Government Model v.2

[F_Smith]

Double trouble.
[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 28, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well as far as i know warriors and religions don't ness each provide only ethics and only security. Well maybe religion only provides ethics, but warriors can provide both, such as knights and samari

[Richard Bruns]

Green Range: If the green range does not imply happiness, then the slider color system wouldn't make sense. I think that green should mean "safe." Otherwise the player gets confused. I asked about this in an earlier post, and assumed that this was the case because I was not corrected.

Power Limits: I understand now. Before, I had assumed that the red range would include things like the declaration of martial law and the use of the army to enforce things. But I see now that the model considers such a drastic step to be a change in government. If you do this, you are essentially switching to despotism, and the range increases. That makes sense.

Just to clarify things:

The center of the distribution and the green range are chosen by the other social classes. The size of the yellow and red ranges are determined by the ruler's political power. The player sees this range and then inputs a value representing the desired policy.

I would like the interface described above. Is this close to what we are doing?

[axi]

F_Smith, are you kidding me? This is from your post of 27 June, in this thread:

quote: P.S.-- there is actually no reason not to allow all social classes to contribute labor, capital and anything else, at varying levels defined by the 'social class'. The code will loop thru it all on a turn-by-turn basis anyway, and get from each person his contributions (taken from his social class) . . . so it's a quick and simple thing to have the 'LowerClass' (UnderClass, maybe?) contribute, say, x percent of it's total net worth (which could be next to nothing) while the 'upper class' contributes a higher percentage of their net worth (which will be considerably higher, of course). Or you can define the 'LowerClass' as returning 0 when you ask for their 'capital contribution'. But it's up to ya'll.

The whole concept of economic and social "contributions" and the idea to define Social Classes according to their contributions, originated from this paragraph of yours and was introduced by me in my post of July 10. Rodrigo came up with the original idea of linking power with contributions, by assigning power to kapital and to population, in August 14. In my post of August 16, I tried to generalise this idea for all contributions, both economic and social, but, for the time being and correct-me-if-I'm-wrong, my view got accepted only for social contributions. This is all the progress the govt model has made for the last 2 months!

quote: Stupid question time. Do I have this correct? "The warrior class is all the groups who provide security". "The religious class is all the groups who provide ethics".

Buzz! Wrong answer!
The RC and WC will exist only in the default game, where there will be the only classes providing ethics and security respectively. Obviously, in a scenario with monks, mandarins, generals and samurais (classes which provide all of the ethics and security in the specific scenario), there will be no RC and WC. Do not confound Social Classes with OO-Classes; monks and samurais are objects of the same OO-class as the RC and the WC ("pure social classes", or "institutional classes") and NOT instances of the OO-classes RC and WC respectively.

quote: I thought 'social class' membership was related to some organization -- Nobility, Military, Church, Guild, Society, Govt Job, etc.

It's either this (membership in an organisation or institution) or an economic role that differentiate social classes. In the first case, we're talking about "institutional classes", in the second, about "socioeconomic classes". Only Nobility is somewhat ambiguous; it is in fact a socioeconomic class that has become an institution. As for society, as long as capitalism exists, it is not organised into a functional body; people are divided along economic lines. But pray, let's not get into this discussion, if we can.

[roquijad]

What a chaos, baby!

I think we should refrain ourselves from discussing so many subjects at the same time. It's too confusing.

Please let's forget for a moment about how to include nobility, "ethic" and "security" contributions, etc and let's focus on what we want for the setting-policies method.

Only to clarify possible F_Smith's misconceptions, I've written the following part to him. All the rest can skip it and go to the "POLICY-SETTING METHODS" part of this post.

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The following is for F_Smith:
Axi is right when he says it's not as easy as simply replacing the Lower Class for People and the Upper Class for Capitalists. It's the same thing I told you some posts ago: a change is needed in equations to fully implement the update that creates the concepts of "People" and "Capitalists" from the old rigid UpperClass and LowerClass you find in the govt model document. But it's not so important now. Just imagine for now we're still using only the UpperClass and LowerClass as in the original system until I see what exaclty needs to be changed in equations. Don't worry about this.

Axi mentions a lot of things like "ethics contribution", "security contr.", "consensus", etc. They're all in the area of "still under discussion" and that's why you get confused. You're free, of course, to code whatever pleases you regarding this concepts in your "alternative" political system if you understand what Axi is saying. As for the "official" or "default" model, all those are alien concepts and should not be coded. The only change so far to the govt model document regards the political structure, replacing UC and LC for Capitalists and People. So, you can rely on the document on anything else. Whatever is not mentioned there, is still under discussion and you shouldn't code it in the "default" system.

The nobility stuff Axi brings up is within the discussion about flexibility for the number of social classes. I'm avoiding the subject for now just to let us all focus on the method for setting govt policies.

You ask if Capitalists and People eliminate UpperClass, LowerClass, MiddleCLass, etc. And you ask a definition for socialclass. Here's the thing:

A social class is a group of people with the same behavior. That's it.

A socioeconomic class is a socialclass whose behavior is given by the culture it belongs to and the amount of Kapital and Labor it provides. For developing purposes we'll have just 3 of them: UpperClass, LowerClass, MiddleClass.

The concepts "People" and "Capitalists", which are novel, are not socialclasses and refer to all social classes matching a given criteria, so they don't eliminate classes UC, LC, etc. When we say "People", we refer to all social classes. In terms of procedures, socialclasses will be aggregated (their preferences, that is) to have them acting politically. The weight each class will have in this mathematical aggregation is given by its demographic share, so demog.shares are relevant for this model (and the econ model). Of course, if a demog. share for a given class is too small, it will practically not affect the math. aggregation, so in fact "People" will be an aggregation only of all "demographic-intensive" classes. The Religious Class, the Warriors Class and the Bureaucratic Elite are all, by definition, irrelevant in terms of demography. This means "People", really, are only an aggregation of socioeconomic classes.

"Capitalists" refers to all socioeconomic classes controlling kapital. Each socioeconomic class has a level of kapital. Again, in terms of political procedures, we'll aggregate socioeconomic classes' preferences with K>0 to know what preferences Capitalists have as a whole, but in this case it will be the relative posession of K the variable defining the weight in the math. aggregation.

So, what a scenario designer (or we, for the default game) has to do is to define how many socioeconomic classes he wants, and for each, how much Kapital and Labor it provides. A procedure TBD will dynamicly, as the games evolves, assign demographic shares to each socioeconomic class the designer defined using, among other things, K and L. The player, therefore, will experience a game with:
N socioeconomic classes
1 Religious Class
1 Warriors Class
1 Bureaucratic Elite

while the political structure consists of (always, regardless of "N"... which provides the very-modest extra flexibility):
People's pol.power
Capitalists' pol.power
Ruler's pol.power
Religous Class' pol.power
Warriors Class' pol.power
Bureaucratic Elite's pol.power

So, when we use the "negotiation procedure" (or whatever policy-setting method we'll end up with) to set a policy value, we take preferences from the respective aggregations (People or Capitalists), the respective class itself (RC, WC, BE) and ruler' pref.

Is it any clearer?
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POLICY-SETTING METHODS

F_Smith: I haven't seen any thoughts from you regarding my two proposals in previous posts to replace the negotiation procedure. Since you're maybe the most reticent to use the current system the govt model uses, I'd like to know your opinion.

All:
It seems each one of us understood a different thing for the colored sliders interface Mark suggested! What's red, yellow or green depends, of course, on what we want to tell players with that. What I mean is we should first be clear about how our policy-setting method is going to work and only then care about how different player's options will be displayed. But it seems to me you prefer to do things the other way around: Imagining how you'd like to interact with the game and leave the inner math that makes that interface possible to me! It's alright. Maybe it's better that way.

Richard and Mark have proposed systems based on colors, but I'll ask you two to please now make a proposal with a definition of exactly what is understood by each color to avoid confusion. All the rest can make proposals too, of course.

Just for a reference, I'll repeat here my last proposal briefly: For a given policy, the player chooses the value he wants. Classes negotiate between them a value X for that policy. Value X is then modified according to what the ruler wants and how much power he has to achieve a final value. The more despotic, the more he is able to modify the value and the closest this final value will be to what he wanted. And vise versa. THIS IS THE LEGAL PART. On a different interface, probably with buttons just like F_Smith has it in the beast, the player will find several special actions for "illegal" activities. These are the ones already envisioned:

Bribing/threatening politicians: It's main effect would be making classes "vote" more in line with ruler's prefs, moving "X" toward ruler's values.

Assesinations/Ideology Banning: Lower or eliminate politicians with mentalities opposite to what the ruler wants from the political arena, which, again, will tend to move "X" to what the ruler wants.

Clossing the Senate: The ruler takes away People's power and makes it his own. He's actually changing the regime here. With more power the player will probably get his prefs imposed.

Propaganda: Will influence mentalities of classes making them more alike with ruler's intentions. It will make possible more affinity between "X" and ruler's pref.

Depending on ruler's pol.power:
a) These actions can be done without any scandal. They're not really "illegal" (despotism)
b) These actions are considered illegal, but the ruler can still do some of them "undercover" facing a scandal. (low despotism)

Classes' happiness or ruler's popularity are handled somewhere else (riots model) comparing what they want to what the govt ends up being and how the ruler behaves.
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All:
Just a quick poll. Please respond.

"The lower ruler's pol.power is, the more limited he should be in his control over govt policies". Do you agree with this statement?

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Axi: I won't comment your ideas for "F" because I feel that's too detailed for the moment. As for your idea for a "political AI", I find it very ambicious. I'm sure we can find a simple method. This isn't THAT difficult.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi everyone:

Its a complicated week at work so I don't have much time.

Rodrigo's new proposed system...
I am with Richard, the math and behavior looks basically good, and it eliminates some problems, but the interface needs work. So I agree we should go with the new system.

"The lower ruler's pol.power is, the more limited he should be in his control over govt policies". I Agree

Interface:
The colored slider was meant to be a synthesis of in what ranges the player can attempt to set policy, and what the possible repercussions are. Personally as a player I don't care if its 'legal' by the govt model or not! If I can change something and there are likely no repercussions (nothing should be completely certain) then its 'green'. So IMO green generally means Both legal and not causing large amounts of unhappiness. In some cases, because of general unhappiness in the body politic, there will be no green zone at all. FE an ideological battle where the country is split 50-50 between two vastly different ideologies. No matter what the player does there will be substantial chance of serious riots or even revolt. Here even though the ruler can do many things that are legal, there is still a good chance things will blow up, and the player must know about it!

I haven't written down specifics because all the happiness stuff depends on the numbers in the riots model, and extraordinary actions aren't quantified in their effect either. For now, in testing, the green could just be legal actions, yellow if it requires some moderate 'extraordinary' actions and red if it requires a lot of them.

As a rule of thumb I would say its green if you can do it with <1% chance of something bad happening in the short run. Yellow <10%. Red >=10%. But these exact breakpoints would have to be figured in playtesting.

[Richard Bruns]

I agree with Mark's post above.

Rodrigo, I am not asking for a new math system. The math in your most recent proposal is good, but it does have one problem. It asks the player to input a value at the beginning, before the player knows what the other classes want. If the players are blind like that, they could unwittingly cause riots. The players should be able to see what the other classes want before they input the desired values. That is why I liked the proposal before the most recent one, and it is also the reason I really like the slider interface.

The player should know roughly what the consequences of the decisions are before the decisions are made. This might not be entirely realistic, but IMO it would make a more fun game.

[F_Smith]

Axi:

No contradiction -- it is a simple thing to do, as I said above. I'm just pointing out that theres no need to do it for the current govt system, as I see it, altho we *certainly* can do it that way.

Since 'people' and 'capital' are aggregates of all economic classes, that is.

Rodrigo summed up perfectly what my understanding of a 'social class' is -- any group with similar behavior. As such, 'uc', 'mc', 'lc' would not seem to be 'social classes', since the poor don't all act alike, the rich don't share any similarities, etc. A 'socioeconomic' class would have 2 parts -- social and economic. I think that's what the 'uc/mc/lc' are, the 'economic' classes. So 'nobility' would be a 'social' class, because they act different from other 'uc' people.

At least, that's what I thought.

* * *

Rodrigo:

Yeah, I believe Axi is talking about the 'econ' model. For the govt-system's purposes, 'social classes' don't matter, except as a provider of input values. They're just 'variables', so to speak.

I'm just trying to understand what page he's on, so I can move in that direction soon. But no, none of this is getting coded yet.

Oh, personally, I'm staying out of the discussion on the 'negotiated' political policy system mainly because I'm not fond of it. I'm sorry.

I think that when a ruler changes a policy, it will pass unless the powers that be are against it (a 'politics' vote system). I don't believe policies are 'negotiated' in this manner, even today. The politicians have always just tried to gather 51% of all the power. Once they have that coalition, they don't need the other groups with political power, and can ignore them. It doesn't make sense to me that a ruler with 80% of the political power can't pass any policy he/she wants. It just doesn't sound like govt as I understand it.

The people who hold the majority of the power get to do what they want, regardless of those in the minority.

People with minority power in govts get over-ridden. Here we have had various groups with some minority political power, yet they have absolutely *no* effect on the final results that come out of Congress.

The 'aggregate' system will work fine, don't get me wrong, it's just not a 'political' system, as I understand it. But it's better than what other games have had, by far.

To sum up, I think that if you're going to negotiate, you should probably use your first system, in which the ruler's power counts exactly it's percentage. But don't go by my advice, since I'd almost always use the 'politics' system.

[Richard Bruns]

F_Smith: It is my understanding that if the ruler has at least 51% of the power, the slider goes from 0% to 100%. But there can be negative social consequences associated with forcing something through. If most of the people want 10% something and the player orders 90%, there will almost certainly be riots and civil unrest.

So the pass/fail system works fine with the slider syatem. If you have the power and are willing to deal withthe consequences, you can do anything. If you don't have the power, you are limited to a certain range on the slider.

I have an idea for the interface. Hopefully it can combine F_Smith's and Rodrigo's systems so everyone is satisfied:

Initially, the allowable range on the slider is any policy that can get support from any combination of groups with at least 51% of the power. For example, if the ruler has 30% of the power, the MC has 30%, and the RC has 40%, then any range supported by the RC or MC is on the slider as a chouce for the ruler (player).

Even if the proposal has 51% support and is passed, it could cause social problems. The riots model would estimate the consequences of the ruler's choice and color the bar accordingly. However, is if the desires of the other classes overlap, the overlap range will almost certainly be green.

I do have two questions about that situation, however. Suppose that the RC wants 20-50% and the MC wants 40-60%. In this case, the player can choose any policy from 20% to 60%. Suppose the player wants 20%. Then, there would be two policies that are supported by 70% of the power: 20% and the 40-50% range. Which one would be selected?

The second question is: What would happen in the above situation if the ruler had 25% of the power and the MC had 35%? The 20% proposal (the one the player wants) would have 65% support and the 40-50% proposal would have 75%. Which proposal would be selected?

Another consequence of this system is that the choices could be discontinuous. If the RC wants 20-40% and the MC wants 70-90%, then those ranges are allowed but nothing in between is. Choosing either of these policies will almost certainly make someone seriously unhappy, so both ranges would be red. However, a strict 51% system allows no compromise.

The previous part of the proposal used F_Smith's ideas, and while being more accurate it can lead to thorny problems. The second part of the system is as follows:

The player can ask for negotiations. This would most likely be done when the other classes' ranges do not overlap. It would have to be done if no proposal is supported by 51% of the people.

If the classes with power agree to negotiate, then everyone bargains as per Rodrigo's most recent proposal. In this case, I would not oppose asking the player to input a value ahead of time, because the player has already seen the initial slider and can make an informed political choice. After the negotiations, the policy is selected.

I think that most choices can be made in the initial 51% system. Usually, the culture would be mostly homogeous and there will be some range that satisfies everyone. But the negotiations are always there as an option for the times that the 51% system would not work well.

I think that this system removes the chaotic tendencies of the 51% system. I also think that while initial slider choices are not real negotiations, they have the good interface characteristics of the negotiation/slider system.

Questions? Comments? Cuss Words?

[Lord God Jinnai]

You are forgetting something with your 51% power. Your considering each gov. as though it were run like a democracy or republic. That's not true. Even if the ruler has 1% power he can issue any orders he wants if he is considered the "ruler." The problem is iimplementation. Take the last emperors of China FE. They were considered "the ruler" of china, but their "rule" ended at the edge of the Forbidden City. He could issue whatever order he wanted, but no one had to impliment it beyond that point. The same is true if a ruler has 51% of the power, with or without coalitions. He can't do anything unless a signifigant portion of the ruling people agree with his policies and are willing to impliment them, even if grudginly. Even at 100% power he still has to have people to back him up or any decree he makes is worthless. That's why the 51% rule won't work for most governmental types.
Also even in the democracies and replublics, the ruler hasto usually give something to gather the votes needed to pass a law or bury it. Thus, negotiation happens anyway, just it happens prior to the bill coming to vote. And with 51% there they still haveto worry about the other 49% because that is still a signifigant portion of the people, enough to cause a bloody civil war or enough to gather strength outside the political area to force a few votes to go the other way after a few months or so. That's what politics is. You haveto worry about the minorites as well as the majorities otherwise those minorities could end up screwing you over, espically if you passed something they absolutley hated.

On another note, what about my proposal about perosalities (for lack of better word) for the groups such as how stubborn they are, how forceful, how moral, etc. Haven't heard anything and i proposed it twice, not even a 'yes that's good.' 'no that sucks' or 'we already plan on having/not having it''

[F_Smith]

Wait:

The 'political' system option runs like this:

1) Someone in the political system proposes a change to a policy.

2) All parties 'vote' yea or nay.

3) The measure passes or fails.

4) The effects of the change are applied.

For the time being, only the ruler can propose changes. That will be enhanced later.

So, as ruler, if I want to raise or lower a policy, I go to my 'preferences' screen and set it to the number I want.

Then other groups with power look at the change. If I raise it and they also want the value raised, then they agree (as long as I don't go farther than they want). Otherwise they disagree.

So it's up to the player to negotiate with those groups beforehand, even if the player has 51%+ 'dictator' power. If the people oppose you, and you push the measure thru anyway, they will become unhappy. They have 'negotiated'. They have made their views known to you. They likely now demand a greater % of the political power, so they won't be ignored again.

That's also where the 'special orders' come in. If I need the support of the Church leaders on a measure, I can blackmail or bribe one of them. Or I can have one arrested, or even shot, to suppress the church's power.

If you pass unpopular policies, over groups; objections, those groups will become unhappy, and less loyal. So even a dictator has to worry about the effects of his policies.

So there are no 'ranges' necessary.

* * *

Lordy:

Interestingly enough, your complaints seem to be calling for the politics system. Everything you asked for is in the politics system, and not in the 'negotiated' system.

The ruler proposes. The govt model makes a game out of implementation. The player is in charge of the negotiation and implementation, as he tries to keep his people happy and productive. A bloody civil war will result from passing too many unpopular policies.

[Richard Bruns]

LGJ: I define power as "the ability to implement things." So if a ruler cannot implement anything, that ruler has no power.

F_Smith: I know how the current "political" system works. I was trying to put a GUI on it. Rather than click blindly through words and menus, the player should be able to select a value on a slider that is color coded to give the information the player needs to make a good decision.

The slider does not allow the player to input a proposal that will fail. If the player cannot get 51% support, the value is simply not an option. That eliminates the uncertainty and chaos of the system. The idea of the slider GUI is to quickly give the player good information about the political system. The player can tell a glance which values can be passed and what the consequences of the values will be.

I think that both of the current proposed political syatems are like DOS. They are good kernels, but navigating them requires a thorough knowledge of the system. A newcomer is lost in the arcane terminology and specific inputs required.

I am trying to make Windows 3.1. I want a GUI that fits over the kernels and allows a newcomer to easily navigate and interact with the political system. Like Windows, my GUI does not give the player as much power and control over the system. Power users will want to deal directly with the kernel. But I am trying to make the GUI a good way for regular users to navigate easily.

[Lord God Jinnai]

F_Smith: You're right in a sence i'm looking for a political system, but not like you described. What you descibe I'll term as a hit or miss system, either it passes and you get what you want or it doesn't and you don't. That's not how politics is. The negotiation system, is actually closer to a political system than yours is because politics is about compromise and coalitions. Coalitions must compromise on each other though, so in this case the negotiations just happen during the proposal instead of before. Also things change. Your view wouldn't allow for internal compromises to support the minority which can puts lots of pressure on the majority because even if it passes, the ruler or other groups might want their votes elsewhere so they compromise with them on issue A to get their votes on issue B. That is another reason the minority of a proposal cannot be ignored.

Rich: Then under your idea that the percentage=amount of power for the player or the group shouldn't allow for the player to set proposals as he wishes with just 51% because he doesn't have total control. Otherwise your saying if its 51+ is = to 100, which isn't right. 51 is just that, a slim majority of control of the civ belongs to the ruler, not enough to do whatever he wishes like set tax rates at any level. Even 99 isn't = to 100. If it were, why have 99 and not just say 100 instead?

[Richard Bruns]

LGJ: If you have 51% of the power, you can take on any combination of your enemies. You can do anything you want, but there will be a lot of rioting and conflict. If you have 100% of the power, then there will be almost no opposition and you will have a much easier time.

At least, that is my interpretation. I am just trying to put an interface on everyone else's ideas.

[Lord God Jinnai]

quote: Originally posted by Richard Bruns on 08-29-2000 09:17 PM LGJ: If you have 51% of the power, you can take on any combination of your enemies. You can do anything you want, but there will be a lot of rioting and conflict. If you have 100% of the power, then there will be almost no opposition and you will have a much easier time. At least, that is my interpretation. I am just trying to put an interface on everyone else's ideas.

Guess we have a fundimental differance in opinion here. See my view is that even though your adveseries might be in the minority, they'd still have 49%. That's enought to cause anyone not simply to be able to trample over them at a whim. They still got big political muscles and they can be used.

See i view it as the pecentages is only how much political or ruling power you can excercize. Otherwise people will generally try to push themselves for that 51% margin and not worry about reaching for that 60% or 70%. They'd glady accept it, but the penalties once you drop below 51% are severe compared to keeping it at 51 or above. That's not anywhere near realistic and the invite heavy micromanagment by the player to make sure they never drop below that point if at all possible.