MC_U, MC_L and MC_R are the respective influences over the MC by UC, LC and the ruler.
Slavery (SL)
LC wants: SL=2*square_root((100-MCA_EthnicTolerance)*(100-MCA_Asceticism)/10000), rounded to the closest integer.
UC wants: SL=1.2*2*square_root((100-MCA_EthnicTolerance)*(100-MCA_Asceticism)/10000), rounded to the closest integer.
RC wants: SL=2*square_root((100-RCM_EthnicTolerance)*(100-RCM_Asceticism)/10000), rounded to the closest integer.
MCM=1
Formulas say slavery will tend to be accepted if there's low respect for other tribes and a high desire for wealth. Because of the latter, the UC will be a little more inclined to slavery (20% more).
Ethnic Discrimination (ED)
UC and LC want ED=(1/(1+exp(5-MCA_Nationalism/10)))*(100-MCA_EthnicTolerance)/10, rounded to the closest integer.
RC wants ED=(1/(1+exp(5-RCM_Nationalism/10)))*(100-RCM_EthnicTolerance)/10, rounded to the closest integer.
MCM=1.1
Religious Discrimination (RD)
RC wants RD=(100-RCM_ReligiousTolerance)*5/100, rounded to the closest integer.
Both the UC and LC want: RD=(100-MCA_ReligiousTolerance)*5/100, rounded to the closest integer.
MCM=1
Civil Rights (CR)
RC wants: CR=RCM_Individualism
UC and LC want: CR=MCA_Individualism
MCM=0.9
Foreign Affairs (FA)
RC wants: FA=RCM_Aggressiveness
UC wants: FA=MCA_Aggressiveness
LC wants: FA=MCA_Aggressiveness*0.9
MCM=1.2
In this case LC wants a FA policy a little less aggressive than the aggressiveness of its culture because, after all, it's them that are going to war. The military prefers a policy a little more aggressive.
IV.2.2 People's Preferences: Choosing Ideologies
Each person will look at the available ideologies (discovered/invented ideologies) and will choose one depending mostly on his culture and how good it is to his class. To do this, the model computes an attractiveness for each ideology, on a class basis. That is, the same ideology has different levels of attractiveness depending on the class observing it. This will be made for UC, LC and RC but not for MC nor BE. As in IV.1.1, MC preferences depend on what UC, LC and the ruler want and BE wants always to preserve the current form of govt.
All persons measure the attractiveness for a given ideology with these four questions:
- How much power the ideology offers to the class I belong to? (Desire for Power Attractiveness-DPA)
- How much the ideology reflects my culture? (Cultural Attractiveness-CA)
- How good the ideology is to solve my economic aspirations? (Economic Attractiveness-EA)
- How good the ideology is to solve other problems my civ is going through? (Current Circumstances Attractiveness-CCA)
Each question leads to an attractiveness level (DPA, CA, EA and CCA). Summing all four we get the total attractiveness the ideology has for someone in a given class. The following shows how to compute the four effects for a given ideology seen by class C. Variables in brackets [] represent info taken from the ideology being processed:
1) DPA=K1*[C_pol.power]
i.e., the greater the pol.power the ideology offers to class C, the greater the attractiveness.
2) CA=K2*exp(-(ABS([RCpolpower]-exp(-0.04*(105-ImportanceReligion)))+ ABS([MCpolpower]-exp(-0.04*(105-Aggressiveness)))+ABS((Individualism/100)-(0.2*[PP]+0.8*(1-[SP])))
i.e., the following cultural effects are counted in:
- The higher the cultural attribute "Importance of Religion" is, the greater the attractiveness ideologies offering high RCpol.power have, and vise versa.
- The higher the cultural attribute "Individualism" is, the greater the attractiveness ideologies offering capitalistic economic systems have, and vise versa.
- The higher the cultural attribute "Aggressiveness" is, the greater the attractiveness ideologies offering high MCpol.power have, and vise versa.
3) EA=K3*(A1*[PP] + A2*[EP] + (A3+A4*(ID/3)+A5*(100-RCM_Individualism)/100)*[SP])
where
CLASS__A1______A2_____A3______A4_____A5
LC______3.5_____-3______-1_______0_______0
UC______0______0.5______0_______2_______0
RC______0_______0______0_______0_______4
In essence this says the UC likes an economic system with high private property, low economic planning and no too high social policies. The LC doesn't care about private property, cares something about economic planning (because this means some level of control on abusing employers) and cares very much about social policies. Indeed, LC has growing care with the more differences between rich and poor (ID=Income Distribution). RC only cares about social policies and it's a growing care the less individualistic religion is.
4) CCA=K4*[Ruler_pol.power]/ES
What's said here is people will find more attractive those ideologies with high ruler pol.power when the empire is seen unstable (ES=Empire's Stability) as if they were "looking for the ruler's leadership".
Having total attractiveness for each ideology seen by each class, each ideology is multiplied by its corresponding "Knowledge Level".
Knowledge Level (KL): How known an ideology is. It goes in the range 0-100%. If 100% it means the ideology is perfectly known by the population. When the ideology tech has not been discovered yet, KL=0%. At the moment of discovery it becomes 10%. From that point and ahead, KL increases its magnitude (up to 100%) every turn based on communications techs available.
What KL tries to do is simulate how ideologies spread through the people slowly. When an ideology exist (the tech has been discovered), it's known slowly by people at a rate given by the com techs available. This way when ideologies are discovered, no sudden changes occur. Multiplying attractiveness by KL with a low KL will turn ideology's attractiveness really small, so people won't be very enthusiastic about them. When KL=100%, people can see all the pros and cons of the ideology and it appears with its whole attractiveness.
Since the current Govt Profile can also be seen as an ideology and since the same happens with the Ruler's Govt Profile, attractiveness are computed for them too. This is like people measuring how attractive is their current govt and how attractive ruler's ideas are.
From this point ahead, only 5 ideologies are kept. The Ruler's Govt Profile, the Govt Profile and the 3 highest built-in-the-game ideologies processed. So what we have up to now is a matrix of attractiveness. Something like this:
CLASS__Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
LC_______110_______83_______94___________73_______ ______88
UC_______90_______117______127__________117_______ _____119
RC_______82________63______157___________67_______ _____103
These numbers are used to determine what share of the population in each class support each ideology. This new matrix of support shares will be called SSM-Support Shares Matrix. We'll say the support share for ideology I in class C is:
exp(W*TotalAttract_I)/sum_over_i(exp(W*TotalAttract_i))
where W is a scale parameter. Using this exponential formula, differences in attractiveness are exaggerated and classes tend to concentrate in the most attractive ideologies. For the matrix of total attractiveness of the example above, the SSM results in (with W=0.05):
CLASS__Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
LC_______46%______12%______20%__________7%________ ___15%
UC_______5%_______20%______33%_________20%________ ___22%
RC_______2%________1%______90%__________1%________ ____6%
So, FE, 15% of the LC likes the current state of things. 90% of the RC supports ideology3.
In this matrix MC and BE are missing. In the case of BE, we can add a row with zeroes in all cells except Govt Profile having 100%. This comes from BE definition.
For the Military Class, as said earlier, high officers mentality is given by relative influences of LC, UC and the ruler. The support share the Ruler's Govt Profile has in MC is
MC_R+(1- MC_R)*(UC_X*MC_U+LC_X*MC_L)
where UC_X and LC_X are the support shares for the Ruler's Govt Profile in the UC and LC respectively. For any other ideology I, the MC support shares are computed as
LC_I*MC_L + UC_I*MC_U
where UC_I and LC_I are the support shares for ideology I in UC and LC respectively.
Having the SSM matrix, we have what we needed in section IV.1, that is, what the people want for every single policy.
IV.3 Setting Government Policies
Knowing what people want, now we can model how they'll use their real pol.power to actually change govt policies to their convenience.
IV.3.1 Directly Negotiated Policies
Using the procedures stated in section IV.1, suppose we have each class preferences for each Directly Negotiated Policies and through a proper interface the player putted the values he wants for each, so we have something like this:
Policy\Class____________UC____LC____RC____MC____BE ____Ruler
Slavery_________________1_____0______0______0_____ 0_____0
Ethnic Discrimination______2_____2______2______4_____3___ __6
Religious Discrimination____2_____2______4______1_____2_____ 0
Foreign Affairs__________37____33_____21_____43____32_____ 40
Civil Rights_____________70____70_____44_____67____65___ __85
Suppose the actual real pol.power shares are:
Class____Real pol.power
Ruler____18%
UC______12%
LC______25%
RC______26%
MC_______7%
BE______11%
To compute the final value the govt will take for the Foreign Affairs policy, we make a weighted sum of the values each entity wants, where weights are the respective pol.power shares:
FA=37*12% + 33*25% + 21*26% + 43*7% + 32*11% + 40*18% = 32
The civ's govt will have a Foreign Affairs policy of 32. The same is done for each policy. This mechanism allows each policy to take a value which is more sensitive to the desires of those with larger pol.power. In other words, the more power an entity has, the more successful it is imposing its view on each policy. The mechanism was named "Negotiation Procedure" because it simulates how different entities, having each its own view on some issue, produce a single output. This output is not one of the originals in dispute, but a new "negotiated" one, reflecting the fact that no entity was able to fully impose its opinion. The procedure is general enough to cover a scenario in which all actors have relevant pol.power shares, like in the above example, and also situations where a despotic ruler holds all power. In this latter case the procedure, without any change, makes the final govt policy value equal to what the ruler wanted.
IV.3.2 Ideologically Negotiated Policies
Again we'll use the Negotiation Procedure, but in this case classes don't have a unique value they want. A class, as shown in section IV.1.2, may have its population divided between several ideologies, so there's no way to determine specifically what a class wants, as a whole, for any of the Ideologically Negotiated Policies. That's why we'll use the Negotiation Procedure on a "party" basis. It'll be like each ideology has a party in the govt trying to impose its ideology and each party has a pol.power to do it.
To compute pol.power each party has is easy. If, for example, LC has 30% pol.power and 12% of the people in LC supports ideologyX, then 12% of LC pol.power is held by ideologyX supporters. Doing this analysis for each class and ideology we can compute all pol.power each ideology gets from different entities and then sum up. Taking the Support Shares Matrix example in section IV.1.2 and the pol.power shares in the example right above, the ideologies pol.powers would be:
Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__Ruler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
__8%_______8%_______36%_________27%___________21%
So, people wanting to preserve the govt as it is (supporting the Govt Profile) have 21% of total pol.power. This one is like the "Conservative Party".
You can see that the ruler, although having only 18% of total pol.power, will be able to effectively impose his position on Ideologically Negotiated Values at 27% because, as can be seen in the Support Shares Matrix, the values he proposes found followers in classes, like in the UC where 20% of them support him and therefore will use their pol.power to back ruler's view. Also, since he has influence over the military, he can also get some support from there.
The Negotiation Procedure is ready to be applied. Suppose ideologies look like these:
________________Ideology1__Ideology2__Ideology3__R uler's Govt Profile__Govt Profile
Ruler's pol.power____70%______20%______20%__________20%___ _______25%
UC pol.power______15%______10%_______5%___________10% ___________8%
LC pol.power_______0%______70%_______10%__________70% __________35%
RC pol.power_______5%_______0%_______55%___________0% __________26%
MC pol.power______10%_______0%_______10%___________0% ___________6%
Private Property____65%______85%_______60%__________75%___ _______68%
Economic Planning__10%______25%_______45%__________35%_____ _____36%
Social Policies______5%______35%_______55%__________40%__ ________43%
Using this info and the pol.powers each ideology has, the Negotiation Procedure would give us for Social Policies:
SP=5%*8% + 35%*8% + 55%*36% + 40%*27% + 43%*21% = 43%
Again, it can be seen how the Negotiation Procedure's final value tends to be closer to what ideologies with higher pol.power encourage.
It was assumed here that all ideologies were allowed to participate in the political process. This won't be always the case because through Special Actions the ruler will be allowed to ban ideologies forbidding them to participate. That's why instead of using the SSM directly to compute ideologies pol.powers, we'll use a "Representation Matrix" which is equal to SSM when no ideology is banned and it's an altered SSM when banning exists. The procedure to compute the Representation Matrix is explained in Appendix 3.
IV.4 Circular Effects
Although the Negotiation Procedure is simple to apply, we'll need to apply it several times in order to reach final values. This happens because there're circular effects involved. FE, when Private Property is changed, it is changed using, among other things, real UC pol.power. But real UC pol.power depends on Private Property through de facto influences. So a change in PP leads to a change in UC pol.power, which leads to a change in the entire Political Structure, which leads to more changes, like the relative influences UC, LC and the ruler have over the military, leading to a change in MC preferences. This might look like a mess, but it's not too bad. Some of the calculations described in previous sections must be carried on several times to achieve an equilibrium point, but there're two good things: 1) The process is needed only when negotiations are called, not every turn; 2) It takes only about 10 iterations to reach equilibrium, which is quite fast.
You can see more of this in the provided Excel Workbook.
[This message has been edited by little green men from Mars (edited June 23, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by axi (edited June 23, 2000).]
)
Comment