Gov.model - next level (long)

[Hrafnkell]

Edited by Mark w/ Hrafnkell's permission

Thanks to Kull and Dominic, the Government model is now up on the web site at:

http://clash.apolyton.net/models/Model-Government.html

Hrafnkell has also given me permission to post his current email address. (the one in the profile is no longer valid) He can be reached at:

keli@ccp.cc

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited December 08, 1999).]

[Mark_Everson]

Three quick things:

I've already given my feedback to Hrafnkell on the model in several parts by email. It's going to take me awhile to put them together into something coherent...

Can anyone help Hrafnkell in converting a Word document into HTML? The standard converter in his version chokes on it. Please post here if you think you have a solution.

I have taken out the government model on the Web page, seeing as its replaced by the document above. When he references that government model on the Clash Web page in his write-up you can find it here.

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited August 16, 1999).]

[CormacMacArt]

I know that you already have your own idea about how to set up government, but I thought that I would post a suggestion that I have been trying to get into CivIII. Feel free to take what you want or leave it all!

MAJOR REVISION 1.3

A note before I go on, I am of the opinion that each city should be taken as being composed of a single culture and religion. Dividing up a city into different cultures and Religions adds a level of complexity that IMO does not add to game play. I also believe that government (organizational and economic) forms should actually CHANGE how we govern our civilizations and not be changes in name only.

Definitions:
Culture - the attitudes of militaristic, perfectionistic, etc, on a -10 to 10 scale instead of -1 to 1
Assimilation - the slow change of a conquered city's attitudes to match that of the empire's.
Discontent - a cumulative measure of the unhappiness of a city

I may need to add different definitions as I see people's comments.

There would be three parameters related to the governing of the civ:

Government Form - how I interact with the people
Organizational Form - how I interact with my cities
Economic Form - how I manage my economy

GOVERNMENT FORM: TRIBAL; MONARCHY; REPUBLIC; COMMUNIST; THEOCRACY; DEMOCRACY; OLIGARCHY

TRIBAL - You are the Lord of your civilization and control:
values (knowledge, power, mores, etc.)
religious attitude
Diplomacy
Military (restricted by Organizational Form)
Direction of research
taxes
Organizational Forms: Restricted to Tribal only.
Economic Forms: ???
Benefits: little corruption when composed of one civilization;
Restrictions: finances are unsure, cities may withdraw money at will for their own projects;

MONARCHY - You are ruler of your civilization and control:
diplomacy
values (knowledge, power, mores, etc.)
religious attitude
military (may be restricted by Organizational Form)
direction of research
taxes (may be restricted by Organizational Form)
Organizational Forms: all
Economic Forms: ?????
Benefits: increased cohesion of empire, compared to Tribal; central treasury
Restrictions: discontent may develop in conquered civilizations

REPUBLIC - You are Speaker of your civilization's Parliament and control:
diplomacy (Parliament must ratify treaties and declare wars)
military
Subject to Parliament's approval
direction of research
values
religious attitude
Parliament controls (but considers proposals by the Speaker):
taxes
Organizational Forms: Feudal, Provincial, City-state
Economic Forms: ?????
Benefits: central treasury; happiness +1; discontent slower to develop
Restrictions: loss of total control; discontent increases each time the Speaker acts as Tiebreaker in a vote, goes down in majority votes

THEOCRACY - You are the religious head of your civilization and control:
values (knowledge, power, mores, etc.)
religious attitude
diplomacy (may be restricted by Organizational Form)
military (may be restricted by Organizational Form)
direction of research
taxes (may be restricted by Organizational Form)
Organizational Forms: all
Economic Forms: ????
Benefits: central treasury; corruption minimal in "loyal" cities; happiness +2 in all loyal cities;
Restrictions: You must choose a religion and that AI becomes your "parliament" if you
choose the Centralized Organizational Form, otherwise only those cities with that
particular religion are represented in parliament; parliament may usurp control of any area
if it appears that you are not being true to the cause; happiness -2 in all "other" cities
in your empire

DEMOCRACY - You are the President of your civilization and control:
diplomacy (Parliament must ratify treaties and declare wars)
military
Parliament controls (but considers Presidential proposals):
values (knowledge, power, mores, etc.)
religious attitude
direction of research
taxes
Organizational Forms: PROVINCIAL; FEDERAL; FEUDAL; CITY-STATE; TRIBAL
Benefits: central treasury; happiness +2; discontent slowest to develop
Restrictions: military actions that are not declared wars, will lower happiness temporarily

COMMUNIST - You are chairman of the communist assembly and you control:
values (knowledge, power, mores, etc.)
religious attitude
diplomacy (assembly must ratify treaties)
military
direction of research
taxes
Organizational Forms: Feudal, Provincial, City-state
Economic Forms: SOCIALIST - all existing corporations are liquidated first.
Benefits: If another communist country goes into REVOLT moving military units into that country, to quell the rebellion is allowed and not an act of war.
Restrictions: All food is distributed equally to each city w/waste and corruption level.

OLIGARCHY
????


ORGANIZATIONAL FORM: CENTRALIZED; PROVINCIAL; FEDERAL; FEUDAL; CITY-STATE; TRIBAL


CENTRALIZED - No representation by the people.
Benefits: assimilation of conquered/absorbed peoples fastest; centralized military; perceived strength in diplomacy +1;
Restrictions: corruption increased upon increasing distance from capital, but can be
controlled with Governor's Residences;

PROVINCIAL - One representative per city a population over 10.
Benefits: centralized military; happiness +1 in represented cities; corruption slope lower than in centralized form; corruption in non-represented cities depends upon distance to nearest represented city
Restrictions: discontent in unrepresented cities can turn into a full-blown civil war;

FEDERAL - Each population point has a representative in Parliament.
Benefits: no possibility of city revolt during wartime; corruption slope lower than Provincial;
Restrictions: vulnerable to revolt from city discontent; city may hold militia separate from central military;

FEUDAL - One representative in Parliament per city; each representative represents the interests of one city (MILITARY, TRADE, SCIENCE, DOMESTIC IMPROVEMENTS, ETC.)
B: very alluring to minor civs; corruption level in all cities (except the capital, which is lower)
R: the autonomy (control of trade, production, military & payment of taxes) and assimilation of each city depends upon the relative strength of the capital to each city; corruption moderate; each city can independantly control its military

CITY-STATE - One representative per population unit.
B: most alluring to minor or small civilizations; corruption low near the capital
R: as Leader of the civ, you may put items on the city's (other than the capital) production que, but the city governor can delay production indefinitely; assimilation stagnant; corruption starts going up after 10 squares (large map, Civ II) distance from capital; each city CAN independantly recall and control its military;

TRIBAL - One representative per population unit.
Benefits: corruption low as long as the civ is homogeneous, increases with each additional conquered city and then decreases to a new (higher) low;
Restrictions: cities past 5(civII large map) units distance from capital can be lost to independence; each city can declare war without Leader's approval even on another member city (loss of the capital costs the treasury, not actual loss of the city in these situations);

ECONOMIC FORM: MERCANTILISM; SOCIALIST; FASCIST; KEYNES'; FREE MARKET

Economic Structures:
Barter, Currency, Manoralism, Banking, Corporate, Labor Union, Communism


MERCANTILISM - internal and external trade is controlled by the state

SOCIALIST - production and trade are controlled by the state
the state dictates what is controlled, either by corporations or by the city

FASCIST - production is controlled by the state, production done within the civ is dictated by the state

KEYNES' - production and trade are monitored and only controlled by the state when necessary (ie. war)

FREE MARKET - the government has no say in production(by corporations) or trade

I don't know a lot about economics, so any suggestions here are welcome. I am working on an idea that works in various suggestions in the Economics thread.


Note: this idea is partially based upon the idea that if a civ is conquered it can attempt
to found a Government in Exile in a friendly civ. The government in exile prevents the
assimilation of its former capital and lasts until all former cities have been assimilated
and the capital is razed.



Below are Society Types that were suggested. I wanted to comment that they appear to me to be more descriptions of what kind of society results from a government choice than something to choose. One can hardly immagine an Absolute Monarchy (MONARCHY/CENTRALIZED/SOCIALIST) that could be described as an "open" society.
Society Types:
Police State, Open, Corporate, IngSoc, Welfare


Below are some forms of government that were suggested that I wanted to comment on in looking at my government scheme suggestion.

Despotism - (MONARCHY/CENTRALIZED/SOCIALIST)
Fascism -MONARCHY/CENTRALIZED/FASCIST
Totalitarianism - see Despotism
Dictatorship - see Despotism
Feudalism - MONARCHY/FEUDAL/MERCANTILISM
Darwinistic/'Pure' Aristocracy - I have absolutly no idea how this would fit into this skeme. I suspect that this would fit in well with the CivII method of government.
Virtual (Technological True Democracy) - this is what I was attempting to approach in my design of DEMOCRACY.

[Mark_Everson]

CormacMacArt:

Actually, I'd already seen your government post. I try to check out pretty much all the civ 3 wish list forums with some regularity, just so I can scope out of the ideas people are coming up with. I think that your approach is quite reasonable, but unfortunately has one huge flaw that's not your fault. The flaw is that in your model, more advanced forms of government end up with the AI running more of the civ. This is completely reasonable in a real-world sense. However, given the AI the civ programming group tends to come up with, your idea would fatally cripple most Democratic forms of government.

Do you have any concrete suggestions on our proposals, either in government or elsewhere? I'm almost certain Firaxis isn't going to listen to any of the more radical modifications to the system that are being proposed. We'd like to hear what you and others think either good or bad. Both kinds of feedback are valuable.

[Keli]

I think some aspects of Cormacs system can aid us. Noteably his ideas on government types and Organizational and Economic Forms (which are similar to the 'add-ons' idea in the gov.model). These two areas are still pretty much in the shades and need clarification.
As we're not including those fields into the inital programming stages of the model we still have time to make changes.
I agree with Mark that we must be very careful in if/how we limit players actions because of the governmental type. They should make some things easier and other things harder, but never forbid anything.
I unfortunately ain't got the time to discuss this further at the moment, more later.

Keli.

[CormacMacArt]

Sorry it took so long for me to respond. I spend most of my time at the Firaxis forum (civ III). Given that that is in a coma, I will spend more time looking at your civ and if I can come up with any hard suggestions, you will hear from me.

Do you want me to remove/shorten my post (since you already saw it) for the sake of space?

[Mark_Everson]

Cormac:

No, I don't think you need shorten your post. Someone else may be interested.

To the group:
I am on a crash project at work, so you won't hear much from me in the next few days.

Mark

[chance]

As a weekend political philosopher, cultural theorist, and theologian, I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

I like the idea about classes; it throws in a lot of real-life complexity in a rather straight-forward way. I'm concerned that you make allowances for a merchant and/or capitalist class that would be different from labor and the aristocracy. The robber barons quickly overtook the old aristocracy in the height of the industrial revolution, setting up a conflict between the labor and capitalist classes that caused quite a bit of trouble until recently. You could add this class in as a variable later in the game when certain advances are reached, similar to how laborers can be pulled when you build a factory or merchants with a bank in CTP.

Along the same line, if you're going to go with a class-based model, you might also throw in an infotech class at some point. White collar professionals (doctors, lawyers) might be another, but you could also include them with religion (doctors) and politics (lawyers).

If you go with a SMAC-type government/social/economic model, you could implement quite a few government types over the long haul. Slight variations in "policy sliders" could, over the long run, make ten or twenty different models available. For less policy prone players, these sliders could have the bare bones numerical values. For instance, if you have a slider position on diplomacy for indifferent toward close neighbors but aggressive toward distant neighbors, you would have a colonialist government like in the so-called Age of Exploration. On another slider, you could pick a more monarchic or less monarchic government, and you'd have the difference between England and Spain. If money flow was directed centrally you'd have a mercantalist economic system, but if was directed more outward, you'd have more of a development approach.

I know this would be a lot for some players, but I think with the SMAC-type number values it would be okay, especially if you threw up big terms they're used to like "monarchy" or "republic," but still have enough to hold us government micromanagers over. Along that line, I think it would be great to throw in even more goverment types for the future, like communitarianism, Pan-Africanism, syndicalism, and more.

I'd be more than happy to help with this sort of thing. I know it's not everybody's passion, but I think it would make for much more realistic and interesting game play, and I think it could be done in a simple enough way.

[Mark_Everson]

Hello chance:

I'm really glad you showed up! Hrafnkell and I have been about the only ones really interested in the government model for months. We were a bit worried that what we had was kind of inbred because of it . It's good to hear that someone else that's interested in governments doesn't think our model is unreasonable.

You know, adding a merchant/middle class is probably the thing most likely to go in the model at a later date. We have already discussed it, and had decided that it simply would be easy to include if we need it. Since the model is already quite complicated, we decided to err on the side of a little less complexity for the time being. That's why there is no merchant class currently. We hadn't really considered a white-collar class much, but will probably keep it in mind if the model starts giving weird results for modern economies.

I think, unless something unexpected happens, we will go with a model as outlined instead of a smac type of system. However, that clearly is a backup position if what we do is way too complicated, or the AI can't handle it, or it doesn't work for some unforeseen reason.

I'm not all that worried about the model being "too much" for players that aren't interested in the area. Our philosophy in Clash, as you'll read elsewhere, is to work really hard to get the AI decent so that the player can turn any part of the game they're not interested in over to the AI with just a minimal amount of guidance. So if we can get the AI to perform an approximately 80% of the capability of a fairly good player people can turn over areas of the game in which they have no interest without suffering a huge penalty.

For now, we could really use a careful look on your part into the details of our model and what you think will work and won't. Hrafnkell is working on the new version of the document. You might want to email him and request it. For one thing the formatting is a lot better.

If you'd like to work on the bare bones of an alternate system, that would be ok too. Although I have to be honest with you that the chances of us adopting a completely new system at this point are very small IMO. But it would be they're as a backup system in case the one we've spent all this time on turns out to be unusable : (.

See you around,

Mark

[roquijad]

My comments on the govt. model:
I. First, the following is a copy of an email sent to hrafnkell. I think it's better to be here at the forum for everybody to see:

I think the general and abstract idea of classes having a piece of pol.power is excellent. Their seek for more pol.power
and their adverse behavior when that power is taken away, as well as determining an attitude towards de ruler like pro/neutral/anti looks very well too. However, how the pol.powers evolve, what
constitutes a class and how many classes exists, the type of reactions to drawbacks in pol.power or the reactions given by
the existence of large anti citizens, need, in my opinion, to be revisted:

It's not true that classes take pol.power directly from others in real world. The pol.power a class has is given solely by the laws and type of gov. you have. The
ones who rule define how much power have each segment of population. In no way a class can take pol.power from another directly and the only way to do it is
having their hands in the govt. structure to change laws and rights. They will, for
sure, try to do it. And the less pol.power they have, the more they'll struggle to
have it, whether it's violently or by-the-law.

The govt. acts following the desires of the people who have the govt., for the
govt. is the rule of those who have pol.power. Pol.power IS ruling. The actions
of the rulers are limited to what the people who has the pol.power want. If the
ruler(player) goes far from the desires of those with pol.power, he'll be undoubtly removed, by force or in the next election or something else. I didn't read the entire model text, but I didn't see this factor: the pol.power having a direct effect on the actions of the ruler, that is, limiting the type of actions he can take.

Once you have a distribution of pol.power, every class will try to enlarge their
power, which is try to define the law in such a way that the distribution change in their advantage. But, as said above, their main goal is to EXCERCISE their power,
which is to influence or limit the type of actions the ruler can do. So, there are two
things going on here: excercise power and seek for further power, which is a system of self-preservation over time. When excercising power, the actual limits upon the ruler will be a mix (or weighted mix) of the different desires given by the different classes. Given those limits, the ruler then will act. The ruler may, and of course will in many cases, go further those limits, upsetting some class. This class (or classes)will use their (political, economic and/or military) power to overrule the ruler and possibly taking him out of his position. It's very important, then, to define
precisely what a class WANT, in order to model the excercise of power.
It's very important, also, to define the real power, in military and
aconomic areas, each class have. That way, you can model military coups uprisings that remove rulers from their position, boycots and the type of behaviour the class will have. For example, you'll never see rich people in the streets asking for the ruler to leave (that is, the rich class will never participate in a riot), for they have other
ways.... Ceasar was killed by aristocrats.... landowners rebel and form
their own para-military corpses, they bribe and so on. We've to remember that former
US president Kennedy was propably killed by a conspiracy from "the establishment" as in Oliver Stone's movie, JFK, is proposed....

An important question is how a class with no or little pol.power will ever be able to get to the govt. and change things. This is specialy important for the arrival of democracy. One way is riots. Others include terrorism, look for independence or guerrilla formation. If the classes with
power can't handle them, they'll have to change laws in order to give them some pol.power, then setting a seed that can grow. If they refuse to do so, they'll face insurrections and probably the loss of provinces into newly self-proclamated states. Anyway, we have to remember that current democracies are the outcome of philosophers from the upper class.... highly educated people making their minds work. So the pol.power of classes that didn't have any, could come from other ways than simple riots.....

About the number of classes, I think it should evolve over time. For instance, in real ancient times a civ had its religion, but as times passes and religions spread through the world, a nation can have many religions within it. Each religion will
want a piece of power, then you have a class for each religion. This is specialy
interesting for modeling the conversion of romans into christianity from polytheistic beliefs or the problem that northern ireland faces these days.... Poor and rich people represent classes longing for power, but their desires (what they want to do with power) can change or split. Ancient landowners believed in no participation of the lower classes into politics. When
communism appears, this confrontation is even higher and as Marx said "it's a
WAR of classes". Nowdays in western countries, however, rich people support
democracy as the participation of everybody, and they seek their objectives through
democracy electing those who will make markets even more profitables. In the case of
the poor class, you can find different desires, which in fact represent different classes. Some will support communism, for example, others will support free-market economy but want more social security. The thing is, the classes participating in the
game can change in number and in their desires.

So, as a brief, what I wanted to sate in these words is:
1) Classes disire things and you must define what is what each want.
2) The main goal of pol.power is to excercise it, not only have it. So you have to distinguish the seek for more pol.power (self-preservation) from the things each class wants to do with power.
3) Excercise power should appear in the game as limits to the ruler's actions. The ruler may go beyond the limits, but taking his chances.... riots could arise or other nasty things can happen.
4) Changes in pol.power can only happen at a govt. level, not classes taking power from others directly. This changes should come from the ruler's desires under the limits set by the classes in power (as in 3). So, distribution of pol.power is an outcome of a series of laws and policies taken at the govt., which is the real life situation.
5) Each class should have economic and military power in order to determine how they will react to unpleasent policies. So, some classes can kill the ruler (Ceasar), others can seek independence by military means or others can only riot.
6) Number of classes should vary overtime, allowing you to include the different religions in your civ or the rising of ideologies (communism, fundamentalism).


II. The following is not part of the email to hrafnkell, but new ideas: Govt. types:
In civ2 you have types of govt. with preset parameters adjusting the attributes of each, like the level of corruption, for example. Unfortunely, this doesn't allow you to model the small-differences-that-matter. For example, the USSR was ruled at its beginning by Lenin. He was, above all, a philosopher who really wanted Marx's ideas to be implemented and looked for a real communist type of govt. The actions and policies he took aimed basicaly toward this ideal. After Lenin's death, Stalin took office, but he was in no way a real communist. His rule was aimed much more to the concept of a superpowerful USSR, spending a lot of money in weapons and undertaking further invasions in Europe. He made the KGB stronger and turned it into a real machine of prosecution and killing of those against him. He limited people's rights and transformed the govt. into a self-preserved system almost impossible to change. He, in no way, seeked for further devolpment of the communist idea, but only in some rare policies. You can't model this differences with a simple govt. type with preset parameters. Other examples include the monarchy in England with the co-ruling of the house of lords compared with the french absolutism (as said by Chance) or even in democracies when you compare US democracy with those in South America. In Chile for example (I'm chilean) the constitution was changed by a military govt. during the 80's crating what they called "a protected democracy". In this form of democracy, president and congress members are elected by the people, but some presidential decisions can be revisted by the military! So, in their view, the military represent guards of democracy, avoiding presidential actions that would lead to unstable govt. Again, you can't model such differences with govt.types with preset parameters, for they will behave much the same. It'd be good to model these differences so you can have govts more stable than others in the same general type of model, thus capturing the differences between democracy in US or elsewhere, for instance.
I think this can be done in the hrafnkell concept of pol.power and mixing it with something I've seen before:
In a game I used to play long ago called Crisis in the Kremlin, you are supposed to manage the USSR just after Gorbachev. Instead of choosing a type of govt, you were able to determine a number of variables like the level of people's freedom. Within some ranges of these variables, you could call your govt. a democracy, a communism or whatever, but not in the opposite direction. This system allows you to have lots of different govt types, some similar but not equal. Here are some variables under this view that could be used:
-Lvl of people's freedom
-Property: from 100% private to 100% State held.
-People's rights: From "the person is more important than the State" to "the State is more important than the person"
-Representativeness: people at the govt being elected by the masses, by groups (aristocrats, clergy, a party, etc) or not elected, but having their position by a divine or family "right".
-Women's rights
-Existence of slavey

III. Now let me try to link hrafnkell's idea of pol.power with what I've said up to here:
1) Define a class as a combination of race, religion, nationality and wealth.
2) What each class wants is:
-no slavery for the own class.
-religious freedom for the class.
-given the tolerance level of the religion (given by the social model), a desire of banning (or not) other beliefs.
-govt expendeture for temples of their religion.
-if nationality doesn't match with the one of your civ, desire for self-determination (independence) or, if other civ holds this nationality, desire to merge with them.
-more economic freedom for the class.
-more govt. expendeture on the class like medical aid, housing, etc
-more pol.power for the class.
-the right to overrule the ruler's decisions.
3) Set an initial distribution of pol.power among classes.
4) Use the wealth of each class to set a meassure of their economic power.
5) Using the distribution of pol.power, merge the desires of classes to know what society wants. This will give the player a gross agregated summary of what should be done and shouldn't.
6) As in 5, but now the desires merge are used to determine limits on the ruler's actions (or banned actions).
7) As the game moves on, the player takes actions that upset some classes and make others happier. These actions can be changes in pol.power or actions related with classes desires, like abolishing slavery or increasing people's freedom. The player, then, has in his control the distribution of pol.power and variables of the "Crisis in the Kremlin" style. If a class is upset enough, it'll act depending on its power. If they have a high potential to overrule the ruler, player's last action could be left like never taken. If it has not: if it's a rich class, it will do some sort of lobby at the ruler's office, maybe halting production and provoking riots among the people. If the class is poor, it'll riot. If the class is upset enough, it'll try to use the force and use their military influences to overthrow the ruler. The influence a class has on the army should be defined, but I'm not sure how to do it for the moment.

Notice that in the above proposal, no govt change takes place and the type of govt you have is that determined by the pol.power distribution and the level at which some variables stand, like people's freedom. However, in real world some changes are violent because they imply profound changes. In those cases it'd be fun to let the player stop playing the ruler and play a revolutionary inside the civ. With a hated enough ruler, this revolutionary could be able to overthrow the govt. and establish a new one. During that revolution, the player could be able to kill class leaders (or maybe entire classes) in order to make his radical changes in pol.power at the govt stable and avoid the resistence the player had to deal with while playing the ruler.


Rodrigo

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Rodrigo:

Your ideas under section 3 are similar to something we have talked about before. In essence, if we have the social model with all these agents doing things, why can we use them for the government also? I think it's a very attractive Potential way to go. But I always get thrown off by the overall complexity of it. Even if each agent's options are fairly straightforward, there will be an awful lot of agents to do it properly within a reasonably limited number of clock cycles. So, in essence, if the social model works out ok, there's no problem with handling the government this way also. However, if the overall complexity of the social model turns out to be too large, we're stuck with two important models that need drastic re-working potentially at the last minute.

The three major problems with an approach like this are clock cycles used, whether the AI can handle it in a reasonable fashion, and the interface. But anyway, let's see what Hrafnkell and Manurein have to say about it. My own impression is that clock cycles are the biggest problem. If such an approach can be done in a reasonable number of clock cycles, I think we can write a reasonable set of rules for the AI to use. The interface will be a little tricky, but I think that's the least of our problems.

BTW I think you're being a little unfair when you take the model to task for classes wanting power in and of itself. Essentially, we have just collapsed the loop between desiring power to Do things, and doing them (or preventing them) into a single issue. If a class is powerful in the current model, then it will not be possible for the ruler to do something that is seriously against their interests. On a related issue, I'm with you in hoping that we can make the player "switching sides" to the rebels if appropriate work out. My view of the player is that they are the "guiding force" of their civilization/culture, so I seen nothing inappropriate about the player backing a different force within the civilization. However, others may take issue with that view.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Rodrigo

First off i KNOW we've talked about an implimentation similar to what said in number 2 so don't worry there. The specifics might have varied but that's all. As for womens rights on that, it could be more suited as gender rights or something cuz its not really a prob for women who live in a matriarchial society.

Now on to number 3.

----
2) What each class wants is:
-no slavery for the own class.
-----
Since i think slaves are a class it might be more appropriate for citizenship for there own class.
-----

----
-religious freedom for the class.
-----
that might not be true, they might want the opposite, that all people in their class conform to a certain religion.
-----

----
-govt expendeture for temples of their religion.
----
I think it should be for anything they want not just religious in nature.
----

----
-if nationality doesn't match with the one of your civ, desire for self-determination (independence) or, if other civ holds this nationality, desire to merge with them.
----
This could be true but i think dominion status would be mostly what they'd consider stopping rebelion for.
----

-more pol.power for the class.
-the right to overrule the ruler's decisions.
----
I think the last 2 go together, the latter being an extreme pol.power
----

3) Set an initial distribution of pol.power among classes.
4) Use the wealth of each class to set a meassure of their economic power.
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How are we talking about this since in ancient times only certain types of people had religious power.
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5) Using the distribution of pol.power, merge the desires of classes to know what society wants. This will give the player a gross agregated summary of what should be done and shouldn't.
6) As in 5, but now the desires merge are used to determine limits on the ruler's actions (or banned actions).
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I think we should consider carefully what a ruler can and can't do. If he wants to commoners to have great athority, he could, but doing so will cause massive reprocussions, esp in early periods when nobility and miliraty and religions often ruled.
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the game moves on, the player takes actions that upset some classes and make others happier. These actions can be changes in pol.power or actions related with classes desires, like abolishing slavery or increasing people's freedom. The player,
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Some of these will have to have certain techs discovered such as abolishing slavery and the amount of freedom allowed.
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then, has in his control the distribution of pol.power and variables of the "Crisis in the Kremlin" style. If a class is upset enough, it'll act depending on its power. If they have a high potential to overrule the ruler, player's last action could be left like never taken. If it has not: if it's a rich class, it will do some sort of lobby at the ruler's office, maybe halting production and provoking riots among the people. If the class is poor, it'll riot. If the class is upset enough, it'll try to use the force and use their military influences to overthrow
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This should only be the case if they have such influences (unless its a military cou then it doesn't matter). FE commoners would prob seize local ammunition instead of inciting the military to join them.
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Notice that in the above proposal, no govt change takes place and the type of govt you have is that determined by the pol.power distribution and the level at which some variables stand, like people's freedom. However, in real world some changes are violent because they imply profound changes. In those cases it'd be fun to let the player stop playing the ruler and play a revolutionary inside the civ. With a hated enough ruler, this revolutionary could be able to overthrow the govt. and establish a new one. During that revolution, the player could be able to kill class leaders (or maybe entire classes) in order to make his radical changes in pol.power at the govt stable and avoid the resistence the player had to deal with while playing the ruler.
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Like mark i like this idea, but the way to impliment it would also have to make sence. FE if ur the hated ruler, it shouldn't be possible. On the other hand if the people are revolting do to certain interest that u can't get implimented in the current gov it should be possible, of course any char (refer to char/dynasty model) in ur control will start off with a low loyalty since ur seen as part of that gov. Also such a thing shouldn't be guarantted since the rebels might not trust ur offer.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I just remembered after i logged out last night something i wanted to add.

Not everyone will be trying for political dominance all the time. Take FE middle-aged europe. The peasants as a whole were content with their lifestyle so long as they were treated fairly and didn't care about much more than their farming, local fairs, keeping their lords happy and being happy themselves. If they weren't being treated fairly then they'd revolt, but only then until the introduction of new tech which made farming easier.

[roquijad]

Well, I guess I started something here...

The real question is what do you need pol.power for. If you need to meassure hostility or acceptance to ruler's rule, you only need the pro/neutral/anti and don't need pol.power. The pro/n/anti would change accordingly to actions taken toward each class and that's it. Changes in the form of govt. are the only reason to include something such as pol.power. If you are a dictator, you can do as much as you want, but if you're in a democracy, your actions are strongly limited. How limited and in what ways? Those who have pol.power and put you in that ruling position will determine that. If they are the aristocrats or the clergy or the masses, your limitations will be different. Then you need to determine what the ruling class wants. And since many forms of govt. don't grant power to only one class, you need to determine the ruler's limits merging somehow the desires of each class with pol.power >0.
One may wonder why do you need limits on the ruler (player) actions, for they only make things more difficult to him.... and I guess that's the fun of it, the challenge of it. What's the point of changing govt if it isn't that way? In civ2 you get a lot of money from democracy compared to monarchy... I hope you don't want something that simple.

Maybe I went too far in the last post (it was really large also... sorry for that) and more general discusion is needed first. How about commenting this post as a start?

Rodrigo

[shimmin]

Rodrigo

- One modification I'd like to make regarding limiting the ruler by the wishes of various "classes". You suggested that when different classes want different things, the ruler's limit to what he can do without irking "the people" is a weighted average of the classes desires. That is, if one group is clamoring for reconciliation with a threatening neighbor, and another group demands full-scale war, then the leader can satisfy everyone by maintaining the status quo. For the sake of making a more enjoyable game (for me, at least, one full of conflict), I'd prefer that each class react seperately to ruler actions. That way, the ruler must act decisively and risk the wrath of some of the people, for maintaining the status quo just results in an entire population that is disgruntled with your inaction.

- Secondly, why should a class seek political dominance? Doesn't the "cultural profile" model contain enough information to decide

1) what a group of people wants
2) if they're not getting it, what means (military action, political action, criminal intrigue, demagoguery, terrrorism, peaceful resistance, religious outcry, patient waiting, etc.) they are most likely to pursue to attain it?

Question to Mark: Does the cultural profile model contain enough info to decide things like that?

The reason I suggest this is that interaction in games can be a lot more fun when the parties involved have agendas that aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but can align and conflict over time. Take Avalon Hill's Diplomacy for instance -- in the end, everyone is out for conquest of Europe, but the roads the players are taking to get there lead to a constantly changing network of alliances of convenience and deceit. Or Steve Jackson's Illuminati, where half the fun (I enjoyed this game far more after I stopped cheating) lies in all the players trying to win in a different fashion.