Social Model v3.0

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
My main question is how to show the social classes breakdown:
When I show aristocracy/workers/warriors, I show the social classes, but each of them has a weight in terms of political power which is a part of the various blocks (e.g. military can get voices from both warriors and aristocracy social classes).
Should I add a political power blocks breakdown per social class or a global one? I don't want the interface to be too cluttered. (Three pies is already a big number imo.)

Hi Laurent, it looks good so far! I think you should show the global power block breakdown only for now. I expect at some point a further detailed breakdown showing political power blocks breakdown per social class will be desired. But that should be a whole separate gui element and doesn't seem to be needed at this time.

[yellowdaddy]

Shifted over from Government Model to stop people whinging...

Why I think Slavery is maybe not the right word:

1. It is surely a researched "technology", not something you start the game with in 10,000 BC.

2. It becomes obsolete as a nation industrialises. The countries in the modern era which still have slavery lack fully developed Social and Economic Infrastructures - slavery is displaced by Indenture, and as the taxation and financial systems and services become more sophisticated slavery becomes anachronistic and unprofitable.

3. The other issue is "types of slavery"; you have traditional ancient world slaves which are commonly understood, then you have: human trafficking, and prostitutes; people who are kinds of slaves because of who they are: women, children, racial groups, religious groups, social castes, economic classes.

What does the position on the slavery slider mean? is it the amount of slavery, or the extent of the slavery? is it the level of oppression?

Are the citizens of North Korea slaves? (ie. would the slavery slider be up at 90+%?), I can see how it makes sense under an ancient feudal government, but what about 20th century regimes?

I would be interested in seeing some example tables for different states we know, to see what they look like in game terms, that'd help illustrate the way this preferences box works.

You might opt for "Personal Freedom".
Could try "Liberty" perhaps? "Egality" (something the French should know about!); you could be more positive, and call it "Emancipation"!
-----------

The Executive is surely both the decision making collective noun, and can be used to descrive the leader's position.
-----------

Clergy is a good term, as it's not attatched to any religion. Philosophy and Religion are probably best treated as one thing in the game, the lines between them can be blurred, particularly in far east "religions".

----------

Human = The People... I still don't get what you mean precisely - what's all this about the "Capitalists" then? - I would naturally be inclined to go for the termThe Public regardless. It just feels more appropriate.

I'm sure no-one'll agree with me, as they rarely ever seem to!

[LDiCesare]

(I thought I had answered this some time ago but apparently I didn't).
1-I don't think slavery is a tech that one researches. Exploitation of man by man is very old.
2-I'm not sure about indenture. If you're talking about apprenticeship, it doesn't replace slavery. Apprentices and slaves coexisted for a long time. If you're talking about indentured servants, that is people who are bound to serve without payment for a period of time because they agreed to, then, under French law it would be slavery, and it can be modelled as a low but not null slavery slider.

Back to my coding: I haven't done a lot of progress, due to vacations and then fever, but also because I have little idea as how to show the things I want to show:
I display ethnicities, religions in a square/province/civ, but that doesn't give the riotting probability.
The only way I thought of was to show for each social group the various discontent factors. However, I as a player would never use that because I'd have to check something like ten social groups every time I'd like to see what may go wrong.
I'd rather have something like a prediction of possible troubles unless policies are changed. This would not necessarily be accurate, but showing that there is a bout X% chance that people will riot here or there because of this or that would probably do?
Does anyone have an idea of a way of showing all discontents in a way that doesn't require micromanagement?

[LDiCesare]

(Double - post)

[yellowdaddy]

Doesn't Sim City have something like that? (of course, I'm thinking of Sim City 1!)

and others like "Balance of Power 1990", a cold war "MAD" game of goepolitical prestige chess, where you have the heads of four advisors who give their opinions on all your policy ideas.
The game's only about 150k so can't be a big deal to do that.


Slavery.

I thought this was a ruler screen, and that we were talking about institutionalised slavery - if it's institutionalised then is should surely be a researchable tech.

I get the impression you're talking about effectively "social slavery", like the pecking order in a pack of animals, when you say "slavery's been around a long time". I don't disagree, but i thought this was about it being a systemic part of a civilised society - defined by precise laws, like in Ancient civs and Feudalism, not vague notions of random gimpdom.

It seems incongruous, and a bit too much like excessive and unnecessary detail if you're talking about "the general amount of slavery in society".
It's too vague - I don't know what the slider means. It seems rather pointless to me on the basis of what i've read of your description so far...

I repeat (and please read my post again for context!):

What does the position on the slavery slider mean? is it the amount of slavery, or the extent of the slavery? is it the level of oppression?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Back to my coding: I haven't done a lot of progress, due to vacations and then fever

Hi Laurent, good to hear about the vacation, but sorry on the illness.

I'd rather have something like a prediction of possible troubles unless policies are changed. This would not necessarily be accurate, but showing that there is a bout X% chance that people will riot here or there because of this or that would probably do?

This way sounds best to me too.

Does anyone have an idea of a way of showing all discontents in a way that doesn't require micromanagement?

Nothing brilliant! I suspect that once some playtesters see it, there will be some suggestions of what data they'd like to see.

The only thing I would add is that if there's a way to show the one policy change that could reduce the X% chance significantly, that would be worth reporting to the player. However that may not be easy to calculate.

[LDiCesare]

The only thing I would add is that if there's a way to show the one policy change that could reduce the X% chance significantly, that would be worth reporting to the player. However that may not be easy to calculate.

We'll have to do it for the ai anyway, so I can try. If the players think it's useless, then the ai will be crap too, so it should be a good way to have playtesters help make the ai better. Now I'll try coding it.

[LDiCesare]

I finished coding a panel which shows various pies on the top, and a panel split between possible riots and suggested policies to get rid of the riots. With buttons that let you apply them or revert to your previous policies.
The ai also adapts its policies based on unrest feedback. This may lead it to lower taxes inconsiderately however, so I may have to check that out.
I also corrected a possible crash when a unit would like to riot but found no civ to join. It'll spawn its own civ. This shouldn't happen in any scenario uness you try really hard to mess things in order to cause three quarters of your civ to revolt, so I don't think it matters too much if the civ is not in good shape, since it shows that civs can reappear after having disappeared.

[yellowdaddy]

I display ethnicities, religions in a square/province/civ, but that doesn't give the riotting probability.
I display ethnicities, religions in a square/province/civ, but that doesn't give the riotting probability.
The only way I thought of was to show for each social group the various discontent factors. However, I as a player would never use that because I'd have to check something like ten social groups every time I'd like to see what may go wrong.
I'd rather have something like a prediction of possible troubles unless policies are changed. This would not necessarily be accurate, but showing that there is a bout X% chance that people will riot here or there because of this or that would probably do?
Does anyone have an idea of a way of showing all discontents in a way that doesn't require micromanagement?

firstly - how are the ethnicities and religions displayed on the map?
is that like a coloured overlay like on a CIA map?
Or is it a mini pie-chart that pops up when you hold your mouse over a square?

I don't think many people would need to see a list of factors, I'd just go for a glowing or flashing (slow for low tension, fast for high tension of the bit of icon that represents what you want...)(mind you Mark says he doesn't like flashing icons) alternatively a colour border which goes from green to amber to red??!! no animation req'd.
keep it simple I suppose.

[LDiCesare]

I don't display on the map. You select either civ, province or square, and get a panel with a piechart inside.
I added a panel with a prediction of trouble. You get a list of each ethnicity per square, and the probability that it riots. It usually is either empty or overwhelmingly big. Then on the right of it, you have the policies that the ai suggests in order to get rid of (most) of the problem.
Following the policies proposed by the ai is not optimal, since it may lower taxes when you'd rather lower something else for instance, but it gives an idea what you can do about your problems. And you can apply these policies with one button. But I'm not sure all these things should fit in the same window...

[yellowdaddy]

it reminds me very much of an old (but still good) game called Balance of Power.



try it, see if it inspires anything...

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=91

I think a nice visual solution is best.
So you might have a pie chart to show 3 ethnicities in a square.
Do you need to give each ethnicity a colour? Or can you use the colour to impart other information?
If you have a limit on the maximum number of EGs, religions in a square, say 10 (?) then you probably will need to use colours to differentiate them on a mini pie chart.

I don't think detailed info on what the cause of the riot is, is necessary or desirable. You just need an indicator of a riot, which you can click on to get more detail - a Sim City style list of percentages of discontentment and issues.

I suppose these are possible options to show there's insurgency without using animation:
- Make the segments of the pie chart expand and contract according to insurgency levels;
- Give each segment an indicator graphic in the middle of it, or connected to it, like a smily;
- Make the pie-charts 3d, with segments expaning up or down;

I like smilies.

You might want to have 2 pie charts side by side - one to show the big picture, and the other the detail. So you could click on a segment of the "overview" pie chart, and get a range of factors in the "details" pie chart (i suppose it could just as well be a block graph) with smilies on each of the 10 (social group) sectors displaying the public mood or insurgency?


on the advisors:

In Balance of Power you get 4 advisors on the panel who give varying advice, it's not very sophisticated, but like in CIV three you could make each one of these 4 advisers (you could have 3 so they never agree) have their own area of interest to give a more complex set of advice.

[LDiCesare]

I agree that displaying data as an overlay on the map would be good. Unfortunately I am too lazy to do it now, and I think there's a lot of info to show. If I use a single color code, it will be hard to show that there is a minority of ethnicity X in a square. With a control panel it should be possible to show various overlays (majority ethnicity, majority religion, etc. but also proportion of each ethnicity, religion, etc...).
I use a pie chart which generates new colors as needed. It roughly cycles from mostly red, mostly green, mostly blue and then mostly red again, etc. You won't get the same hue before a few hundred colors in the pie, so that's not a problem as noone could see that many anyway.

[Mark_Everson]

Great job on the social scenario!

I just wanted to say here that all the hard work in terms of diagnostics and getting the social model going have paid off very well in the social scenario. It is fun to play, and gets the message across about the juggling act that the ruler must perform for a multicultural and multiethnic civ. I can't wait until all the preferences have real game effects, which will make the strategic political choices that the player makes very important and challenging.

Thanks for putting together the scenario Laurent, and also thanks to alms for adding the player guidance at the beginning.

[alms66]

Let's discuss this comment that I made in the 7.9 discussion thread here, shall we?:

When rebel units form & I “repair” the cause that brought them forth (I'm assuming the cause is that listed under the riots entry in the events panel on the turn the unit was created), I expect to see the units disband back into the population eventually, though I never have.

Personally I feel that if the rebels' original reason for rebelling is 'fixed' then at least some of the rebels should lay down their arms.

[LDiCesare]

In the social model, there are 3 kinds of units that can be formed by riots:

Revolutionary Forces Formation: In the province the event was called, a (people's) military unit is created and passed to AI control. Revolutionary units try to conquer the civ's capital. If they succeed, the ruler and govt are replaced. See below for more details on that. See also below how a "total" revolution can be triggered.

Guerrilla Forces Formation: In the province the event was called, a (people's) military unit is created and passed to AI control. The objective of guerrilla units is to liberate the province from the civ's control. If they achieve it, the province is annexed to a civ with matching nationality or, if such civ doesn't exist, a new civ is created.
(...)
Rebel Duke: A military/nobility leader in a province decides to decrease central govt's influence over the province. It's like a less radical form of independence declaration, where the local leaders just want more autonomy, but still find valuable belonging to the civ. The Province's Autonomy Level in the province is increased and associated Feudal Units are created (see Govt Model). See more of Feudal Units below.

A bit farther in the model, there's a more detailed explanation:

The model defines 4 types of internal military opponents: guerrilla, revolutionaries, rebels and feudal units. The distinction is relevant to get the right results in different situations and historic frameworks.

Guerrilla: The AI must drive the units looking to conquer the province where it was generated. Must store the nationality that produced it, so if it's successful, the game engine will know what nationality the new civ formed will have.

Revolutionaries: The AI must drive the unit looking to conquer the civ's capital. Must store the regime that produced it, so if it's successful, the game engine will know what new regime is implemented in the new govt.

Rebels: The AI uses the unit depending on the Civ's Unrest Status. If "normal", looks to conquer the capital, just like the revolutionaries, but if "under civil war" switches to "conquer as many provinces as possible". Needs to store the social class that produced it so, if successful in capturing the capital or forming a new civ, the game engine will know what mentality the new govt must have.

Feudal Units: Little AI needed. The units simply stay in the province where they were created and defend the province from attacks. The existence of Feudal Units represent a powerful local warlord (see more on the Govt Model).

Since guerilla, revolutionaries and rebels are harder to model, I went with the feudal units only. This means they don't move much, but they represent people having seized power and arms, and they probably have little or no reason to relinquish power that they have seized. They won't receive reinforcements if people are happy, but I think it would be too easy if they disappeared just when you changed policies.

One thing that I think is a problem is that there are too many units formed. The model is based on provinces, but with ethnic groups in squares, and there's a slight hole here to know if this should be checked province-wide or per square. I check per square because it's easier to compute, but that leads to many units being created, which can be a pain. The equations for the events occurring are also a bit different from the original ones because of some existing comments in the code stating that didn't work as expected. All this results in 2 things:
-When riots occur, they are most often very severe. Only the most severe riots cause units to appear.
-Riots create many, probably too many, units.
I'd rather lower the number of created units and let them stay there. I don't wantthem to disappear because I think it would be "cheap". It could effectively be used as a tactics to get rid of opponents: Cause riots in your province, rebels appear, but since they don't like your enemies either, they'll fight the invaders as well as your own troops. This could be fixed by diplomacy by letting the rebels ally themselves with exterior threats, but diplomacy's a long way from that.
Another thing which could be done is to use diplomacy to appease the rebels: When the cause for riots disappear, you could go and tell them "see, all is fine now", and probably pay them a bit and they'd settle.
But I don't think they should disappear automatically and would let things as they are now for D8 unless more people want it changed.