Social Technologies

[roquijad]

This thread is meant to give us space to discuss the so-called "social techs". The idea is to solve how to handle certain "advances" that do not fit well in the tech system and are more related to social evolution.

The first question is what techs are "strange" to be handled in the regular tech system. One of them is religion, but for that we have an agreement so far which is "leave control to the social model alone". Another one is slavery/abolishing_slavery, where I believe we have agreement too: "leave control to govt and social models". What else? Are ideologies social techs? Why? What about art? Which makes me wonder... do we have a better definition for what a "social tech" is?

[Lord God Jinnai]

What is/isn't controlled in the tech model as far as I see it for 'social techs' is those that giving them 'more advanced forms' might lead to biasing like religion. Art is a prime example of this.

However social techs, incluing religion for a few stuff requires input from tech model. FE animation can't be learned at the beginning of the game, nor can be be learned ever if you never know how to producing the illusion of motion pictures. But animation isn't 'better' than its predisesor 'drawing' or 'painting' just like 'monotheism' isn't better than 'polytheism.' Its just a differnt form of expression and medium.

Some things are also linked equally with both models, equally being a relative term. Laws and Administration are good examples. These beome more complex and more effiecent as the levels progress. But, laws and the way things are administered vary from place to place. In some places it may be acceptable for an aristicrat to kill a peasant for stealing, but the peasant has little recourse for the same situation reversed. In other areas the punishment might not be so hard and the peasant might have more recourse. Also cetain idea, or ideologies as they are refered to, require certain levels of understanding to even be considered. After that their definition is usually crude and changes over time and becomes more complex.

Anyway since ideologies would be more appopriate over here can you copy your post from tech model here rodrigo? Also that list will haveto be expanded as it doesn't incorperate many of the modern types of government or sometimes, lack of it (such as rule by crimelords), etc.

[Richard Bruns]

Off the top of my head, I can think of the following hybrid concepts that would be social techs. I believe that these cannot be treated by the existing models alone:

Arts and Literature
Philosophy
Environmentalism
Ideologies
Government types
Clivalry/Way of the Blade
Crusade/Jihad
Literacy

Basically, things that cover the development of human thought should be social techs. For social techs, the knowledge of the subject advances (tech component) yet the impact depends on populatity and acceptance (social component).

[Richard Bruns]

After looking the social model thread, I realized that there was another definition for social techs: techs that the social, cultural, and religious leaders care about. I don't think anybody has ever been branded a heretic for building a better plow or making a stronger building, but people who introduce new social and philosophical concepts can easily get other people mad at them.

Religion should have a very small impact on the engineering type techs, but the social techs are affected by religion (or lack of it) in many complex and subtle ways. That is another reason for building a social tech system.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Alright, I've gone ahead and posted here some ideologies. Rather than have tons of ideologies such as "Capatalisic Demorcracy" i think we should stick to "pure" forms of the only as seperate ideologies, and allow the social classes to choose more than one, otherwise we could come up with hundreds and thousands of combinations. There may some exceptions though.

Despotism
Federalism
Confederatism(?)
Divie Rule
Monarchy
Constitutional Government
Oligarchy
Republic
Capitalistism
Democracy
Communism
Socialism
Fundamentalism
Anarchism
Fascism
Feudalism
Marxism
Nationalism
Utilitarianism

Some ones I don't have names for:
Rule by Crime Lords (Think Bosina w/o UN peackeers)
Rule by Bussiness (think Final Fantasy 7 FE)
Rule by Machines (You've probably seen or read what I'm talking about)
Military Rule
Rule by LC

Anyway there's probalby more than I have here. If fact I'm sure there is.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited August 15, 2000).]

[Richard Bruns]

I agree that economic preference and government preference should be stored seperately.

I think that there could be a few problems with LGJ's list:

Capitalism is tracked as a seperate ruling method. I din't understand this.

Constitutional Government shouldn't be seperate. Almost any form of government can have a constitution.

The main problem I see is that the identity of the ruler should not be an ideology type. The military, for example, could rule by any method it chose, including democracy (In the book Starship Troopers there is an example of this).

So to reduce complexity, we should split up the parts by defining the ruler seperately from the method of government. The ruler can be any social class, and there are a few other choices like Democracy.

The ruling method is the actual ideology that is being used. Ruling methods are things like Socialism, Fascism, etc.

And finally, the economic choice should be tracked seperately. Basically, this is a scale that goes from pure capitalism (0% planned) to a 100% planned economy.

This allows mixing and flexibility; for example, the scientific class could be in charge, governing by a fascist ideology, and planning 75% of the economy.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Moved to Gov. Thread
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited August 15, 2000).]

[roquijad]

Gentlemen:

You're discussing things that are already solved in the govt model. There's a good reason for having economic as well as political systems together, FE. Refer to the govt model. If you don't like the implementation we (I and Axi) took, please comment it in the govt model thread.

The list of ideologies is unimportant. We just have to figure out how they'll be discovered in general sense without concentrating in a particular list.

Some comments on Richard's list of social techs:

Arts: We can have a unique social tech called "art" or several techs like "sculpture", "literature", etc. I vote for just one. To avoid biases, I propose, as I did in the social model thread, to have the art tech interpreted as the AMOUNT of art produced by the civ. No references to styles, like "greco-recoman style" or such.

Philosophy: Again, I think we should interpret this tech as the amount of philosophy produced. This tech should help ideologies development.

Enviromentalism: As proposed by you in the social thread, ethnic groups and religion will have in a future version of the model a "Natural Affinity" attribute. The value for this attribute should depend, among other things, on polution generated in the civ. In time, the attribute should encourage the development of eclogical-friendly techs. I think is a good idea to have the "enviromentalism" tech depending on Natural Affinity and this tech in time should help developing techs like solar energy plants. sounds good?

Govt types: Ideologies ARE the govt types, so we only have to care about ideologies.

Chivalry/WOB: I presume here you're refering to things like Samurais. I believe we can have this tech (application, really) using on one side the "normal" tech "horseback riding" (or the equivalent you're using now) plus the Importance of Religion attribute from the social model. Sounds good?

Crusades/Holy wars: I've shown in the social model how people can be inclined or not to this type of activities. I don't think we need a tech for it.

Literacy: A future version of the social model will have an education level attribute. I don't think we need this tech.

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One important thing we must solve soon is what cultural info the social tech system will use. Since a civ can be composed by several ethnic groups, it's not clear from which of them info must be taken to be the inputs for social techs. My proposal is to take the info from the "majorities" group. They're the "culture in charge" of the civ, to say it simply. Sounds reasonable?

[Lord God Jinnai]

quote: Arts: We can have a unique social tech called "art" or several techs like "sculpture", "literature", etc. I vote for just one. To avoid biases, I propose, as I did in the social model thread, to have the art tech interpreted as the AMOUNT of art produced by the civ. No references to styles, like "greco-recoman style" or such.

I say do it the same as the rest of the tech model. Have "The Arts" as the foremost one and have braches for differnt ones from there. This allows for varying degrees of emphasis which is what can make a civ well known. FE Egypt is known for its architetural art in pyramids and such, not nearly so much as its drawings (not to be confused with pottery or heiroglyphics). Anyway your right that it shouldn't be decreed what type it is by this model. That will done in the 'flavor' section when starting the game.

quote: Philosophy: Again, I think we should interpret this tech as the amount of philosophy produced. This tech should help ideologies development.

I agree and should not be shown to inherantly go toward one style or another. That should be based on ethnic modifiers.

quote: Enviromentalism: As proposed by you in the social thread, ethnic groups and religion will have in a future version of the model a "Natural Affinity" attribute. The value for this attribute should depend, among other things, on polution generated in the civ. In time, the attribute should encourage the development of eclogical-friendly techs. I think is a good idea to have the "enviromentalism" tech depending on Natural Affinity and this tech in time should help developing techs like solar energy plants. sounds good?

Overall yes. One should be able to achieve it with low scores on Natural Affinity though.

quote: Chivalry/WOB: I presume here you're refering to things like Samurais. I believe we can have this tech (application, really) using on one side the "normal" tech "horseback riding" (or the equivalent you're using now) plus the Importance of Religion attribute from the social model. Sounds good?

Well the equivalent is land-based riding i believe, though it should be a helper tech since Samarai FE did not use horses.

quote: Crusades/Holy wars: I've shown in the social model how people can be inclined or not to this type of activities. I don't think we need a tech for it.

I'm with you on this.

quote: Literacy: A future version of the social model will have an education level attribute. I don't think we need this tech.

Alright we can postpone it for now, but it will need to be a tech of some type.

quote: One important thing we must solve soon is what cultural info the social tech system will use. Since a civ can be composed by several ethnic groups, it's not clear from which of them info must be taken to be the inputs for social techs. My proposal is to take the info from the "majorities" group. They're the "culture in charge" of the civ, to say it simply. Sounds reasonable?

No, for one big reason. Many 'minorities' thoughout history have come up with great inventions that would seem to be taken credit by majorities. We can modify minority output, ie making it not count as much, but if you have an entire agricultural society based on minorities working there and coming up with ways to improve thier lives you can't model that with just majorities.

[alms66]

On Literacy... It isn't needed as a tech at all, once you discover Writing, you can automatically read it. The place literacy comes in is with the education level attribute Rodrigo spoke of, to know how literate the populace is.

[Stuff2]

I suggest we leave art outside the system.
There is no need to involve art since the social effects from art always can be traced from other factors like religion and ideology. Art can be 'invisible included' in religion, ideology and happiness.

[Lord God Jinnai]

There are differnt types of art that come onling at differnt peridos. Also, what you say is true, but non of those need apply. In fact that may be the reason a government spends more to develope art is to increase those things or atleast some of them. It also displays pride in the country for really high levels. You can have high levels of the those modifiers and have almost no art.

[Richard Bruns]

roquijad:

Your treatment of my list of concepts seems good. I don't agree on a few of the details, but I trust that you know what you are doing so I won't argue. I'll see what you and LGJ come up with.

Just make sure that things like Chivalry are not available at the beginning of the game. They should only become available once the civ develops to a certain point. That is my main concern.

[Stuff2]

What i am saying is that art is always an expression of something else, art is used in all sorts of contexts and different purposes.
Art is used both for propaganda and antipropaganda, it's used for expression and entertainment. Art has always been and will always be a reality in a society. And beacouse of that there is no need to incorporate it as a system in a civgame since it has no effect that isn't depending on other factors than the Art itself. Maybe there could be an option to spend money on 'culture'. This will give a bit happier population and other people will think of your people a little less agressive.

[roquijad]

Richard:
If you don't want to get involved in the discussion, it's alright, but maybe this is THE moment for you to give arguments, now we're starting. Why don't you state your opinion in one post and then forget about it until things are finished?

Stuff2:
I completely agree with you. Things you mention also help sustain the argument of not worrying about art styles or types. But I'm sure you agree that the AMOUNT of art produced in a society is not always the same. And this is why I believe we need the tech, interpreting its "tech level" as the amount of art produced.