Govt Model v.2 (contd.)

[roquijad]

The 150 limit in the other thread was reached. We'll go on in this thread.

To check the old thread click here

Regarding policy-setting methods, we agree to code two systems and test them in the beast. We'll let this thread only to discuss the so-called "default" system, which is the one originally planned in the govt model with some minor changes. I *strongly* suggest you, F_Smith, to open a new thread for your system. In this way both system can be developed with no bias to one or the other. It's fair! F_Smith's system can become a much better one if everybody can see how it's being implemented rather than seeing it as a black box in the beast. I also think that Axi could help you a lot there because of his doubts regarding the negotiation procedure and his ideas for election-procedures.


Alright then. The following are the last elements I found in the other thread related to the default system. They're suggestions by Richard:


Richard wrote:
(btw, can anybody teach me how to quote?)

"So beside the slider, there could be a botton that says "foul play limits." The button opens a window where the player determines the maximum escalation of foul play. The player could tell the game to stop at bribing, or set foul play to unlimited. The game would start with the most benign actions, and if they don't work it would keep implementing more harsh actions until the objective is met or the player's limit is reached.

Cool Idea: Sometimes overzealous agents might go beyond the player's limits. Then the player would have to deal with the consequences their actions."


And he also says:
"My view is that if a player really wants something to happen, that player should be able to get the thing to happen. For example, suppose that I really needed to raise taxes to support a last ditch defense of a valuable province. I wouldn't want to micromanage a lot of petty politics and run the risk of my vital tax increase being rejected. I would want to set foul play to unlimited and run the tax rate up into the red zone. I would want to make sure that I get my money.

Of course, I would still have to deal with the consequences of my actions."

My opinion is...
As Mark has said, it's important to have what the ruler wants (the ruler's govt profile) just like we have it in the beast. In this way classes can look at it and have feelings specifically aimed to the ruler himself, which is a separate thing than the govt as a whole. This is a little bit contradictory with the sliders interface because the player would have to set a value (which becomes the official govt value) and then the ruler's govt profile doesn't count at all. That was what made me offer the lattest proposal for the negotiation procedure.

In brief it was: "For a given policy, the player chooses the value he wants in his ruler's govt profile. Classes negotiate between them a value X for that policy. Value X is then modified according to what the ruler wants and how much power he has to achieve a final value. The more despotic, the more he is able to modify the value and the closest this final value will be to what he wanted. And vise versa."

So here the ruler uses his power as a modifier. Assuming for now and for simplicity that we take 0.5*ruler_polpower as the modifier magnitude, then if the negotiated value X for Civil Rights is FE 35% and the ruler has 50% pol.power, then the ruler could set the policy in whatever value in the range [35-25,35+25], that is [10,60]. This range I would put in green. This is the range where the ruler can move without interacting with anyone. He is in his right. But, we won't make the player choose the govt policy value. To make ruler's preferences count, the final value is set according to what the ruler putted in his preferences. If what he wanted was within this range, the official policy becomes that value. If not, the official value takes the upper or lower extreme value in the range. This happens automatically.

Now suppose the ruler didn't get what he wanted. I like the idea of setting a level of foul play considering things like bribing, threats and hits. Let's assume the player has already set this foul play level. Since he didn't get what he wanted, his goon squad would push other classes to make X closer to what the ruler stated in his preferences. According to the level of foul play, classes will be influenced and X would then change, creating a new range. Then, again, the policy is set automatically according to ruler's pol.power and preferred value. To help the player with more info, we should use here a color for the final value. Let's say we make the final value red. That means the range was achieved through dirty play. Or, even better, let's put a color from green to red that's sensitive to how much effort the goon squad had to put to get it. Here it's important to note that even if the ruler tells his squad to act aggressively, in many cases for some policies it won't be necessary to do anything because classes can think alike the ruler.

So, what the ruler does is to set his preferences and the level of foul play. The game does all the rest. It makes classes negotiate, creates the green range and compares it to what the ruler wanted and then uses the goon squad if the ruler preference wasn't achieved. A final value is found. At any given time, if the player looks at the "political interface" he should see for each policy:
A green range.
A (let's say) blue dot denoting X
A green, yellow, orange or red dot representing the final (and official) policy value.

And beside it, his preferences for all policies. The player knows everything here. He knows what are the values he can choose to be in line with the law (green range), he knows if his goon squad had or not to act and with what intensity, he knows what classes negotiated (X) and he knows what's the current official value for each policy. He can change his preferences and see what happens.
How does this sound?


I like it. It works well for all policies and changes in ruler's preferences can lead to an immediate change in govt policies, which is good in the sense that player will "feel" their control over the govt. For the political structure (pol.power shares) I suggest a less immediate and direct play. That's because changes in it can have a wide scope of effects and for realism is better if changes in it happen smoothly. So, for these variables the ruler has his preference too and affects the negotiated shares just like policies were, but if he changes his mind, he won't see a change immediately. As time passes, the structure of power changes.

The ruler can have other special actions in other interface for more radical changes, like closing the senate (sudden changes to the political structure) or banning and ideology. These would be less frequent actions under the exclusive hand of the player instead of his goon squad.

Browsing unhappiness in the civ should IMO be made in a totally different interface. There's too much to analyze and in too many ways to have it all incorporated.

Comments?
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited September 03, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Rodrigo:

I am too sleepy to comment sensibly on your new ideas. But I can tell you how to do quotes!

On the main forum screen follow the link to the faq that is near the 'post new topic' (top right).

In the faq, look at the 'UBB Code' heading. It tells you how to do a lot of things, quoting among them. Another good way to find out how to do things you see others doing is to edit their posts to see what the code looks like. You can't submit an edit of someone elses post, but you can see always what their input was.

[roquijad]

Richard:

What do you mean by the "pass/fail" system? Is it the 51% rule?

"Accidently" killing a lot of people: This can't happen if the player sets the foul play level to low. Only if the player sets a high level, but if so, where is the "accident"? He's actually saying "do whatever it takes to get it done"!

You seem to care a lot about "timing". What happens before and after or what the ruler knows before taking a decision. In the proposed system, every time the player looks at the interface he knows what was the negotiated value classes found and there is *already* a ruler's preference for each policy. Ruler's prefs are the ones from the last time he visited the interface or the start values in the very first turn in the game. With all the info above, the game has *already* computed the official policy values, so the govt already has a policy value for all policies. The political game has *already* taken place. In fact, it has taken place as many times as game turns have passed from the last time ruler's prefs were set. The main role of ruler's prefs is to tell the game what the player wants and each game turn the political game takes place using ruler's prefs as player's desires. The player is never "called" to negotiate or to set policy values. The ruler is "acting" every game turn, even though the player is really not.

So, the player uses the interface to change his preferences every now and then. And to change them, he has info there telling him things. He sees what classes negotiated the last turn, what was the final value achieved using ruler's current prefs and he knows how dirty he (automatically) played last turn to get govt values the closest possible to what he stated as preferences. For whatever change in prefs he is considering, he knows if he's going to heat up things or cool them down. He knows what's easyly achievable and what not. And whatever decision he makes, will have an immediate and a continous effect for the years to come. Because the ruler is continously playing politics, even though the player is not.

All the system is meant to model long-run politics. Negotiations between classes and the effect of the ruler are evolving all the time as time passes. There are no "negotiation times" or "policy setting times". It's all happening continously. The player won't change policies directly, but choose new preferences from time to time. Each game turn, the whole situation is checked again and ruler's prefs are seen as if the player was expressing his desire every single turn. Every time he changes his prefs, he's saying "I want govt policies to be like this for all the years to come". The game processes that every turn thereafter. As time passes, classes can change their mind and their negotiated value X may change, affecting automatically the whole process. They won't say "hey, ruler, now we want to make this tiny change, could you please tell us what you think so we can set the final policy value?" every time they change their mind a little bit. Doing that would be playing a short term political game caring about every single change.


Fanatic Minorities: You're overlooking all the deals and arrengements that could take place behind the scenes. In your example you're using a majority rule that makes it impossible for those fanatics to somehow alter the final value. All the interactions of political actors (I gave several examples of them in the old thread) are forgotten when you choose a system that overlooks classes or parties with low power. This is a must for realism, so whether we model a lot of individual possible political arrangements (maybe F_Smith's goal) or we allow an abstract level of political interaction like the one proposed here. Majority rules ALONE don't do the job. They, alone, are far from being realistic.


"social" and "govt" decisions: What's this? Are you saying people's opinions are not affected by their cultural profile for some policies? I hope you're not. I don't know what you mean with these.
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited September 04, 2000).]

[Richard Bruns]

Rodrigo:

Yes, the "pass/fail system" is the 51% rule.

I understand the confusion now. Your "long term political system" is the same thing I referred to as the "social decisions." We actually agree, but we were using different terms.

When I say "government decision" I mean something like an emergency war bond bill or a drastic change like abolition of slavery. These are things that are decided once, in a single meeting.

Consider the slavery issue. If 70% of the people want to emancipate the slaves and 30% want to keep them, will the government institute a policy of "half slavery?" Usually, they won't. The 70% will have their way and free all of the slaves.

But the social climate will not be one of pure freedom. The 30% of the population that was former slaveowners will probably continue to treat the former slaves like dirt. So while the Government Policy is one of pure equality as decided by the pass/fail system, the Social Climate is mixed as per the negotiation system.

The negotiation policy is great at tracking long term change, and I now realize that was all it was meant to do. But there have been many times when big changes happened quickly because the majority wanted it to happen. F_Smith's pass/fail system does a good job of handling these one-time decisions.

That is why I was concerned with timing. I was thinking of setting the level of a one-time war tax or voting on a major change in policy. In those situations, you need to know what the other people will accept before making a preference. If you accidently ask for a tax that is way too high, you can cause a lot more trouble than you intended. But I now understand that in the negotiation system, the ruler is just making small changes to a preference that has existed for hundreds of years.

I think that the social model is the place for fanatic minorities to have an impact. There are many cases when minorities are completely ignored. In the US there are a lot of minor parties like Libertarian Socialists that have never really influenced any vote or government policy. The majority completely ignores them because they don't have power. But they do have an impact on the society.

You do have a point about deals and arrangements, but IMO an average does not do a good job of portraying them. I think such things should be handled in the foul play. If you keep snubbing a certain group, they will be almost impossible to bribe.

[roquijad]

Well, we kind of agree, but there're still some deep disagreements, IMO.

I don't like majorities rules at all. They're to my eyes too "all-or-nothing" and unrealistic. Just like F_Smith has fought for having them, I'll make my fight for keeping them out of the default system. I simply believe they're too bad for long term modeling.

I understand your concerns about things like slavery or war-times decisions and how very weak parties have almost no effect at all in final values. Let me say a couple of things about that:

War-Times: Of course in general here we're refering to all kinds of sudden events that demand quick response by the player and not only wars. In the same framework of modeling long-term politics, we (Axi and me) never intended to include in policies things that are very short-termmed. Policies are meant to be overall guidelines for broad topics. We never thought about policies or laws like "penalties for robbery" or any such tiny thing. That's why the list of policies is really short. I'm putting them here just in case you don't know them (if you do, spare me the tomatoes):

>> 3 variables to determine the type of economy (PP, SP and EP). It's possible these will be reduced to just two.
>> 3 variables for discrimination (ethnic discrimination, religious dis. and slavery)
>> Tax Rate
>> Civil Rights
>> Foreign Affairs (how aggresive the govt is allowed to be in the internat'l arena)

With the exception of tax rate, they are, as you see, just general laws. A list this short is also very helpful to avoid micromanagement. Because they represent very general concepts, I don't expect sudden events triggering strong changes in policies. You don't dramatically change your type of economy just to face a war. Maybe as a player you would still want to change policies a little, but that will be possible in the new proposed system. So, I don't see policies as restrictive as you maybe were seeing them for these events. And even if as player you'd like to make a really dramatic change in the govt to face an event, in terms of realism this shouldn't be possible without some serious foul plays. I really don't see any problem in this area.
(Axi referred to this almost the same way in the old thread)


Slavery: An election or majority-rule system may sound better for variables like this where in real life they take discrete status. You have or not slavery. Since the majority rules work in a discrete fashion, they seem the perfect solution for something like slavery. But this is IMO a wrong interpretation. It's the nature of the variable that gives you the right flavor. ANY policy-setting system will work if you define the variable in a discrete form. If the variable Slavery has as possible values "0" or "1", then a negotiation procedure producing an outcome of 0.2 would mean, by approximation, "0". A negotiation system can be successful with all kinds of policies as long as you define the policy correctly. In fact, the govt model uses discrete values for all 3 discrimination policies to give us the right flavor, which simply means, in mathematical terms, "make a rounding to the negotiated value". So, I believe is better to use a negotiation procedure which can give intermediate results for continous variables (that are continious IRL) and can give you discrete results for discrete variables (that take discrete values IRL) instead of a system that forces all of them to behave as discrete/all-or-nothing variables.


Those little political parties: You're right in what you say. When a party is sufficently small, it doesn't even have the chance to negotiate deals behind the scenes. The negotiation system doesn't recognize this and the thing to blame, as you perfectly said it, is the averaging system behind it. My question is, Why would I throw away all the good things of the negotiation procedure just for this? And, Is it possible to refine the system to make it sensitive to this type of things? We can refine the negotiation system preserving its good things. This is not a take-it-or-leave-it decision.

Here's an idea to solve this that bothers you: Instead of a simple weighted average, we can make an exponential weighted average. Pol.power values will be exaggerated to the extremes, in a magnitude we can control, so if a party has a low pol.power value, it will appear in the equation as being zero. Therefore, the tiny party won't be able to affect the negotiation. Still, all the good things of the system are preserved. What do you think? What all the rest think? Note that if the exageration produced by the exponential is sufficently large, the system colapses to a "simple majority rule". Even more, we can control how much the "pure" simple-majority-rule applies and how much negotiations affect policy-setting.

I'm much more inclined to find solutions like this than to take a majority rule and all its problems.
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited September 04, 2000).]

[Richard Bruns]

I now see how the negotiation system assumes that government policy will basically be an extension of social attitudes. It can be argued that the society and state governments in the US in the late 1800's did implement "half slavery" in the form of sharecropping, vote restriction, etc. even though the official policy was that all were equal. If you assume that the social climate will change little government actions over the long run, the negotiation model should work well for widespread government policies. The little actions are averaged out over the civ, so the negotiation system does well in producing the average effect.

So, I agree that the negotiation system is good for setting general policies that average out over the whole civ.

Still, I think there is a place in the default game for the pass/fail vote method. Rodrigo, would you agree to use this for things that are not covered in the policies you listed? I think that big, special actions should be voted on. For example, the construction of something like a wonder should be voted on by the pass/fail system.

And if someone wants to play the political games in detail, there are a lot of uses for the pass/fail method. They should still remain an option.

Basically, I agree with both F_Smith and Rodrigo, but it took me awhile to realize this. I agree that the negotiation system is good for long term average change, and I agree that the pass/fail method is good for short term political games. Unfortunately, I also disagree with both of them on some issues. I don't like the chaos in the pass/fail, so I tried to make it more steady, and in so doing came into conflict with F_Smith. I don't like the extensive averaging when the negotiation model is applied to certain situations, so that puts me in conflict with Rodrigo.

I think the default game needs both systems. Each is good at modeling a certain thing, but neither works for everything. I think we sould agree to use both of them and try to work out the proper place for each to be used.

-------
The exponential averaging sounds like a good idea, but of course it would need to be tested. As long as it can be turned off if it messes up, we should add it. We added a lot of similar things to the tech ststem. They are there for testing, and may or may not get in the final model. But flexibility is good, so we should put it in and test it.

I'm a bit concerned about the negotiation system and binary variables. When a model rounds something like that, it can create chaos and instability. The problem is again in the rounding. If a minority of 20% changes their attitude a bit, the negotiation system could cause the country to slip into slavery because the value went from .49 to .51.

So I propose that, to make a big change like that, the negotiated value should have to go farther than .5 If the value is currently 0, the negotiated value should be about .66 before things change, and if it is 1, the negotiated value should go to something like .33 before things change. This is equivalent to the requirement of a two thirds majority to make big changes in the pass/fail system. Such a requirement is realistic (Inertia is powerful and people don't make big changes without good reason) and it greatly reduces the possible instability.

[Richard Bruns]

The system Rodrigo outlines should work well, as long as the players see the slider ranges before they are asked to set policy. I don't want to accidently order dozens of assassinations just because I didn't know I was asking for something in the red range.

I think both systems can coexist. I think that for government decisions, the pass/fail slider can appear first, and if there is no green zone there the player can ask for negotiations.

There is an important reason I think the negotiations should not always happen:

It does not allow you to ignore fanatical minorities. For example, assume that the ruler with 20% power and other groups with a total of 60% power all want a value at 90, and a minority with 20% power wants a value of 10. In real life, the government will not ususlly try to appease the fanatics. If 80% of the power base wants the same thing, then that is probably what will happen.

But the negotiations will adjust the value downward by quite a bit. The official policy is something that nobody wants. It is even possible that the new, "negotiated" value makes 60% of the people unhappy enough to riot!

So I think that the pass/fail should be the standard for government decisions. It is a more realistic depiction of the coalition process.

But there is a place where negotiations should always be the standard for calculating values. The culture is the average of the beliefs of all the people in the country. If something is not decreed by the government, then the conditions are usually the kind of average the "negotiations" system portrays. Even though nobody is negotiating or talking about things, the weighted average is what will emerge.

This is where that 20% minority has an impact. Their views will influence the cultural climate. If they all hate foreigners, then the average feeling of xenophobia will increase even if everyone else likes foreigners. The climate that a foreigner experiences will be changed by this minority, even if the official government policy is one of tolerance. The negotiation system should work very well for calculating the average like this.

IMO the negotiatins should be used for social decisions and the pass/fail should be used for most government decisions.

[Mark_Everson]

Just a quick point, all I have time for

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 09-04-2000 09:57 PM I don't expect sudden events triggering strong changes in policies. You don't dramatically change your type of economy just to face a war. [This message has been edited by roquijad (edited September 04, 2000).]

I believe frequently nations Do strongly change their economy in wartime. FE in WWII for the US & England I imagine before the war economic planning was about 10-20% whereas during the war it was probably 50-70% (production mandates, and restrictions, rationing, etc.). I think that is pretty drastic. And if the war had gone on for a long time, I think the negative effects of this kind of govt control of the economy would have produced serious repercussions in the efficiency of the economy.

[axi]

quote: And if the war had gone on for a long time, I think the negative effects of this kind of govt control of the economy would have produced serious repercussions in the efficiency of the economy.

IMHO, this type of economy is much more efficient than the other one; that's why they had to switch into it once the war started. Of course, if the war had gone on for too long, there would be severe repercussions, but not due to the inefficiency of the economy, but to the draining the war would cause to production, to stocked goods and to the stamina of the population, even without the severe destruction the European combattants were suffering. War-socialism is bad, not because it's socialism, but because it's aimed at war (and it generally involves alot of oppression). You can disagree with this, if you like.

Some OT information:
This all I can contribute to this discussion too. I am feverishly working on an implementation for infrastructure. What Mark sent me didn't spoil my plans at all; on this I based my "preferences machine". Expect me to post my proposal for the infrastructure submodel one of these days (I have yet to write the text) and to send you the spreadsheet. How long it will take depends, since I haven't figured out all things yet. I have requested via e-mail if there is a version of the tech model in spreadsheet (from LGJ) and whatever there is on the riots model (from Rodrigo). I hope these requests have passed through.

[F_Smith]

I have to agree with Mark:

A 'socialist' or 'government managed' system is certainly going to be *far* less efficient -- with far more waste -- than a 'privately' managed system.

[Lord God Jinnai]

quote: Still, I think there is a place in the default game for the pass/fail vote method. Rodrigo, would you agree to use this for things that are not covered in the policies you listed? I think that big, special actions should be voted on. For example, the construction of something like a wonder should be voted on by the pass/fail system.

Not to crush your statement, but such a thing wouldn't work Rich because wonders are decided more by the populous than the government. Now pouring in alot of time and reasources will generally help, but you can't just create a wonder cuz you want to. So in this example if it were up to a governmental descion and politics, then current/default system would be the best.

quote: Here's an idea to solve this that bothers you: Instead of a simple weighted average, we can make an exponential weighted average. Pol.power values will be exaggerated to the extremes, in a magnitude we can control, so if a party has a low pol.power value, it will appear in the equation as being zero. Therefore, the tiny party won't be able to affect the negotiation. Still, all the good things of the system are preserved. What do you think? What all the rest think? Note that if the exageration produced by the exponential is sufficently large, the system colapses to a "simple majority rule". Even more, we can control how much the "pure" simple-majority-rule applies and how much negotiations affect policy-setting.

I like this idea, but I still INSIST on some sort of aggressivness modifier because not all groups act the same aggressiveness for their stance (small groups may make up for thier lack in size with their aggresive pushes, which don't include foul play) and larger ones may decide to give a little more to seem more friendly and moderate and hope for more power because of that. Also they act with different aggressiveness with differnt issues depending on how important the issue is to them. Not all issues are equally important.

[Richard Bruns]

I must agree with Mark and F_Smith; history has consistently shown that the free market is more efficient and productive than socialism. The advantage of socialism is that the government can control the economy and force people to make what it wants, so socialism can be more efficient at using the country's resources to acieve a certain goal. That is why it is used in a total war situation.

But in terms of overall production and meeting the needs of the people, a free market will be more efficient than a bunch of government bureaucrats.

axi: I can e-mail you the spreadsheets if LGJ doesn't have them.

LGJ: It seems to me that wonders would be comissioned by the people in power. The pyramids were built not because the common people wanted them, but because the despotic rulers ordered them built.

I think that the agressiveness modifier is a good idea, if it can be implemented without too much trouble.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited September 05, 2000).]

[roquijad]

WARNING: In my post above I said

quote: if the exageration produced by the exponential is sufficently large, the system colapses to a "simple majority rule"

I rushed my conclusions. In a situation like that, the system colapses to a system where the political actor with the highest pol.power is able to impose his will.
-----------------

Gentlemen: Forgive me for trying to stop a discussion here, but I'm affraid the socialism vs capitalism issue can lead to long and extensive talks. Most of us won't change their minds in a significant level in that regard, so I ask you all to please leave it, at least in this thread. The best place for that topic is in the govt-econ thread. This way we can move on in this thread with the things that need implementation and can be agreed more easily.
Just for the record, the last agreement I recall about efficiency in economic system is that the more socialist a system is, the higher the penalty (waste) will be for GNP. BUT, the magnitude of this penality is still TBD and for sure, it will be easily changeable by players, so free-market lovers can make it sky-high and communists can make it low (or null).
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quote: Rodrigo, would you agree to use [the fail/pass method] for things that are not covered in the policies you listed?

I see the fail/pass method as a short term political thing, but I also see it as too democratic. Are we going to have votings in a divine monarchy? If the system can be generalized a little to make sense in any type of govt AND if it can be generalized a little to accept more majority rules than only the very specific (US-like?) 51%-rule AND if it's used only for short-term play AND if at least a little of intelligence can be included in votings to simulate the "interactions", "coalitions", "strategic voting", etc between parties, then I'm willing to accept it for any policy, listed or not. Otherwise I'd accept it only for short-term decisions for new more specific policies with a low impact in the game.

That's just my opinion. It's still a team's decision.

quote: So I propose that, to make a big change [in slavery], the negotiated value should have to go farther than .5 If the value is currently 0, the negotiated value should be about .66 before things change, and if it is 1, the negotiated value should go to something like .33 before things change.

That's exactly the kind of things the exponential average can achieve. I'll give you all a more detailed example of this type of averaging in a future post. Just note your concerns here are not resolved by the 51% rule system and any "chaos" problem discrete variables produce, will appear in ANY system, because it is the inherent discrete nature of the variable rather than the system used the core of your concerns.

We wouldn't have to worry about these things if we make all variables contineous, but as you have said it yourself, variables like slavery NEED a discrete approach if we want to have the kind of flavor that a message "slavery is abolished!" produces.

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LGJ: You never commented my idea to include the things you say about extreme positions colliding within the political body. If you're INSISTING on the subject, should I understand you didn't like it?


PS: Did you see I learned to quote and some other stuff?

[Lord God Jinnai]

stupid Apolyton acting up again!
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited September 05, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

quote: LGJ: It seems to me that wonders would be comissioned by the people in power. The pyramids were built not because the common people wanted them, but because the despotic rulers ordered them built.

First off this isn't completely relevenat on this thread, but since it does have a signifigant portion to with the governemnt, i'll post it here.

First off you're right Rich, the pyramids were built because the egyptian government wanted them, but just building them doesn't make them a wonder. That was one of the unbalancing things about the Civ2 and other models, ie you already knew what the wonders were, what they did and and 'raced' to produce them, first the ones you wanted then the rest or the ones you thought you could complete before someone else.

That's not how it works here. Yes the government can ask for something to be built and be built in a grande scale, but that doesn't make it a wonder. Take the Shinto Temple to Amaterasu. The most decorate, largest and most authentic Shinto temple in Japan (making it also in the world), but its not a wonder.Also many things were not built by people in government (well atleast not because they were in government).

So someone could build the pyramids, but that doesn't mean they'll have the same impact or as much impact as in the reality. Take FE the Great Wall of China. It wasn't considered a wonder until the Europeans arrived and marveled ats its size and the effort it took to build it.

quote: LGJ: You never commented my idea to include the things you say about extreme positions colliding within the political body. If you're INSISTING on the subject, should I understand you didn't like it?

Ok, one thing i saw that i remember is that it may drag out negotiations for a time being. Anyway my idea doesn't have to be for extremist. It can be for anyone. An extremist who justs wants to say what he thinks, but not push much and an extremist who wants to have his demands met as much as possible and will make sure he's heard loud and clear. A moderate who just wants to please everyone and a moderate who voices his opposition to anything remotely left or right winged. That's what i mean and all the combinations inbetween.

If that's not what you meant or your doing that already can you repost that message where you gave your ideas on extemist in the political body.