Government Model v. 3.1

[LDiCesare]

Long-term question but it may have short-term impact.
Will any player be able to influence the policies of other civs?
e.g. Suppose you are the Vatican and another player/ai is medieval France. The Church has some political power, but it takes its orders from the Vatican. How do we model that? Do we?
Note it can lead to fun scenarios like declaring your own church (England) or putting a pope in Avignon (France).
I'll muse on model implications later if that is to be supported someday.

[Mark_Everson]

That's a pretty interesting idea. I don't know if we could pull it off without majorly torquing the system or not. I'd say lets revisit the idea when we are further along.

[Mikael]

Laurent, there's something like that in the Diplomacy Model. In the treaty clauses part, there is the possibility for one player to ask a civ to stop misbehaving. I can't remember the details now, check it out.

[Mikael]

Of course I mean the new diplomacy model...
By the way Mark I like your idea. Playtesting needed, but if the balance is right it would be a nice challenge.
What about solution 3: mass genocide of the baddies?

[Lord God Jinnai]

About the provinces....i think if we go with a mostly computer controlled system where its based simply to be the best of all possible systems once we go into the industrial revolution and beyond you'll have mega-provinces and eventally a 1-2 nation province nation is likely for even huge nations becuase of the technology. Also there would be a lag effect for when the technology was actually administered.

Also there is the use of provinces to 'oppress' EGs that live mostly in a given area. A player may want a province that just has mostly that group in it. Maybe they don't want to oppress them but give them more automomy to hopefully quell rebellious attitudes.

Anyway as far a 'coquered' vs 'occupied' vs 'claimed' territory goes, any territory you're on or have gone through that isn't your own and have destroyed its defenses should be considered 'occupired'. The other way is by having troops build some kind of outpost in unowned area and all ajacent areas are considered occupied. 'Claimed' is territory you simply have gone through that isn't owned already or used to own or claim because of heridity or something. Claimed could be used in the diplomatic model for Cacus Beli sisuations and wouild allow for multiple claimants which was definattly historically a major part of warfare. 'coquered' or 'owned' areas are those you have supposably undisputed jurisdiction over. In a war, you can't 'conquer' anything until the wars end, only occypy. Note that you could techinally recive money from occupied territory in the long run.

[roquijad]

Posted by Fosse in other thread:

Team,
Regardless of the model that gets adopted I am worried that there will not be a fundamental difference in the FEEL of different government types.

In most Civ type games the government you pick just acts as filters for things like unhappieness and economy, which is artificial and feels wrong... and leads to situations in which the most noticable differnce between democracy and communism is that democracies cry when they go to war.

Something I am worrying about with Clash is whether or not I'll be able to tell the difference between being a ruling monarch or an elected official as the leader.

Ruler's influence can of course be altered to simulate how much power is given to monarchs/dictators/presidents/whatever, but will it finally give me the ability to FEEL like I'm actually changing governments instead of picking a different set of filters?

For example, Tudor England. The Church had influence over what the ruler (Henry VIII) could and could not do, so he was able to, as king, simply remove the church and establish a new one that would agree with him. In Clash terms he simply replaced the Ethics polblock that had a Governmet profile he disliked, with one that was more to his liking.

Now, in a modern democracy this is impossible, but as a king will I be able to make such drastic decisions... always bearing in mind that they might come at a cost?

From what it sounds like in the threads and model description is that I won't be able to do things like that... I'll only be able to vote that some blocks get more power while others get less. I know that there may be room for assanations and such (which is great) but Henry was able to do that legally just because he was king.

Another example would be totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.... people with power in Nazi Germany disagreed with Hitler and would even voice that opinion... but it just didn't matter because he did what he wanted.

In short, will the current government I am running under do anything more than change the influence I have over the government profile, which is the filter that my civ's raw resources are sifted through?

I really hope that a democracy will feel like one, while a theocracy will feel like one... am I even making sense?

I hope that this doesn't sound critical, and I hope that I was clear in my question. I applaud the work that is being done and will be happy to comment once I am able to test the current Demos (I'm traveling right now and only able to get on-line in NetCafes... but all I really want is to play the demos!!)

Thanks for your answers, keep up the good work

Fosse: I believe your worries are very valid and in fact, critical. IMO is a must for a govt model to give player the FEEL you mention. I admit that, through all my time as govt model lead, I've never taken the time to explain well what experiences players will have regarding the govt model globally or, in Mark's words, where is the "fun" in this model. That's in part because govt, social and riots models are so inter-related that explaining one is really explaining the three of them and that seem to be too much for a lazy guy like me. But I'll do a little bit of that now:

Although competing for power has some fun of its own, what's gonna give you the FEEL of different regime types is what happens as a consequence of different settings of govt policies. Govt policies are meant to define how your civ behaves in several fields and also define the type of things the ruler can or cannot do. A few examples:

1) The "Foreign Affairs" policy defines how aggresive the ruler is allowed to be in the international arena. When high, the player will be able to declare war, break treaties, etc at will and when it's low the player will be forced to be more peaceful and "civilized". Note this is something that's actually handled in the Diplomacy Model. That model is fed by the govt model (mainly through the foreign affairs variable) to determine player's diplomatic options. FE, the Diplo Model, fed by a low value of FA, may determine that the ruler can break/end an alliance only if the ally has low reputation or is aggresive. So what's the FEEL? When you're in a despotism you'll be able to set FA as high as desired, allowing you to start wars and be as imperialistic as desired, but when in more representative govt, you'll have to live with a FA value that's mainly determined by the masses.... and in general, the masses won't be as enthusastic as you are about wars. Another FEEL: if you're in a fundamentalism (high religious power with intolerant religious policies), the Diplo Model will allow you to be more aggresive with civs having a different religion than with civs sharing your religion. Another FEEL: Even if you don't have a lot of power to set FA as high as you want, if your regime is something like a military dictatorship, then the military may have enough power to enforce an aggresive foreign policy.

2) The Civil Rights policy determines how arbitrary you can be with your own population. A low value will give you the ability to do things like:
2.1) Forced Migrations.
2.2) Apply "martial law" (use military units to crash uprisings)
2.3) Prosecute political adversaries.
Again, when in despotism you'll be able to set a low civil rights value, allowing you to do all those things. But in representative govts you'll live with a CR value set by the masses, who in general don't like those sort of things, so you won't be able to do them. CR can also be used in combination with policies Ethnic Discrimination and Religious Discrimination, so while you may not be allowed to be rude with "majorities", low ED or RD can authorize you to do those nasty things to those poor minorities.

3) Policies Private Property and Social Policies define the type of economy you have. When in despotism you'll be able to set them to the values you want, imposing, FE, a communism even if your population doesn't like it. But in representive govts you'll be forced to accept other settings. In particular, the people of your civ may decide the State has to face more social spending if you're not giving them enough. Another FEEL: The way the govt spends money will depend on who controls the funds (power structure), so, FE, in a religious regime the govt will spend more in religious infra than it would in other forms of govt.

There's a key aspect of the govt model: It does nothing but tell other models what to do about specific things. It tells the Diplo Model what restrictions to apply on player's options. It tells the Econ Model how to manage economy. It tells the Military Model if troops can perform martial law or not. It tells the Riots Model what intelligence measures exist to control uprisings. The FEEL you talk about, as you can see, isn't given directly by the govt model, but by its influence on other models.

In a way, then, the govt model is far from being "finished", since most of those relations with the rest models aren't yet constructed. So far I haven't pushed to create in those other models the necessary links to the govt model, mostly because I think any intervention from the govt model will be easy to implement via already existing paramenters in those models. I might be wrong, but I think if the rest models are well built, which I believe is the case, then when the govt model "comes in" it will only increase/decrease "artificially" some of the variables the models are already handling. The links IMO will be easy to create and so, can wait.

The govt model, on its own, has also some fun to offer, giving you the FEEL you look for: in the last model version I described what I called "one-time hits". They are a way in which the player can change potentially all power structure values and policies values (although in general the change doesn't have to be that dramatic), skipping all the negotiation procedures. It's a way to have important changes immediately. As a cost social classes piss off and also the sense of stability falls (which affects several aspects of the social+govt+riots model), but the thing is, the annoying level of social classes and the degree the stability falls depends on one side on the magnitude of the change, but more importantly, on ruler's prior-to-the-change power. If the ruler is essentially despotic, those type of actions by him are, really, expected, so the damage is low. But when the govt is more representative the ruler is not supposed to make changes like that, "outside the law". The damage will be big. And as a ruler, you can expect strong reactions. That's where the Riots Model gets in charge of the "fun": civil disorder, attempts of murder, military coups...

Summing up, the mere fact of not making the ruler all mighty all the time, as well as adjusting the way the govt model influences the rest models according to the mentality of given social groups (religious, military, etc), will be able to give the FEEL of different govt types. IMO, when all links between models are made, we'll have the sort of things you look for.

Here in the forums govt model's discussions have been mostly focused on exactly how the interaction between the ruler and social class functions in "negotiations", which is really a small piece of the whole plan, although it's certainly important. That's why sometimes the big picture seems less clear. On the other side, my personal effort has been mainly focused on making social classes "think", which is the toughest job. By that, I mean making social classes have an opinion about govt policies and govt power structure according to their "social role" (military mentality, aristocratic mentality, etc) that at the same time must lie in the context of the particular cultural profile of the social class, so we can have, FE, civs with more affinity to religion than others. And if that wasn't enough, I have also to make possible that that opinion change overtime, so FE people can be more willing to accept a despotism in antiquity than they would in modern times. The complexity of that part of the modeling is one of the reasons why I haven't payed yet much attention to how to build the relationships between the govt model and the rest models, that at the end is the part players will experience more directly in gameplay.

I feel we're approaching the time when we'll have to start connecting the govt model to the rest models. But for now I'm not worry about it. Probably within the demos plan the right moment to start working on that will define it.

Regards,
Rodrigo

[Fosse]

Thanks Rodrigo, this cleared things up for me immensly, and I'm even more looking forward to the day when I can test out the government model as it interacts with everything else.

Another question... are the political blocks able to take any actions themselves, or only influence what actions I can and cannot easily take. Would the military hawks, for example, be able to march a legion into a peaceful neighbor's territory if that legion isn't loyal enough to me as the leader?

Which would leave me in the unfortunate position of having to either carry out a war I didn't want or trying to replace my military leaders.... but since those armies might be loyal to them do I reall want to do that? On the other hand the people don't want the war.... so do I face a military coup or a full fledged revolution? And what about that war I just got dragged into?

Or will the model work so that I am allowed or not allowed to attack, and I only need to worry about my polblocks influencing my power?

Or have these questions already been covered and I just haven't looked carefully enough in the right places... so much to read... so many questions....

[roquijad]

No, my plan never included social classes/political blocks acting on their own in things like military conquest. The type of actions they can take (other than participating in politics) are mainly constrained to reactions against the ruler or the central govt. FE, people declaring their province independent; the miliary making a coup to overthrow the ruler; conquered peoples forming guerrillas to fight the invader (the central govt).

I agree the potential for social classes/polblocks acting on their own in several fields makes one's imagination go and things like the ones you mention are very attractive, but I fear the amount of required AI for them would be high. I don't think we should take that road.

have these questions already been covered and I just haven't looked carefully enough in the right places... so much to read... so many questions....

Well, in a way, they're covered, but only if you read in detail the three inter-related models. That's something very few people have done because models' extension. With your questions you're certainly helping other team members to understand better these 3 models, so I'll be glad to answer you other doubts you may have, as long as you don't go into too much detail.

If you want details, then I'll have to ask you to read carefully the documents in the web site first.... ok?

[Mark_Everson]

My next big item for me after Demo 7.2 is to try to get the Govt model working again. To that end I thought that boosting this thread up would be worthwhile. I am going to reference here the threadAlternative "Negotiation System" for Govt Model - opinions needed!! since that is the direction the govt negotiation model was headed when last it was discussed.

[LDiCesare]

Ouch, this is a big bump...
As I implemented riots, I wanted to allow people to prevent them but it shouldn't be that easy, so I plugged the interface to the government model, AS IT WAS CODED. It's been a while since the last discussion (see thread pointed to by Mark above), but here's what the UI looks like now.
The figures to the right are the resulting value after the negociated policies kicked in. (There's currently a one-turn delay so the feedbacl is poor, but I should be able to handle that soon.) Check the Ethnic Discrimination value of 45 while the ruler's preference is 0.
Note the model used is an average of all values, not a NS system or whatever we talked about in the other thread Mark linked in the above post.
The NS system would be better than what we have now as it would block Machiavelism. The last system described in the other thread would require more things in the user interface (a toggle or slider for priority for each and every policy). See my comments in the other thread.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Laurent, good to see this step forward. I think the old approach to negotiations (essentially a weighted average) is fine for getting the system going. It is more important to get players interacting with the overall system, the best negotiation system can come later with playtesting. I can't wait to have this working in a scenario!

[LDiCesare]

I've been using an approach from the user towards the model in my coding so far. This means I started by the UI and negociated policies, gave each powerblock a set of preferences, and checked the negociated policies stuff was working. The actual power distribution is also determined in a file.
I'm now working on the lower layer, where the preferences for each power block are computed from the social classes.
<rant>
Who coded SocialGroup?
This class and others revolvng around it have lots of stuff computing a GovernmentProfile, the whole thing being called in Administration.updateGovernmentPolicies(). This method is, of course, never called by anyone Icould find. It looks like it is supposed to update some government profile, whether a desired or actual profile I don't know. Does anyone know what this thing is about?
Also, why is SocialGroup the name of the class best mapping the model's social class?
I hate bits of code dangling around unconnected to anything useful.
</rant>

If I get the equations right, the model requires knowledge of the current government in order to compute the people's preferences:

p=E*RPW + W*MPW + K*CPW
RPW is the political power of the Religious Block in the Current Govt Profile.
MPW is the political power of the Military Block in the Current Govt Profile.
CPW is the political power of the Capitalists Block in the Current Govt Profile.
Civil Rights=EmpireStability*((0.5*(IND-TRAD)-p)/(1-p)

What's the rationale behind this? Is it that people want more liberty if they have more?
And what if IND == TRAD in this equation?
I'm also puzzled by the comment:

Note for me: la libertad que realmente goza una clase es CR*(1-p)+p

Since a class wants a liberty of 1, it wants 1 = CR*(1-p)+p thus 1-p = CR*(1-p) thus CR=1. What's p doing here? And what name could I give to 'p'?
The tax rate also depends on this p factor.

There are two reasons why I'd like to understand the p stuff, which is current government dependant:
-One is I can't put a name on it, and don't like to not understand what I'm doing. The rationale on why one's preferences for an ideal government depend on the current government escapes me. I'd understand a link to known governments, some tech or stuff, but don't get this one.
-Second one is this implies I would have to update every ethnic group in every square whose civ changes. This means adding a pointer from the social class (SocialGroup object) to its square/government. This has implications in the code I don't want to start doing until I understand the underlying reasons.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
<rant>
Who coded SocialGroup?

It doesn't look familiar to me. But OTOH, if it's screwed up that increases the likelihood that I did it!

If I get the equations right, the model requires knowledge of the current government in order to compute the people's preferences:

That is also my take on it.

And what if IND == TRAD in this equation?

Yeah, that's a problem. Obviously either a typo or an error.

There are two reasons why I'd like to understand the p stuff, which is current government dependant:
-One is I can't put a name on it, and don't like to not understand what I'm doing.

Based on a limited review... I'd call p something like the Social Class' Effective Influence in the current govt. It's not exactly that, but that's the closest I can come.

I have no clue on the rest of your questions. Unfortunately, Rodrigo is on vacation all this month, and didn't expect to have internet access. Given that is the case, I'd advise getting this working in a crudely sensible fashion with minimal code complications, and revisiting it when Rodrigo is back.

[edit] fix bad tags

[yellowdaddy]

small question relating to the Fosse & Roquijiad bit a couple of posts back:

In a Democracy will you be able to campaign (for an unpopular policy)? even it's just a matter of increasing funds on a "campaign fund" bar or pressing a button called "campaign"

I'm thinking of the recent Iraq war, where some populations (UK!) were perhaps a little reticent, and were campaigned upon (?) intensely by their leader (Blair!) and the resistance to war was lowered - is this going to be possible in any sense in Clash?

{ - how about if you could bribe barbarians or other units to attack/destroy one of your own assets (perhaps bordering with a state you want to fight) in order to influence public opinion?!}

[LDiCesare]

quote:
If I get the equations right, the model requires knowledge of the current government in order to compute the people's preferences:


That is also my take on it.

Except of course this leads to circular dependencies. I have to compute the actual government profile, which depends on every social class profile, which depends on the government profile. I could store a current and previous profile, but that leaves open the question of how do I initialize the thing?

I'm struggling with the equations. I hope I got something wrong somewhere. Right now people are wanting the government to pay taxes to them (negative tax rates - actually VERY negative tax rates), which doesn't work very well... But then they do riot quite well.