Government Model v.2

[axi]

F_Smith: I am eager to reply to you, but this is adressed solely to Rodrigo, so you will have to wait for the next post.

Rodrigo:

quote: Several "hard" comments to the govt model... I must say that I LOVE that type of comments! It's then when real discussions start!

You're the one who started it, you should know I would respond. You were just lucky I was out of town.

From your original post:

quote: Finally, this change in how ideologies are defined implies a change in how Warrior Class' mentality is computed. It was formerly computed as partly influenced by the Upper Class and partly by the Lower Class. It will be now computed using People's pol.power, Capitalists pol.power, demographic shares and kapital shares in a way I won't detail now.

I'm interested in the WC behavior and you know very well than I'm not afraid of details; I'm all ears.

Concerning the "dictatorship of the proletariat": From a strictly economic point of view, it works as you say it does; with their kapital taken away, the UC and MC are forced to work, in order to survive and so, economically, there is nothing but LC. People's mentalities on the other hand do not change from one day to another and these people remain politically UC and MC. So if power is distributed to them too, democratically, they will try to use it, in order to revert to the old regime. They are counter-revolutionary agents and as such, they have to be suppressed. That is why Marx said that all the power was to be given explicitly to the proletariat and not to the people in general. So the UC and MC are actually reduced to the state of minorities (although technically they belong to the majorities population). This happens at the transitional stage of communism, where the old class structure is abolished externally but not internally, in the people's mentalities. After one or more generations, the mentality will be uniform and communism will enter it's final stage, where society will be truly classless and power will be distributed evenly to the whole population.

It is a general fact that the socioeconomic classes, during transitional politicoeconomic stages, can have one demographic percentage in economic matters and another in political outlook. This is what leads to counter-revolutions (like the Restauration of 1814 in France) and causes contrasts like "new money" vs "old money" and, in the grand scale, landed aristocracy vs bourgeoisie (although in that case the Sites vs Kapital factor intervenes). This separation seldom lasts more than a couple of generations (say 50 years), but while it exists, it is one of the largest driving forces in the political scene. Depending on the scale of the game, this might not matter very much (f.e. when a game turn lasts 50 years), but usually (and specially when radical changes, like revolutions, occur), it is important enough to question the consistency of the political system. In the govtecon field (in other words my spreadsheet), there is and there should be no inertia; during a revolution the UC will instantly dissapear. While in the political field (the govt model), it is inadmissible that large masses of population should change preferences instantly. If the UC didn't manage to supress the revolution this turn, it should at least be given a chance to revolt against it next turn.

If we indeed recognise a problem here, the solution shouldn't be very hard to accomplish. According to the length of the turn, a transitional stage of n turns should be declared and the class demographics used by the govt model should be the old ones (before the political change), converging (linearily?) to the new ones. For demographic changes during normal times, maybe the govt model should be one turn behind the econ model. Intra-class mobility is recorded anyway. I think that you have dealt with transitional stages in the govt model before, haven't you Rodrigo?

Nobility: You are right in your claim that nobility isn't tied to land ownership. Nobility is instituted where and when too much power stays in the same few hands for too long. Nobility is nevertheless linked with a certain social or economic contribution, whatever that is, the possesion or procuration of which is a hereditary right (land, capital, security and ethics have been under such hereditary rights in human history). When I was writing my original post, I considered of including "Nobility" or "Oligarchic power" between "Autocratic power" and "Democratic power", where it would naturally fit (inside the political layer of the power structure), but I thought I was stretching it too far. Now that I know it is concerning you too, I am mentioning it.

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.

Classes per sector: I don't think we need them either, but, judging from the amount of options that will finally be available in Clash, they will probably be optional. As for Landowner power, I based this not on the (doubtful) nobility of the landowners, but at the inherent power held by the land (Sites), as a production factor, in correlation with the power attributed to Kapital and Labor. The econ model is using in general a production function of the style Y=A*R^a*K^b*L^c, where A is the tech factor, R is generic resources (#of sites in the primary sector, #of resources units in the secondary and 1 in the tertiary) and a+b+c=1. Although it is applicable only in the primary sector, Sites is a factor of production, so why shouldn't it be the vessel of political power (of the economic layer). Of course such an approach is complicating things very much, specially in what concerns the product distribution (which should have to be 3-fold) and it certainly invites us to do classes by sector. It would also appeal for a dynamic class system, so that we won't have capitalists in 4000BC. Each option here has it's pros and cons; I don't know what to support. What do you say?
- Classes per sector (9 classes)+Landowner power?
- Landowner power+Dynamic class system (3-4 classes)?
- The current system (unique UC (3 classes) + land and kapital bagged together)?

N Middle Classes: Their power would be proportionate to their demographics and to the share of total Kapital they hold (and to the Labor they produce, I would say), but how do we define them? Even the single Middle Class, which has a somewhat good definition, causes us big problems. I wouldn't want to define them by their income. They could be defined according to education level, which acts as a multiplier for labor (skilled labor, like in Imperialism), but I have my reservations about that.

Btw, your reference to "middle-class warriors" has reminded me a case where we find both that and 4 discrete (rated according to income) socioeconomic classes: the Athenian Democracy of the 5th century BC, where we had:
Pendakosiomedimnoi, >500, charged with the maintenance of a trireme each. Fought as ship captains.
Hippes, 300-500, charged with the maintenance of a warhorse. Fought as horsemen.
Zeugitai, 150-300, charged with the maintenance of a pair of oxes. Fought as hoplites.
Thitai, <150, with no economic responsibilities. Fought as sailors and light warriors.
(Income is counted in medimnoi of wheat per annum: 1 medimnos=52 litres)

So there was no MC (even the generals got picked by chance) and the military contribution was distributed among the socioeconomic classes. Since it was firmly tied together with tax collection (everyone had to pay for his weapons), the class distinctions were extended upon military organisation. Neat, isn't it?

Mixed and complex classes: You are insinuating that in real life the mixture rules do not apply; the scholar-monks will not have the average behavior of scientists and priests, but something quite different, so we should have to invent a new behavior for them. I aknowledge this problem of course, but that's (their behavior) not what we want them for. From a historic point of view I find them less boring than the N Middle classes. I foresee them to be the absolute must for scenario creators, who will demand historical accuracy rather than realistic behavior from their classes. I expect that scenario creators will have the capability to set class behaviors at pretty much what they expect it to be, overriding the system. Most of them I guess will leave quite a few liberties to the political system, or totally freeze it, like in some civ2 scenarios where you can't change the govt type. As for the normal games, I think that the standard should be to have only simple classes, which will be able to have the realistic behavior they are having now. What is great in attributing the pol.power to contributions instead of classes is that it gives us unlimited flexibility in the typical-historical context, while having exactly the same effect in the political arena. If we could invent a trustworthy and realistic dynamic class system, it would be even nicer in appearance, but I wouldn't expect it to make class warfare more interesting.

Before we move to details on behaviors, we should decide what alterations should be made with the socioeconomic classes.

[roquijad]

F_Smith's comment on communism invites to passioned discussion! Even tho, if a (more philosophical) conversation about communism and capitalism is about to take place, let's do it in another thread so we can still advance in this one, ok?

Axi:
You're very right about mentalities staying the same when capital is taken away. I overlooked this fact. Your solution of keeping an inertia for mentalities sounds attractive. For sure the model now needs an update on that part after this very clever comment of yours and I'll be thinking about how to do it starting now.

I'll skip the dicussion about nobility to concentrate on class flexibility.

Classes per sector: Your comments only reinforce my opinion of not having them.

Middle Class(es): Although I found your MC definition very good some time ago, I find unnecessary to restrict its econ/political behavior with a definition. The scenario designer (or us) has to specify how much K it provides and how much WH it provides. The econ model multiplies WH by class' skill level to generate L. And that's it. I don't see a need for a rigid class definition.

quote:"I foresee [mixed behaviors classes] to be the absolute must for scenario creators, who will demand historical accuracy rather than realistic behavior from their classes."
jeee... what are you saying here? Any time someone wants to add a class is because he/she wants the specific beauty and flavor of it. Like LGJ desiring the scientific class. He expects that if he adds that class, then it will behave as scientists do. He'd be very upset if after adding the class, it ends up behaving as the military! Your words seem to suggest players should be able to add classes just for cosmetic reasons. That is, having the class, but the class having no effect in the game in terms of what the class was supposed to do (historical accuracy but no realistic behavior). I find this totally useless.

Scenario designers won't achieve better historical accuracy adding classes if those classes don't do as historicaly they did.

quote:"I expect that scenario creators will have the capability to set class behaviors at pretty much what they expect it to be, overriding the system."
How... without getting into coding? Mixed behaviors cannot do the job. Mixing very specific behaviors (such as BE behavior, FE) will produce a very strange hybrid class.

quote: "What is great in attributing the pol.power to contributions instead of classes is that it gives us unlimited flexibility in the typical-historical context"
Sure, but we can't create realistic behaviors with contributions only. Contributions can only help.

It seems that you're leaning toward losing realistic behaviors in order to achieve more scalability in the number of social classes. This would be valid as an option if this choice in fact would give you MORE social classes. It's tricky, but simpler behavior allows you to have more classes, but in time makes classes very homogenous (like the military units example I gave in my "govt model update" post). This increased homogeneity makes you lose the desired scalability because what makes a class interesting is those little-details-that-matter. Just look at your greek classes you mentioned. Their differences are just details, yet are what makes them different. Losing in realistic behavior actually makes you lose "real" scalability.

I prefer to have realistic behaviors for a few classes than very vague and homogenous behaviors for lots of classes.

[F_Smith]

Rodrigo:

I know that this analysis might rock some boats, but I actually think it is highly relevant to this discussion.

'Class' is defined by 'control of capital', agreed?

The Middle Class and Upper Class are seperated from the lower class by the difference in the capital they control.

In a 'pure' communist system, the capital is controlled by the govt buearacrats.

Which is why those Govt 'commisars' become, by definition, the 'upper' or 'priviledged' class. The Govt worker in charge of handing out housing assignments has power, and is 'priviledged'.

The current system can already model a 'communist' system, and will in fact confront a 'pure' communist system with the realities of what capital is. A 'communist' system in the game will have the same difficulties that such a govt faces in the real world.

We can not make a model that will allow an impossible govt to exist.
[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 18, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

First off I'm with Axi on more classes. I do want to say however though that a class should be something thas has some inpact on the game. FE the "scholarly monk class" rodrigo refered to wouldn't. All he'd do is pray and generally copy books (not enough to have an impact on the economy of books either). Anyway he might discuss some philisophical ideas and such, but generally most won't go beyond his place of worship.

I do understand Rodrigo's concern for realistic classes vs. many classes that might seem not to be quite realistic, but I would perfer more classes. Perhaps explaining how each of the social classes works currently might help expalin some stuff.

Also as far as combining things is concerned, we could do it with priorities or levels which would offset some of the unrealistic behavior that might occur. I mean check out how I figured out some ideas for personalities for the Character Model. Sure these aren't indivisuals, but we are modeling all the people molded together to act like a indivisual entity which amounts to similar ideas since it would either be the average of everyone's ideas in that class or the ideas of the dominant members of that class anyway.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I read the entire post between you(Axi) and rodrigo. I'm wanting to know how one comes up with the final negotiated result as there are people who are more willing to budge than others. Also must there always be a successful result? That seems highly unrealistic.

Another thing I really didn't understand why things must alwasys be negotiated with for a medium, why it can't be yes/no on changing with no middle ground.

Finally if you give anti-feelings for extreme mesaurs you should also give pro-feelings for rulers or groups that try to stand the middle ground or go with what the people want.

Also as far as revolts happening with extreme views insn't ness likely. Take pre-war Japan during the latter part of the Mejii Restoration. By this time anyone who critized the government or possibly would was killed (or banished if a foriegner). This is also coupled with the fact that the countries main religion, Shinto (specifically State Shinto) said the Emperor was devine and couldn't be contradicted or replaced because of his descions. This makes his policies when putting something through not ness for negotiation because anyone who doesn't like them is killed. Also revolts won't happen because those who would've started them have been killed.

Also Hitler did something similar. When he was denied things earlier on, he simply took the few minority people who agreed with him and taught the younger generations after seizing the government. Such policies would still need to be negotiated for atleast say 20 years, but after that, negotiation is irrelavant almost.

I'm just saying extreme views if a population grows up believing in them, shouldn't result in violence. Instead it should be more if they are related to the EGs views which can varry.

[F_Smith]

Lordy -- and everyone else:

We need immediate help in the 'bug reports' thread on this exact issue.

Please check there, and comment.

[roquijad]

LGJ:
"must there always be a successful result? That seems highly unrealistic."

I don't know what you mean by "successful result"
---------
"Another thing I really didn't understand why things must alwasys be negotiated with for a medium, why it can't be yes/no on changing with no middle ground."

We could do it, but Mark was worried bout the difficulties of having good AI for discrete variables, so in general terms we tried to keep all variables in a continous range.
-------------
Anti-feeling: This concept doesn't exist anymore. In some of the quotations by Axi it appears, but only because at that time there was no riots model an we were working with Hranfkell's concept of Anti-feeling.
------------
About your thoughts regarding "extreme" positions, Axi was referring to extremes compared to what classes want, not extremes per se. If people in Japan liked their all powerful monarch, then this wouldn't be considered an extreme position. If you try to set a fundamentalist govt in the US, then it'd be extreme and protests and other stuff would ocurr.

[axi]

As I had warned, I moved all the OT quotations from the Object Builder thread to here, where they are really relevant.
------------------------------------------
F_Smith wrote:

quote: If I want to raise a value in a negotiated policy, I have to 'high-ball' the pref choice -- ask for way more than I want to get what I want. It's kinda wierd, and wasn't much fun. It kinda seemed like a loophole that allows you to manipulate the system.

In our initial discussions, I had pointed out the problem. The quotation is from the part of the model referring to CNPs.

quote: Rodrigo: For every variable discussed above we have what each class wants. The ruler/player has given already his opinion putting the values he thinks are best in a proper interface (ruler's govt profile), so the PC has values for each variable too. The final policies will be a weighted sum of the desires of each class, in which weights are their pol.power shares. axi: There is a MAJOR problem here. Because of the weighted sum, the player will be compelled to support more extreme policies than these that he intends, in order to tip the scales to his favor. You might call it a feature - I call it a bug, because such dishonesty would never work in real politics. Your example below is most enlightening: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Example: Suppose the political structure is RC-10%, MC-5%, PC-25%, UC-40%, LC-20%. Suppose values classes want are: UC:2 LC:2 PC:1 RC:0 MC:2 Now each class use its pol.power to try to make the govt. policy equal to its desire. The calculation is: (RC) 10%*0 + (MC) 5%*2 + (UC) 40%*2 + (LC) 20%*2 + (PC) 25%*1 + =1.55. Since the variable can take only integer values, rounded we get "2", so negotiations at the govt have given a Religious Tolerance equal to "2" (all religions allowed). ------------------------------------------------------------------- axi: The PC here voted "1" and he got "2". If he were smarter, he would have voted "0", so his share would be 25%*0 and the final outcome 1.30 rounded to 1. Then he would get what he actually wanted. One way to adress this is to penalise unpopular suggestions with anti feeling too and not just policies, but this would complicate things too much. Another is to modify the decision making system, introducing two rounds, (like in the municipal elections): Round 1: Distribute the political power between the choices. The best two get to the second round. Round 2: Throw each of the other percentages to the closest finalist. If one is in the middle, split. Majority wins. Rodrigo: You got me here. I knew this effect was in there and in fact we discussed it with Mark. Mark didn't care much about it and gave me a "we'll see", so I kept going, but I do dislike it. There's really no way in which we can force the player to put exactly what he wants instead of strategically choosing values. My negotiation procedure cannot fix that nor can yours. In this particular example your procedure might seem better, but in the general case the player will always be able to choose values he doesn't really want no matter the procedure used. I think the best way to solve it is, as you said above (and which is also what I proposed to Mark), including the ruler's values in the Anti feeling. In that way the player cannot go for extreme values without risking to face problems. As for the procedure to use, I prefer mine. The reason is your 2-rounds election mechanism is an election procedure, not a negotiation one. In an election procedure, the final value for any policy is one of the initial values in the competition since the procedure only chooses one of them. If we are to simulate the politics within a govt, then the final value should be the outcome of negotiations and so this final value is not necessarily one of the initial ones but a new negotiated one. If we simulate elections instead of negotiations, we'll be strongly reducing the possible values for each policy and this is a big problem for continuos variables like Foreign Affairs. The other important problem with your method is that if the ruler has more than 50% pol.power, then the final policy value will always be exactly what he wants, so it's irrelevant how much power the other classes have. If the rest classes have a total of 0% pol.power or 49% pol.power is unimportant and in both cases the govt policy takes the ruler's value EXACTLY, which I find very unrealistic. If the ruler has 51% pol.power and wants a policy value equal to 1 and the rest classes (with 49% pol.power) want a value of 3, I think it's way more realistic the final value being around 2, than the ruler imposing his view. Having an election procedure destroys any attempt to simulate actual negotiations, which I believe are extremely important to exist in the model. So, IMO, we should keep my negotiation procedure and just see how to push the player to be honest. MS! axi: I only suggested an election system here because I did the same for the INPs (although I actually said the opposite), but there there are some more reasons for it. I aknowledge that here it would probably do more harm than good. If the "penalising the profile" solution is feasible, I' m all for it. Solved!

In the govt model thread, in my first comment, I had said:

quote: 7) The Macchiavelian ruler: I have already pointed out that the weakness of the negotiation procedure is that it lets the ruler counterbalance the other classes preferences by taking some extreme decisions for the ruler's gov't profile. The things are bad enough for the DNPs, but for the INPs they are worse because of the multiple loops of the procedure. The first thing I did with Rodrigo's worksheet is to put 100% for Ruler's pol_power in the Ruler's gov't profile and the macro gave me exactly what I wanted. If this happened in the game, it would be exactly like playing civ2 after this. The obvious solution for this is to make sure that the player will not dare to give extreme RGP's, because that would cause an immediate raise to all the related PAFs and an immediate events check and would normally cost him his head (at least). This is something to be set at the riots model of course, but I have outlined it here because otherwise the whole negotiation is useless. It could also be possible for us to restrict the negotiation to a few or only one loop per turn, so that any governmental change wouldn't take place immediately. Rodrigo insists that an equilibrium must always be reached, but if this prooves to be in any way buggy or unnatural, this could save our efforts.

Rodrigo's reply:

quote: The Macchiavelian ruler: As you perfectly said it, Axi, the ruler can face a lot of problems in the Riots model if he chooses extreme values in Ruler's Govt Profile. Even more, there's a specific Pro-Action Feeling for this, the "Replace Ruler Feeling". Concerning the equilibrium point of the Negotiation Procedure, if you didn't notice, I actually chose your idea! Whenever nagotiations are called, the equilibrium will be found, but not applied immediately. It will be stored and each game turn, the Govt Profile will slowly move toward eq. I think these two elements will prevent the player from being dishonest.

--------------------------------------------
I had made a suggestion about a political/electoral system for INPs (which I am going to update and present it in a subsequent post) and "Rodrigo1" is his criticism. "axi1" is my reply and "Rodrigo2" is his criticism on my reply (axi1 was written as a continuous text, but Rodrigo 2 broke it up). Do not expect to understand everything.

quote: Rodrigo1: Your system is very interesting, but I think it's biased towards a modern democracy where elections happen and the ruler has to try to keep himself in charge (be re-elected). The real problem with it is explained in the next paragraph, but let me give you a comment before that: I understand why you took this road. As you said it, it should be a struggle between ideologies instead of classes and also merging ideologies should be more limited to ideologies really similar to one and other. About the first thing and as I said, there's no real difference between both views. However, I admit it's easier to understand the model seen as an ideologies struggle, so let's keep that view instead of mine for explaining purposes. About the second, the main explanation for allowing merging is given in the next paragraph, but maybe we can be more exigent with ideologies and impose some similarity level at least, but we have to be very clear about what each variable represent. I say this because it seems to me you are not understanding pol.power as I do. In your system an ideology having pol.power>0 can be left out of the final govt computation for policies, while I think this is fundamentally incorrect. If you have pol.power, then it means you can take part in govt decisions (you DO have power to do so, by definition). My guess is you treated pol.power more like "political support" or "political strength", so being low can let the ideology out of the govt, but that isn't the role of this variable. If your calculations for defining the winning ideology would have used only the Representation matrix and DIAC (but not pol.power), then at least all variables are being used in their right sense. We have to respect each variable role. The main problem with your system is that you're simulating only the "executive" power, that is, what ideology (or ideologies coalition) wins "the presidency" (or equivalent for other govt types), while I was trying to simulate the behavior and interactions between the executive power and "the senate" or any other equivalent for less representative govts. When I say "govt" I mean the whole political scenario and not only who's in charge of administration. That's way you feel is unrealistic for different ideologies to be merged to determine govt policies and I guess that's why you saw pol.power not as power to change govt numbers but as something else. I agree there's little room for merging ideologies in an election competing for "the presidency", FE, but this is different because I don't want to know which ideology won the elections (became the executive power), but the complete struggle between the executive power and the rest powers. If we were simulating which ideology was going to be elected as the executive power, then I could have agreed with you, but that's not the case and I still believe that shouldn't be the case anyway. Clinton and his ideology, once elected, doesn't decide all govt policies, but he and his party has to deal with other parties in the senate for any fundamental policy change (law, if you will). So, policies are determined even by those not elected in the executive power. So, what I think we need is to simulate the whole political game including interactions between the executive power (PC) and the "senate". And the senate can and should be a mix between all ideologies present and the power each ideology has over final numbers is the total pol.power the ideology supporters have (mod by Representation). No elections are needed and any coalition effect is included indirectly in the negotiation procedure. If you think we should ALSO simulate the election of the executive power (PC), then that's another matter. However, you have to realize that doing so is equivalent to define PC ideology, so that's like taking away any control from the player and therefore we have to be really careful about it. MS! --------------------------------------------- axi1: I am obliged to accept your reasoning, although different from mine, because of the different definitions that each of us (subconsciously at first) gave to political power, political struggle and the PC. Some points need to be clarified: 1. Under your definition, where does political power derive from, if not from the capability of each class to control the legislative and executive power? How can a class alter state policies like the amount of welfare, if not from within the government? For me, executive power and policies are the same thing, while the PC can be regarded as the incorporeal "Kratos", or more conveniently as the personal will of the person or personae moving the threads of power, directly or through the people. --------------------------------------------- Rodrigo2: I really don't know what to say here. Your questions are as far as I can see answered already. I'm afraid we're just having problems with definitions. The capability to change govt policies (at least to influence their value) is called political power in this model. That's the answer for the first question. If a class has pol.power then it's within the govt. That's the answer for the second question. "Government" in this model refers to all political institutions that take part in govt policies definition. PC is nothing but the ruler or if you prefer, the ruler plus a set of fellows who work with him to try making his ideology applied. --------------------------------------------- axi1: 2. It is commonplace among the pluralistic types of government, that, although everyone recognised as a political agent has the right to get his view represented in the government, not all of them get represented simultaneously, because, as it is claimed, a) there are differences that are generally considered unbridgeable and b) a political synthesis can sometimes be far worse than a pure ideology. So what happens is some variation of the majority rule, otherwise referred at as "democratic concentrisation" (directly translated). I will not discuss here if this is right or wrong, only that it is common practice and that it should be represented. In autocratic regimes of course, all of this is irrelevant. ---------------------------------------------- Rodrigo2: The question is how you include within one model these types of expressions of democracy with the negotiations that takes place in ancient regimes between the great military leader and the chief priest. For almost all history no democratic mechanism like those you mention existed, so I rather simulate a negotiation procedure than an election one. Since I don't want to include an "exception rule" for democratic regimes, I'll keep the same procedure for it. If the final values turned out to be so bad for everybody, then the Anti feeling will come to our aid pushing the govt to a more radical change. I prefer to make the Anti feeling more sensitive to the difference between what's desired for policies and what exist than to try to simulate individually each type of political struggle for each type of govt form. In that way you can ensure very little mixing will exist because the Anti feeling won't let it happen without suffering revolutions and other nasty events. ---------------------------------------------- axi1: 3. From a totally technocratic viewpoint, "majority rule" is the most natural way of avoiding the merging and so giving a chance to extreme policies of ever being practiced. --------------------------------------------- Rodrigo2: But totally unrealistic. The illusion of democratic elections is just that: an illusion. You don't just step aside if you're capitalistic and a communist govt wins the elections or vice versa. No extreme ideologies have ever reach govt by normal elections and without blood in the process (including the attempt to actually rule). There's a simple reason for that: people with extreme ideologies are too few. If a extreme ideology is pursued by the player, he'll do exactly what you mention below that's also historically accurate. ---------------------------------------------- axi1: We should not fool ourselves; the player is bound to do anything in order to get his civ under control, so we wouldn't want to force him do things that he normally shouldn't. Because to achieve this with total merging, you'd have to suppress the opposers political power to zip, giving it all to the conceding parties and this everytime you wish a change in policy, while this is definitely not the meaning of political power. (This reminds of some political bureaus of socialist regimes, where the consensus had to be unanimus, so no opposing voice was practically allowed.) ---------------------------------------------- Rodrigo2: You have just outlined the steps to follow for a player with the ambition of having an extreme ideology in the govt. You just missed some killings in between. Of course that's not the meaning of pol.power and that's fine. If you're afraid the player will do all that always to keep his civ as he wants it, you're (again) forgetting about the Anti-feeling. He just cannot do that all the time. He'll have to face too many riots and such. In no way I've trusted the players to be politically correct and use this model as good human beings. The temptation to be dictator is huge, I know. Just let the player do whatever he thinks is best, but let's see how he deals with the mess. ----------------------------------------------- axi1: Majority rule also allows for more and easier fluctuations in policy, while rendering the player willing to let two or more opposing ideologies to coexist. I have the general feeling that it provides better gameplay. However, as you have already pointed out, we must respect the variables, so my approach can only be accepted if we are willing to redifine them. I am afraid that this is a rather philosophical matter, about which everybody has extremely vague ideas. I am also afraid that a discussion in the forum about it would really get chaotic. Feeling that there are other, way more important issues to settle, I will not (I am not entitled to anyway) veto your approach. I am only concerned about the implications of #3, which will be practical. Solved? ---------------------------------------------- Rodrigo2: You have to give more attention to the Anti-feeling. Two antagonistic ideologies won't coexist peacefully if they both have a large support. They can if one has very little support, like the communist party in any first world country today. And IMO it's reasonable to say that this minority ideologies can affect policies (which what my negotiation procedure allows). Just look how these minority parties conform alliances to be able to change laws to what they consider better. They find a way to make some little changes at least, which is well modeled through little pol.power (derived from little population support). The world doesn't work changing from one govt form to the next through majority rules. Such radical changes occur only through violence. History is my witness. The player will need to be despotic several times and allow representative govt forms only if his people is homogeneous enough, which in time can be achieved through propaganda, murders, forced migrations, etc. It's not my fault. It's just the way it is. This is why the role of the Anti-feeling is very important and you shouldn't oversee it. It's a part of the political process.

[axi]

I present here my forementioned suggestion for an election-type system for INPs, to be discussed (and just in case F_Smith goes on a coding spree, before I'm back ). Since I'm leaving tomorow, I do not have enough time to update the numbers in my example. You'll get the idea anyway. The PC is the "Primary Class", the Ruler.

These are the four competing profiles. To make things easy for me, I suppose that the current values match the de facto values for the power structure.

VARIABLE	             Ideo1     Ideo2     PCIdeo    Current Values
PC pol.power 	20%	40%	20%	15%
UC pol.power	25%	10%	25%	10%
LC pol.power	30%	5%	10%	25%
WC pol.power	15%	15%	15%	30%
RC pol.power	10%	30%	30%	20%
Private Property	60%	40%	60%	50%
Economic Planning	60%	30%	70%	50%
Social Policies	80%	20%	60%	50%

The DIAC matrix I use is also arbitrary. In this matrix it gets multiplied with the PP of each class and the sum of support for each ideology is multiplied with the Knowledge level for each ideology.

CLASS    Ideology 1            Ideology 2            PC Ideology          Current Values
PC         0%x15%               0%x15%              100%x15%           0%x15%
UC         26%x10%             38% x10%            22% x10%           14% x10%
LC         81% x25%            8%x25%               11% x25%           0% x25%
WC        72% x30%            13% x30%            14% x30%           1% x30%
RC         54%x20%             23%x20%              20%x20%           3%x20%

SUM       55,25%x25%        14,30%x100%       28,15%x110%       3,30%x100%
FINAL     22,14%                22,92%               49,65%                5,29%

With these final percentages, the profile variables will be negotiated. These resemble very much the results of the real world elections and should IMO be displayed on the interface, in this format. In this case, Ideology 1 has by far the largest support, but it is vastly misrepresented, which, along with a little propaganda, makes the PC ideology dominant.

Using these results, negotiations can be done in the usual way, through a weighted average, the negotiations procedure or whatever. Even in this case though, the problem that we encountered with the Culturally Negotiated Policies persists: the player is driven to dishonesty, concerning the ruler's govt profile. Of course in the INPs the PC Ideology loses support as it goes more extreme. For this reason and also because of the merging effect, I am proposing an alternative: we can use an election - type system like the one I proposed for the Culturally Negotiated Policies. In this case, the choices are the 4 (or more) Ideologies and coalitions occur with ideological distance as a criterion.

***From now on, things are different from the govt model.***

The formula that computes ideologic distance between two ideologies is simple, since we have to compare vectors with 8 elements, which have the same range (0-1):
D(Ia, Ib)=sqrt(2)*sqrt[(Ia1-Ib1)^2+(Ia2-Ib2)^2+…+(Ia8-Ib8)^2], so that 0
So, for the 4 ideologies above, we would have the folowing (symmetric) matrix:

IDEOLOGIES	Ideo1	Ideo2	PCIdeo	Current Values
Ideology 1	0	1,179	0,510	0,583
Ideology 2	1,179	0	0,922	0,742
PC Ideology	0,510	0,922	0	0,529
Current Values	0,583	0,742	0,529	0

From this distance chart it is obvious that Ideology 1 will prefer a coalition with the PC Ideology rather than anything else (the funny thing here is that it is partly suppressed, but then the DIAC matrix is not real) and since they achieve an absolute majority between them, the PC will only have to negotiate with them. We should probably impose a limit to the ideological distance of the collaborating parties, D

VARIABLE             Govt Policy
PC pol.power 	20%
UC pol.power	25%
LC pol.power	16%
WC pol.power	15%
RC pol.power	24%
Private Property	60%
Economic Planning	67%
Social Policies	74%
Consensus	71,79%

Of course the PC ideology doesn't dominate all the time. There are the following possibilities:

a) PC Ideology > 50%. Then the player can choose between inforcing his policy as is and finding collaborators to increase the consensus.

b) Another Ideology > 50%. Two cases:
i) D ii) D>Dc. The distance between the two ideologies is unbridgeable, so the PC loses the struggle. The dominant ideology is the Govt policy.

c) No ideology > 50%. Then the two ideologies that share the smallest D collaborate. If they do not exceed 50%, the next bigger D is checked and either a third ideology is added to the group, or another couple is formed. This formation of groups goes on until:

i) Dc is reached without any group exceeding 50%. Then a Universal Consensus Government is formed, with the participation of all Ideologies.

ii) A group exceeds 50%. Two cases:
1) If the PC ideology is in the dominant group, the Govt policy is the weighted sum for this group.
2) If the PC ideology is not in the dominant group, the case is similar to case b).

What happens when the PC loses the struggle? Then according to the game settings, one of the following can happen (TBD, although I think it has been some times already):
- The player just can't influence the Govt Policy.
- The ruling Character/Dynasty changes according to LGJ's model.
- The AI undertakes total/partial control of the civ and the player has to try to take over again next turn.
- The player loses the game (if he has chosen to play the Eternal Ruler Challenge).
[This message has been edited by axi (edited August 21, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

Here is a quote from an email I sent to Rodrigo at one time. It gives us a way to inform the player on which changes are 'safe' and which could be very risky etc. It could work with either the negotiation mechanism, or in a slightly different way for the 51% approach. It would IMO help players to know where the limits are - the same way an experienced political actor.

quote: The player would be presented with a range of sliders covering all the things they can set a preference for. Each slider could be color-coded something like green = safe, yellow = caution, red = extreme danger. Not only would each individual preference have a color code, but they would be linked. If the player "pushes it" very far in one area, then all the other sliders might have their green range reduced extremely. This would indicate that if anything else changed, one or more classes would be likely to go ballistic! Anyway, this seems like a cool concept to me.

[F_Smith]

Actually,

the 51% method doesn't need anything to tell you when it's safe. Whenever you pass a law that people don't like, it'll make them somewhat unhappy.

Too much unhappiness, and *then* you have a problem.

So even a despot can't just blow off the desires of the people.

[roquijad]

This post is meant to describe in brief what Axi posted. I feel very little can be understood from what Axi posted above as quotes, so I'll try to explain briefly what was all that about, so you can understand what was that he was proposing:

Axi was worried about two model's features:
1) As a result of the process of negotiations between classes, some of the govt policies end up with values that are a mix between the values of different ideologies. Axi was worried about this mixing of ideologies in the govt, specially in cases when ideologies are too different. He thought (thinks still?) it was unrealistic to mix ideologies to find a final govt policy. As an example, you can think people supporting a capitalist system and other people supporting a communist system. All this people now "negotiate" to define what system will be implemented. The negotiation procedure in the model would give us as a result something in between these systems, where each prevails depending on the relative pol.powers of each "party". If they're both equally powerful, FE, the final system is "in the middle" of the two "pure" systems. I think Axi didn't like this because he saw it as a "friendly" conclusion of a negotiation between antagonic forces that would unlikely work together. My argument was that this analysis was running short. The negotiation procedure only reflects what happens within the govt and only what has to do with the "legal" part of politics. Since no party has total power, then it's fair to say the opponents have to give away things to obtain others, so the final setting is in fact not one of the original positions, but something in between. This, however, doesn't mean people will live happily ever after. Since the final setting is different to both initial positions, people of the two parties will be upset when comparing what they wanted to what was achieved. This is made in the riots model and chances of revolts, revolutions and such would be higher. So this antagonic forces are indeed antagonic. While politicians in the govt are bounded by legal activities and negotiations, what happens in the street can be totally different. In no way mixing ideologies implies a friendly cooperation. If antagonic ideologies exist at the same time, the most probable is that wouldn't last.

2)The ruler can choose other values than those he really wants to achieve what he wants. Usually this implies a more "extreme" position than the one the ruler'd normally take. This is what Axi calls "the machievelean ruler". This is in fact what I consider the worst part of the model. To solve it, I proposed this: People will look constantly at what the ruler offers (ruler's preferences), so if he takes really extremes positions, he'd face protests or things like that. I'm not entirely satisfied with this, but I don't see another good way to proceed.

Before I gave my arguments to Axi (the ones exposed here), he developed an alternative system based on the majority rule, which is, as far as I understand, pretty much the same thing F_Smith was proposing to do. With that model he doesn't allow for ideology mixing (his preocupation) and in part eliminates the machiavelean ruler effect. I didn't like the idea because I felt it was useful only for democracies (it was an election-type method) and even in those cases it had outcomes I considered unrealistic. Even more, election-type systems take away a lot of flexibility. In an election system, as its name says it, one of the competing choices wins (is elected). Therefore, the govt takes exactly the form of one of the ideologies in competition, which in time means it's impossible to model smooth changes in the political system because changes occur in a sudden way from one ideology to another. We couldn't get things like "an ancient republic, yet a little bit monarchic" regime or that type of things that the current model does allow. As for realism, the majority rule makes, FE, a scenario where the ruler has 51% equal to one where he has 100%. He's able to impose his will exactly in the same way in both scenarios because he has the majority pol.power. I find this absurd. Majority systems also leave aside any other political agents. It'd be like saying the elected republican administration doesn't have to care about the democrats and can impose its will completely, while we know this isn't real. The majority rule systems and election systems tend to be IMO all-or-nothing systems with lack of flexibility.

Part of the discussion quoted by Axi referred to what is exactly meant with the word "government". This is important because it defines what is possible and realistic in the model and what not. In order to model all the political games in any type of regime, the definition I used includes in govt all persons and institutions who have the capability to participate in decision making regarding govt laws (govt policies). So it can be just a king, a king and religious leaders or a whole senate plus the elected administration in a democracy, FE.

I hope this helped to see what Axi was quoting.

[F_Smith]

Rodrigo:

I am ready to move on with coding more of your model. I want to add the 'Ideologically Negotiated Policies'. First I'm going to have to define 'Ideology' objects.

So please help me make sure I understand --

[*]An 'ideology' holds the people's prefs on 'politcial structure', Private Property, Social Policy and economic planning?
[*]There will be a 'game level' list of all ideologies?
[*]Each Civ will have a list of 'known' ideologies?
[*]Each EG will have a list of 'chosen' ideologies?
[*]'Ideologies' are going to be selected by the 'Ethnic Groups', and it is necessary to know what % of the EG supports each 'Ideology'?
[*]The 'Religious Leaders' will *not* have an ideology?
[*]Neither will the 'Generals'?[/list]

Is this all correct?

P.S. -- if you ever get the inclination to try out the beast again, your 'directly negotiated policies' are all in there. As before, I used the equations from the Govt Model v.2 thread.


[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 22, 2000).]

[roquijad]

F_Smith:

Q:An 'ideology' holds the people's prefs on 'politcial structure', Private Property, Social Policy and economic planning?
A:Almost correct. An ideology holds that set of variables, but it's incorrect to say they're the people's preferences. An ideology is independent from who support it, so an ideology cannot be associated with a particular class per se. Ideologies are not class-specific or ethnic-specific or whatever. They are stand alone ideas anyone can choose or let go.


Q:There will be a 'game level' list of all ideologies?
A: yes

Q:Each Civ will have a list of 'known' ideologies?
A:yes


Q:Each EG will have a list of 'chosen' ideologies?
A:Social classes have a list of chosen ideologies. We could do it on a EG base, but that'd be ambiguous. Since within an ethnicity you have different social classes with different behaviors and needs, what's important is to know what each class prefers.

Q:'Ideologies' are going to be selected by the 'Ethnic Groups', and it is necessary to know what % of the EG supports each 'Ideology'?
A: yes... but for social classes. In my mind I imagined a "support matrix" like this:

Class_______Ideo1______Ideo2______IdeoN
RC___________10%________40%________50%
UC___________25%________5%_________70%
LC___________60%________20%________20%
WC___________75%________15%________10%

where each row must sum 100%. This matrix says, FE, that the 40% of the RC supports ideology2. Of course, you don't have to code it as matrix but in the way you think is best. But that's the idea.

Q:The 'Religious Leaders' will *not* have an ideology?
A:Wrong. RC will have a list of supported ideologies like any other class.

Q:Neither will the 'Generals'?
A:Wrong. WC will have a list of supported ideologies like any other class.


A couple of comments:

1)The list of supported ideologies should include by default the "govt profile" and the "ruler's govt profile". So, if the list of available ideologies has 10, then each class can support 10+2=12 different ideologies with different support shares. This is because the govt profile (that is, the current values the govt has for the political structure and PP, SP and EP) can be seen as an ideology and therefore people is allowed to support the current govt setting. The same happens with the "ruler's govt profile", but in this case with the ruler's prefs for the same values, so the people is allowed to support ruler's "vision" like they do with normal ideologies.

2) The one class that doesn't have an ideology is the Bureaucratic Elite. To be more precise, it supports ALWAYS the "govt profile" ideology with 100%.

3) What political structure are you using? The one from the pre-updated model or the one from post-update?
The pre-update:
ruler pol.power
RC pp
LC pp
UC pp
WC pp

The post-update:
ruler pp
capitalists pp
people's pp
WC pp
RC pp

I ask because equations are there if you want to implement them, but only for the pre-updated version. For the new proposed system I'd have to change a some things.
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited August 22, 2000).]

[F_Smith]

Okay, so far so good.

1) Will each social class select it's Ideology choice at the Civ level?

2) I'm using the new Political Structure, altho I'm using the equations from the old one. I've substituted 'Peoples Power' for 'LC' and 'Capital' for 'UC'. I will plug in any corrections you make.
[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 22, 2000).]