Social Model v.2

[Lord God Jinnai]

OK. Wow. A lot to attempt to talk about. And Rodrigo i did look quite closely. I just seem to know more about religions and how they work and evolve then prob 90% of thw world population.

1) I don't want to see "monotheism", "meta-life approach" or any such thing in either model. These should only be flavoring names applied arbitrarily to a just born GRW. Why? because they serve no use in gameplay terms and could only lead us to offensive problems. The very essence of each GRW should be there in characteristics WITH A CLEAR EFFECT ON THE GAME

4) What I've being trying to say all along is "don't look at the religion form (natural, sky-based, monotheistic, polithesitic, meta-life, etc), but look at its effects on population and its spreading capabilities". Focus and meditate on this single phrase. My view is religion form is irrelevant IN GAMEPLAY TERMS because if people is monotheistic it makes no difference at all compared to being meta-life supporters. What really matters is what religion does to people and how many people it can reach. As defined in the model, what religion does is to change cultural attributes, making them ad hoc to religion attributes, as if people would be trying to behave according to religion's doctrine. And about spreading capabilities, that's where GRW come in. A GRW is nothing but a religion that can go beyond a particular ethnic group (not beyond a province, civ, nation, border, etc), while a primitive religion is someway attached to a nationality (ethnic group), so others cannot embrace it. An example of primitive religion is aztec beliefs, because in that cult there're elements like "God X protects the aztecs" and consecuently no other tribe feels interested in it (or at least not in a important level). Maybe the name "primitive religion" is not the best and should be called "ethnically attached religion" or such.
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OK. I think I can work with that apporach, however you will still need atleast a couple more variables. These do affect daily live and clash game itself because the concept of religion is so differnt in ways from the orient and the west w/o even using the meta-life/god apporach.

I have gone through and based on what u said only put the ones i think need to be added and a good reason why. And don't complain about the numbers...i cut out about half of them because of what u said.

Alignment - (0-100) I didn't want to put this in. Beleive me I don't want to complicate things further than nessasry and this would gladly be the first thing to go if it would simply things enough without destroying what makes a religion different from another, but I can't. Anyway, to keep from saying one religion is good and another evil, instead Alignment is pro-social/anti-social behavior, based on the general morals of the originating ethnic group.

Why is this nessary? Lets take Christianity and its counterpart Satanism (I am usuing the offical religion of Satinsim, not the cults). The only differance between the two would be without this that Christianity would require material sacrifices and Satanism wouldn't and that Christianity is more centralized than Satanism. Hardly enough to show the rivalry (to put it nicely) between them. That is why this is needed.

Another reason is because it is the only way to show many of the so called darker religions. These will have effect in the game by promoting anti-social behavior and turmoil (depending on the civ and alignment) Also pro-social obes might insist on not starting wars even if they are aggressive, but finding other ways to attack.

Aggressiveness - (0-100) This is used for several areas. First it represents the overall assertiveness of a religion. It also is used to determine the overal tolerance level for other beliefs (high aggressiveness=low tolerance). The more a belief structure differs, the more aggressively it will tend to act toward that religion.
Aggressiveness is also used to determine the rate of expansion of GWRs. This doesn't mean highly aggressive religions spread faster or vise versa. It depends on the variables of the other religion.

OK i'm not adding this...just expaning its role so that i don't have to add something like tolerance.

Nature Affininty - (0-100) This represents how the religion views nature and how much of the religion revolves around it. Highly Natural Affinity religions revolve heavily around nature and vise versa. In addtion high Nature Affinity religions will view humans as equal or even less than nature and should try to live in absolute harmony with it, while low Nature Affinity religions view humans as the superior of nature and that they have the right to control and tame nature to do their will.

Why is this needed? Because this is the main driving force for why the western type was the first to develope industrialization, its expansionism, etc. All the eastern religions and the native american religions have much higher levels for this and it has drastically changed the way they act, technologically, socially, economically, etc.

Sacrafice - (0, 1, 2; 0-1) This represents the types of sacrifices one must make for the religion. This doesn't include moral sacrifices to the way you think and act in your daily life as this is inherant to all religions and thus shouldn't be modeled. Instead this represents additional sacrafices one must make. There are theree groups (1-3), each with an on/off switch (0-1) to represent the various types of sacrafice. To keep this model from becoming to complex, if a sacrifice type is "on" it is considered mandtiory in some sort and pretty high on the scale so we don't have to worry about modeling that.

0: Material Sacrifice - This can be anything from money and articles to food and a drastic change of lifestyle, ie beyond what most people would do (such as Traditional Budhism).

1: Animal Sacrifice - One must sacrifice animals to appease the gods or forces around them. These sacrifices can be such as a farm animal, pet or an animal u hunted or just some random aninal.

2: Human Sacrifice - This requires the sacrifice of a human. The one sacrificed can be willing and/or not (prob dependant on aggressiveness). This is different from animal sacrifice for religious and sociatal technological reasons (ie most people usually think human sacrfice is barbaric).

Well these need to be seperated because just having a high level doesn't mean u will sacrifice humans or animals, etc. just something. FE To budhist sacrifice is extermly important. They sacrifice money, clothing, everything materialistic (everything they get they must beg for or get donated to them. This is for tradtional budhism). So there sacrifice would be like around 100. Whether u think u still need the 0-100 range is up to u.

Traditionalism - (0-100) This represemts the resistance to change in the way society is and the religion itself. Older religions tend to have higher levels, up to an extent. At some point they must either change or die out.

Um well this is needed because religions do change slightly, primitive or enthic religions moreso, but even GWRs do to. This could be also used for modeling branches. This is needed also because more tradtional religions who would have low tolerance would be farther behind the times like ur example of christianity.

3) GRW characteristics and moral codes should not change. Two good reasons. First, modeling cost. Modeling that would be as complex as modeling a culture and the question about how each characteristic should behave is not easy to solve. Second, religions indeed have changed almost nothing in thousands of years. I know this can be an opinion you may find wrong, so I'm gonna try to convince you: When we look at religion practices and people's views about religious matters, we can for sure say things have changed notoriously, but this does not mean religion doctrine has changed. Take christianity for instance. All its doctrine has changed about nothing in these 2000 years. Today, it's the same story and beliefs first christians had. Even more, the church still is based in the words of the bible, which is the same book they have used all these centuries. There's a very good example regarding "the universe". Do you know when christianity officially accepted the earth not being in the centre of the universe? Less than a decade ago! Society has accepted Galileo's ideas for centuries so far. This shows how slow changes in doctrine are. The same happens with other religions. What do changes is people's view about religion, but not religion itself. People start to believe in non-religious things like Galileo's ideas or Darwin's ideas, while religion doctrine stays the same. That's why for the same cult you can find from very liberal practicers to fanatics. Fanatics are actually those believers taking doctrine in a rather unflexible way. The social model allows people to be less influenced by religion as techs advance using the "Importance of Religion" variable, so, FE, in a modern west country people would find in religion other roles compared to ancient times.
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Well i know your wrong there about religions not changing. I know history of religions and such about them very well. And they have changed in very fundimental ways.

Since your on christianity i'll take up that. Chirstianity first off has had the bible changed by several popes during the middle ages to fit there will and hasn't been corrected. Thus Doctrine changed. This didn't happen in the eastern orthodox branch, just in the roman catholic which was later past down to the protostant branches.
Also another thing. In the begginings of christianity there was no such thing as saints...they were invented later to commenerate people they considered worthy.
Another thing. In the begginning there was even battle over wheter christianity should be monotheistic or polythesitic (not that this matters for ur model), but it's just another example. If you want i can even come up with better examples and for other religions.

2) Religion should not be a tech advance in any way. As said by Richard, when new religions appear, they're just new ways to see the world and therefore it's not a good idea to tag some of them as more advanced than others, which is the main assumption we'd made if included in the tech model.
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Well he's right about how religion and philosophy will be handled (as well as fine arts). This isn't that hard to do since techs can even go down in levels if u can't afford their upkeep.

I would prefer that no names be given to any religion. That was the approach taken in the tech model. The social model is the one that gives names and characteristics to the religions.
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I agree totally with this. However the player should be able to name him themselves or something other than GWR of (insert enthic group parameter here).

Again, a high tech level is not meant to imply that a religion is better. It means that the religion is a bigger part of people's lives and a bigger part of the civilization.
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Actually i'm with rodrigo on this. We should use the religious importance variable for this instead of the religion level.

For another example, consider the Japanese in this century. Only 55 years ago, their society and religion encouraged pilots to crash their airplanes into enemy ships. Nowadays, Japan is one of the most peaceful Asian countries.
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In addition they are the most secular nation in the asia, although they are very religious. This is because the east defines religion differntly. It doesn't define it by doctrine or belief, but by practices and riturals in daily life. There is belief, but that takes a second seat. And doctrine is very uninportant.

I don't think the IR variable can cover the problem of static doctrine. The current assumption is that people will either follow an ancient, unchanging doctrine to the word or ignore it completely. The form of religions will change; equally devout people will sometimes do entirely different things as the interpretation of the religion changes over the centuries.
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Actually i didn't think about this, but he does have a point. I mean even with working with that there is still going to fanatics and those who don't give a ****, but will call themselves a certain religion.

Finally on a totally differnt note:
Resurectting dead religions:
It should be possible, even after 1000s of years. It has happened IRL. the 2 examples are greek religion and druidic religion.

The thing is first the place would haveto allow religions freedom (perfer not favoring 1 religion) and there would haveto be other variables too. But even if it were revived, it wouldn't be exactly the same. It would be close, but not quite the same because of time and because ur basing everything on records, not actually living and breathing when this occured.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited June 28, 2000).]

[roquijad]

Good trip, Richard! No more philosophical talks for you for a while...

I hope, however, you can answer at least this question before going on vacations: Where EXACTLY in the social model you concluded this "The current assumption is that people will either follow an ancient, unchanging doctrine to the word or ignore it completely." ? I ask it because I consider the comment totally wrong. The social model does not do that.

OK. So far I've been unable to convince you two about the religion topics we've discussed. I'm gonna give my opinions for the last time because otherwise I'll just repeat myself endlessly. If we can't solve this, well, I guess it'll be Mark's call to decide what to do. The following goes for LGJ and any other interested (not-on-vacation) soul:

Here I go....
I) Let's not forget our final goal: Build a couple of models (social and tech) able to produce interesting scenarios for players regarding social effects. We are NOT modeling society in all its richness nor attempting to have a completely detailed social world. That goal is what decides what should be and what shouldn't be in the models.

II) Another thing is modeling approach. Things like static religious doctrine or dynamic religious interpretations or whatever, are just means to achieve the goal and they're all valid if they guarantee giving a true-to-life outcome. Crusades, religious discrimination and all that kind of things are the desired outputs and they're what the player sees in the game. It really doesn't matter how those outputs were actually produced or what assumptions were made. It's the visible outcome that matters, not inner processes.

III. All social effects incorporated in the tech system have an inherent assumption, intentionally or not, explicitely or not, which is "something is better than other". It's the tech system structure that forces this assumption. This is so evident that already we're talking about "tech-social sub-models", because we aknowledge we can't simply put in social stuff in the tech system without messing things or creating prejudices. We are considering changing and expanding the current tech system because it really cannot hold social changes in a proper manner, and that's wrong IMO. If you get to that point, you've to realize you're not creating a tech system anymore but something else, larger than that. As a game design decision, my opinion is "keep the current tech system as it is and just don't add social stuff in it". This way it will do wonders out of REAL techs, like matallurgy, and it won't produce problems for social things. Social things must be managed, at least mostly, in the social model. My social model or any future one.


Now...
Based on I), do we need models to incorporate every single cult? every single religious practice? No. What for? It only complicates things. What we need is modeling general trends, general changes in religion. Otherwise we start modeling each detail of society and that's not what we want. See the world in the big picture. What do you see? Just three religions different enough from each other. If you want to compare catholics and protestants sure you'll find differences, but seeing them in the grand picture they're just the same. What relevance have differences between catholics and protestans when in the same picture you have native american beliefs or buddhism? None!
We can find infinite particular cases just about everything. Details are an infinite space. Consider "holy cows"! How tempting is to add such thing and force the econ model to be less food productive in civs with religions embracing this idea? This is why I don't like looking at each particular practice a religion has. Instead, I prefer to look at the general effects. In this case, "Sacrifice". All religions dictate to followers some sort of material sacrifice reducing the potential economic productivity and wealth. Some religions choose high sacrifice, some low, but that's it... why adding any more details? what good it does to the game? Modeling small differences adds close to null fun to the game and a lot of computing effort.

Based on II), is static religion doctrine better or worse than other approaches? The only important thing is to see if the model is able to give us the outcomes we want the player to face. So, let's see... My model says doctrine is static, while the "passion" for doctrine (Importance of Religion) changes. As a result, the model allows from fanatics to "just believers". Doctrine can be followed just a bit, more than a bit, a lot or to the word. The outcomes the player faces go, then, from passioned peoples wanting to discriminate other beliefs or go to crusades, to just going to church on sundays... From people supporting monarchies or fundamentalistic govts, to people prefering a secular State... Are these desireable outcomes? Do these outcomes reflect the general aspects of religions through history? Yes, I think so. Does the "static doctrine" characteristic prevent the model from producing these fun-to-play features? No. They'll be there and even more, they'll be there at a low cost as opposed to the complexity of modeling doctrine change. So, if you want a changing doctrine, tell me what do I gain as an extra. Tell me what relevant fun-to-play features I'm missing as a result of a static doctrine.

Based on III), all social stuff included in the tech system should be placed there veeeeery carefully. For the same reason, the less we put in the tech system, the better. The tech model should not be THE answer for such important social things as religions. Also, tech info is valid on a civ-wide level, while social stuff is better handled at the ethnic group level. This helps preventing bizarre effects or an arbitrarily homogenization of all civ's ethnic groups based on what the civ-level tech info dictates.


As a result of the previous arguments, here are some comments on some of the things LGJ and Richard have said:
"The form of religions will change; equally devout people will sometimes do entirely different things as the interpretation of the religion changes over the centuries."
>>Yes, that's a change in how people see religion, not religion itself, therefore, the effect desired is already included in the model via "Importance of Religion".
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"In real life, the actions of the RC change over time even though they are a part of the same religion."
>>This is a very good criticism, although it belongs to the govt model. It's true, the RC is currently acting politically the same in any point of time. The criticism is so good that I will change the way RC Mentality is computed to include the effect of "Importance of Religion", which is the way, as has been explained, the social model manages different perspectives of the same religion.
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A religion "level" on the tech model... I'm totally opposed. It has several problems:
1)It's ambiguos. Explaining what "level" means would help, but I think it hardly can be done in a non-offensive fashion.
2)It would tend to have the same role "Importance of Religion" has.
3)It's not clear which ethnic groups in the civ would be affected by this civ-level tech info.
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LGJ's "Alignment": We can easily incorporate the existence of anti-social/evil religions without this attribute. Just imagine a religion with low religious tolerance, high aggressiveness and high individualism. Anyway, I'm not interested in modeling "dark cults" because they're a detail in the grand scheme, so if they can or cannot fit in the social model is something I really don't care about.
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LGJ's "Agressiveness": Why did you merge the role of this attribute with the role of "Religious Tolerance". I think they work well separetedly.
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LGJ's "Nature Affinity": This one is really interesting. It's a possible good adition. I think it can also help with the proposed cultural attribute "ecologial view". There's some similarity with Asceticism (low Asceticism->low care about nature), so I'm not fully convinced. Maybe you can help me see why we should have Nature Affinity AND Asceticism...
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LGJ's "Sacrifice": You have entered in the detail level for this one and I prefer to keep it as it currently is in the social model. The only worth discussing thing is IMO human sacrifice. It'd be worth modeling if the number of sacrificed people would have an impact on demographic growth or on economy (labor force), but IMO this type of sacrifice has been so low-impact in history that it doesn't deserve modeling.
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LGJ's "Traditionalism": My intention is to keep religious attributes unchanged overtime. Traditionalism would enter only I'm forced to change the model to flexible doctrines, which, you can see, I'm fighting hard not to...
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"Resurectting dead religions": What would be the impact in gameplay terms? A resurrected religion wouldn't be so different from a newly born one in all the relevant parts of the game. I don't see the need to include this.


Finally, I want to say that what I stated in I), II) and II) above are the most important things I see when creating a social model. If you disagree with those, there's really not much we can discuss, unfortunately. In that case I think we'll have to wait for Mark and have him taking the tough decision.

[roquijad]

ooops! double post...
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited June 28, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

Sorry rodrigo...rich already left so he won't be able to reply.

Anyway to your points:
I> Let's not forget our final goal: Build a couple of models (social and tech) able to produce interesting scenarios for players regarding social effects. We are NOT modeling society in all its richness nor attempting to have a completely detailed social world. That goal is what decides what should be and what shouldn't be in the models.
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Yea I agree. But in some ways i think your simplifying the religious aspect too much.

II> Another thing is modeling approach. Things like static religious doctrine or dynamic religious interpretations or whatever, are just means to achieve the goal and they're all valid if they guarantee giving a true-to-life outcome. Crusades, religious discrimination and all that kind of things are the desired outputs and they're what the player sees in the game. It really doesn't matter how those outputs were actually produced or what assumptions were made. It's the visible outcome that matters, not inner processes.

Based on II), is static religion doctrine better or worse than other approaches? The only important thing is to see if the model is able to give us the outcomes we want the player to face. So, let's see... My model says doctrine is static, while the "passion" for doctrine (Importance of Religion) changes. As a result, the model allows from fanatics to "just believers". Doctrine can be followed just a bit, more than a bit, a lot or to the word. The outcomes the player faces go, then, from passioned peoples wanting to discriminate other beliefs or go to crusades, to just going to church on sundays... From people supporting monarchies or fundamentalistic govts, to people prefering a secular State... Are these desireable outcomes? Do these outcomes reflect the general aspects of religions through history? Yes, I think so. Does the "static doctrine" characteristic prevent the model from producing these fun-to-play features? No. They'll be there and even more, they'll be there at a low cost as opposed to the complexity of modeling doctrine change. So, if you want a changing doctrine, tell me what do I gain as an extra. Tell me what relevant fun-to-play features I'm missing as a result of a static doctrine.
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First off religion insint static. On changing doctrine (i assume in this context in means underlying beliefs), as far as GWR is concerned, if you want it to stay the same, that's fine. However, PR or Ethnic Religions (ER), are not static in the least bit earlier on, espically when they are appraoched by new religions. Therein lies the problem though, where to draw the line. I think making ERs static is stripping away to much in favor of simplicity and doesn't address the fact that ERs adapt when GWR come in and theaten them. They change and model some aspects of the GWR, but not enough to become the GWR. This might not have an immediate impact, but later on it will because they will act more like the GWR, but not entirely so. I'd say the best way to model this is the first time the ER comes in contact with the GWR the check for conversion, adaptabilty, etc. is made, and then no more for adaptability. Even GWRs change because of competition, but we not as much so for the sake of simplicity, unless something catestrophic needs to happen to keep the religion alive we can say it stays the same.

III> All social effects incorporated in the tech system have an inherent assumption, intentionally or not, explicitely or not, which is "something is better than other". It's the tech system structure that forces this assumption. This is so evident that already we're talking about "tech-social sub-models", because we aknowledge we can't simply put in social stuff in the tech system without messing things or creating prejudices. We are considering changing and expanding the current tech system because it really cannot hold social changes in a proper manner, and that's wrong IMO. If you get to that point, you've to realize you're not creating a tech system anymore but something else, larger than that. As a game design decision, my opinion is "keep the current tech system as it is and just don't add social stuff in it". This way it will do wonders out of REAL techs, like matallurgy, and it won't produce problems for social things. Social things must be managed, at least mostly, in the social model. My social model or any future one.
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OK, but we still need for the tech level some understanding for you to gain "Code of Conduct" or "Ethics." Societies don't start out with them, they evolve into them. I'm not dictating that enthics of group A are better than B, but that it takes a certain level of understanding, cooperation, etc. and knowledeg of the social world around you before you can gain this.
How Ethics work is up to the social model for each ethnic group or civ. The point i'm making is that this is just a "marker" for when a scoeity has learned enough about society to have ethics or any similar type social advance, such as Abolishment of Slavery.

LGJ's "Alignment": We can easily incorporate the existence of anti-social/evil religions without this attribute. Just imagine a religion with low religious tolerance, high aggressiveness and high individualism. Anyway, I'm not interested in modeling "dark cults" because they're a detail in the grand scheme, so if they can or cannot fit in the social model is something I really don't care about.
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If you can come up with a way of doing it otherwise that's fine. I just didn't see a way. And i wasn't talking about the samll cults, but of bigger grander religious ones (and yes there were a few).

LGJ's "Nature Affinity": This one is really interesting. It's a possible good adition. I think it can also help with the proposed cultural attribute "ecologial view". There's some similarity with Asceticism (low Asceticism->low care about nature), so I'm not fully convinced. Maybe you can help me see why we should have Nature Affinity AND Asceticism...
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OK. I'll use 3 major religions for this, Christianity, Hindsuism and Budhism. Both have low Aesticism, though christianity is not quite as low. Hinduism is tricky since it varies from place to place and the type of path u choose so we can say its 40-60. This is one reason i wanted branching system for such complex religions as Hinduism which can't really be defined by an overall agenda. Anyway, Hinduism, despite even the branches with really high Aesticism (around 80) would still value nature as extremely important and would not do anything to upset the balance of life and nature, thus one reason they have lagged behind technologically until recently. Budhism is the same way, though it is more inclined to be devoted to the few who follow the path and isn't the type of religion that "tells" you that this is means this and that means that. Again this depends on the branch since there are two branches that go in almost completely opposite directions, one that has a much higher Ascetism than the other (that's the more common one, but the one with the monks u usually hear about is the lesser branch). Finally Christianity has a very low natural affinity. The view throughout its history has been that the land, sea, etc was put here to serve humanity and thus that humans can do with it pretty much as they please so long as its not a holy place. This may however be one of those "catestophic" things that could change the attributes of a GWR because it may need to change this attitude soon because many are adopting a more "eastern" thought for this particular issue.

LGJ's "Traditionalism": My intention is to keep religious attributes unchanged overtime. Traditionalism would enter only I'm forced to change the model to flexible doctrines, which, you can see, I'm fighting hard not to...
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Well ur right about that, but i think it is nessary for a good sense of how religions evolve. Otherwise your going to haveto come up with ways of creatings many new religions over time because attitudes will change and there will be religions who embrace those attitudes. There will also be rulers who will try to create their own religions.

[roquijad]

LGJ:
First, I love when you take your time writing... it makes it all so much easier to read!

BTW, I just finished reading the characters and tech models. The latter is really good... for "real" techs, though You'd probably like to know the new future techs poll is not working. I voted and it didn't work...
As for the chars model, I think a first and good step toward creating interconnections between it and the govt and riots models would be introducing Radicals' effects on these two models. I'll give it a thought for some days on how exactly to do it and I'll open a new thread for us to work on this matter in a couple of weeks or so. Hopefuly, it'll be an easier task to accomplish than agreeing on social matters!

Now to our thing...
"First off religion insint static. On changing doctrine (i assume in this context in means underlying beliefs), as far as GWR is concerned, if you want it to stay the same, that's fine. However, PR or Ethnic Religions (ER), are not static...."

Three things to say:
1) I like the name ER. Let's use that from now on.
2) The model currently has static religion attributes only for GRW. ERs are not static. This happens because I assumed ER attributes match cultural attributes of the ethnic group in question, so, given culture change, ER changes too... I hope this makes you a little bit happier...
3) Regarding the staticness of GRW, you have to give me a new argument, not just insist that they're not static. Why? Because I've given you a totally new argument for keeping staticness in the model: I'm not saying anymore doctrine is static (although I still think is true), I'm saying it doesn't matter if it is or not static in real life, what matters is staticness asumption DOESN'T prevents the model to give us the fun-to-play features. Given this, let me ask it again: What do I gain as an extra introducing doctrine flexibility? If the model is currently producing the main outcomes for religion behavior, why should I change it?
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Alignment: So... you didn't like my idea about a religion with high aggressiveness, low tolerance and high individualism for your satanic religion?

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Natural Affinity: What you say only reinforces my opinion. You kind of sorted three religions by their Asceticism level and they turned out to be sorted by Natural Affinity as well... so I guess we can use Asceticism alone as a substitute for NA.

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"The point i'm making is that [ethics] is just a "marker" for when a scoeity has learned enough about society to have ethics or any similar type social advance, such as Abolishment of Slavery."

Just look closely to your phrase: "A society has LEARNED enough about society to have ETHICS or any similar type of ADVANCE". Isn't it clear to you, as it is to me, that here you're simply putting your western/american culture as the reference? You simply can't see slavery as a sign of progress! It's impossible to you to see it that way! In your mind, social progress means things like abolishing slavery. And that's alright, so do I, but we cannot impose this, otherwise we're simply imposing our values to just everybody. For ethics and any other social thing. There's no value at all you can say "Oh, well, this one is really valid for everybody". Just think in the most bizarre things and you'll find some tribe somewhere in some point of time seeing the same things as non-bizarre.

When you try to base your arguments on the existence and "development" of ethics, you're actually saying some social customs cannot exist in ancient societies, like it'd be ness a "higher understanding" or a "higher level" of ethics to produce a given behavior. This is not true! what special social thing is present today that didn't exist yesterday? Ethics don't have levels, they're simply different and when saying ethics "advance" you're making a value judgment with your own culture as a reference. You say societies didn't appear with ethics, they "developed" it, they "understood" the world and then "produced" ethics. I say no, it just takes two guys for producing ethics. Ethics are invisible, they appear with the simple existence of two persons and the way they interact with each other, the behaviors accepted between them. They don't have ness to write or express these implicit moral rules. Rules appear at the same time the two persons meet and start to interact. This is BTW what makes interesting Robinson Crusoe's story. It just takes two to produce a society and in that story Friday was a slave, but later he and Robinson were friends... it sure didn't take any ethic advance for that, they just changed the way they interacted.

Anytime you introduce a social variable in the tech system you have to give it an interpretation. You need to know what means a low value for it and what means a high value. This is no easy task and can lead to tough problems. Like ethics. We couldn't model the rise of nazis in germany by the 20th century. German "ethics" would be too high by then as a result of centuries of existence... they just couldn't come up with the idea of gasing jewish! The only way would be to reduce ethics, and therefore you need something in the tech system reducing ethics by some strage means. And by strange I mean methods applied only to this particular variable, but not for all the rest techs. This only leads you to having a tech system with "special rules" and "exceptions" which I believe only destroys such a good and coherent model as the tech model is.

The next time you think about a possible social variable for the tech model, before proposing it, think what interpretation its tech level is going to have and then think if that's biased to your own culture. My belief is you won't be able to create them without a bias, and that's not your fault, it's a problem derived from how the tech model works and the relativity of values and morals from culture to culture, religion to religion.

OK, for sure you have an answer for the above, at least as long as mine... Now let me put this another way to see if we can really advance in this thread... When you propose a social tech variable like you did with ethics, what I guess you're trying to do is to add something you consider very important that you think the social model is not able to do. Am I right? If so, why don't you give me a list of things you want to see AS A PLAYER that you think the social model won't be able to produce as an outcome? Please concentrate on the things you think MUST be there... the most important effects. Maybe with such a list we can work some things out.

[Lord God Jinnai]

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM 3) Regarding the staticness of GRW, you have to give me a new argument, not just insist that they're not static. Why? Because I've given you a totally new argument for keeping staticness in the model: I'm not saying anymore doctrine is static (although I still think is true), I'm saying it doesn't matter if it is or not static in real life, what matters is staticness asumption DOESN'T prevents the model to give us the fun-to-play features. Given this, let me ask it again: What do I gain as an extra introducing doctrine flexibility? If the model is currently producing the main outcomes for religion behavior, why should I change it?

Why? Why not?
Hehe no seriously, because of light in what has happened in recent years as well as what has happened when agriculture became common. Religions around the world changed in such drastic and fundimental ways that their very nature was altered to the core. We are living currently in such an age. Ask any historian and/or religious expert. They'll agree. What actually is the cause, whether its computers, the internet, etc. No one agrees upon, but they all say that no religion (except those so far removed from technology of 1st world countries) will survive the transitition unchanged. This isn't like a reformation such as 1400 century Christianity, this is a complete change in the way religion acts, is percived and worshipped. Already the effects are showing up. FE this era is has for all religions the greatest number of "charismatic cults" and outright splinters. Religion has to cope with the new ideas that challenge many fundimental ways of thinking, such as the world is the center of the universe and new technology such as the internet that will change life within the next 50 years that has rarely been seen. That is why GWR needs to be non-static, so that they can survive. When the agricultural revolution took place, there were no GWRs to worry about, but the religions there were all adapted to new ideas to embrace the concepts of community, harvest, etc. Religions today will haveto do the same with the computer, internet, space exploration and possibly other planets having life.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM Alignment: So... you didn't like my idea about a religion with high aggressiveness, low tolerance and high individualism for your satanic religion?

Well high aggressiveness and low tolerance are okay, but high indivisulism isn't ness. In fact it may be quite opposite depending on what the religion preaches as far as anti-socail behavior. It mny be more like acting as a group, but only with the group kinda mentality.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM Natural Affinity: What you say only reinforces my opinion. You kind of sorted three religions by their Asceticism level and they turned out to be sorted by Natural Affinity as well... so I guess we can use Asceticism alone as a substitute for NA.

OK. I don't think you read this right. U said, "There's some similarity with Asceticism [and Natural Affinity] (low Asceticism->low care about nature)..." What i showed you was correct for Christianity, opposite for budhism and well really can vary for Hinduism as far as Asceticism, but Natural Affinity is high always.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM "The point i'm making is that [ethics] is just a "marker" for when a scoeity has learned enough about society to have ethics or any similar type social advance, such as Abolishment of Slavery."

Well hmmm...maybe that was a bad example since the only thing that allowed this to really change was the Industrial Revolution (or the use of Serfdom). But something like a code of honor (which will vary as to how it appears for differnt ethnic-types as defined by me and rich, not enthic types of this model) does require some understanding beyond just the basics of philosophy and religion. Others would be Aethism (which DOES require a high level of science and philosophy of some sort because people need ways to explain the unexplainable around them. That's human nature.

Basically i'm not saying "lets model these in the tech model." I'm saying we should have some sort of progression, sometimes like abolishment of slavery and Aethism linked to advances in the tech model, but not inherantly a part of them. But if we don't have some sort of progression, once a group meets the fundimental requirements for a philosophy via religious status and/or ethic status, they automatically know it even if they can barely comprehend what religion and philosophy are? That's not right. Not only that, but if they loose that status they would A> keep the old one and gain the new philosophy automatically...again not right because you can also learn philosophies via contact with other civs thus potentially learning them all before 0 BCE even! or B> loose the first one and gain the new one...not right. Also there are historically some types of philosophies that have only appeared more recently such as secularism.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM Anytime you introduce a social variable in the tech system you have to give it an interpretation. You need to know what means a low value for it and what means a high value. This is no easy task and can lead to tough problems. Like ethics. We couldn't model the rise of nazis in germany by the 20th century. German "ethics" would be too high by then as a result of centuries of existence... they just couldn't come up with the idea of gasing jewish! The only way would be to reduce ethics, and therefore you need something in the tech system reducing ethics by some strage means. And by strange I mean methods applied only to this particular variable, but not for all the rest techs. This only leads you to having a tech system with "special rules" and "exceptions" which I believe only destroys such a good and coherent model as the tech model is.

Actually, Hitler would prob. be a political radical and thus outside the "normal" limits that such ethics would've stopped, but there are other situations which your statement would hold true on so my agument there is kinda mute.

OK what exactly do you mean by modifiers to the tech model? Are you saying we should strip social modifiers from controlling how much rp generation (along with other variables) is created for basic techs? If that's the case your wrong. You couldn't model FE the Christian Church's power to slow the growth in areas like Astronomy or Ecology. You couldn't show why the Eastern civilizations went from being the most advanced in the world during the first millenium to dropping off rather low by the second. You couldn't show the mogel advancement in military technology while leaving behind other aspects.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM The next time you think about a possible social variable for the tech model, before proposing it, think what interpretation its tech level is going to have and then think if that's biased to your own culture. My belief is you won't be able to create them without a bias, and that's not your fault, it's a problem derived from how the tech model works and the relativity of values and morals from culture to culture, religion to religion.

Your right, no one is completely unbiased. That's why we're working together. The variables that will be used in the social model will affect the tech model (not all of them ness.). There are times when a culture just doesn't want a war and doesn't spend the money on war technology. That is the type of variables we use. Any culture can in theory have such.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM OK, for sure you have an answer for the above, at least as long as mine... Now let me put this another way to see if we can really advance in this thread... When you propose a social tech variable like you did with ethics, what I guess you're trying to do is to add something you consider very important that you think the social model is not able to do. Am I right? If so, why don't you give me a list of things you want to see AS A PLAYER that you think the social model won't be able to produce as an outcome? Please concentrate on the things you think MUST be there... the most important effects. Maybe with such a list we can work some things out.

The most important effects....
That like any such thing will take time....
But i know 2 things already.

As a player i don't think its right to start out with ideas that might not have come until the 2nd century ACE. And that if i do discover these earlier, I'm not guarateed to keep them if my culture changes that much.

Also as a player i don't want to be overwhelmed at the beggining with ideas such as abolishment of slavery or equality of everyone or perhaps Aethism.

[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited June 30, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited June 30, 2000).]

[alms66]

Hi, sorry it took so long for me to comment on your work Rodrigo, like I told you when I handed you the Social Model, I just don't have much time anymore.

But...on to the comments:

1.) I have to agree with LGJ and Richard...Religious characteristics need to evolve or change over time. If not, then how do we show, FE, how Christianity was once very aggressive (the Crusades), and now it promotes world peace? Also, in recent years the Catholic church has publicly accepted some long-accepted scientific beliefs, such as evolution and the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe (yes, they only recently admitted they were wrong on this one), which is a dramatic change in the fundamental teachings, or doctrine of the religion.

Though the changes should be slow and small, I must admit.

2.) I thought we agreed that Religions would be best if their atrributes modified, not replaced, a culture's attributes? The way you have it now, the GWR religous stats completely replace the cultures stats...which IMO should not be done.

Why?...I just think it would work better as a modifier. FE, if a culture had a Aggressivness of 70 before, and then they aquired a GRW, why would they suddenly or even gradually change to an Aggressiveness of 10 (if that's what the GRW had)?

It would also allow 2 different cultures with the same GRW to have different levels of stats, while still following the same religion.

Your Improtance of Religion variable could be like the Centralization variable I had, increasing or decreasing the amount the religion modifys the culture's stats by.

3.) I really think we should use real-world religions. Think about it...we have all this realism and complexity, then you get to religion and we just have mumbo jumbo...it would piss me off as a player (and history buff), if with all the realism I've already experienced in the game, I get a GRW, and it's nothing but a cardboard cut-out with some numbers and some "fantasy" name that acts like Christianity. Or even worse, if a religious fanatic leader came to me and said, "You must declare war on the Egyptians, Miss Piggy our eternal Goddess wills it."

I personally don't care if I offend anyone, but since it's more than me making the game, I think the best solution to not offending anyone and using real religions would be to look at my #2 post above, and using religions as modifiers, as realisticlly as possible (with input from everyone), try to decide what the relion's stats would be. This would be difficult, but IMO much better than having my citizens worship Mahabu the Almighty.

4.) Why didn't you use the missionary/priest idea for spreading and converting? Just asking.

5.) I also don't like the fact that an EG must all follow the same GRW. I probably just misinterpreted it, so forgive me if I did, but why should all Egyptians follow the same GRW?...I mean you did say that an EG can only follow one GRW.

That's it for now.

[This message has been edited by Toubabo_Koomi (edited June 30, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

quote: Originally posted by Toubabo_Koomi on 06-30-2000 11:19 PM 1.) I have to agree with LGJ and Richard...Religious characteristics need to evolve or change over time. If not, then how do we show, FE, how Christianity was once very aggressive (the Crusades), and now it promotes world peace? Also, in recent years the Catholic church has publicly accepted some long-accepted scientific beliefs, such as evolution and the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe (yes, they only recently admitted they were wrong on this one), which is a dramatic change in the fundamental teachings, or doctrine of the religion. Though the changes should be slow and small, I must admit.

I totally agree.

quote: Originally posted by Toubabo_Koomi on 06-30-2000 11:19 PM 2.) I thought we agreed that Religions would be best if their atrributes modified, not replaced, a culture's attributes? The way you have it now, the GWR religous stats completely replace the cultures stats...which IMO should not be done. Why?...I just think it would work better as a modifier. FE, if a culture had a Aggressivness of 70 before, and then they aquired a GRW, why would they suddenly or even gradually change to an Aggressiveness of 10 (if that's what the GRW had)? It would also allow 2 different cultures with the same GRW to have different levels of stats, while still following the same religion. Your Improtance of Religion variable could be like the Centralization variable I had, increasing or decreasing the amount the religion modifys the culture's stats by.

OK, correct me if i'm wrong, but I think your confusing the ethnic and religious modifiers. If a GWR with Agression of 10 converted everyone in the enthic group who's ER had Agression of 70, it doesn't modify the ethnic groups agression nessarily. This depends on the importance of religion and the time that occured. The GWR their wouldn't be more aggressive just because it took over a more aggressive ER. The exception might be if we impliment the branch system to represent this.

quote: Originally posted by Toubabo_Koomi on 06-30-2000 11:19 PM 3.) I really think we should use real-world religions. Think about it...we have all this realism and complexity, then you get to religion and we just have mumbo jumbo...it would piss me off as a player (and history buff), if with all the realism I've already experienced in the game, I get a GRW, and it's nothing but a cardboard cut-out with some numbers and some "fantasy" name that acts like Christianity. Or even worse, if a religious fanatic leader came to me and said, "You must declare war on the Egyptians, Miss Piggy our eternal Goddess wills it." I personally don't care if I offend anyone, but since it's more than me making the game, I think the best solution to not offending anyone and using real religions would be to look at my #2 post above, and using religions as modifiers, as realisticlly as possible (with input from everyone), try to decide what the relion's stats would be. This would be difficult, but IMO much better than having my citizens worship Mahabu the Almighty.

Agghh! No! I haveto strongly disagree with this. We should under no circumstances model real-world religions. Why? Because you will get those people who will so fanatic about their religion and wonder thy they cannot have it in the begginning of the game (5-6000 BCE). All religions back then were either "Nature God Woship" or ancestrialism type religions, nothing like chrsitianity or Budhism. The only exception might be a very primitive form of Hinduism, but that would be like nothing it is today.

In addition Rodrigo says he doesn't want to model god/meta-god or whatever type religions and doing that would require him to do so to some extent.

Finnally, people like me will want to create a differnt type of class M planet totally unique and can't do this if there are religions from this world.

quote: Originally posted by Toubabo_Koomi on 06-30-2000 11:19 PM 4.) Why didn't you use the missionary/priest idea for spreading and converting? Just asking.

Such can be done in the character model. Right now, the only thing of religions linked to it is the Religious Radical Character who is the "founder" of the GWRs. The problem with linking is i need input from the other models before i can do anything, that includes your models TK.
[quote]Originally posted by Toubabo_Koomi on 06-30-2000 11:19 PM
5.) I also don't like the fact that an EG must all follow the same GRW. I probably just misinterpreted it, so forgive me if I did, but why should all Egyptians follow the same GRW?...I mean you did say that an EG can only follow one GRW.
[/quoter]
not all egyptians would. All of one ethnic type would.

Which reminds me...how are ethic types created/destoryed/absorbed?

[alms66]

LGJ,

If those fanatics don't realize that this is a GAME modeling history, and that's simply the way history unfolded, I say that's their problem. The only thing I'm worried about, in regards to offending religious types, is if we totally get the characteristics wrong, like giving Buddism an agressiveness of 90, which is ridiculous.

Why couldn't you have a different M class planet if you have real religions? You already have a different planet with real civs, and real "characters" from history...why not religion? I think we would do a great disservice if we didn't do real religions.--Also, we could always have the option to use historical religions or not.

4.) That was something probably only Rodrigo or maybe Axi also, would know about. It was something that was in my social model that I never completed...not what you are thinking.

-What info do u need from my models?

[roquijad]

Hi, TK! nice to talk to you again.

"What i showed you was correct for Christianity, opposite for budhism and well really can vary for Hinduism as far as Asceticism, but Natural Affinity is high always."
ooops, I still don't see it... You now say NA is high always, but back then you said NA was low for christianity and this explained why western culture is more inclined to tech development...
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"what exactly do you mean by modifiers to the tech model? "
I mean you'd have to introduce new equations or new variables in equations in order to produce the social effects you want. This changes would be introduced only for social tech advances, while the rest stays the same, thus producing two (or more) ways to handle tech advances depending on its type (social or not). IMO this is a mistake because the tech model works very good how it is now for all "real" techs and it is straight forward and clear in all its interpretations and uses, with no exceptions. All techs are treated the same and can be interpreted in the same way, which is a very very good characteristic that can be lost introducing social techs.
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"There are times when a culture just doesn't want a war and doesn't spend the money on war technology. That is the type of variables we use. Any culture can in theory have such."
Agree, but I don't know why you're saying this... culture changes in the social model so no problem with this one.
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"As a player i don't think its right to start out with ideas that might not have come until the 2nd century ACE [like abolishing slavery or atheism]. And that if i do discover these earlier, I'm not guarateed to keep them if my culture changes that much."
I totally agree. I also don't want to see "modern" stuff in 4000 BC or so. So far the social model will not do this, so you can expect a historically accurate social simulation in general. If you see some specific modern idea appearing in ancient times as a result of how the social model works, name it. As for the two examples you give, ab. slavery and atheism, the latter is not present in the social model and shouldn't be in the game either because unfortunately (I'm atheist), atheism is practiced by 1% of population or less in any country, even in our high tech current era, so IMO that's a useless detail to add to the game. As for slavery, people will take one position or another based on cultural variables Ethnic Tolerance and Asceticism (high desire for material goods and low respect for other tribes leads to slavery). This is IMO a much better way to handle it, because it's unbiased. We don't need to introduce something like a "higher moral code" in order to terminate slavery, so if it is supported in one time by a given culture, it can be abolished later when culture changes. The way culture changes in the social model will produce (as a general trend) an increasing ethnic tolerance as time passes and therefore, in some moment you can expect to see people claiming an end of slavery, but it'd be very unlikely to happen in ancient times, so you'll have what you want. Of course, it's senseless to talk about ab. slavery for a culture that never supported it, so, since the model allows also to some cultures to never be interested in slavery, there's no problem here.
------------

"I have to agree with LGJ and Richard...Religious characteristics need to evolve or change over time. If not, then how do we show, FE, how Christianity was once very aggressive (the Crusades), and now it promotes world peace?"
This is exactly how I like questions asked. As long as you keep your eyes on the scenarios players would face, we'll be able to advance in this thread. Discussing about religious attributes being static or not is irrelevant and what matters is if the model can or not produce things like crusades in ancient times and don't produce them in modern times.
The social model CAN give you crusades in ancient times and a more friendly behavior in modern times without the need for changing religious attributes. The key is the "Importance of Religion" variable. This variable tells you how important and relevant religion is for people or, if you want, how fanatic people is regarding religious issues. The social model, as a general trend, will give you high IR for most of the game and it will decline in modern times. Therefore, for earlier times you can expect the church to be really concern about things like holy places and support crusades, but in modern times this support would fall. The good thing is crusades can exist in the model at a CHEAP cost (just one variable, IR). So I don't need to make the model more complex having changing religious attributes to produce these effects. Doing so would be work for nothing.
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"The way you have it now, the GWR religous stats completely replace the cultures stats..."
on what do you base this comment? The social model makes religious attributes influence cultural attributes, which does not mean cultural attributes suddenly change to the exact values religion is dictating as an ideal. Again, Importance of Religion tells you how much people care about this, so if your people is fanatic, cultural and religious attributes would be really alike, but if IR is low, this is not ness so. As for the speed of changes, all changes in the model are very slow. Any exception to this speed rule could arise from interconnecting this model with the chars model and its Radicals.

"It would also allow 2 different cultures with the same GRW to have different levels of stats, while still following the same religion."
As explained, this would naturally happen because religion has only a level of influence and doesn't control cultural attributes completely.
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"I really think we should use real-world religions. "
I agree with LGJ. However, could you be more explicit? What exactly do you mean?

"In addition Rodrigo says he doesn't want to model god/meta-god or whatever type religions and doing that would require him to do so to some extent."
It's not that I don't want to, it's the fact that nothing changes in gameplay terms when you say "this religion has a single god" or "this one believes in reincarnation". So my suggestion is we can have these things but only for flavoring with no real modeling, like simply labeling religions.
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"Why didn't you use the missionary/priest idea for spreading and converting? Just asking."
As I once told you, I really liked your priest idea. However, once I developed the spreading process I found a much easier way to model converting. Anyway, there's nothing said about converting in the current model because I indeed liked so much your idea that I want to introduce it someway or another, so I just left aside converting for this first version post. I'll post your priests idea soon so others can see it and comment on it too.
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"I also don't like the fact that an EG must all follow the same GRW."
My main argument for this has been: everytime you pick a real-life/historical ethnic group, in an overwhelming majority of cases you see only one religion having like 85%-90% support plus a variety of other small cults or branches. I take advantage of this and assume then there's only one religion, gaining a lot in simplicity without having absurd results.
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"Which reminds me...how are ethic types created/destoryed/absorbed?"
created: in civs with multiethnic govt it is possible for a new EG to appear.
destroyed: if killed
absorved/disappear: EGs with low nationalism will tend to be absorved by other tribes.
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There's something really good in these last posts, which is you giving gameplay features you want/don't-want to see AS PLAYERS. Rather than discussing philosophical matters, it's way more productive to see if specific things like "abolishing slavery" or "crusades" can or not be produced in the social model. Those are the really important things. That's the way I prefer to see this thread going...

Rodrigo

[alms66]

Rodrigo,

I guess I just don't understand how the importance of religion variable works then. But it's fine, I'll take your word for it. I'm sure your right I just don't see it yet.

I think we should use real religions like Christianity, Islam, etc., mainly for people like me. I love ancient history and these religions played major roles then, I'd just like to see them play as large a role in my games. I want Islam to act like Islam in the game, and Christianity to act like Christianity, I don't want just a bunch of random numbers that the game tells me is my religion.

On Eg's following one religion, you're right, most of the time. But if you take a look at the U.S., FE, we have one EG, "American", but have varying levels of religions being practiced, that is unless you plan on having a country like the U.S. made up of many EGs, in which case, I guess your way will work.

[Lord God Jinnai]

If those fanatics don't realize that this is a GAME modeling history, and that's simply the way history unfolded, I say that's their problem. The only thing I'm worried about, in regards to offending religious types, is if we totally get the characteristics wrong, like giving Buddism an agressiveness of 90, which is ridiculous.

Why couldn't you have a different M class planet if you have real religions? You already have a different planet with real civs, and real "characters" from history...why not religion? I think we would do a great disservice if we didn't do real religions.--Also, we could always have the option to use historical religions or not.
-----
Well, if its optional, OK. I just personally like creating other class M planets that have as little to do with earth as possible. The only problem with modeling things like earth, is where does it end. Should we have civs with names of real-world countries? cultures? ethnic groups? application techs like F-117A?

"What i showed you was correct for Christianity, opposite for budhism and well really can vary for Hinduism as far as Asceticism, but Natural Affinity is high always."
ooops, I still don't see it... You now say NA is high always, but back then you said NA was low for christianity and this explained why western culture is more inclined to tech development...
-----
-_- Hehehe. Ooops my fault. I meant to say that NA is higher for the last 2 always. Basically Christinaity High ASC, Low NA; Budhism, Low ASC, High NA, Hinduism Moderate ASC and High NA (Depending on brach for ASC...all braches of Hinduism have high ASC)...that's probably what I meant. That religion along with a few others is the major reason i think we should have branches in religions because we'd be insulting them by saying all Hindu's are the same (religious-wise). Without this we wouldn't have the ability to have inter-religious warfare like Iran/Irag had or have the reformation like in Christianity.

I mean you'd have to introduce new equations or new variables in equations in order to produce the social effects you want. This changes would be introduced only for social tech advances, while the rest stays the same, thus producing two (or more) ways to handle tech advances depending on its type (social or not). IMO this is a mistake because the tech model works very good how it is now for all "real" techs and it is straight forward and clear in all its interpretations and uses, with no exceptions. All techs are treated the same and can be interpreted in the same way, which is a very very good characteristic that can be lost introducing social techs.

There are times when a culture just doesn't want a war and doesn't spend the money on war technology. That is the type of variables we use. Any culture can in theory have such."
Agree, but I don't know why you're saying this... culture changes in the social model so no problem with this one.
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Why am I saying this? Because the way you're making it sound you don't want ethnic and religious modifiers to affect non-social techs also like discovering the earth (or whatever planet your clash is on) isn't the center of the universe or having harder time developing the technology for better farming in a civ that want's to develope better factories.

I totally agree. I also don't want to see "modern" stuff in 4000 BC or so. So far the social model will not do this, so you can expect a historically accurate social simulation in general. If you see some specific modern idea appearing in ancient times as a result of how the social model works, name it. As for the two examples you give, ab. slavery and atheism, the latter is not present in the social model and shouldn't be in the game either because unfortunately (I'm atheist), atheism is practiced by 1% of population or less in any country, even in our high tech current era, so IMO that's a useless detail to add to the game. As for slavery, people will take one position or another based on cultural variables Ethnic Tolerance and Asceticism (high desire for material goods and low respect for other tribes leads to slavery). This is IMO a much better way to handle it, because it's unbiased. We don't need to introduce something like a "higher moral code" in order to terminate slavery, so if it is supported in one time by a given culture, it can be abolished later when culture changes. The way culture changes in the social model will produce (as a general trend) an increasing ethnic tolerance as time passes and therefore, in some moment you can expect to see people claiming an end of slavery, but it'd be very unlikely to happen in ancient times, so you'll have what you want. Of course, it's senseless to talk about ab. slavery for a culture that never supported it, so, since the model allows also to some cultures to never be interested in slavery, there's no problem here.
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OK...here's the thing...even if they don't have slavery they must have something like serfs until the industrial revolution takes hold because of the fact that the economies are based mostly on agriculture which until the industrial revolution took a lot of manpower.
Also on atheism...I think a good way to show that would be on IoR variable...but we'd also haveto have someway of determining the number of fanatics, ordinary people, people who claim to be religion, but that's all and atheists/agnostics. The reason why is IoR can be 1%, but that 1% are all fanatics...and that can be worse sometimes (depending on the religion) than 100% who are ordinary people because fanatics are more drastic and depending on the aggression level and tolerance level may decide to destroy things and start wars.

Finally I must say that we should allow more than 1 official religion and the player can atleast ban certain types of religions (if not specific ones). The reason for having 2 official religions would be like the case of pre-British India where Hinduism and Islam were side by side (sometimes more aggressively than not), but those were the only 2 religions given official blessings...others like Jainism existed but weren't given this status...they were allowed but that's all. Another example is in several Arab states where Christianity and Judaism were allowed to be practiced, but only those and no others and Islam is considered the main religion. The player should be able to give the status of official religions to as many as he wants (or say atleast 2-3), and this would only the stats for all 2-3 slightly less than for just 1 official religion. Also you should put in the ability to have no religions legal like USSR.

Finally you didn't answer my point about how GWR will be able to cope in the new era without variable change, espically when doctrine changes and IoR is on the increase as well as decrease (in differn't aspects).

[roquijad]

First of all, happy 4th of July to all of you american guys...


TK:
"I guess I just don't understand how the importance of religion variable works then. But it's fine, I'll take your word for it. I'm sure your right I just don't see it yet."

Well, thanks for taking my word, but anyway, this is how IoR works in general: It's defined as people's care about religious issues in their lives and what role they assign to the church in society. If you have an ethnic group following a GRW, then the EG tends to "copy" religious attribute into cultural attributes, so if religion says Asceticism should be 35, then cultural asceticism will tend to 35. How similar to religious attributes cultural attributes can get to be is handled by IoR. When IoR is high, chances are they'll be almost the same. When IoR is low, the model makes cultural attributes less influenced by religion values and mostly influenced by what I called "environment", that is, several other factors people face in their daily lives, like the type of economic system the civ has. That's the main role of IoR, but as per definition the same variable is used affecting other things, like people and the clergy choosing a type of government they prefer in the govt model (high IoR-->monarchic/fundamentalist, low IoR-->regimes with a less powerful religious class). In the case of crusades, although actual modeling would need the diplo model involved in a way not yet determined, IoR would be the crucial variable (because it tells you how much people care about their holy places), modified of course somewhat by religious aggressiveness.
How IoR evolves overtime? People is assumed to give high importance to religion when 1)there's little scientific knowledge, so things like thunders, rain, deseases, etc cannot be understood or controled, producing fear and need to seek religion; 2)the world appears unstable, a dangerous place to live leading to higher fear. IoR, then, depends on the overall tech level (from the tech model) and govt model's variable, "Empire's Stability". So, as a general trend, IoR will decrease as the game advances, being small in modern times, where the right interpretation would be people seeing religion as a strictly spiritual thing, with no or little role in other aspects of society. Because of how IoR is computed, you'll see cultures valuing religion greatly in ancient times, embracing regimes where the church has significant power, where things like prosecuting other beliefs or going to crusades are possible. But in modern times this won't be so. Hardly you'll see people excited about crusades and even more, they'll possibly push their govt to become secular.

I hope that helped understanding why IoR has such an important role. It's probably my falut not saying these things in the social model document.
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"I think we should use real religions like Christianity, Islam, etc., [...]I don't want just a bunch of random numbers that the game tells me is my religion."

If what you only mean is giving GRW historical names (christianity, etc) and having them with their "true" values for attributes, then I'm all for it too. Indeed my intention was to give the player the option to choose 1)random or 2)historical. I guess I specified this in the social model document only for ethnic groups (so romans would behave as such and the same for other tribes), but I wanted it that way too for religions.
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"On Eg's following one religion, you're right, most of the time. But if you take a look at the U.S., FE, we have one EG, "American", but have varying levels of religions being practiced, that is unless you plan on having a country like the U.S. made up of many EGs, in which case, I guess your way will work."

The US would have only one EG in modern times (post civil rights granted to black population). I'm certain the US is about 85% christian, so it doesn't represent an exception to the rule. Probably the best examples of really multi-religious cultures are found in the east of Asia... However, I'm not saying there're no multi-religious cultures. I know there're. The thing is in the grand picture, yesterday and today, the widely most common case is a culture with one religion supported by something like 85%. Under that situation I don't see as critical to allow EGs to support more than one religion.
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LGJ:
On Natural Affinity: OK, I'm convinced. NA will be in the next version of the social model.
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"the way you're making it sound you don't want ethnic and religious modifiers to affect non-social techs also like discovering the earth (or whatever planet your clash is on) isn't the center of the universe or having harder time developing the technology for better farming in a civ that want's to develope better factories."

Sorry if I gave that impression. Cultural modifiers are IMO extremely important to be introduced in the tech model. Cultural attributes should be the ones deciding most of people's inclination to innovation for "real" techs. As for religious attributes, I think there's no need to have modifiers for them affecting tech development directly. Why? Because it's people (not religion itself) who produce development. Religious attributes will be, however, affecting tech, but indirectly because culture is influenced by religion. If you have a culture following a religion with low NA and with a high IoR, culture will in time be low in NA. Using NA (and maybe others) as a modifier in the tech system, you get cultural/religious influence on tech development.

I'm not against cultural/relgious modifiers, I'm against social techs. I have the feeling, based on your comment about me opposed to using cultural/religious modifiers, that probably you and me are not using the same "definition" for social techs. I mean that maybe some things you consider social techs, I don't, and vise versa. I guess we could solve some of the "philosophical" problems we've so far in this thread looking at the list of techs you're considering to have in your model up to now. Do you have a list like that? If not, why don't we discuss in more detail what specific techs you and I think are social-related?
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"but we'd also haveto have someway of determining the number of fanatics, ordinary people, people who claim to be religion..."

That's something we can do in the social model if we need it. IoR tells you the "average" level of fanatism, so some demographic assumptions can be made to calculate those populations you mention.
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"even if they don't have slavery they must have something like serfs until...."

Sure, NP with that. My question is why put "serfdom", "slavery" or any such thing in the tech model when it isn't needed. And it isn't needed because the social model takes care of that realisticly. As I have said, putting social stuff in the tech model has several problems, so let's avoid doing it if the social model can handle it. It's just the simpler and better way to go.
You say serfdom should disappear after industrial development and I agree. Does that imply you have to introduce something like "no serfdom" tech in the tech model with "industrialization" as preriquisite? I don't think so, even with a much better name than "no-serfdom"... And I don't think so because the existence or not of things like slavery or serfodm can be well modeled with the current social and govt models. And by "well modeled" I mean social and govt models can give you those with cultural background and according to historical time. Under this perspective, there's no reason to double-model them introducing them in the tech model too.

Now let me get deeper in one phrase I just stated: "And by "well modeled" I mean social and govt models can give you those with cultural background and according to historical time"
I believe one of your biggest concerns and the reason why you have proposed using techs for "ethics", "slavery", "serfdom", etc is you feel social/govt/riots models are "timeless". I really feel I found the core of our problem here! Let me rephrase: You feel these 3 models cannot "see" the moment in history the game is at. If they cannot see it, they can easily produce no serfdom in ancient times or other bizarre effects. Also, social things would be tech-independent, while we know many social transformations were triggered by techs, like the effects of industrialization. It'd be obvious, then, to introduce those social transformations as "social techs", so they can appear at the right historical time. If my three models were indeed "blind" about the historical time the civ is going through, then I'd totally agree with you and by now we'd be working on social techs... But they're not blind. I have shown how abolishing slavery would appear late in the game or how crusades would be possible in ancient times but not in modern times. These 3 models can be historically accurate because of how they work and because of some interconnections with the tech model, like using an "overall tech level" when computing Importance of Religion.

I think this is THE explanation for you wanting to have social techs and me rejecting the idea. You feel we need to have social techs so some of the most important social things would appear at the right historical time. If I can show you the social model can be historically accurate without social techs, I guess we'll be closer to agreement.
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"we should allow more than 1 official religion and the player can atleast ban certain types of religions"

"you didn't answer my point about how GWR will be able to cope in the new era without variable change..."

I'm going to skip these two because I want you to concentrate 1st in the other comments I made.

[Richard Bruns]

I did get a bit of time on the net, but not enough to read everything. I'll reply to some stuff, though.

Rodrigo:
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Where EXACTLY in the social model you concluded this "The current assumption is that people will either follow an ancient, unchanging doctrine to the word or ignore it completely." ?
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That conclusion came from the RC's actions in the government model. They always acted the same. Giving them the "importance of religion" variable like you suggested should erase most of my concerns there; their actions will change over time even if doctrine does not. I am happy with this; I'm glad we could agree.

I think that the name of this variable should be changed to, "importance of doctrine". That way, the player knows that the new leaders and people are just as devoted to the religion, but they are now willing to change it.


I so not believe we should use real religions. It is not a good idea.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Rodrigo:

No...sorry we don't have a "list" yet. We have things we want to put down, but atleast I don't have them written down anywhere.

You're right about my concerns of the social model being "timeless," but since you seem to be able to show its not then OK.

Now then...can you answer the other 2 questions?:

"we should allow more than 1 official religion and the player can atleast ban certain types of religions"

"you didn't answer my point about how GWR will be able to cope in the new era without variable change..."