Social Model v.2

[F_Smith]

Boer:

I'm sorry, I didn't realize you understood the terminology. I try to keep this discussion as non-jargon oriented as possible. No one else here has any exposure to OOA/OOD at all, and most of these models have been designed in a very non-OOD way.

So yes, if you know what a pointer is, the Ethnic Group actually encapsulates a pointer to a 'culture' and 'religion' object. Those objects are stored at the game level.

FYI, it also encapsulates a 'tendencies' object and an 'attributes' object, a 'demographics' object, at this point. There will likely be more, later.

The 'culture' (and religion, for that matter) will split/evolve from time to time, I don't think we should try to get around that. It's easy to do, and absolutely necessary for realism.

If you're interested in the architecture of the data model, please do glance at the threads on the OOA/OOD of the game's models. It would be great if you could look over and critique what's been architected so far.

I'm far from perfect. It would be amazing if this was the first time in my life I coded something perfectly!!!

[Beör]

F_Smith, every time you reply your 'sorry', that is not necessary . I am definitely not an OOA/D guru or anything. When I have time (wife, three kids and a pending PhD) I will try to look through the posts in the OOA/D threads.

I don't recommend trying to get around the changing of culture/religion over time. On the opposite. In the beginning many EGs will share an objCult, which they can be grouped by. However, I foresee that culture/religion will have to be changed on an almost continuous basis, as squares change hands. This will be great game-play wise. But if many squares change hands we will end up with a very large number of infinitesmal objCults, each one related to its own objEG. This way the original EG-concept is lost.

[roquijad]

Beör: There's nothing solved for migrations yet. Any idea is novel. I don't want to get into that yet. If you can't wait any longer, please start a new thread on the subject. However, maybe we should wait some more given the questions raised in this thread.


EG-Techs: Please re-direct discussion to the tech thread. I made a comment about it already.


Know that I see F_Smith's words, I understand what's currently implemented in terms of EG and their culture would help a lot in modeling an approach like the one you're suggesting, Beör (nations). Since EGs and cultures are handled differently, a lybian EG could still be connected to all lybian EGs through this common culture. But I strongly disagree with this!!

Each EG should evolve in its own way given its particular environment. A reference to a pana-culture or protho-culture is a very magical concept. For EGs living appart, the only way to preserve a common culture would be with intensive relationships between them, which in time contradicts the fact that they're appart and living different realities. Cultural attributes of a particular EG should be independent of all other EGs in order to model smooth and realistic divergences in customs and ways of living. Handling culture and EG separately doesn't serve to this goal, so I believe, F_Smith, that you have to integrate them. Otherwise we're saying culture evolves independently of the EG itself as a "thing" of its own. EG' cultural attributes are unique to it in the sense that can change individually with no restriction to what happens to other EGs. The division between EG and culture is artifical and useless, IMO.


Beör: You ask if EGs in different locations will "act in common". It's a vague question. If act in common means behave alike, then the answer is yes, at least for a while. After some time, cultures can diverge enough to find different behaviors. If, in the other side, "acting in common" means acting coordinated, then the question is in what aspect coordination interests you. One possible coordination is a rebellion, like a germanic rebellion in a roman controlled land. In this case, yes, the riots model doesn't look at mapsquares to determine chances of rebellion, but at the province level. According to the riots model, chances of rebelion increase if germans see they have enough population in a province. This can be interpreted as a coordination of germanic settlements in a greater territory than mapsquares. Beyond provinces there's no coordination in the riots model. In your lybian-egyptian-roman example there is in fact a problem. Lybians under roman rule are in a different province than lybians under egyptian rule. There'd be no coordination between them even if they aren't really too far away. But to solve this your "national" approach doesn't work IMO, because although it's related to a nationality, the main variable here is distance. If through force migration lybians under roman rule are sent to the balkans, then coordination with egypt-lybians is impossible, while the "nation" is preserved.

[Lord God Jinnai]

One minor correction...tech info, if it is currently modeled in the 'enthic group' object should be taken out. I don't want it modeled via the enthic groups for accuracy reasons, ie historical, funny results, etc.

[Beör]

Rodrigo

I don't think the question was vague. It could be answered with a clear 'Yes' or 'No'. And your answer was - of course - 'Yes'. Had to be, otherwise the original EG-concept would go down the drain.

My next question would be:
How do you decide, which EGs should be grouped? In other words, what makes the German EGs in the province you mentioned German. What identifies a german settlement? F_Smith's answer was 'a common culture object'.
What is your idea on this?

I agree that migration would benefit from its own thread. I think however that we should wait until the framework of the social model is decided upon.


[This message has been edited by Beör (edited September 15, 2000).]

[Beör]

[enter Shakespearean mood]
Rodrigo, Rodrigo, Where arst thou Rodrigo...?
[exit Shakespearean mood]

[Beör]

While rambling on in the tech thread I realised that with the present definition of EG, it is possible for an EG to consisit of only 1 person .
May I suggest we put a lower limit on the size of EGs. If the size of an EG falls below this limit, the entire EG is either incorporated into an EG of the same nationality (There it was again - Rodriiiigooooo ), the largest EG in the square or the EG of the civ. Similarly if the creation of an EG is called for (FE migration - Oouuch!! Who slapped my fingers).
[This message has been edited by Beör (edited September 18, 2000).]

[roquijad]

I'm sorry, Beör, for being away these days. On september 18th we celebrate in Chile our independence day and since friday there've been a lot of activities around the subject and a lot of drinking!


About your next question (germans), the essence of the problem is IMO that you keep seeing a culture as a thing existing on its own. You're asking me really what the "german culture" is like. You want to picture and see the german culture as an independent entity. Otherwise you wouldn't ask me what groups belong to the "german culture". What indeed exist is several groups of people who call themselves germans. The german culture would be, therefore, the aggregation of their cultural attributes. The aggregation is, however, an abstract thing that only helps you see the world in a simplified manner. In this aggregation, of course, you lose info. In a big country like the US, for example, talking about the "american culture" wouldn't let you notice differences from people in the east vs the west, black vs white, etc. The american culture doesn't exist. What exist is several social units in North America with some differences between them in their customs that call themselves "americans". "American culture" is just a simplification the observer does. That's why I don't want to model "cultures", but social units (ethnic groups).


As for the amount of people in an EG, yes, it doesn't make sense to have an EG with just one guy in it. Some control of a minimum amount of people should be made.

[Richard Bruns]

I have some questions about the social model as it relates to giving different EG's different levels of technology:

How would the social model handle this potential "knowledge gap"? Is there a way to easily add this stuff in with realistic effects? For example, would a certain EG achieve dominance if it had a higher knowledge level? And if so, is there a way to model the reaction of the other EG's? Also, are there characteristics of individual EG's that would make them more or less likely to research or innovate?

Basically, I am asking if it is feasable to connect the technology and social models like this. If the social model people say that it would work well, then I suppose there would be no problem with adding this feature. But if the social model isn't able to deal with this change of plans, then the benefits of the idea will go away.

[axi]

An OT comment:

quote: On september 18th we celebrate in Chile our independence day and since friday there've been a lot of activities around the subject and a lot of drinking!

Bolivar the Liberator, huh? What exactly were you drinking my boy? Some strange local liquoir, or just the usual stuff?

Btw, does September have a symbolic meaning for Chile? IIRC, the military coup of 1973 took place in September 11th.

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

[Beör]

Rodrigo

No, no, no. You interpret me all wrong.

From your last post I gathered that at some points in the game it is necessary to have EGs in different squares group so they can act together. Your own example was:

quote: ...a rebellion, like a germanic rebellion in a roman controlled land. In this case, yes, the riots model doesn't look at mapsquares to determine chances of rebellion, but at the province level. According to the riots model, chances of rebelion increase if germans see they have enough population in a province. This can be interpreted as a coordination of germanic settlements in a greater territory than mapsquares.

This means that the game-engine would have to recognize which EGs are 'Germanic'. If there are 35 EGs in the province, the game must be able to decide which ones are Germanic, and thus increase the Germanic population of the province.
What I would like to know is: How - based on the parameters you have in your model - is this done?
There is no meta-culture or anything implied here. Just a question of game mechanics in your model.

On the other hand - and this may be a little OT:
Being from Chile (Joyfully chanting Bolivar - Rah Rah Rah), in which country would you think the average Chilean would feel most at home if he/she were to migrate to Europe? And if you don't say Spain I won't believe you ! Despite a century and a half of independence and a physical distance of thousands of miles the mere fact that you speak the same language makes all the difference.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I asked in the Tech model something that really needs to be addressed in a much more concrete manner here:
What causes EGs to diverge and converge and at what point?

I know one thing is a difference in the ruling civ, espicially if the civ is of completely differnt governing aspects than the EG would normally be for. Relocation after this has also been discussed. However, what i want to know is what would cause internal splits and convergences in EGs. If you haven't read the tech model or forgot here is an excert of one of my posts pertaining to this matter:

quote: Each EG in each square might exist in squares where a tech is useless to them. FE an EG that is spead over a large penesula where there is a lot of coast and a lot of mountainous regions. Now then because the people at the coast would know how to fish and shipbuild so would the people in the mountains? This isn't right...because the people down below devote more to farming they people in the mountains get better at it? Again i don't think so, espically if they have little contact. Also you are forgetting the fact that when two places have an advanced culture come in, the advanced culture is quickly adapted as far as technology by the old and thus after a few turns you have loads of redundant information that must be caclulated....

The thing is I saw no information to say that the group in the mountains would ever become another EG unless it was conquered by another civ or formed its own which IMO isn't right. What i want to know if you agree with me is what method would be used, FE after X turns, after certain economical, technological, ecological and/or soceital (usually religious based) differences are reached or if it is a combination of the 2 and how if either of the former 2 would these be tracked and if also what criteria would haveto be met for convergance other than falling below the minimum sustainable population level for an EG.

On other thing is that you seem to force EGs to diverge when civs conquer them after a period of years if they conquer only part of them. If this is so, how do you deal with the fact that there are also IRL ethnic groups conquered by multiple civs even today, that seem to keep a resemblance with their past and with their brethren in the other countries. The pre-modern day isreali population is a good example as are the Kurdish population in the ME. I'm not saying there shouldn't be divergances, espically if the civ is completely differnt in its outlook and other factors, but right now there is no way i see of keeping these similarities of a group that would combine the people in nationalism to break away and form their own country where the people are divided by other countries. Right now all these people are given no matter what it seems is X amount of turns, reguardless of favorable or disfavorable conditions that could lengthen or shorten that time period.

[Beör]

I think the introduction of square level EGs have caused some confusion in this dicussion. When I say EG I mean an object in one square that holds n people of the same ethnicity. This should not be confused with the original EG-concept that encompassed all people of a certain ethnicity in a province

I leave it up to rodrigo (lead) and F_Smith (programmer) to think of better unambiguous names if they find it appropriate.

[F_Smith]

Boer:

Actually, the name 'ethnic group' is perfectly appropriate for the object, at all levels of aggregation. You can have an 'ethnic group' object stored at any level -- civ, mapsquare, province, etc. It'll just be an aggregate at higher levels.

All we're really discussing here is the storage strategy for EG info.

They are attempting to make a single, big data aggregate and break that down when needed. Monolithic design, it's sometimes called. I'm afraid my experience shows me that it's always more efficient to build a complex system out of small parts. 'Component' architecture, as it's called.

They want one big 'EG', broken down as needed. I coded a bunch of small 'EGs', and aggregate them as need be.

I am attempting to explain my use of this 'component' architecture, and why the game program will be better if we use it.

So far I'm not succeeding, I'm afraid. But I enjoy this discussion, it's valuable experience for me that is applicable to my work.

I'm not sure how much programming you've done, but this is actually a common design error from procedural programmers. I'm kind of afraid to mention that, because of the reaction I might get, but there's no other way to put it. I've sen this before, updating legacy Cobol systems. One of our Cobol products, an insurance tool called 'Vantage', is a design nightmare . . . and now they're trying to add EJB-based middle-ware and a servlet-based front-end.

We're having all these same discussions with the Cobol architects every day. Having them here helps me to 'focus' my points.

[Richard Bruns]

I'll reply in the "Model Organization" thread.