Social Model v.2

[roquijad]

Richard:
"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 ..."

Oh, I see. It was the word "people" that confused me. I prefer to refer to RC members as "the clergy" and preserve the term "people" for common people (not church-related). Anyway, I'm also glad you see this solved. A big step forward!
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"I think that the name of this variable should be changed to, 'importance of doctrine'. "

Maybe a change of name would help, but the one you propose can lead to confusion too. Since Importance of Religion is also used by people and the church to decide how much power the RC should have, then if you change it to Importance of Doctrine it's strange to use it for that. I'd suggest the name "Passion for Religion" or something like that. In this case when it's high, then it's understandable people care a lot more about doctrine and also want the church to be a integral part of the govt.
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"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."

I knew it! That was the big problem behind all your protests. We should be happy we now know what the problem is. It should help us move forward. Of course this doesn't end the tech-social discussion. I said I can show many social things can be modeled in the social/govt models being accurate about historical time. I have already done it for some variables like slavery. If others come to mind, must be named so we can analyze if they're or not well modeled (in the historical time sense) in the social model. I know the social model won't be able to cover all social stuff, so we must be aware.
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About a list of techs, let me name some "advances/applications" I consider social-related that I feel must be managed in the tech system rather than in the social model for better results:
Philosophy
Art
Worshiping Building (temples, etc)
Holy/Spiritual/Religious Warrior
Ideologies (for the govt model)
Code of Law

how do you like those?
For those and for any other you can think of, we have to give them a good definition (so we can know what we're really modeling) and think how Research Points would be generated, based mostly on social and govt variables.
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"we should allow more than 1 official religion and the player can atleast ban certain types of religions"

That's something I'd like too. My problem with that when building the model was that, although it's easy for the player choosing what religions are official, what are forbidden, what prosecuted, etc, it's not easy to make classes take those decisions. Since the govt model needs what classes want to define govt policies, your proposal becomes a bigger problem to cope with. I'm not entirely happy either with the way I'm handling religious discrimination. I cannot promise you I'll be able to change it, but I promise you I'll think again about it and see if another solution can be found.
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"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)."

How GRW will behave in modern times? is that the question? If so, first we have to be clear that it's not religion itself that behaves a certain way, but people who follow it. The people who follow it belongs to two groups. The clergy (Religious Class) and the rest (all other people). Change in behavior is given by IoR. As a general trend, and assuming no catastrophies, IoR goes down and down pushed mostly by scientific advances. So in modern times IoR is low for both groups (clergy and people) because techs are sky high. Being low, people and clergy's mentalities are less influenced by religious attributes and more influenced by other factors, like the environment where they live. Given this, chances are both groups will behave in modern times based mostly on other things than on religion attributes. IoR is also used directly to make people choose secular regimes and be less inclined to things like religious discrimination. So, for a typical western nation in modern times, chances are the church and the people will agree on having a secular state, with freedom of worship and no interest in things like crusades (although the latter must be worked along with the diplo model for the right result).
As you can see, the key is IoR, and since it is mostly dependant on the "overall tech level", the most probable scenario a player would face is churches and people behaving one way before the boom of techs during the industrial revolution and other after it.
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited July 05, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

About a list of techs, let me name some "advances/applications" I consider social-related that I feel must be managed in the tech system rather than in the social model for better results:
Philosophy
Art
Worshiping Building (temples, etc)
Holy/Spiritual/Religious Warrior
Ideologies (for the govt model)
Code of Law

how do you like those?
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Philosophy---needs to be broken up...this is almost, if not more, complex as religions.

Art- Again needs to be broken up into differnt parts.

Worshiping Building (temples, etc)---fine. the type would depend on the flavor more than the relgious type and also the achitecture basic tech as to how complex of a design it is...also sculpture (art) would be nessary at a descent level.

Holy/Spiritual/Religious Warrior---Rich proposed this...i'm not sure how it differs from non-religious warriors other than being either a member of the clergy or "blessed" which blessing have no RWE in clash.

Ideologies (for the govt model)----i'll haveto review that part...been a while since i looked it over.

Code of Law---yea...definnatly...need to have a system of writing (i assume your meaning an unchangeable code of law available for all to see like Hanarabi used).

There are some others like idea of abolition of slavery or others...i wish i still had my old tech tree...i had them all listed there...maybe there's some on the openciv3 page.

How GRW will behave in modern times? is that the question? If so, first we have to be clear that it's not religion itself that behaves a certain way, but people who follow it. The people who follow it belongs to two groups. The clergy (Religious Class) and the rest (all other people). Change in behavior is given by IoR. As a general trend, and assuming no catastrophies, IoR goes down and down pushed mostly by scientific advances. So in modern times IoR is low for both groups (clergy and people) because techs are sky high. Being low, people and clergy's mentalities are less influenced by religious attributes and more influenced by other factors, like the environment where they live. Given this, chances are both groups will behave in modern times based mostly on other things than on religion attributes. IoR is also used directly to make people choose secular regimes and be less inclined to things like religious discrimination. So, for a typical western nation in modern times, chances are the church and the people will agree on having a secular state, with freedom of worship and no interest in things like crusades (although the latter must be worked along with the diplo model for the right result).
As you can see, the key is IoR, and since it is mostly dependant on the "overall tech level", the most probable scenario a player would face is churches and people behaving one way before the boom of techs during the industrial revolution and other after it.
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OK...This takes care of a all the major problems i have about it except 1. The breakup of religions or reformation through cults (mostly charasmatic). These people have more IoR than the others, but, usually follow doctrine even less, branching off on their own ways. Thus just because IoR is higher doen't mean the populous will tend to follow doctrine moreso. I think keeping track of the numbers of people who are fanatics, just barely religious, etc. and the percentage of cultish or whatever you want to call it variable would solve this problem...The only other way is to have it become ER (which isn't right since these don't usually fall on ethnic lines). These "cults" can sometimes become quite big, such as the Mormons in Christianity or Tenrikyo in Shinto religions.

[F_Smith]

Feedback wanted, please:

Clash Object/Scenario Editor, Mark I


http://home.austin.rr.com/lostmercha...ashEditor.html

Just a test for compatability. Please hit this page, and if you experience any errors or bugs, post them in one of the 'coders' threads.

Not any real functionality yet, other than being able to add a basic 'Ethnic Group' to a few basic 'MapSquares'. But updates coming along soon.

[roquijad]

LGJ:
"Philosophy---needs to be broken up...this is almost, if not more, complex as religions.

Art- Again needs to be broken up into differnt parts."

I see what you mean. These are social complex things. But, IMO the key here is gameplay implications. The effect of Art in the game should be 1)Affecting creation of wonders (wonders model); 2)Increasing people's happiness (riots model); 3)maybe increase innovation?... If so, the approach I propose is to not crash our heads modeling art tendencies or styles, but only the amount of artistic work your civ produces. People produce Research points for art someway (probably depending on PCI, so low PCI produces little art because people is more worried about eating rather than any other thing). The "art tech" goes up and down depending on the civ's capability to produce art, so in prosperous civs there'll be likely more art, but we'll never say how good it is. If, FE, the wonders model uses a fraction of the art tech level as the probability for a master piece to appear, we'll be having the right outcomes. FE, if art is at 60% and in the wonders model we define the prob of one master piece appearing as 1/10 of art level, the chance of a wonder of this type coming up would be (1/10)*60%=6% each turn. If the amount of art increases, so does the prob and vise versa.

In the case of philosophy, I'm inclined to the idea of it only affecting the chance to generate a new ideology. Ideologies are like a regime or govt form. I believe philosophy shouldn't be used for anything else. Again, the "philosophy tech" only counts as the amount of philosophical activities in the civ, never caring about its type or line. So, the more philosophy there's in you civ, the more likely new ideologies can arise.

Worshiping Building: Now I'm not sure about this. I remebered in the econ model there're no individual buildings, but a continous level of religious infrastructure. I wonder what sense this tech would have then...


"Holy/Spiritual/Religious Warrior---Rich proposed this...i'm not sure[...]"
OK. Let's leave this one for some time in the future.

Ideologies: I have some ideas about this. I'll post them someday. No rush.

"Code of Law---yea...definnatly[...]"
Great. Yes, I imagined something like the Hammurabi's code. In my head this tech would represent the existence of written and explicit law. Low levels for this tech means law is expressed by tradition, changing from province to province and more difficult to apply. A higher level would be a complete and explicit legal code like in modern times or as in Rome. In this case IMO RP's should come mostly from govt's spending in such area.

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"OK...This takes care of a all the major problems i have about it except 1."
Well, your thougths go in the direction of "branches". As I've said, that could be a possible feature to add. I'll have it in mind for the next version.

[Lord God Jinnai]

rodrigo:
First off, like religion, i think it best for the culture model to handle everything here except maybe the last (written law thing). After discussing religion for a while i think its best. With that said i also want psychology (one basic tech i was listing as a social tech) not to be included in here because 1> it is actually termed a "science" 2> it acts like a science 3> unlike the others, it relies so heavily on basic techs that it cannot be put in the social model without modifying it alot to do so or the model, in either case not a good idea IMO

With that said:
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I see what you mean. These are social complex things. But, IMO the key here is gameplay implications. The effect of Art in the game should be 1)Affecting creation of wonders (wonders model); 2)Increasing people's happiness (riots model); 3)maybe increase innovation?... If so, the approach I propose is to not crash our heads modeling art tendencies or styles, but only the amount of artistic work your civ produces. People produce Research points for art someway (probably depending on PCI, so low PCI produces little art because people is more worried about eating rather than any other thing). The "art tech" goes up and down depending on the civ's capability to produce art, so in prosperous civs there'll be likely more art, but we'll never say how good it is. If, FE, the wonders model uses a fraction of the art tech level as the probability for a master piece to appear, we'll be having the right outcomes. FE, if art is at 60% and in the wonders model we define the prob of one master piece appearing as 1/10 of art level, the chance of a wonder of this type coming up would be (1/10)*60%=6% each turn. If the amount of art increases, so does the prob and vise versa.
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The reason for differnt art types is directly related to interaction with clash, espically on the 3 models i'm working on (technology/reaseach model, character model and the wonders and achievements model).
Art-Sculpture: Refers to works of art such as statues and buildings. This will definatly affect the wonders and achievemnts model for wonders.

Art-Drawing/Painting: This refers to anything from cave paintings and mosaics to canvas art. Animation might be in the same area early on, but for the last 10-15 years its really been almost completly seperate (except the sketches),so i don't know. Anyway this would affect the wonders model for masperieces, which are not wonders. Works of art such as these are usually more portable.
Art-Literature/Theatre: Things from folk tales to plays to books to motion picture...again MP might have its own seperate one, but i don't know... Anyway this would affect masterpieces and also spread ideas around. Same could be said for drawing/painting, but you can't easily pass on a painting to many people by showing it to them than by telling them a story.
Art-Music: This is used like literature/theate and often in conjuction to pass on ideas. It affects the wonder model by producing masterpieces. The differance is music is usually considered non-ethical, or atleast less so, except by the people who use it for religious purposes and such. It might not change attidutes as well as literature, but it is easier spread.

These are the 4 basic forms of the arts. I believe an Importance of the Arts (IotA) added to there could take care of the "level" of it for the cultures. We might need some ways of decideding which ones are more-or-less valued of the 4 basic types, but i believe some atleast can be done with existing ethnic modifiers. Some might have to be added though.

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In the case of philosophy, I'm inclined to the idea of it only affecting the chance to generate a new ideology. Ideologies are like a regime or govt form. I believe philosophy shouldn't be used for anything else. Again, the "philosophy tech" only counts as the amount of philosophical activities in the civ, never caring about its type or line. So, the more philosophy there's in you civ, the more likely new ideologies can arise.
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again it should not be handled by the civ, but by the ethnic groups. The Importance of Philosophy {IoP) could be used as such.
One thing though, reguadless of even if IoP is at 100, if the ethic modifiers aren't close enough for a new ideolgy to take hold it won't. This is even harder if the IoR is high at its against that ideology.

Also like religions there are usually ideologies that expaned much further than others. I'm not sure if we need something like a Great World Ideology (GWI) type deal, but it could be an idea. Whatcha think? Again, philosophies spread differntly than religions so it might not work.

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Worshiping Building: Now I'm no=t sure about this. I remebered in the econ model there're no individual buildings, but a continous level of religious infrastructure. I wonder what sense this tech would have then...
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At first it thought there was, but mark cleared that up for us. The problem is, this contradicts directly with what the Wonders and achievemnts model is trying to do with wonders.

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Ideologies: I have some ideas about this. I'll post them someday. No rush.
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Well lets decide how philosophy will act first.

"Code of Law---yea...definnatly[...]"
Great. Yes, I imagined something like the Hammurabi's code. In my head this tech would represent the existence of written and explicit law. Low levels for this tech means law is expressed by tradition, changing from province to province and more difficult to apply. A higher level would be a complete and explicit legal code like in modern times or as in Rome. In this case IMO RP's should come mostly from govt's spending in such area.
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Yea it is related much to the government model (except the intial need for a system of writing and some other small indivisual application techs).

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Well, your thougths go in the direction of "branches". As I've said, that could be a possible feature to add. I'll have it in mind for the next version.
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OK. Well if that's the case i have no further arguments on the religion area till the next version of the model.

[Lord God Jinnai]

rodrigo:
OK, so i lied about the religion part, but this is only do to something u posted in the other forum:

"'PrimitiveReligion' object is for designing and loading religions from a file"
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There're no primitive religions to load. Primitive religions are just a model's "trick". They don't really exist, and the model does nothing with them, ever. That's why the code should not have them either. In the model, an ethnic group "is said to follow a primitive religion", but that's it. No traits or anything is ever needed for them. What really exist are the GRW and they can be loaded from files and anything you want.
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Here's the thing that i see is a problem. There should be seperate variables for Ethnic Religions. Why? Because of the IoR. If the IoR is high, yes the ER and EG will tend to be the same variable, however, the less the IoR, the greater the distance or "lag time" for the ER or EG.

FE in a EG with relatively low IoR if the variables change for EG, the religion will tend to lag behind in its beliefs. This simulates the "traditionalism" of ERs that do occur. On the other hand if a GWR and an ER meet and some sort of adapting takes place for the ER so it hopefully won't get taken over by the new one, the EGs stats would still be the same, or not change as much, if the IoR was low. Over time, depending on how low the ER is, the culture and religion will join somwhere in the middle, assuming nothing else happens. Without this even if IoR is 0, your still saying that the IoR is in effect 100 because its stats mimic the culture exactly, turn per turn, which isn't true.

[alms66]

Rodrigo,

sorry it took me so long to get back to you on this

I understand the basics of how IOR works, it's basiclly how my "Centralization' was supposed to work. It's the details I'm more interested in. You've basically explained the detail that I was worried about already (that the higher IOR, the more it influences the change to cultural attributes). So I, now, see no problem, it's just that I thought I remembered reading that the GRW's attributes completely replaced a culture's attributes, I could be wrong, but you may want to check the document again, I'm possitive that was in there.

On real religions, yes I meant "historical" as you described it, names and attributes, and possibly even birth dates, but that may be too far if not using the Earth map. What else did you think I meant?

On Eg's following one religion, if you define all the protestant religions and catholic, etc., etc., as being Christian, the U.S. is probably 99% christian. But I was thinking in terms of Catholic being different from the protestants, because really Christian religions are those that "follow" Christ, and there are several of them, I guess it's like LGJ's idea of "branching" religions.

[roquijad]

LGJ:

Yes, all what you say is truth. However, this "trick" for primitive/ethnic religions was meant to keep the number of "religion objects" low. If each EG has a religion with attributes of its own, then the model increases its memory requirements Greatly, which I was trying to avoid.

I still believe this is the way to go, even knowing it's not entirely accurate with history, because this way we save a lot in memory and we don't lose too much, given most of EGs will in in time embrace a GRW where things are modeled "correctly". However, it's possible, under F_Smith approach of not caring much about computational resources, that the trick will never be used and primitive religions will end up being modeled correctly anyway.

TK:
We share the same opinion on historical religions and tribes. As I said, I'd like to see an option for the player where he can choose "historical" or "random".

As for protestants vs catholics and all that stuff, even though I really don't feel branches are needed, your and LGJ's desires makes me see branches will be something players would like to see, including the chance for more than one religion per ethnic group. Both things I think I'll have to include them in the model. I guess doing this will take the model to final acceptance.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Rodrigo:
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Yes, all what you say is truth. However, this "trick" for primitive/ethnic religions was meant to keep the number of "religion objects" low. If each EG has a religion with attributes of its own, then the model increases its memory requirements Greatly, which I was trying to avoid.

I still believe this is the way to go, even knowing it's not entirely accurate with history, because this way we save a lot in memory and we don't lose too much, given most of EGs will in in time embrace a GRW where things are modeled "correctly".
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Actually, not really. At most it little more than doubles it for that area, but it need not do that even. Whenever a change occurs that would affect an ER or EG, the program figures out based on IoR how much lag time there is. As far as for my adaptability scenerio is concerned, the higher IoR, the faster EG attibutes change compared to ERs, until they reach the same number. When they are the same it doesn't matter.

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However, it's possible, under F_Smith approach of not caring much about computational resources, that the trick will never be used and primitive religions will end up being modeled correctly anyway.
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Yeah! Now i can everyone convert to my choesen ER or die by the sword!!!!!!! Then spread it as i conquer more land angainst that GWR infidel! (Getting a little carried away here, but oh well).

Also any comments on what i posted about the social advances?

[roquijad]

Well, F_Smith has already decided to code also ER, so we'll have no "trick" for the time being. Good for you!

Continuing our discussion on techs:

1) psychology a tech... yes. btw, what are you planning for it to be useful for?

2) If you feel it's important to split the "art tech" into more art styles, I'm alright with it. However, you didn't tell me if you agree with me about having art(s) in the tech system defined as the AMOUNT of art.

3) An "Importance of Art" I feel is unness. I think all civs and tribes in history have shown the same level of interest in art so this variable wouldn't make a difference. Differences from tribe to tribe are 1)styles and 2)amount of it. This is why I suggest having art(s) in the tech system representing the amount of it and just never care about styles. The amount, in time, would be given not by cultural inclination, but by things like wealth and freedom.

4) About Code of Law, it's related with the govt, but IMO this relation should exist only for RP's. The Code of Law itself should IMO be a tech and govt actions simply change the amount of RP generated for this tech. Your opinion?

5) About philosophy, I really don't want to model different philosphies as we're doing with religions. IMO the only real impact in gameplay terms of phisolophy is the ideologies it produces. I see philosophy as a high level tech and ideologies as low level techs generated by philosophy. The spreading of ideologies is another thing and you're right about it. Ideologies don't simply "arrive", but take time to reach to the ears of the people. I tried to do this in the govt model, but I noticed it's incomplete after you mentioned "the knowledge about an ideology can be lost" some while ago. So, the spreading and development of techs are problably better handled by the tech system and the govt model should only take that info as given.
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited July 18, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

1) psychology a tech... yes. btw, what are you planning for it to be useful for?
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Direct effects would be things that would allow the rulers to better influence the people around them. It would also allow for advanced technologies such as psycho-history for trying to mold your populace. Very advanced technology may allow mind control also.

2) If you feel it's important to split the "art tech" into more art styles, I'm alright with it. However, you didn't tell me if you agree with me about having art(s) in the tech system defined as the AMOUNT of art.
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Yea i do think its ness. And as for the second part, well i haven't gotten a chance to answer till this message. I'll asnwer that below.

3) An "Importance of Art" I feel is unness. I think all civs and tribes in history have shown the same level of interest in art so this variable wouldn't make a difference. Differences from tribe to tribe are 1)styles and 2)amount of it. This is why I suggest having art(s) in the tech system representing the amount of it and just never care about styles. The amount, in time, would be given not by cultural inclination, but by things like wealth and freedom.
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Oh, your wrong there. There are societies where it is at differnt levels. Granted almost every society has some importance to it, even if it might only be for religion, but there is a differance in importance. This is why it should be done here, not in the tech model. Besides, IMO it can get even more complex than religion because there is even less linearage in the arts than in religion.

4) About Code of Law, it's related with the govt, but IMO this relation should exist only for RP's. The Code of Law itself should IMO be a tech and govt actions simply change the amount of RP generated for this tech. Your opinion?
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Yea...religion might also use it, but won't help in rp production for it. It would probably be under Government/Administation basic tech with a hard rq of the application tech System of Writing.

5) About philosophy, I really don't want to model different philosphies as we're doing with religions. IMO the only real impact in gameplay terms of phisolophy is the ideologies it produces. I see philosophy as a high level tech and ideologies as low level techs generated by philosophy. The spreading of ideologies is another thing and you're right about it. Ideologies don't simply "arrive", but take time to reach to the ears of the people. I tried to do this in the govt model, but I noticed it's incomplete after you mentioned "the knowledge about an ideology can be lost" some while ago. So, the spreading and development of techs are problably better handled by the tech system and the govt model should only take that info as given.
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Whether you think it should be modeled like religions or not is okay, but there really is no linerage to philosophy, only that some require certain critera to evolve.

[axi]

I never was too interested about the social model and apart from posting it I have nothing to do with it's development.

I find it very difficult to follow discussion here. Alot is said and alot is repeated in every post.

I want to ask something from LGJ. In your posts, I think it's better to stop quoting whole pages in order to make a short comment afterwards, because alot gets repeated and the tread gets so big that it's difficult to load. You could also use the [.quote]...[./quote] (remove the points) UBB tag, to make quotes that are more clear to the eye.

Nothing constructive to say, I just HAD to grumble.

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

[alms66]

Yes I have to agree with Axi, You LGJ, and ohters need to stop quoting entire posts just to make one line of comment...numbering comments would be better , but rather than critisize...

Rodrigo, I never meant to say that branching religions MUST be a part of the game, I only stated a fact as I saw it... the U.S. is made up of multiple religions, actually one of it's founding principles, I just wanted to make sure you included this.
[This message has been edited by Toubabo_Koomi (edited August 13, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

Editorial note: Several potentially inflamatory posts removed. This was done by agreement of all the posters concerned.

-The MGT

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited April 21, 2001).]

[roquijad]

I just don't understand the last posts. In those cases when someone goes too offensive, please don't remove the posts just to keep being friends. A simple "excuse me" is alright and the rest of us can understand what was all about.

TK: If you want you can "rephrase" what you deleted, so I can understand your criticism about the social model.