Riots Model 2.0

[Richard Bruns]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Well, see it the other way: If people riot and you had only 2%PP, it may be a good time to throw in a revolution so you increase your PP.

True. I hadn't thought of that. Very clever. Just make sure the player knows that this is a possibility. An advisor might say, "We can't beat them, so we might as well join them."

The interface plan you described (choose 25-45) looks good. I must have missed that.

[roquijad]

The riots model currently allows both types of unhappiness:
1) you don't like the current govt profile (you don't like govt)
2) you don't like the ruler's govt profile (you don't like what the ruler is going for)

So far I believe both are needed, but in the future we can get rid of the second one if we want to.

[Cmonkey]

The Riots model does a wonderful job of modeling internal unrest. One thing I don't see here, is a way for the people of a nation to protest/riot based on events in another nation, or the policies of another nation. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, last century or so, but I think it's important enough to be included.

Recent events (the Iraqi Freedom war), depict this quite well. People are rioting/protest all over the globe. I don't want to spark a political discussion of these events, I'm merely pointing to them as the most recent case of this.

Historically, these riots/protests have never severely impacted the nation they occurred in, that I am aware of. However, what they do impact is that nation's ability to get involved in the situation. For example, again recent events, Turkey, a very close ally of the US, initially refused to allow US military to operate from their land for fear of the repercussions it could have in the form of riots within their own nation.

This sort of thing plays an important role in modern diplomacy/warfare, so I think it's important enough to be a part of the model. I'm new here, and I may have just missed it somewhere in the model if it already exists, if so, point it out, please.

[roquijad]

Cmonkey,

You clearly have a point. But I also agree with you about this thing being a very recent phenomenon. Some two years back, when I wrote the model, I didn't have in mind, of course, anything like that, nor things like the anti-globalization movement.

The problem is that these things are so new that I'm affraid we can't evaluate correctly how important they really are. Will they have a long term impact, enough to become candidates to be modeled?

I'm not sure.

[Cmonkey]

roquijad,

What I'm asking for here is really very simple. An event that triggers a riot or protest based on the actions of another country. This requires a few new variables be put into the model, nothing more. The first variable, actually an array of them, would be the disposition of the people towards each and every other nation. This would be handled in much the same way as a nation's disposition is handled in the diplomacy model.

The second would be 'bad foreign policies feeling' or some such, as a pro-action feeling. The chances of this being triggered should be very small, to prevent it from happening until modern times. With the advent of the application 'the Internet' these chances should rise dramatically.

The purpose of all this would not be to model some huge effect. This would model the effect a nation's people have on its foreign policies that they can't directly affect in the government model, basically its war policies. It is intended to prevent a nation, whether player or AI, from standing idle around while one of its neighbors or allies is being exterminated by another nation. It is also intended to prevent a nation from assisting another in wars its people don't want, even if the assistance is only a right of passage for its troops to attack from.

I assume Clash is going to go somewhat into the future as Civ3 does, 2050 or so. If this is correct, we can assume if this situation is occurring now, it is likely to occur until that point as well. However, if Clash stops in the year 2000, you're probably correct in assuming it's not important enough to model.

As a side effect of tracking a nation's people's disposition towards other nations, we could also model terrorism from this. Given the situation of the world, I'm not going to push for this issue, but it was suggested in the List sent to Firaxis for Civ3, so I thought I'd mention it, if the team decides it isn't too politically incorrect to do such a thing.

[roquijad]

Cmonkey,

Please have in mind I'm only checking the forums like once a week, so if I take too long to answer, it's only that....

I agree it's not complex. I disagree, though, about being something cheap to model ("This requires a few new variables be put into the model, nothing more"). Since PAFs are computed for each social class and since each Ethnic Group has several socal classes, and since a province can have several EGs, adding just one more PAF leads to several variables really. If we need one PAF for each "other nation", then it's a costly multiplication.

Anyway, I'm not the guy to comment on computational costs. I can only agree that they way you're proposing it would be the exact way to deal with it if we want to include it and are prepare to pay the cost.

Mark: What do you think on the cost of that?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by roquijad
I disagree, though, about being something cheap to model ("This requires a few new variables be put into the model, nothing more"). Since PAFs are computed for each social class and since each Ethnic Group has several socal classes, and since a province can have several EGs, adding just one more PAF leads to several variables really. If we need one PAF for each "other nation", then it's a costly multiplication.

Mark: What do you think on the cost of that?

Hi Gents:

I think this would be doable without the large computational overhead suggested so far. In short, if there is a Strong negative or positive reaction of an EG to a govt we could record that, and let it decay over time. A fairly simple algorithm could be used to figure when needed an EGs reaction to a govt or that govts policy.

The approach is doable, but I'm not sure we'll get much bang for the buck out of it play-wise. Personally I'd favor just leaving this idea lying fallow, and see when things are further developed if it is worth revisiting. We won't be playing the modern age for quite some time yet at the rate things are going.

[LDiCesare]

I've got one question. In my social test scenario, the Persians do some ethnic discrimination against Greeks. The Greeks decide to revolt because of the ethnic discrimination and bad policies. This results in the creation of a warrior unit. However, this unit is part of the Spartan civ, which happens to be at peace with the Persians. Since Greeks revolt and decide they want to join Sparta, should that cause war between Persia and Sparta? Or should the Greeks not revolt in order to avoid the war? Or do they simply seize weapons and leave the place?

Admittedly, this is still quite unfinished, and I don't have all teh subtleties ready (like feudal units...). Right now a new unit just pertains to a civ. But this leads to another question: If the player controls a civ and an EG somewhere revolts and wants to join the player's civ, who controls the revolting units? Is it the player or the ai? And when/if the province is conquered, do these units disappear, are they controlled by the ai or (if they were previously ai-controlled) are they controlled by the player?

I don't know about war status.
If war is declared, it can ruin one's external policy because your neighbour has poor internal policies.
As an alternative, the player could decide they don't want to support the rebellion, in which case the units would become a new civ (and the whole EG would probably feel betrayed and switch nationality to that new civ).
If war is not declared, then new units will pop here and there, causing some people to move around. Shouldn't, in such a case, the units 'carry' with them the civilians (like settlers)? Or are they just free units for the civ the EG wants to be part of?

[yellowdaddy]

my opinion

it strikes me that you need some kind of "obiedience" or "loyalty" factor to determine the actions of the revolting unit you describe.

If these people have a high level of public order, respect for the law etc, then they should be more inclined to obey their chosen masters.

however, being as they are revolting to the extent that you describe, then I think they would not have such respect for authority and therefore their actions should be unit specific:

they can tend to allegiance to the Spartans, but be in a state of insurgency which causes them to fight the Persians.

I think it should depend on factors like the ratios of kinds of classes in the Greek area - if military and crime sectors of the population are high then they should be more prone to aggression and unrulyness, if largely mercantile then they should be more "gandhi"-like.

The proximity of their chosen masters should also have an effect - they will not feel so inclined start a war if there is a Spartan military unit nearby!

Why shouldn't they attempt independence, and become a new nation! You should have the "opportunity" to choose whether you wish to embrace them as part of your nation but, should it only depend on whether you reject their offer of allegiance or not?
If they offer allegiance to your nation, then would they have poor relations with you if you had rejected them, and they became a new nation? or would it depend on how desperate they were to be on good terms with you?

I think rather than having settlers, why not have social sector specific units: merchants, clerics, artisans - either can set up a settlement, and you might want to change the balance of sectors in a population by adding a particular type of "settler" as it were...?

As for the revolting EG thing, I think they should be treated as another nation (ai) until you accept (click on ok) to accept them as under your control. You should get all the units that survive any invasion (conservation of energy prinicple!). I think there's a case for "guerilla units/nations" to handle this limbo, don't you think?

[LDiCesare]

Why shouldn't they attempt independence, and become a new nation!

Because there's another event for that. I'm talking about guerilla uprising event, not declaring independence event. Here again, Gandhi is 'declaring independence' rather than guerilla uprising.
Letting the player have the option of waiting it out before they accept the rebels woudl lead to leader abuse: I let them declare war for me, and if they win I take them, if they lose, I lose nothing. There's no real choice involved here.

I think rather than having settlers, why not have social sector specific units: merchants, clerics, artisans - either can set up a settlement, and you might want to change the balance of sectors in a population by adding a particular type of "settler" as it were...?

That's already been discussed elsewhere, but settlers will often change profession and social status when settling in a new country. Check for a migration thread.

If they offer allegiance to your nation, then would they have poor relations with you if you had rejected them, and they became a new nation? or would it depend on how desperate they were to be on good terms with you?

Doesn't really matter. The diplomatic status is not really important here. What's important is the fact the ethnic group would change nationality. It should probably be all the ethnic group of the province, and only of that province, that feels betrayed.

I agree that units controlled by something which is not really a civ (typically feudal units) are needed at some point. I'm not sure I'm ready for them yet.

[yellowdaddy]

i suppose the revolting greek eg in your scenario would have to be heavily drawn to the culture of the spartans to have enough allegience to obey the spartan ruler, so that mere oppression by their persian overlords is not enough to make them obedient to another civ, even if they declare allegiance to it.

the thing is you say they produce a spartan unit through revolting, but does that automatically have to mean that they are pledging allegiance to the spartan state?

i suppose the ball is in the persian court - if they choose to crush the rebellion, then the spartan player should be prompted whether and how the spartans wish to respond.
i think the idea of them choosing not to revolt to avoid war, or to simply evacuate is not realistic.
they'd revolt because they're unhappy, full stop. the spartans may then be faced with the choice of having to either acknowledge them immediately or wait until prompted by a persian act to defend or abandon them.

i think you agree that the revolting units become semi-civs until they are established as belonging to a particular civ. and that units should not instantaneously disappear in a puff of smoke.

separate units - with variable numbers inside them, civilians shouldn't be "carried" by other units IMO.

[LDiCesare]

i suppose the revolting greek eg in your scenario would have to be heavily drawn to the culture of the spartans to have enough allegience to obey the spartan ruler, so that mere oppression by their persian overlords is not enough to make them obedient to another civ, even if they declare allegiance to it.

Unfortunately, that's human-thinking. Such considerations do not exist in the program or the model as it is. The model specifies a single nationality. It doesn't provide for a set of computations as to which civ has 'greeks' as its preferred ethnicity, and then which one would be most likely to declare war on the Persians. The problem being there may not be any other civ which prefers Greeks and is at war against Persians.

i think you agree that the revolting units become semi-civs until they are established as belonging to a particular civ.

Yes, except that this is not coded and will not in the immediate future because it's probably going to take too long and I'd like to get a demo out before. So I need to decide on something in the meantime.

[yellowdaddy]

i think you misunderstood me on the first quote.

i think an aspect of the game was that eg or cities could revolt by being attracted to the culture of another nation - much like in Civ3.

here you talk about a scenario where an eg or city is revolting from its ruling nation.

i'm thinking that these are two different sets of coding, so that you can have a logical choice of combinations where the EG is:

a. revolting from X, but not attracted to Y.
b. not revolting from X, but attracted to Y.
c. revolting from X, and attracted to Y.
(d. not revolting from X, and not attracted to Y)

only in option "c" will the EG follow the orders of nation Y.
in option "b", the EG could be influenced by nation Y in various ways.
and option "a" is where they have some kind of allegience to nation Y, but will not obey orders from the ruler of nation Y.

all being distinct from independence; option "a" is like "autonomy". - perhaps like Commonwealth dependencies like the Isle of Man, Hong Kong, and Cayman Islands.

The problem being there may not be any other civ which prefers Greeks and is at war against Persians.

i'm not sure if i know what you mean?

[LDiCesare]

I ment if I'm looking for a civ which matches the revolters' wishes, I may not find any. In such a case, the revolt can't join an existing civ, it has to create its own civ or try to overthrow the government and replace it (or become feudal units). As I haven't put regimes in yet (and don't want to until we've got some tech tree that will let new regimes to be discovered), nor feudal units, I think I'll leave things the way they are now for the next demo.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Actually, unless they like the spatans why much they revolt as spartan unit? Why can't they revolt as say their home cities unit? Even if their city is destroyed, they'd still have aligence to that city, not ness to the spartans. I know to become viable long-term they'd haveto either give up on some of their ideals, ie compromise, overthrow a governemnt or atleast a city, or found their own nation somewhere else, but why can't for a bit they exist without a city (obviosuly such units existing would exist without costs as they're living off the land).