Coding the "Society Model"

[LDiCesare]

I'm not for putting language evolution (gw -> b, etc.) in the game.
I want one of three kinds of names in my game:
- Historical names,
- Names that I can understand ("Big Wood"), be they in English, French, Quenya or a language I made up, but definitely in a language I know or can look up.
- Names I make up myself or picked up somewhere (for instance, 1, 2, 3, etc. are all names I used for cities in ICS civ2 games).
I am not sure seeing a series of names that don't look like anything they know will appeal players. For instance, it's ok if I speak breton to have a city called Gwynned, but to simulate all the language distorsions so it can be called Vannes after being invaded/conquered by French speakers seems pointless. These changes will hurt more than help as I'd rather have the names in my empire stay constant so I can better know what is what and where it is. If names evolve constantly, as they do IRL, it will be harder to fins out where things are. Same for foreign countries. You don't have to know how they call themselves, you just want to give them one name and let it stick.

[yellowdaddy]

But tying them too strongly into the game seems premature. Peoples with the same language frequently hate each other. Language closeness is only one of many parameters in how peoples get along.

absolutely - i don't think i should like welsh people more than slovakians just because i'm scottish. but at least i can understand their language a bit better.

btw - the ROMANS would be a NATION of the LATINS who would be a TRIBE of the ITALIC people.
none could exist at the same time in the proposal.

i.e.: the ITALICS could split into any number between 1 and 6, then they would cease to be called ITALICS if they did. likewise their descendents say LATINS and UMBRIANS (if the ITALICS spkit into 2 in a given scenario) and a branch of the LATINS, formed a NATION around a city state called ROME, then the remaining LATINS would/could have to be given a new name based on some combination in the vocab list.

[yellowdaddy]

ok

to simulate all the language distorsions so it can be called Vannes after being invaded/conquered by French speakers seems pointless. These changes will hurt more than help as I'd rather have the names in my empire stay constant so I can better know what is what and where it is. If names evolve constantly, as they do IRL, it will be harder to fins out where things are. Same for foreign countries. You don't have to know how they call themselves, you just want to give them one name and let it stick.

I wasn't exactly envisaging constant change like that.
Or changes brought about by invasion even.

I was really thinking about a 3 stage evolution process within each people/tribe/nation or EG/ELG.

so city names would only change or evolve within the context of a people or tribe splitting. and then never change unless another split event occured.

Though i suppose, ideally, a complete conquest event perhaps ought to lead to a further name change, as roman placenames have become modified in europe. However, I can see how if names changed every few turns it would be annoying.

I think I already modified the proposal to say that name changes can only occur after a long prescribed length of time. say 300-500 years or perhaps 300 turns (1588-1888 if 1 year is 1 turn during that stage in history). that would mean that Gwened could only change to Vannes if the French maintained their occupation of Brittany for long enough.

This removes the possibiliity of constant annoying changes, and allows some degree of realism. So you might not see so many changes - but do you really want to see the Holy Roman Empire continue to be called that from 4000BC to 3000AD? How do you deal with a break up of an empire like the Autro-Hungarian Empire?

I was really thinking about how many American city names are that of the local tribe that lived there: Miami, Chicago, Kansas,

Though you bring up some points to think about:

a. I didn't know anyone actually ever used the "find city" function!

b. if you're maps aren't going to ever be more than the biggest sizes i managed to squeeze out of Mark, then i can't see it being such a big deal gliding aroung the map with your mouse. Anyway even when you change city names in Civ, they still keep their same position on the list of cities, so i'm surelist based city management features needn't be a big deal either.

but at least you seem to like the idea of a vocab list for each
E(L)G. so putting the other stuff to one side for a moment

It then raises the question, and this relates only to a "from 4000BC" type game (scenarios would have to be different), do you want to have French, Babylonians and Americans playing alongside each other, OR, Italics, Semites, Athabaskans, which then can split into Umbrians, Latins, Faliscans, Oscans, Samnites, etc, and then merge with other tribes to form a new Nation, such as France - a potentially 3 stage process, but not necessarily as in the case of the Basques who you might say don't split, but just move directly from the People to the Tribe to the Nation stage?

If we're talking historical authenticity, then I can't see how playing French against Romans in 3000BC makes any sense at all.

[LDiCesare]

I'd like to have no French, English or Americans in 3000BC, but have them evolve from cultures.
Thus this requires people/tribe/nation names, but also adjectives (white russians, wisigoths, etc.).

[yellowdaddy]

then we agree on that

[LDiCesare]

Originally posted by roquijad
1) There're several comments in earlier posts about independence, what should happen in those cases and things like that. Please just keep in mind that, since social stuff is greatly interrelated with government, revolutions and the like, and since all that is too much to handle it in one model, I originally split it in three models (social, govt, riots). With that framework, the social model is only intended to manage the evolution of Ethnic Groups' characteristics and when and how certain EGs disappear or new ones are created. Nothing more. Anything that happens as a result of cultural stuff must be handled somewhere else (for example in the Govt and Riots models).

2) Be extremely careful with the words "cultures", "ethnicities", "nationalities" and such, for they tend to be used as synonimous in normal language, but in the model we need very specific definitions, for practical reasons and to avoid misleading concepts. I strongly suggest we all use the same terminology. These are the most relevant, as defined in the model:

Ethnic Group: A "unit" of people who have a nationality, a religion and a culture. The EG lives in a geographic location (province, FE).

Nationality: The name of the nation/tribe the EG feels it belongs to.

Culture: A set of variables, such as individualism, asceticism, etc, that describes the attitude of the EG regarding several areas relevant for game.


3) In the past some people have suggested that there should be some sort of "entity" existing "above" EGs describing each "ethnicity". In that way you could guarantee that romans of different parts of the world have in deed similarities, so it makes sense to call them all "romans". Also, to detect when the cultural profile of one EG has departed far enough from its "original culture", in order to change its name and call it something else. I have strongly opposed to that in the past, mainly because I don't see it's needed and I don't find it realistic either. But if you wanna include it, just do. We'll see later.

Originally posted by MarkEverson The Ethnicity objects do exist in the current code, and are I think needed. It is the object that all identical EGs (ones that share the same nationality, religion, and culture) in a given province share so that each EG in each square doesn't need a detailed cultural profile. People of the Roman Ethnicity in Gaul and in Latium should have cultures that evolve independently, so IMO it is in the same spirit as your original model. It is mostly in the coding details that it differs. Owen may want to comment on this, since he has presumably worked with that part of the code much more recently than I.

Okay, so this is a very big bump...
I shook the social model code a bit. There are things I'm not yet happy with, but it runs. I now have to plug things which actually do something with the data... Note that when there are 2 ethnic groups in a square with the same ethnicity name are in theory possible in the code but would cause problems. I didn't check if this had any meaning.
The current code EthnicGroup is a (shared) ethnicity (set of cultural attributes, culture,...), a nationality, the administration of the square (could be province...) it is in. All this I understand, though I wonder whether nationality should be shared as part of Ethnicity?
Now there are these things: tendencies and culturalAttributes. I understand tendencies as it is explained as: "Eventual equilibrium position that CulturalAttributes will evolve to given current environment". But culturalattributes are not clear. It is said also in the code that " Different ethnic groups with the same ethnicity differ ONLY in their opinions." So I suppose that nationality, tendencies and culturalattrbutes are all 'opinions'.
If anyone can clarify these things for me, that would be greatly appreciated. It is normal that the code uses constructs like Ethnicity which allow to factor in certain concepts, so some differences with design documents are inevitable, but there are still things I'm not sure what they're supposed to do.
Anyway, I'm just activating the code that uses the social model to fuel riots. Looks like it's working, but I must tune things so that a riot actually happens and then I'll see if it works or the game crashes. And then I'll have to fix, tune, fix...

[yellowdaddy]

perhaps culture is quite synonimous with religion (or lack of it).
perhaps it can be defined as in attitudes towards class, women, individual rights v state, democracy, monarchy, violence/pacifism - ie the distinction between pakistanis and indians - their race and language is largely the same, but the pakistanis shook off the caste systme, and now have cultural parity with countrites to their east.
but these things (mentioned above) are quite fluid, and evolve.

going back further
cilmite:foodstuffs,terrain probably ultimately define the nature of the religion - mongols in their tents on the lonely flant plains of northern asia, and polynesians in their tropical atolls. their lifestyle, clothes, art, behaviour is defined by their terrain, climate, flora and fauna.

religions seem to be an early device for educating and controlling a population - what civilisation can evolve from nothing without one?

culture as defined by art, dress, music, food, seems to be entirely down to what's available and the survival needs.
a lot of ancient shamanistic religions from every part of the world seem to be remarkably similar.

are British and Americans, French and Belgians seperate ethnicities or seperate nations?
I think it's clear that they are seperate nations only. (perhaps divided by language?!)
Ethnicity often involves language (including accents) and usually race

so maybe what i'm saying is, that all ethnicities are blank canvasses, defined by their environment.

Stick a Polynesian in the desert and s/he evolves the same kind of culture as an Arab.
Stick an a arab in arctic tundra, s/he evolves Inuit-style culture.
As for whether they're building style goes curvy, square, triangular or pointy - i suppose that's largely to do with environment too - what building materials/climatic concerns.

tendencies - like Greeks and Chinese are more inventive? Apaches and Mongols are more nomadic?
no way, that's almost racist, really.

a nation's definately just a political construct based around economics, and at the early stages with religion as a function of it. unless you define "individualism" as a form of religion?

what do you think?

[LDiCesare]

Culture is not synonimous with religion. In the model, they are the 2 components of the ethnicity. In reality, 2 atheists or 2 catholics can have vastly different cultures.

These are well defined in the model (for reference: http://cullivan.com/coc/models/Model-Social.shtml ).

As I see it, there can only be one EthnicGroup of one Ethnicity in a given square, and I don't get the part about opinions in the code comments, unless opinion is about which nationality they should belong to?

Tendencies is supposed to be the way culture is evolving, not whether one is inventive or something. I am not sure where this lies with regards to the model.
The model says:

The moral codes the EG is exposed to are combined through a weighted sum to form the Tendency Values. Weights, in terms of equations, are created in such way that they ensure:

1) The influence of the religion's moral code over the EG increases with Importance of Religion.

2) The tendency to keep current culture for a longer period increases with Traditionalism.

3) The magnitude with which the govt can influence EG's moral code depends on how "present" the govt is in the province the EG lives in. Here "presence" means govt's capacity of providing an administration the people can "feel" in their daily lives. The Administration Effectiveness Level (AEL) is used for this purpose (see Govt Model).

This doesn't give me much in terms of equations to fill the tendencies object...

[LDiCesare]

Here's some output of the riots produced in-game by some ethnic riotting (figures come from Carthago scenario, which should probably have little of these):

Ethnic Rioting in [[3, 0]]
by EG Gauls
EDF = 0.5 RDF = 0.0
Probability (before suppression): 0.2
Suppression by troops: 0.0
Severity: 0.03716518
General Infrastructure Destroyed: 0.007433057
Government Infrastructure Destroyed: 0.012388408
Production Reduced: 0.0037165284

Ethnic Rioting in [[11, 8]]
by EG Latins
EDF = 0.5 RDF = 0.0
Probability (before suppression): 0.2
Suppression by troops: 0.0
Severity: 0.038845316
General Infrastructure Destroyed: 0.007769048
Government Infrastructure Destroyed: 0.012948453
Production Reduced: 0.003884554

With regards the riots model:
Aggressiveness cultural attribute is not used (yet?) to determine the probability of such an event, and there is nothing yet to repress (suppression by troops or by money spent somewhere).
I think it is important to provide some ways for the player to reduce/prevent/suppress these riots through either spending money or stationning troops. What effect would have troops and money on these riots?
Curent formula is: Probability = 0.8 * ((EDF + RDF)/2), where EDF/RDF are Ethnic/Religious Discrimination Factors. If this leads to 0.4 or more, units can be created, but this is not yet tested (I'll have to devise a scenario for that to happen, where you start with high discrimination factors).

[yellowdaddy]

Culture is not synonimous with religion. In the model, they are the 2 components of the ethnicity. In reality, 2 atheists or 2 catholics can have vastly different cultures.

you mean 1 athiest can have a quite different culture from another?

yes, i think i reached that conclusion when i factored in environment.

what do you mean by culture?


are you planning to make one ethnicity more aggressive (or something) than another as a innate thing that is fixed rather than a cultural thing that can spread or be modified?

if so, what are the pros and cons?

i suppose for your tendencies you might want to have a peek at some social history web pages?!

as far as i know there is a evolution where you start of with a religious state, technology and learning or natural disasters can modify this so it evolves into the the next stage of state where laws and the concept of nationhood evolve.
ancient civilisations won't have much government presence - even ones with good civil services.
it's key inventions/technologies that cause sudden shifts in societal behaviour.


i think it's a shame if you only have one EG per square - if it were set up so that a certain number or population of another ethnicity joined a square's population (EG disbanding a load of foreign military units) there was like an "assimilation threshold"

so you could have a square which was 30% Latin and 70% Gaul, disband loads of roman soldiers and change the balance to the assimilation threshold of say "10% of population" or "10,000 people" and the Gauls would disappear and the population after say 10 years would never be reinstated.

I can see how it'd get annoying having more than four ethnicities in a single square, but two seems a bit tight. you might have a little pie chart! (i'll keep dreaming about a human race simulator...)

but if rival nations are fighting over important border territories with say a port or some resources, then ethnicity could play an important factor in "winning the peace" or "subverting the enemy's military success with insurgency".

opinion might be something like "satisfaction with the quality of life under the current administration"?
(which seems fairly similar to national loyalty, but could include factors like wealth, civil liberties, health, ethno-religious tension?)

[LDiCesare]

what do you mean by culture?

Check out the url I linked above. Culture is all the traits of the ethnic group (moral code, ...).

There is no innate/fixed trait in the model.

i suppose for your tendencies you might want to have a peek at some social history web pages?!

That would be useless. I know the trends, what is supposed to influence what, I just wondered whether someone (Rodrigo) had put equations somewhere which I could reuse directly into the code?

i think it's a shame if you only have one EG per square

Argh! I have not been clear. I ment one EG per ethnicity per square. You can have Latins and Romans in one square. You can't have Latin EG1 and Latin EG2 in one square. That doesn't seem to make sense (what would be the difference between these EG1 and EG2?). Actually this is already the case in Demo 7. I once saw a fight where goblins and humans both raised militia in the Siegewars scenario. No, my point was rather to ask what distinguishes 2 EGs of the same Ethnicity. To me it's only the location, but I may be missing something. This is important because in one case I can move the tendencies (better called trends?) into a separate class instead of having one instance of these per EG.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Laurent:

Sounds like you've made good progress! I have been looking around trying to find anything on tendencies and have come up empty. I've written Rodrigo to let him know that you're working on getting the model going again. I'll try to respond to the other issues when I both have time, and have something informed to say!

[wombat42]

On the integration of language into Clash:

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Seems doable, but I'm not sure we'd enough player enthusiasm to justify it in Clash 1.0. I as a player probably wouldn't notice all the clever things you would have happening in the background. Anyone have opinions?

Actually, that's exactly the kind of thing I was starting to get excited about with Clash... the exquisite realism even down to the point of having languages that evolve. Of course, I'm a wanna-be linguistic nerd and don't know Java, so I can't really help, but still... I had even started to jot down some non-programming-language based flow-charts in case I did learn it someday, along with all of the different letters/phonic units that I could think of... Anyway, my point is, go for it if you can.

[wombat42]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
if the former, then i'm a bit puzzled because there are bits of this game that seem pretty world-simmy to me - the politics and characters elements. I like the ideas in these, but i worry that they will be somehow incomplete without a few other simmy aspects to complement them.

By the way, I'm completely with Yellowdaddy on this, though I'm no programmer either... And personally, I would care much more about language trees and what not than characters. Just seems to be a logical extension of the whole ethnic group system, and the only real difference between this and religion trees is in scale - having 2 or 3 languages in a nation vs. 16 ethnic groups of the same religion.

[yellowdaddy]

ok, re the thing about 2 EGs of the same Ethnicity, and those Latins 1 and 2...

I think surely the obvious answer is Language - or rather a scale from accent->dialect->language
especially if you're talking about those different branches: the Oscans and Faliscans - sister tribes/dialects of the Latins...

i refer you back to that ethnolinguistic tree i posted...

am i off-target with this point?


as for those equations, yes, i'd like have a peep - i'm no programmer, but i'm ok up to "freshman/sophomore" level
(to use the american).


as for the EG definition, I think missing out race and language is a "missed opportunity".

I think part of the answer behind coming up with those equations ought to be having sets of parameters for religions - i do feel that religion (in it's broadest sense i.e.: philosophy) determines a lot of the othe attributes, and environment, defines the religion.

in my original game idea i wanted to have a "religion designer" and a "political system designer" with rows of parameters and flow charts. ( a bit like in Sim Earth and Sim Life).