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F_Smith
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Austin, Tx 78728
May 1999
time: 05:13
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Govt -- one per civ, gotcha.
Altho, will that force a single tax rate thru your 'empire'? That, at least, seemed to require some govt info stored at the province level.
Am I mistaken?
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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F_Smith:
1)One govt per civ. Eventually will have some sort of ProvGov object, but leave that aside for the moment because it's unclear yet what exactly to do there.
2)Each mapsquare contains a collection of ethnic groups with (until now) only one info: population. I'm leaning to the possibility of adding a couple more variables at that level, but all cultural attributes and all other ethnic info is at the civ level (as info stored in ethnic groups objects), not at the square nor province level.
3)It's "majorities" that's divided by classes, not ethnic groups. Classes objects should be treated at the civ level, maybe as a sub-object of a "majorities object". The majorities object would be what in the govt model is called MCA (see govt model appendices).
4)Each class doesn't holds a "culture". Cultural info is stored in ethnic groups objects and majorities also holds some info too.
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited July 07, 2000).]
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F_Smith
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Austin, Tx 78728
May 1999
time: 05:13
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I'll go ahead and include a minimal 'Govt' object at the province level, for now. If only to hold tax rate. But it does leave open the possiblity to be able to model a 'city/state' confederacy type of Civ like the Ancient Greeks, in which each city/state has it's own, very different type of govt. Otherwise, there's just no way to fit Sparta and Athens in the same Civ . . .
Rodrigo:
Considering 'culture': In the code I have, you can, as scenario designer, choose to default all SocialClass Culture attributes to that of the 'Civ'-level culture. But you aren't forced to do so.
About the next, I'm confused. I don't see how the code can work this way, actually, but I probably missed something.
Each turn, all people in a mapsquare must be 'looped thru' only once. That means a 'hierarchy' of encapsulation, to my mind, is a must. I have assumed so far that in a turn we will:
1) Loop thru all EGs in a MapSquare.
2) Loop thru all 'SocialClasses' in an EG, and do 'turn' logic on those people.
There is not really a need for a 'majority' object, on the code level. 'EthnicGroups' are sub-divisions of that object, so the EG collection functionally *is* the 'Majority'. So that info, when needed, can be assembled. And the possibility for more control is there, for later.
Finally, each smallest group of people to be looped thru (SocialClass, in my assumptions above) will by necessity have to hold a reference to the Cultural attributes they will use during turn logic, for turn logic purposes. These can all be to the exact same 'Civ' level cultural attributes, as I said, in keeping with your vision.
But that is not the only possible way. More depth is available. The code will allow you to have an EG with 1000 people in a 'Warrior' class, 1000 people in an 'Asthetic' class and 1000 people in a 'Laborer' class, each with their own, distinct culture. Each with their own wants and needs. So you may be forced (if a scenario designers so chooses) to balance the wants and needs of these divergent groups of people.
Or, they can all simply be 'Etruscans', and use 'Etruscan' Cultural attributes, for gamers that want the simplicity.
Is this acceptable?
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axi
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Athens Greece
Sep 1999
time: 07:13
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The heat wave is raging here in Greece (today we reached 46 Celsius in Athens) and this virtually keeps me away from my computer, since the room is not air-conditioned. My summer vacations period commences on Saturday, so I may be generally more availiable, or I may be gone for a month; I have not made plans yet. On to the point:
quote:
This is the actual way that it was at many points in history, so I really objective a whole model being screwed up just so that Axi can have ideological purity in the model.
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I will have to repeat myself, in order to make things clear. quote:
I don't understand why Mark and Rodrigo are so afraid of my reactions to their thoughts about the Middle Class. Do I look like a fanatic?
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I did not create this model, so I would not have any rights of mental ownership on it, even if I aknowledged the existence of such rights. What I was trying to underline is the real IMHO cause for the existance of classes in a society, which is the differences in economic role rather than in the income. I think that this point is well understood, so if there is a Middle Class after all, it's origine will not be in the range of it's income but in it's source. I have already described in which way a whole social spectrum, ranging from the lowest income to the highest can be divided in as much as four sections, the middle two consisting the so called middle class. In order that the income range has any meaning in class repartitions we have to assume the same consumption/investment ratio, the same labor to capital ratio, the same revenue for capital invested for everybody inside the spectrum and finally that nobody works more than he needs to pay for his consumption, even if he is able to do so. If all these conditions are met, then income is the sole factor that determines in which class a person belongs.
This accounts for all kinds of historical references that one can imagine. The peasants of Mark's example, since they are independent, they are actually Middle Class, belonging to the third group of the spectrum (according to my definition), although their income is at subsistence level. This happens because the primary sector has (had) a much higher labor to capital ratio than say the tertiary sector. All the peasants needed was the land (which in the primary sector may be considered as the natural resources of the production function), a little infrastructure and tools (the capital) and lots of working hands (the labor). He who can provide, by himself or by trading what is missing, all three factors, owns the machine. These people were independant farmers - they owned their farms. If they were seamen, providing transportation for merchant activities (services, ala tertiary sector), their production function would require more capital (a ship) than what they could afford, so they couldn't own the enterprise. The shipowner would provide the capital needed and would pay the seamen for their labor. He would then be true UC (if he were just the owner) or independent MC (if he were the captain, working - by need, not by whim - in his vessel). A company executive, with the same income with the captain, would also be MC (since he will undoubtadly have stocks or sth - in other words capital invested), but will in the same time be dependent, since he lacks the capital to open his own firm, so he needs to work for others. His only difference with his employees would be that they have no stocks - no capital. As you can see, LCRs can be very different from time to time and from trade to trade, even in the same sector.
Now, how do we turn this into a game? When it comes to wrap things up in a code many questions rise. FSmith, from a programmer's point of view, has bumped up a few. How do we define classes and how many do we need? Is class distinction only based in economy? How do the other classes stand up to this - how do we define their roles? What is their contribution and what distinctions can be made, based on the different social contributions of each class? Shouldn't we keep the class system a bit flexible, so that alternative societies can be modeled by other visionaries?
What can belong in this system? With italics is what we have decided so far.
Contributions
- Labor - Economic contribution, needed by the production function.
- Capital - Economic contribution, needed by the production function.
- Sites - Economic contribution, needed by the production function, but only for the primary sector, since the secondary needs only extracted resources and both the secondary and the tertiary have unlimited sites.
- Administration - Social contribution, providing guidance and decision making, according or opposing the society's values.
- Security - Social contibution, needed to assure the society's survival and independance.
- Ethics - Social contibution, needed to form and maintain a set of values and beliefs.
- Innovation - Social (?) contribution, needed for the progress of the society, socially and technologically, which affects economy as well, throught the production function.
- More???
Classes
a) Plain
- Labor Class - Provides only Labor
- Capitalist Class - Provides only Capital
- Military Class - Provides only Security
- Religious Class - Provides only Ethics
- Bureaucratic Elite - Provides only Administration
- Landowning Nobility - Provides only Sites
- Scientific Elite - Provides only Innovation[/i]
b) Complex
- Upper Class - Provides Capital + Sites
- Middle Class - Labor + Capital + Sites
- Intellectual Elite - Innovation + Ethics
- Enterpreneur Class - Administation + Innovation
- Feudal Nobility - Sites + Administration + Security
- Religious Warriors Class - Security + Ethics
- More???
Note: As an afterthought, doesn't this seem deja-vu? These seven contributions I just mentioned, and the corresponding plain classes, don't they seem familiar? You see, this reminds me very much of SMAC (original) and it's seven factions. If you grant that the Hive represents Labor and the Gaians represent Sites, all the others are obvious. It seems like the classes from our model found out their differences on their way to AC and, led by extremists, formed the seven warring factions (in a very kitch - american way I must add  ). I think that Brian Reynolds and his team subconsciously tapped into the essence of the powers that be in the world. In some societies, some contributions are considered much more important than others. So how can the same model represent two elementally different societies, such as the Middle Ages (where Land was everything) and the 21st century (where Science will be everything)? But on with my main line of thought...
These lists could be extended indefinitely, especially if we were to add more outlandish contributions such as Magic (Mysticism). The fact is that if there is no class specialised for it, the contribution would be considered common. If f.e. there is no class providing Ethics, then everybody is considered to develop his own, if no class provides Capital, there is common ownership of the means of production, if no class provides Administration, there is anarchy (in the primitive or the utopian sense) and so on. In every case, the number of classes should remain at a minimum. Including Plain Classes (or complex that have a monopoly on all their contributions such as the UC until now) is an easy task. Including Complex Classes would be a very tricky in the details and in the best case it will be as hard to do as with the Middle Class. The problem with non-economic contributions and non-demographic classes (classes whose contributions are economic) is that there is no production function with which to evaluate their contributions and derive their revenues. And if we cannot derive their revenues, we can have no demographic share for them, no PCI, nothing but a nominal + a de facto Political Power, a cultural profile and some PAFs. Then we admit that not all classes are essentially the same and we divide along the lines of social/economic contributions, which feels bad. Because if we lived in a spiritual rather than material society, social contributions would be valued more than the economic ones.
In order to prevent Rodrigo and/or Mark from totally freaking out, I will surpass this issue from the time being and concentrate on the MC (Let this be the abbreviation for it from now on, the Military Class can be known as Warriors Class - WC  ). The problem is how do we divide the income spectrum, so that it's form corresponds to the attributes of the classes. I have tried to achieve this with the two Plain Classes, but I still don't know if this works. Below I present one case of class distribution, along the line of percentile contribution of Labor and Capital to their income, which is more correspondent to the political profile than the plain income range (the cantilever rule applies). The spectrum in these examples consists of 5 groups, but one could have much more, if one wants to do number crunching. The population is 50 heads (50.000 people) and I assumed ID=8.
__________________________________________________
___________
000% - 18 (18-0) -------- LC=36%
025% - 14 (10,5-3,5) ----------------------- LCdem=70% --- wages=22,6% --- LCpci=0,32xPCI
050% - 10 (5-5) ---------- MC=60%
075% - 06 (1,5-4,5) ------------------------- UCdem=30% --- profits=77,4% --- UCpci=2,58xPCI
100% - 02 (0-2) ---------- UC=4%
_____=50_____________=100%__________=100%_________
=100%
The problem is that in our game the spectrum will not be given but required. I also think that ID will not be given too, what will probably be given by the econ model is the wages/profits analogy and from that, in combination with the essential demographic shares, ID and the PCIs will be derived. But how can the existance of the MC also be derived from this? I am still pretty confused about this.
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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
[This message has been edited by axi (edited July 07, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by axi (edited July 07, 2000).]
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F_Smith
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Austin, Tx 78728
May 1999
time: 05:13
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Feedback wanted, please:
Clash Object/Scenario Editor, Mark I
http://home.austin.rr.com/lostmerch...lashEditor.html
Just a test for compatability. Please hit this page, and if you experience any errors or bugs, post them in one of the 'coders' threads.
Not any real functionality yet, other than being able to add a basic 'Ethnic Group' to a few basic 'MapSquares'. But updates coming along soon.
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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F_Smith:
That's a toy I think we'll enjoy playing with... Great! I didn't find problems playing with it, as long as the edit/build buttons on the left were meant to do nothing at this time...
I'll answer coding things in the other thread.
Axi:
1)You don't look like a fanatic. I'm not either affraid of your reactions. I actually enjoy many of them.... It's your kind of socialistic ideology that gives these topics a greater flavor and makes us predict what you like and what not...
2)I didn't understand well the table of your example.
3)military=WC... simply a genius! 
Everybody:
I'm going to merge in this post some coding issues with the current discussion on the middle class. I've problems organizing things in my mind, so expect some chaos and rumbling...
Here I go: The govt model has a great weakness in "expandability". While developing it, I (and I guess Axi too) never thought about the posibility of having an arbitrary number of classes or to add/change/remove classes. After seeing OC3 govt model approach, I realized some people might desire to have lots of classes. In OC3 they're already talking about "large farmers", "small farmers", etc, which for my taste is too much detail, but it doesn't look bad for others. On the coding side, it won't be easy for a scenario developer to create other classes and their behavior, and most of times it would need extensive coding by the scenario designer himself, which is not my mental idea of scenario designing. This happens because in the current govt model classes' behavior is not created straight forward and in the same fashion for all of them. UC and LC behavior is given by a set of cultural characteristics called MCA, while the RC takes values from another set called RCM. Each, MCA and RCM, are computed using very different procedures. Also, the military class uses UC and LC values plus a special mathematical formulation for choosing ideologies. So, almost each class have its own way to compute its behavior, and this not only includes different variables, but also very different procedures. This usage of different modeling for each class makes deeply harder an attempt to create a totally new political environment. Adding a new class can be an imposible task for a model developer, unless it's very similar to one of the already existent classes.
On the other side, how the model uses "ideologies" presents another problem. Ideologies have fixed values and they should cover all the relevant regimes the game is expected to have. If a scenario designer chooses to have 10 classes instead of the original setting, the number of ideologies needed for the minimum flavor increases Extensively.
Ideologies have yet another problem. For representative regimes, pol.power shares must go according to demographic shares. Since pol.power shares are fixed in ideologies, this means the ideology itself needs to determine demographic shares, so coherency can be obtained. This isn't much of a problem with the current classes we're dealing with (excluding middle class) if we accept demographic shares are given by the values of PP, EP and SP, but if now one imagines adding/changing classes, then the relationship between demographic shares and ideologies can be very complicated.
IMO the govt model is simply not expandible. If this characteristic is a must in the team's view, then a radical change is needed in the model. I never thought about expanding classes, so it's my mistake.
I agree with Axi about "plain" and "complex" classes. Having the plain classes you guarantee the game has what's needed as a minimum, while having/adding complex classes is tricky and it's unclear where to cut and stop adding classes, because the possibilities are endless.
Now, about adding the middle class to this fixed, not expandible model, I think we can find a way to do it. But I'm having second thoughts about it. First, why do we really need it? Mark, you said there can be some problems in the econ model. What are they? Second, the typical concept of the middle class won't match with the modeling. This happens because I agree with Axi about defining class behavior based on econ role and not on income, while the typical idea of the middle class is an income category. Defining classes behavior based on econ role is IMO a must. In a kind of socialism where the govt forces UC and LC income to be more similar, it won't be true their mentalities would become similar too, so income doesn't define behavior. Third, if econ role defines behavior, then the middle class provides capital and income. The exact amount it provides of each will be an arbitrary decision. Depending on this decision the middle class would have different behaviors and then I wonder what flavor are we looking for this class to add.
I'd be happy to see more arguments on the real need for the middle class.
On another note, probably names of classes should be changed so people can see clearer their role. Instead of UC and LC, we should call them something like Aristocray and Labor Force, FE.
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Lord God Jinnai
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St. Louis
Sep 1999
time: 23:13
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rodrigo:
-----
Here I go: The govt model has a great weakness in "expandability". While developing it, I (and I guess Axi too) never thought about the posibility of having an arbitrary number of classes or to add/change/remove classes. After seeing OC3 govt model approach, I realized some people might desire to have lots of classes. In OC3 they're already talking about "large farmers", "small farmers", etc, which for my taste is too much detail, but it doesn't look bad for others. On the coding side, it won't be easy for a scenario developer to create other classes and their behavior, and most of times it would need extensive coding by the scenario designer himself, which is not my mental idea of scenario designing. This happens because in the current govt model classes' behavior is not created straight forward and in the same fashion for all of them. UC and LC behavior is given by a set of cultural characteristics called MCA, while the RC takes values from another set called RCM. Each, MCA and RCM, are computed using very different procedures. Also, the military class uses UC and LC values plus a special mathematical formulation for choosing ideologies. So, almost each class have its own way to compute its behavior, and this not only includes different variables, but also very different procedures. This usage of different modeling for each class makes deeply harder an attempt to create a totally new political environment. Adding a new class can be an imposible task for a model developer, unless it's very similar to one of the already existent classes.
On the other side, how the model uses "ideologies" presents another problem. Ideologies have fixed values and they should cover all the relevant regimes the game is expected to have. If a scenario designer chooses to have 10 classes instead of the original setting, the number of ideologies needed for the minimum flavor increases Extensively.
Ideologies have yet another problem. For representative regimes, pol.power shares must go according to demographic shares. Since pol.power shares are fixed in ideologies, this means the ideology itself needs to determine demographic shares, so coherency can be obtained. This isn't much of a problem with the current classes we're dealing with (excluding middle class) if we accept demographic shares are given by the values of PP, EP and SP, but if now one imagines adding/changing classes, then the relationship between demographic shares and ideologies can be very complicated.
IMO the govt model is simply not expandible. If this characteristic is a must in the team's view, then a radical change is needed in the model. I never thought about expanding classes, so it's my mistake.
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IMO some kinda balance is needed. It doesn't haveto be as customizable as the technology model is (which you can add/delete/change any application tech and probably and basic tech, pretty much anything but the technology engine itself).
You said yourself you don't want scerio designers to get frustrated at designing new kindof classes for scerios. IMO if you want to design a class for a scerio that cannot be done any other way, you should be able to do that. FE: One might want a small, but non-the-less important "Gestapo" type class or in an expansion for magic and such a wizard class (which i want and if there was an add-on for this could probably boost clash's userbase alot, atleast the people i know,but that's for later since right now were working on clash in the real world).
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I agree with Axi about "plain" and "complex" classes. Having the plain classes you guarantee the game has what's needed as a minimum, while having/adding complex classes is tricky and it's unclear where to cut and stop adding classes, because the possibilities are endless.
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Here's an idea: Have the 7 basic classes be unchangable in the program itself, ie scerio designers haveto work with that (expasions maybe might add pyschic and wizard classes, but like i stated earlier, that's FAR down the road). Then if they want more classes, they can make them from the more complex class part. Just an idea, so if it can't be done oh well.
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F_Smith
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Austin, Tx 78728
May 1999
time: 05:13
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Agreed, 'Ideology' is a problem.
I'm stuck on trying to code that now. I'm thinking on my feet, but how about this, it's very similar to what you have above, but reorganized --
Each SocialClass has/chooses an Ideology, as above.
An Ideology holds:
1) Tolerance for ruler absolutism (a %?).
2) Their preference on govt spending (econ, social, military).
3) A list of Social classes the ideology has an opinion about. If no opinion, then a 'default' value will be used.
Then a Govt has a 'PowerStructure' object, which defines which SocialClasses have which level/percent of political power in that govt?
Then using these two, you could achieve all you asked above, and still expand it to include any number and type of Social Classes.
Perhaps I'll try this. Maybe it'll fail miserably. I'm just not sure how else to proceed, and I feel like coding. What the heck, I'll give it a spin.
That's what a prototype is for, eh? So that after seeing what you don't want, it'll be more obvious what the right way to do it is!
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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:13
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Hi everybody:
Man, there has been a lot of action since I was last here... I'm going to respond to the coding debate in the other thread.
Unless I'm missing something, the only other thing that I really need to respond to is Rodrigo's question about the problems in the Econ model when there is only a lower and upperclass. (And also taking as the definition that the lower class cannot control any capital or land.) I have already described the problem in my post of July 5. I will elaborate on it a little bit here. The main problem comes near subsistence. If we assume that the UC controls all capital and land, it is natural to assume that they get a part of the profits proportional to the capital and land value in the production process. So I have assumed in trying to match the economic and government models that the class that controls a particular input to the production process gets a proportional amount of the production to call theirs. To figure out the value of each input to the production process (labor, capital, and land in the farm sector for example) I assume that the marginal productivity due to that resource indicates its value in the production process.
To make this concrete, the values that are at the top of the Econ spreadsheet for the very poor low-tech province show the extra amount produced if adding a single unit of each of labor, land, and capital in the farming sector. These amounts are 3.68 for labor, 0.93 from land, and 0.81 from capital. So if we assume that the UC gets all the food produced due to its contributions (both land and capital) in the current model it will get (0.93+ 0.81)/(3.68+ 0.93+ 0.81) = 32% of the food credited to it. Only the remaining 68% would be what the LC could call its own. So even Before Any Taxation the food left to the LC would be 68% x 5.27 = 3.6 units of food. This is on the brink of catastrophic starvation! (4 units of food per head are required for minimal nutrition and no net population growth) At this level of food the population will be declining approximately 1% per year! And this is a province with pretty good agricultural land, it would be much worse in a less well-endowed province.
So that is why I think we need one of two things, either an LC that allows for some control of capital, or a middle class. I think Axi's suggestion about calling free subsistence farmers middle class is basically a good one... We could also mess around with the way the Econ model works to avoid this problem, but the Econ model also has a lot of work in it, and is somewhat difficult to balance. I have already cited numerous other arguments for why a middle class is, I think, a good idea, and I won't repeat them here.
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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I don't see a real need for the Middle Class, but I guess we can just go for it so everybody is happy. I find more interesting Mark's proposal to find a way to build class' behavior in a more general way to increase flexibility. I think it can be done and I'll see how to do it.
As for the discussion about ideologies, I believe the concept is right, so we need ideologies in the model somehow. Ideologies fix the problem of classes caring only about themselves, so you can find a happy WC in a regime with low WC pol.power if they actually believe that's good. Ideologies are IMO the most important ingredient we added compared with the old model and they provide several other good features such as a true-to-life modeling of revolutions. Maybe actual implementation can be changed, preserving the concept, so more classes can be added without destroying the core of what they're giving us now. I'll think about other ways to implement them. If you can give it a thought too, Axi, it'll be appreciated.
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F_Smith
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Austin, Tx 78728
May 1999
time: 05:13
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Okay:
The beast is about ready to be put to work. After some cosmetic cleanup, I'll be spending time on the turnhandler code tonight. Which leaves me with a few questions:
[*]Tax Rate -- Right now, the govt's tax rate policy automatically becomes the ruler's tax rate pref after one turn. I was wondering if the majority EthnicGroup (in the proportions of the govt's power structure) should have a say in taxation.
[*]Numbers -- As I look at and play with this, it is slightly confusing for slavery and a few others to not use the 0%-100% range. Might just be me, but should we standardize the numbers?
[*]Economic Class v. 'Job' -- it made most sense, from a data storage viewpoint, to seperate these two. But this will be seamless and invisible to the player. The values will cumulate and look exactly as ya'll have laid out.
[*]Political Power Structure -- right now, the player can set the %'s. I assume that they have to add up to 100% total (might have been in the text and I missed it)? I think perhaps I'm suppose to have a selection of govt types (the ones in the 'ideologies' section of the govt post) for the player to chose from? If so, anyone want to come up with values there?
[/list=a]
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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Hi F_Smith,
I tried to play with the beast last night and windows crashed while doing it. I'll try again tonight to give you more feedback.
As for the questions you rise now,
1)It's perfect how you have it now. We haven't invented a way (in terms of equations) to make a class choose a desired tax rate. Probably it won't be ness. either. Keept it how you have it.
2)There're some good reasons for the ranges I chose. It has to do with the outcomes needed. Preserve ranges as they're.
3)Job? I don't know what you mean, but if it's something you'll keep hidden and I can still be thinking of our regular social classes, I don't mind.
4)Yes, they have to sum 100%. The numbers come from a math process considering cultural values, ruler's preferences and ideologies values. If for the moment you prefer to keep it editable so we can put whatever numbers we want, that's alright. Implementation of the math process can come later.
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F_Smith
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Austin, Tx 78728
May 1999
time: 05:13
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Hi, Rodrigo:
Oh, god, I'm sorry it crashed Windoze. That's not suppose to happen with Java, altho using IE as the platform can create problems. If it happens again, please let me know. Do be warned, the GUI stuff is *very* slow to load . . . my webspace is the freebie space that comes with my cable modem, and it's poor. Altho on my machine here at home it loads in about 15-20 seconds (at work it takes about 30-40 seconds).
The downloadable zip (which doesn't have the newest stuff yet, maybe I'll put that together tommorrow) has an application that alleviatest that problem, if you don't have a cablemodem yourself.
I am dying to get your feedback. I'm sure I've missed the boat on a few things, and I'm anxious to finish this baby and get on to other models.
Just f.y.i. -- for 'filing' purposes I've seperated the 'economic classes' (uc/mc/lc/slaves) from the 'job/social classes' (religious, military, govt, etc). They'll act the same, from ya'lls standpoint.
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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GOVT MODEL UPDATE
For the last weeks I've been considering how to increase flexibility and scalability concerning social classes. This was triggered by F_Smith and others who wanted to see more classes than the ones I and Axi considered originally for the model. Unfortunately, I don't bring good news. I decided to change a couple of things to allow some more flexibility, but it's far from being what some of you wanted.
In order to let you all know why adding more classes is no easy task, I'm gonna enter in some details. Hopefuly this will help understanding the problem.
From the computational point of view, it's quite easy to add any number of social classes. You just have to add more objects and that's it. The problem comes in modeling classes' behavior. Objects hold two things. Data and procedures for the data. Procedures take data and process it with some equations to produce something we call "class' behavior", which is nothing but another set of numbers we interpret as classes' decisions. In order to have an arbitrary number of classes AND their behaviors, we need equations (procedures) that are common to all of them. Having common equations for all social classes is what makes possible scalability, because if you need to code new procedures for new behaviors each time you add a social class, then you have to admit there's no real scalability.
Having a common set of equations for all social classes assumes their behavior is similar. In that case it's the data (class' attributes) that produces the small differences. This is FE what we see in the military area. Each time we want to add a new unit, we just specify its attributes (attack strength, speed, etc) and the game engine uses the same procedures with these new numbers to generate the unit's behavior in the battle field. And this is good because military units are indeed very similar. Having a common set of equations for all units (of most of them) makes sense and therefore you have scalability.
Unfortunately this is not the case with social classes. If one starts to imagine classes like "farmers", "scientists", "religious warriors", "land-based aristocracy", "trade-based aristocracy", "freed slaves", "greenpeace fighters", "jedi knights", "elves", "robots", and a very long "etc", then it's pretty obvious that behaviors can get to be very different. If you try to create a set of equations valid for all of them it becomes a monumental task. Having a set of equations common to all classes was very problematic when I was developing the model and I only had 5 classes! I actually didn't achieve it. I found that to have a reasonable and believable class behavior for each of them I needed class-specific procedures in many parts of the game. Generic (or parametric)equations are hard to create, specially if you want social classes to have a sophisticated behavior like the one we're trying to implement.
Equation sophistication is just a part of the problem. Data input you need for behavioral equations will not be entirely held in classes' attributes. Scientists will be interested in tech variables, aristocrats in economic data, greepeace in ecological data, etc. A generic class behavior equation would actually have to access all available info in the game!
It's the nature of human behavior that complicates things. It can be so complex and different from group to group that it's ambicious to resume it all in a few equations, even if you are focusing only in some aspects of behavior.
Coding will allow us to create any number of social classes we want, but we have to realize this coding flexibility doesn't mean game flexibility. When a new social class is added, it will use the same procedures older ones used and so, class' behavior will be almost the same. The new social class is useless and senseless. It will behave as the others do, which means the game hasn't really changed. You can add 20 more classes and the same happens. We'd be fooling ourselves if we trust that adding more social_class objects will bring us new and different scenarios.
So, I'm sorry to say it, but the model doesn't have the capacity to scale up. One solution is to change the model and create a new one with a much simpler behavior for social classes. Simple enough so we can have generic procedures for all classes. But I wouldn't take that road. On one side the model will lose flavor and in the other it implies a more homogeneous behavior for all classes (as it happens with military units), and homogenity is the greatest enemy to social classes, because the fun in having more classes is having new behaviors.
The other solution is to allow scenario designers to code new behaviors. Add a class and code whatever it feels good for the class behavior. But, well, if players can get into coding, the word "game flexibility" takes another meaning...
This ends my explanation. Now I present to you the update to the govt model. It will allow having an arbitrary number of the so-called "economic classes". The model originally included the Upper Class and the Lower Class. With this update we can (if we want) include the Middle Class and as many other economic classes we want without reducing behavior flavor we have till now. The model, then, will have N economic classes, plus the Warriors Class (formerly known as Military Class), the Religious Class and the Bureaucratic Elite.
The update replaces UC and LC behavior equations with a generic set of behavior equations for "Socio-economic classes" (I hope the word "socio-economic" exists in english). I prefer the term "socio-economic" to simply "economic" because class behavior will be given by economic role AND cultural info. The scenario designer and we (when creating the "by default" game setting) have to choose a number of socio-economic classes and for each of them need only to specify 1)the degree in which the socio-economic class controls kapital and 2)the degree in which it provides labor. The exact measure in which both variables will be handled is still TBD depending on how they best serve the econ model. Political and economic behavior for socio-economic classes will be given using these two variables and cultural info from the social model. Equations for socio-economic classes' behavior will wait until we decide how variables for provision of kapital and labor will be measured. Equations shouldn't be a problem once that is solved.
One of the problems of adding more classes was ideologies. Ideologies were meant to have a list of all social classes and their respective political powers. Adding more social classes would make the list longer, which isn't a problem, but would complicate defining how any govt type should look like regarding pol.power distribution and would also encourage the introduction of an important amount of extra ideologies. To solve this, instead of a list of all classes, ideologies will posses this info:
Ruler's pol.power
People's pol.power
Capitalists pol.power
Religious Class pol.power
Warrior Class pol.power
(if you don't know why the Bureaucratic Elite doesn't appear here, refer to the model document)
This means Upper Class pol.power and Lower Class pol.power were replaced by People's pol.power and Capitalists pol.power. People's pol.power is pol.power granted to the masses in terms "one man, one vote". This means a social class has access to this pol.power proportionally to its demographic share. The RC and WC are very small because they're respectively the religious leaders and the high officers of the army. Then, demographically they're assumed to have a share of 0%. Then, only socio-economic classes have relevant demographic sizes and therefore only them have access to People's pol.power. Demographic shares for each socio-economic class are given by a TBD procedure currently in discussion in the govt-econ thread.
Capitalists pol.power is the pol.power granted to socio-economic classes that provide kapital. These classes have access to this pol.power proportionally to the amount of kapital controlled.
Having ideologies defined like this implies that socio-economic classes have a total pol.power computed as the sum of the People's pol.power granted in terms of demography (which may be interpreted as "votes") and the Capitalists pol.power granted because of its control over kapital (which may be interpreted as aristocracy privieleges).
Just as an example, the ideology for a democracy would look like this:
Ruler's pol.power___________20%
People's pol.power__________80%
Capitalists pol.power_______0%
Religious Class pol.power___0%
Warrior Class pol.power_____0%
Even though Capitalists pol.power is null, socio-economic classes providing kapital have pol.power anyway through People's pol.power, but only proportionally to their demographic share. In this way, you can see why Capitalists pol.power can be considered a priveledge. It gives more power than the demographic share.
Finally, this change in how ideologies are defined implies a change in how Warrior Class' mentality is computed. It was formerly computed as partly influenced by the Upper Class and partly by the Lower Class. It will be now computed using People's pol.power, Capitalists pol.power, demographic shares and kapital shares in a way I won't detail now.
One advantage of the new way to specify ideologies is that computing demographic shares can be (if desired) totally independent from ideologies themselves (that is, independent from the economic variables ideologies specify). In the old system, it was very "advisable" to compute demographic shares using ideologies info to achieve consistency.
It should be said that in order to make this update useful, the govt-econ interactions must be able to manipulate an arbitrary number of socio-economic classes. Since that thread is still under development, I guess we're still on time to get that done the right way.
Comments?
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F_Smith
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Austin, Tx 78728
May 1999
time: 05:13
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rodrigo:
I like it. I like it a lot.
I have to disagree, what you've built scales nicely and would allow a large number of different types of 'social classes' to be defined that acted very differently. Varying the values of the ideology produces a very different social class behavior.
I like 'ruler', 'people', 'capital' as an object design for political power. Then including any collection of 'social classes' defined for that game is fine.
We can define yours as the 'basic' social classes, for now -- in fact, I'll do that soon, in the beast.
And other 'social classes' with their own ideologies can be defined. Adding a 'Scientific community' social class can be a matter of defining it's ideology.
Or am I wrong?
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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:13
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Mark: How would you use the tech tags to determine class behavior? They would be a good guide for determining what the class would invest in, but I cannot imagine how they would determine all of the behaviors of a group of people. They were never designed to do that.
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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All:
It seems my proposal for having an arbitrary number of socio-economic classes is finding support. That's fine. But I was also seeking your agreement about the imposibility of having an arbitrary number of social classes (elves, etc). Did I convince you?
About the scientific class: If we accept the number of classes is a key decision, then we can start discussing about it. If, as a team, we feel a sci class is needed, then I have no problem generating equations for its behavior. Just please let's focus first in the arbitrary vs fixed number of social classes. IMO this is a more important subject and relevant for coding matters.
F_Smith:
Based on your comments above and some you gave in the object builder thread, I believe you have a little confusion with ideologies. I'll give a brief explanation below about them. If this confusion of your was only in my imagination, just ignore me.
Class behavior and ideologies:
Ideologies are a description of how the govt should work, regarding 1)who has the political power, and 2)what economic regime to implement. Variables describing an ideology are the same for all of them. Only numbers change from one to another. FE, a capitalist democracy ideology and a communist dictatorship ideology:
Variable__________capit.democr______comm.dict.
Ruler's pol.power__________20%_________70%
Capitalists pol.power______0%__________0%
Religious Class pol.power__0%__________0%
Warriors Class pol.power___0%__________30%
People's pol.power_________80%_________0%
Private Property___________90%_________0%
Social Policies____________15%_________100%
Economic Planning__________X%__________Y%
(I didn't put values for EP because we're not sure anymore how to handle this variable and it's likely to disappear from the game)
Just like the two examples above, we'll have around 20 ideologies in the game covering all the govt types we've seen in history. The values for each ideology are fixed during gameplay. Ideologies will be discovered as techs, just how in civ2 you discover "monarchy", "communism", etc.
Each social class has a behavior (or mentality). A social class has NOT an ideology. A social class' mentality covers several things, like its preference about slavery (not covered in ideologies as can be seen). As a part of social class' behavior, class members choose the ideology of its preference (among those discovered). FE, Lower Class members in western countries would be inclined to choose democracy as their preferred ideology. The model actually allows classes to be divided. Some class members may choose democracy while others choose communism. FE, the following is possible:
Class______communism_____democracy____monarchy
WarriorClass___5%_____________85%________10%
LowerClass___26%____________71%________3%
which means, FE, that 26% of the people within the lower class supports communism.
Class preferences for available ideologies vary depending on things like culture. Because of this, as culture changes, preferences do too. People can support monarchy in ancient times, but dislike it in modern ages.
The above shows that behavior/mentality is not equal to ideology. That's why a phrase like "Adding a 'Scientific community' social class can be a matter of defining it's ideology." is not correct. The sci class has a behavior which may include things like a preference for scientific investements. The sci class can choose, as only a part of its wider behavior, an ideology. This choice represents the sci class preference for govt type. In fact, several classes can choose the same ideology and still have different behaviors in other aspects.
Class behavior/mentality and the concept of ideology are different things.
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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:13
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Elves would be a seperate race, not a different social class. The population model is designed to create and model nonhuman races. The Elven race would probably contain the same social classes the Human race would.
I think I understand the difficulties involved with creating an arbitrary number of social classes. In addition to interacting with things like the economic model, the classes interact with each other. Thus, the complexity of the system increases exponentially as more classes are added.
However, I think we should include the functionality anyway. The ability to design custom social classes is a powerful design tool. Perhaps the designer of a modern scenario would want to take out the Military Elite and replace it with Entertainer Elite. It would be hard to do it properly, but if the good Civ 2 scenarios are any indication, some people are willing to put lots of time and care into scenarios.
My General Policy: If the programmer says it is feasable and the model lead can add it to the model without much trouble, I say go for it.
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06-07-2000 23:49
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