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axi
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Athens Greece
Sep 1999
time: 07:13
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Social Model
I. Introduction
The Clash of Civilizations will be a challenging game not only because of the better AI it will include, but also because the Clash world will be more complex compared to games of this type. Most of models developed in the Clash Project have assumed so far the existence of civ's cultural attributes where they can get inputs from to simulate how different cultures act in different ways and how civilizations can appear to have their own styles and histories based on social effects. It is the main role of this model to produce that necessary social base we're all counting on. This model only describes how people can be characterized through cultural attributes and which mechanisms exist to make attributes change overtime according to the civ's experiences. The effects of culture in the game are supposed to be managed in the rest models. In particular, the Riots Model will take care of major social events such as revolutions, independence attempts, etc.
For the nature of the subject, it's possible for some people to take in the wrong way some opinions about culture and culture evolution. Audiences are encouraged to be open minded when reading the model, because, of course, the only goal here is to replicate what we've seen in history as a general trend and avoid discussions on what's good or bad about cultures.
II. Model Overview
The problems to solve are mainly two: How cultural attributes change as time passes by and how different ethnic groups interact with each other. Modeling the first one is obviously needed, while the importance of the second one needs an explanation: Civs won't interact with each other always like nations, each in its own space. If romans take Egypt, then egyptians end up living under roman rule and they won't necessarily will become roman citizens and support the new regime. Even more, Rome can invade just a part of Egypt, so you can find egyptians in roman provinces and in egyptian civ. In other words, the problem here to solve is the interactions between cultures when more than one occupy the same space (provinces).
The approach I took for the model is this: Each civ can hold several ethnic groups (tribes/nationalities) in it. At a civ level, each of them is described with a set of cultural variables or characteristics. It is assumed that all people with the same nationality have the same characteristics regardless of the place where they live within the civ. This means, FE, that romans in the capital province share the same characteristics that romans living in central Europe provinces. At the province level we only need a dynamic array of the existent nationalities and the populations of each. FE, a roman province in central Europe could be something like this:
Romans-1200
Celts-950000
Franks-1200000
while in a roman province in the greek peninsula would be:
Romans-2600
Greeks-1700000
The number of elements in the arrays change as migrations and other events happen. Populations will be stored on a tile/square basis. Province populations are just the sum of the populations in the tiles forming the province.
The set of ethnic groups (EG) in one civ will be called Population Composition (PC). Each EG in the PC has the following information:
- Nationality (FE, romans)
- PR%: Primitive Religion (share of population who follow the "primitive religion")
- GRW: Great Religion of the World (which GRW is followed)
- GRW's spreading rate
- Religiously Discriminated (dummy variable describing if the EG is discriminated or not by the govt because of religion)
- Ethnically Discriminated (dummy variable describing if the EG is discriminated or not by the govt because of nationality)
- Slavered (dummy variable indicating if the ethnic group is "brutally" slavered, as defined in the govt model when Slavery=2)
- Characteristics (several variables describing the culture)
Each turn what the model does is change the characteristics of each ethnic group in the civ according to some rules explained later and where religion plays a fundamental role. The other important factor is govt. It's a govt decision if any ethnic group is above the rest (FE, romans in the roman empire). In general, the govt will determine a level of ethnic discrimination defining how groups will interact with each other. These two factors, religion and govt, and their role in the model are discussed in the next two sub-sections below in general terms.
It should be clear from what has been said above, that "civ" and "tribe" (or ethnic group) are not synonymous. A player plays a civ, not an ethnic group. The player playing the roman empire controls the roman govt and through it, all what happens in the controlled provinces (the civ), but romans are just one of many EGs in the civ. The romans having a special position respect to other tribes and calling the civ "roman civ" is, above all, a govt decision. The civ may indeed have a nationality of its own. FE, a player might be ruling Yugoslavia (civ's nationality=yugoslavian), while EGs in this civ, although generally referred as yugoslavians, have other nationalities (serbs, croats, etc) and there's no EG above the rest. This example also shows that in this model "nationality" means the tribe you feel you belong to, not something imposed or declared by a govt.
II-1. Modeling Religions
Religions are definitely needed in the game. They have given shape to culture for most of (if not all) history and they have also played huge roles in wars and politics, so they're a cool ingredient to add in Clash. The govt model handles how the Church acts in the political arena. In this section it's explained how religion affects EGs.
A religion will be described by several attributes, many of which are the same that describe a culture. The idea is religions "dictate" to their followers how to behave, so they show the people what values cultural attributes should take. FE, if one religion has an aggressiveness of 70, then all the people who follow that religion will tend to have their cultural attribute "aggressiveness" equal to 70. So, the main role of religions in this model is being culture changers, making cultural attributes alike to religion attributes.
There've been many religions and there're still many of them. Their evolution from their primitive forms to how they're today is a complex matter. In order to avoid the game from keeping track of a lot of religions, their birth, evolution and possible disappearance, I've chosen the following approach: The really important religions are what I've called "the Great Religions of the World". There'll be from 3 to 6 of them in the game (the number will be decided by the team, but that should be the order of magnitude). The model will manage how an EG goes from following primitive religions to following one of the GRW. What makes the difference between a primitive religion (PR) and a GRW is the "exportability" of GRW. PRs are extremely associated with the particular ethnic group that practices it, so it's very difficult for others to embrace the same beliefs and therefore these religions cannot spread. Other peoples can sometimes take elements or even the whole cult, but always adapting it to their own nationality (FE, greek religion passing to romans). If you take ancient egyptian religion or aztec beliefs, it's clear to see how religion has to do with the egyptians and aztecs respectively, but not with humanity in general. GRW go beyond the tribe, so no matter where you come from, it's sufficient to follow what the religion dictates to be part of it and therefore it can spread through the world.
GRW will be described with several attributes shown later. The model won't keep track of PRs' attributes, only GRW.
At the beginning of the game EGs will support a PR with 100%. It's assumed that a PR in one EG is different from one in other EG because of the relationship primitive religions have with nationality. PRs have no name (or can be called after the EG, like "egyptian cult" FE).
The game will randomly give birth to each of the GRW after some thousands years of play. Any EG in any civ will be picked as the starting tribe to embrace it. From that point, the new GRW starts to spread as will be explained. Any EG will be allowed to support only one of the GRW. This is not true in real life because in a group of people different cults can coexist, but when we see the world we notice there's always a very dominant religion and some small groups following other beliefs, so I think the restriction I'm using is good enough and it helps keeping the model simple.
For spreading purposes, in each civ there'll be 2*N dummy variables indicating if each of the GRW is known there and if it has followers, where N is the number of GRW in the game. These will be called "Contact Variables" as in "The civ has/hasn't contact with GRW X" and "Acceptance Variables" as in "There are/aren't EGs accepting the GRW X". FE, in one civ there's contact with christianity and Islam, but not with Buddhism, so the contact variables are CHR-1, ISLAM-1, BUD-0. But only Islam is practiced, so Acceptance Variables are CHR-0, ISLAM-1, BUD-0.
Also for spreading purposes, each civ needs to store its level of "social contact" with the rest civs. For simplicity, that level will be given by the number of trade routes between the two civs. That info will be stored in a list (Known Civs List). Each time a trade route is created or deleted, the lists are updated for involved civs.
II-2. The role of government
Usually a civ's govt is related to a particular EG (a nationality) and it's also common for a govt to be related to a religion. The govt model uses the Ethnic Discrimination (ED) Policy for the first type of discrimination. ED can take the following numbers:
0: No discrimination (uncommon. Think Yugoslavia). When ED=0 the civ is said to be "multiethnic" and the player will be asked to introduce a new name for the civ, like Yugoslavia. This is important, not just flavor. As will be shown, EGs with low Nationalism will tend to lose their identity and adopt the civ's nationality, so a player ruling an empire with many EGs with low Nationalism might choose as a strategy to use a multiethnic civ in order to unite the tribes. This is how the model makes possible the rising of new nationalities like the french from gauls, franks, celts and others. However, this strategy wouldn't work in Yugoslavia, where nationalism in the EGs present was high.
1-9: A nationality is preferred (i.e. only one EG) and all others are ethnically discriminated (Minorities). The civ is named after the EG's nationality (e.g. Roman Civ). This is the most common case. Going from 1 to 8 gives different levels for treatment toward minorities, from respect to other tribes and their customs and the possibility to change nationality to the "dominant" one, to very disrespecting treatment (think nazis).
When a govt chooses to be multiethnic and after a new tribe name is picked, the model merges all cultures to create the characteristics for the new people using relative populations as weights in a weighted sum of the original characteristics. This is no sudden forced culture mixing. The new tribe will have zero population. As the game advances, EGs with low Nationalism will slowly drop their current nationality and become part of the new EG.
The govt can also discriminate via religion. If there's a govt with an intolerant official religion, EGs supporting other beliefs can be considered minorities. This is done in the govt model via the Religious Discrimination variable. Since an EG can follow two religions when the EG variable PR% is greater than 0% and lower than 100%, there's ambiguity in knowing if the EG should be discriminated or not. In that case we'll apply the rule of considering the EG as supporting the GRW alone. This is done because as will be shown, once the EG takes a GRW, it'll inevitably embrace it a 100%, so it's just a matter of time to consider the EG as totally committed with that GRW.
Minorities, then, are all EGs discriminated via nationality and/or religion. The govt discriminates and the whole thing about discrimination has as purpose, here in the social model and in the riots model, to change the attitude of each EG and the things affecting them.
III. Cultural Attributes (Characteristics)
These are the cultural attributes and their role in the game. More can be added given the needs in each of the rest models. All variables are in the 0-100 range.
Ethnic Tolerance: It represents how you see other tribes and what kind of relationship you think exists between your tribe and others. A low ET means you feel your tribe is superior and the rest hardly qualify as human beings. A high ET means you respect other tribes and you're willing to live together with them.
Religious Tolerance: This is the tolerance of other religions (by other I mean the ones not followed by the EG). Low scores mean people feel upset about having to live with people with other cults.
Aggressiveness: This defines how aggressive the culture is. A high score indicates a very warlike culture while a low score indicates peaceful. Leaders of an aggressive culture will find it easier to wage war against their neighbors. A very high score could also give a bonus to the efficiency of troops.
Traditionalism: This represents the people's ties to the past. Its role is force culture to stay as it currently is.
Nationalism: Will be defined as "The notion of being a part of something bigger than your local clan (a nation) and the people's willingness to form that nation and live under one same government of their own". This variable was sometimes known as "provincialism/nationalism". Low Nationalism means you care only about your local clan and you don't see much difference between your tribe and others. A high Nationalism shouldn't be confused with a fanatic or blind nationalism. It's only a rather strong feeling of belonging to a specific tribe and a high opposition to be ruled by other tribe. Nationalism is very low at the beginning of the game (thousands of years before Christ), with some random small differences from tribe to tribe (values in the range 1-10).
Land Connection: This is the people's feeling of belonging to the province they occupy. The love for where they live and the idea that the land they occupy belongs to them. Initial LC will be high because the EG is assumed to have lived there for some time. It'll be used in the Riots Model.
Asceticism: This represents the people's desire for material goods. A high score indicates a lack of interest in material goods, while a low score indicates lots are wanted. It has a role in people's behavior in the economic field.
Importance of Religion: The highest this number, the more influenced the rest characteristics are by religion doctrine. This happens because people want to do what religion says. Importance of Religion will be in general very high at the beginning of the game for all cultures and in general terms it will decrease as time passes by.
Individualism: This is the people's value of self. Its main role is modeling what type of economy people wants. The more individualistic, the more inclined to capitalism and vise versa.
Initial values will be given randomly or using pre-set values defined by us and ad hoc to each historical tribe. The player will decide which option to use.
IV. Attributes of GRW
Each GRW has the following cultural attributes: Religious Tolerance, Aggressiveness, Asceticism and Individualism. They represent the moral code the religion tries to impose on its followers. Religion has no say about the other characteristics described above. The following attributes also exist in GRW:
Sacrifice: The higher this score is the more is required from the followers of the religion. This is money and economic resources the clergy takes away from the people that allows the church to act. The economic model should use this variable to know how much people invest in religious infrastructure.
Countdown: Used to determine when the GRW is born. Its initial value in the game is equal to the date the player chooses to start, doubled (FE, 4000BC implies countdown=2*4000=8000).
Holy Land: The tile in which the religion was born (randomly picked at the moment of religion's birth). This is to model crusades and that sort of things.
After the GRW is born, its moral code remains fixed for the game. Religions have shown to be very reticent to change their doctrines, and although we know some changes have occurred, the assumption made here is still very accurate and keeps the model simple. Sacrifice and Holy Land are also fixed and Countdown stays at zero once the religion is born.
Primitive Religions are supposed to be described with the same variables, but the game won't store that info as with GRW. We'll assume that if you take a EG, the PR associated with it has attributes equal to the EG's cultural attributes. In other words, cultural attributes and religion attributes for PRs are indistinguishable. If you want to know what the chinese PR thinks about individualism, just look at the current individualism score of chinese EG. This is made to avoid keeping track of each of the dozens primitive religions existing and their attributes and to give GRW the importance they deserve, being much more autonomous and homogeneous through out the world. As for sacrifice and holy land, which is info we can't read from the EG attributes, holy land is never needed for PRs and Sacrifice will be assumed to be equal to the average between (100-Individualism) and Asceticism.
V. How the model works
Each turn we do the following:
1. Apply the "GRW birth" sub-model to the game.
2. Apply the "Religion Spreading" sub-model to each civ.
3. Apply the "Nationalities" sub-model to each civ.
4. Apply the "Cultural Evolution" sub-model to each civ.
5. Apply the "Migration" sub-model to each civ.
V-1. The "GRW birth" Sub-Model
The countdown variable for each GRW is checked. If it's zero, do nothing. If it's greater than zero, it's decreased by R*L, where R is a random number between 1 and 3 and L is the length of the game turn in years. If after the decrease it's zero or negative, then set it to zero and give birth to the GRW. This means a random tile is picked anywhere in the world. If no population exist in the tile, another is chosen until a tile with people is found. If there's more than one EG in the tile, one is picked randomly. Contact Variable for the GRW in the civ where the EG lives is turned to 1. The religion's moral code is made equal to the corresponding attributes in the EG. Sacrifice is made equal to the average between (100-Individualism) and Asceticism and Holy Land is made equal to the tile's code number.
V-2. The "Religion Spreading" Sub-Model
For each EG in the civ:
First: If the EG has PR%=100% (no GRW is known and accepted), the model looks at the Contact Variables and for each of them equal to "1", the religion is checked for acceptance by the EG. The EG will accept the GRW if the religion's moral code is not too different from EG's culture. A "distance" between culture and religion's moral code is computed as D=square_root( (C1-R1)^2 + ....+ (Cn-Rn)^2 ), where Ck is the EG's value of the kth cultural attribute and Rk is the religious value for the same attribute. If D is less than a given threshold (TBD), it is accepted. The GRW variable in the EG is turned to the name (or code number) of the GRW accepted and the Acceptance Variable for the GRW in the civ is made equal to 1. A GRW spreading rate is then computed for the EG as (1-Traditionalism)*(K1-D)/K2, where K1 and K2 are scale factors allowing to use D in the calculation so the more similar attributes are, the fastest people will take the religion.
If a GRW is at the govt (i.e. it's official), it has more power to convert people. So, instead of comparing D directly with the threshold, we'll really use D*(1-G*RC%), where G is a dummy being "1" if the GRW being checked happens to be the official one and "0" if not. RC% is the political power of the Religious Class, from the govt model.
Second: If PR% is greater than 0%, then PR% is decreased by the magnitude of GRW's spreading rate. If the final value is less than zero, it's set to zero. GRW's spreading rate is zero if no GRW is known and accepted by the EG (i.e. zero is its default value), so PR% will remain at 100% until a GRW is accepted by the EG and will decrease slowly thereafter (i.e. the primitive religion will be inevitably replaced by the GRW).
Civ to Civ Spreading: A random civ is picked in the Known Civs List. If the level of social contact with it is greater than a given number (TBD), continue: Contact Variables in this random civ are changed to represent the contact with the followed religions in the civ being processed. Each Contact Variable in the randomly picked civ is changed to MIN(1,a+b), where a is its current Contact Variable and b is the Acceptance Variable for the same religion in the civ being processed. Example:
"Acceptance Variables" in civ being processed: CHR:1, ISLAM:0, BUD:1
"Contact Variables" in random civ picked: CHR:0, ISLAM:0, BUD:1
New values for Contact Variables in random civ picked: CHR:min(1,0+1)=1, ISLAM:min(1,0+0)=0, BUD:min(1,1+1)=1.
The example shows how the civ being processed exports practiced GRW to a civ with high enough social contact, allowing the latter to have knowledge about them, which will make possible (in the next game turn) for some EGs in it to embrace them if they're accepted. The mechanism also ensures that a civ can only export religions practiced in it, but not those it has contact with, but nobody likes.
The first step makes possible a EG start embracing a GRW. Step two is the EG's internal spreading process leaving the PR in the past. The third step is what makes GRW to spread through the world.
V-3. The "Nationalities" Sub-Model
Nationalism is updated as new_Nationalism=current_Nationalism+C*L, where C is a constant depending on the case (see table) and L is the length in years of the game turn.
________Case______________________________C
EG in a "barbaric province"____________________0.025
EG in a civ with matching nationality______________0.1
EG in a civ with different nationality________0.03*(1/(1+exp(-14+.2*current_Nationalism)))
The rules increase Nationalism as a "natural tendency" as time passes by, making it faster if the tribe has its own civ (govt). But, under the rule of others, Nationalism goes down because it's hard to preserve identity in this conditions. However, it's much easier for tribes with already low Nationalism to lose it than those that already have a great sense of identity and that's why the exponential formula is used.
Nationalities (EGs) with low Nationalism tend to be absorbed by the dominant culture. This happens because the tribe has no sense of itself and easily give up its identity to become something else. This mechanism allows for some tribes to be lost during the game, as it happened with saxons and many other tribes.
The following must be done in each province for each present nationality: If the nationality doesn't match the civ's one, then a dice is rolled to see if some of its population adopts the civ's nationality. The probability of doing so is
P=(1/(1+exp(0.06*current_Nationalism)))*exp(-K*ED)
where ED is the Ethnic Discrimination level the govt imposes and K is a scale parameter. If the dice indicates nationality shift, a population of P*600*L is deducted from the EG's population and added to the EG having the civ's nationality, where L is, again, the length of the game turn in years. This conversion can be up to 3000 persons every 10 years or null, depending on how nationalistic people is and the attitude of the govt regarding other nationalities.
If the population for a given EG falls down to zero, the EG is deleted from the Population Composition (the EG has disappeared at least in this civ).
V-4. The "Cultural Evolution" Sub-Model
This sub-model is the one that changes cultural attributes (characteristics except Nationalism). There are two questions: In which direction the characteristic should go (increase, decrease, stay) and at which speed. Modeling changes in culture is really difficult. It's not easy to answer these two questions (specially the first) in a general way. That's why I grouped characteristics in three categories according to the complexity of the variable:
1) Land Connection
2) Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion and Traditionalism
3) Religious Tolerance, Individualism, Asceticism, Aggressiveness
1) Land Connection
LC can only rise, since it's the love for the province where you live and the notion that the EG has lived there "always". It should increase by around 1 point every 4 years.
2) and 3)
The approach I took is characteristics tend to a value, so in each turn we only move slightly the characteristic in the direction of that value. The magnitude of the change is given by Traditionalism, so the more traditionalistic, the slower the change. The following is made to each characteristic:
new_value=current_value + ((100-Traditionalism)/100)*T*L*(TV_value - current_value)/ABS(TV_value - current_value) (*)
where TV stands for "Tendency Value", T is a time-scale constant and L is the length in years of the game turn. Now the question is what is the TV for each characteristic. The difference between categories 2) and 3) is the way TV is computed.
2) Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion and Traditionalism (TV)
TV_ET=MAX(100-Nationalism, 60)*(1-Aggressiveness/100) (i)
Ethnic Tolerance decreases slowly as a result of the rising Nationalism level and the need to clearly make a difference with other tribes, but Nationalism won't push it below a certain level (60). ET can go lower than this only by the presence of a high Aggressiveness level.
TV_IR= 100-OTL*0.4-ES*3 (ii)
The assumption here is religion's attractiveness is mostly given by the incapability of human beings to understand and control their world. Then, the importance of religion in people's daily lives goes down as science gives us new and useful explanations for our environment and as our society appears to be stable. OTL is the civ's "overall tech level" in a 0-100 range. A measure I hope we can build in the tech model. ES is "Empire's Stability", a variable from the govt model in the range 0-10.
TV_Traditionalism=95-(CivilRights/100)*15 (iii)
This means Traditionalism goes in the 80-95 range depending on the current value of Civil Rights, which is a government model's variable describing how free is people in the 0-100 range. I'm assuming Traditionalism always tends to be high and the differences are from high to very high, depending on freedom. IMO cultures with high freedom give more space to innovation and changes are more acceptable, so Traditionalism tends to be somewhat lower.
3) Religious Tolerance, Individualism, Asceticism, Aggressiveness (TV)
For all these variables religions have something to say and that influence must be merged with other existing factors. The TV will be a mix of the values different factors encourage.
There are 3 factors:
Religion- Through the religion's moral code, religion tries to impose certain values in these characteristics.
Dominant Culture- Majorities tend to impose their customs.
Environment- Effects of economy, govt and others which the people are exposed to in their daily lives. Environment values should be seen as those people would tend to as a result of the environment they live in. In other words, people tend to recreate the environment where they live, making cultural attribute ad hoc to the current environment.
Religion's values are taken from the GRW the EG follows and from the EG's characteristics themselves for PRs. Values majorities imposes are taken from the Majorities Cultural Attributes. (The MCA is created by the govt model using majorities populations. For civs where one EG is above the rest, MCA values are equal to that EG and MCA is a weighted sum of all EGs in the civ for multiethnic civs, where populations are used as weights.) Environment values are the following:
Individualism: You tend to be as individualistic as your environment is. The level of individualism in environment is given by the current economic system (the more capitalistic, the more individualistic) and by the current Civil Rights level, where high CR encourages heterogeneity in population (individualism). The level of individualism by the economic system the govt imposes can be computed as econ_Ind=10*(PP+(10-SP)) where PP=Private Property and SP=Social Policies (both govt model's variables). The civil rights level is given by the Civil Rights govt policy. Assuming economy counts for 70% of total environment influence on individualism, Environment value for Individualism is (econ_Ind*.7+CR*.3).
Aggressiveness: Not yet determined, but it should be a measure of the relationship with neighbors. The more dangerous the world is and the fewer friends abroad, the more aggressive people is as a response in order to survive.
Religious Tolerance: The tendency is to accept other mystic beliefs in the same degree other ideas and lifestyles are accepted. Using the Civil Rights govt policy as a measure of the current level of heterogeneity in population (i.e. level of acceptance of other lifestyles), we make RT_Environment=CR.
Asceticism: Environment (Nature perhaps) imposes the need to survive and gather material goods for it. The assumption is people desire goods and more and more of them until at least a level where you have an accommodated life. We'll define a constant variable for the game: a PCI (per capita income) representing that minimum level of material goods. If the current civ's global average PCI is lower than that, then Asceticism is equal to 100*current_PCI/reference_PCI. If it's higher, Asceticism keeps its current value.
Each of the three factors (religions, Dominant Culture and Environment) push characteristics to given values. The level at which each prevail is another matter. We'll say religion imposes its doctrine depending on the Importance of Religion variable. So, if IR=60, then 60% of the TV for any of the attributes is given by the religion's value. The rest (40%), is influenced by Dominant Culture and Environment and we'll say Environment is responsible for 80% of that:
TV = IR%*religion_value + (1-IR%)*(0.8*environment_value + 0.2*MCA_value) (iv)
Since an EG can support two religions (PR and GRW) each with its own value, the religion_value in the formula is really: PR%*EG_current_value + (1-PR%)*GRW_value.
So, in short, what this sub-model does each turn for each EG is:
1-Increase Land Connection.
2-Compute tendency values for Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion and Traditionalism using (i), (ii) and (iii) respectively.
3-Compute tendency values for Asceticism, Individualism, Aggressiveness and Religious Tolerance using (iv). ("3 factors approach")
4-Apply equation (*) for Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion, Traditionalism, Asceticism, Individualism, Aggressiveness and Religious Tolerance.
Three Comments on the Cultural Evolution sub-model:
1) The model moves characteristics to TV as if TV were an equilibrium point. But, TV values change slowly as things happen, so during the game this "equilibrium point" is moving and characteristics are constantly chasing it.
2) The way TV are computed for characteristics in category 3), i.e. via the three factors approach, allows the model to do at least three interesting things: a)EGs in the same civ will tend to be more homogeneous as time passes by; b)Empires can export their culture to tribes within the empire, like barbaric tribes in central Europe being "romanized" or native americans being "europeanized"; c)The influence of religion on culture will decay overtime.
3) This sub-model is by far the one that needs more computational resources. I guess we can make the model just apply steps 1 and 4 each turn using stored TV, which is really cheap. TV would then be updated less frequently, like twice a century or so.
V-5. The Migrations Sub-Model
NOT YET SOLVED
VI. Final Comments
A lot has been lost from previous attempts to create a social model. This model doesn't have a mixing culture procedure, doesn't model races and race mixing and it's mainly managed at a civ level instead of a province level. Social changes in real life do happen at the local level and then spread, but that kind of modeling is much more expensive in computational resources, so that's why I take care of cultures at the civ level assuming all changes occur simultaneously in each province. As for mixing cultures, it's a growing problem the more nationalities and religions coexist in the same civ and there's no way to have true-to-life effects once the civ-level approach has been adopted.
The current social model just provides a minimum set of interesting effects without making a too complex model. It will be a Clash Team decision if more complexity is mandatory.
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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:13
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Great job Rodrigo and Axi!
Your system looks very practical and flexible, and yet should inject a lot of fun into the game. I think you've done a good job in holding down the number of calculations and still getting a lot of the right flavor in the model. I just have a general bunch of comments at this point. I haven't looked in-depth at most of your equations and whatnot, since I think we need to assess the general thrusts of the model first before worrying about the details.
So, since most things look really good, I will mostly comment on the things that I think are missing...
I get the sense that there are some critical cultural attributes that may not be there that other model heads need.
The one that most struck me as missing is an overall notion of the "tech level" or perhaps PCI that the culture has evolved to function with. I think this one is Very important, seeing as one of the main historical directions of cultural diffusion have been from civilizations with high tech level to those with low tech level. Even if the barbarians conquer your "high-tech" culture, they will usually end up taking over a lot of your cultural attributes, because their culture just doesn't really work very well at the new tech level IMO. Another related important criterion is education level. Probably we would combine the two of these even though the correspondence isn't always one-to-one.
Another similarly important thing is Corruption. Does the society have an "if it's not nailed down its mine" attitude? I have read a lot about the institutional frameworks that are needed to support market economies and well-functioning democracies. And I think the corruption level that the culture is used to is the key between the societies that work and those that don't in making the transition to efficient market economies and democracies. I would like to hear everyone's thought on this. If we don't, how do we model the fact that it can take very long periods of time to make the transition to effective institutions even though the general recipes for the sorts of institutions needed are well-known. In terms of game play this would mean that you can't be a ruthless autocrat for the whole game, and then expect towave a wand and in very short order have a functioning capitalist democratic state. During your mis- rule the people will have gotten used to cheating on everything possible just to survive... this kind of thing cannot be undone over a short period of time IMO.
One final trait that may be important is language. Language differences can make it much more difficult for two cultures to get along, that if they spoke a similar tongue.
Another thing I thought of that you haven't included is that the player can try to affect the direction in which the culture is evolving. Of course, this shouldn't be a sure thing, but at least something they can try to do.
I don't like the idea of just one world religion per culture. It seems with the number of variables that you dedicate to keeping track of great religions that cultures could have an arbitrary fraction of each of them without overly complicating the system. Anyway, please think about it, because I think the clashes of religious fervor within the culture could be interesting.
I get the sense that your nationalism model needs to be much richer. I think it needs to involve critical communication distances in some ways. It should also include the education level of the populace IMO.
I generally like the way you picked to handle new "civ cultures" that are amalgamations of the other cultures in the civ. That's a fine idea and will help out a lot in modeling the dynamics of a country like the United States IMO. My one criticism is that when you form the new culture that the new culture's characteristics should shift depending on which cultural groups choose to join it. So, for instance, if I want to form a new group out of the previous multiethnic civ composed of three cultures named smelly, noisy, and obnoxious. Now suppose the obnoxious ones have a very high nationalism. So they will never really join in the new culture, and the new culture will end up being a hybrid of smelly and noisy! So I think you need to modify the characteristics of the hybrid culture to reflect a population-weighted average of the cultures that join it, or something like that.
To reiterate after all these criticisms... I think the model is Really Good and although the details may need to be modified, the frameworks sufficiently versatile to accommodate most of the changes anyone from another model may feel we need to make. Excellent Job!
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Lord God Jinnai
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St. Louis
Sep 1999
time: 23:13
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Yeah! *Jumps up and down, until he hits his head on the ceiling and comes back to his senses.* Cool it's finally here! I've been waiting forever for this model cuz without it we can't do the final part of the coding for the tech model, ie the social advances and modifiers for social attributes for everything.
Anyway here's what I have questions/comments on:
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There've been many religions and there're still many of them. Their evolution from their primitive forms to how they're today is a complex matter. In order to avoid the game from keeping track of a lot of religions, their birth, evolution and possible disappearance, I've chosen the following approach: The really important religions are what I've called "the Great Religions of the World". There'll be from 3 to 6 of them in the game (the number will be decided by the team, but that should be the order of magnitude). The model will manage how an EG goes from following primitive religions to following one of the GRW. What makes the difference between a primitive religion (PR) and a GRW is the "exportability" of GRW. PRs are extremely associated with the particular ethnic group that practices it, so it's very difficult for others to embrace the same beliefs and therefore these religions cannot spread. Other peoples can sometimes take elements or even the whole cult, but always adapting it to their own nationality (FE, greek religion passing to romans). If you take ancient egyptian religion or aztec beliefs, it's clear to see how religion has to do with the egyptians and aztecs respectively, but not with humanity in general. GRW go beyond the tribe, so no matter where you come from, it's sufficient to follow what the religion dictates to be part of it and therefore it can spread through the world.
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OKay what you say is fine, in and of itself, for the most part. However, there are exceptions. FE not all civs or cultures have to move toward one of the GWR. Most notably Japan and India have not and almost guaranteed will not for any length of time worth mentioning, if at all. Instead they still hold mostly to their original religion, although influenced from outside forces. In the case of Japan, as with all far eastern religions, religion isn't seen as homogenius and once can be multiple religions at the same time ephasizing differnt aspects of each.
Also this doesn't allow for religions like Judaism which isn't major (it only has a small % of the world population), but it is very far reaching and very influential. It is however, not a GWR. The only reason it has expanded is because of the forced migrations do to the Romans and others.
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The game will randomly give birth to each of the GRW after some thousands years of play. Any EG in any civ will be picked as the starting tribe to embrace it. From that point, the new GRW starts to spread as will be explained. Any EG will be allowed to support only one of the GRW. This is not true in real life because in a group of people different cults can coexist, but when we see the world we notice there's always a very dominant religion and some small groups following other beliefs, so I think the restriction I'm using is good enough and it helps keeping the model simple.
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I think you're wrong here. When you look at the world in many areas there is no clear cut dominant religion throughout history. Also GWR tend to spring up in many of the same areas. These have noticably been the birthplaces of civilzation, but i don't think it has to be. I will use the example of China/SE Asia. Here there are 3 major religions in the area, depending exactly where you are. Islam, Christianity and Budhism (everywhere for the latter). Each of these is supported by similar groups of people for the same reason. In fact, as i mentioned above, there is quite possible people who are mixed religions of those types (in fact i know there are a few indivisuals who are). This doesn't include the native religions of Confusicanism and Taoism which are also present in this area (although Taoism to a much lesser extent).
Cultural Attributes:
I think there may need to be a few more:
Exantionistic: How much your population wants to settle more land. Low values mean they are content with what they have. High values mean they want the civ to control more land. *You don't have to be agressive to be exantionistic or vise versa*
Rigidity: How laws are in your society. The more rigid, the more laws there are (atleast enforeced) in your society. High rigiity also has very strict set of classes, while low ones may have none or very fluid set.
Religious Tolerance could also be used for ethnic tolerance. Since if you had a low score for importance of religion, religious intolerance being high wouldn't make sense.
Openness: This is how your society runs and treats people (usually outsiders). Closed societies distrust outsiders and will attempt to keep them away while open societies will embrace others and welcome newcommers in.
IV. Attributes of GRW
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Holy Land: The tile in which the religion was born (randomly picked at the moment of religion's birth). This is to model crusades and that sort of things.
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Holy land doesn't have to be to specific. FE India is the birthplace of Budhism, however, it can be. Jerusalum is the birthplace of Chirstianity. Also Holy Lands shouldn't ness be limited to birthplaces. Every GWR religion has (a) site(s) that is not affiliated with the birthplace of the religion and/or more than one holy birthplace such as in Islam (Jerusalum and Mecca).
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After the GRW is born, its moral code remains fixed for the game. Religions have shown to be very reticent to change their doctrines, and although we know some changes have occurred, the assumption made here is still very accurate and keeps the model simple. Sacrifice and Holy Land are also fixed and Countdown stays at zero once the religion is born.
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If your going to do that, then there should be branches for GWR. No GWR throughout history has had a single branch for a very long time. NONE. Most branches take place 100-500 years after the birth. At most, GWR have 3 major branches so it won't get too complex. We don't have to do minor branches which would get really confusing, but not doing any IMO isn't right because it makes it too simplified and doesn't allow for the changes that have occured in GWR over time.
On PR: I'm assuming PR is the inital religion when the game starts out? Well in that case a PR should be able to be changed into something other than a GWR, say an Avanced Religion (AR) ARs differ from PRs in that they are complex enough to withstand being absorbed by GWR much better. They differ from GWR in that they are local. They cannot be found outside the area to any major extent (Exeptions can be made for refugees fleeing homelands and such). ARs can exist in the same area as GWRs. Generally there is only 1 AR per ethnic group. ARs can be can be spread, though not very far beyond its home origin (FE Hinduism is no a PR and not a GWR, it would be a AR. Hinduism is generally limited to the land of Hindi aka India. It can however be found in minorities elsewhere, but will never reach a majority in another other area unless conquered by indian gov who supports Hinduism and prob makes a conscious effort to promote Hinduism there. Finally what causes a RR to become an AR? The insurgance of another religion, usually a GWR. People with high traditionalism will have thier PR become ARs, but slightly differntly to show the absorbtion of some of the ideas from the GWR.
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The assumption here is religion's attractiveness is mostly given by the incapability of human beings to understand and control their world. Then, the importance of religion in people's daily lives goes down as science gives us new and useful explanations for our environment and as our society appears to be stable. OTL is the civ's "overall tech level" in a 0-100 range. A measure I hope we can build in the tech model. ES is "Empire's Stability", a variable from the govt model in the range 0-10.
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OTL...I don't see anything wrong with it not being possible just avergae the Basic technolieis out. The problem is that 100 is not the limit. There is no limit. This is because Clash will be allowed to go into the future so technologies will advance beyond what they are today.
Finally can you or do you have a religious moral codes that I can use? This is a;so ness for the tech. model.
Also i do think we need to have cultural mixing/absorbing. As to the way social chnages happen, i like your approach better.
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Lord God Jinnai
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St. Louis
Sep 1999
time: 23:13
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The one that most struck me as missing is an overall notion of the "tech level" or perhaps PCI that the culture has evolved to function with. I think this one is Very important, seeing as one of the main historical directions of cultural diffusion have been from civilizations with high tech level to those with low tech level. Even if the barbarians conquer your "high-tech" culture, they will usually end up taking over a lot of your cultural attributes, because their culture just doesn't really work very well at the new tech level IMO. Another related important criterion is education level. Probably we would combine the two of these even though the correspondence isn't always one-to-one.
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I'm not sure about this one.
Another similarly important thing is Corruption. Does the society have an "if it's not nailed down its mine" attitude? I have read a lot about the institutional frameworks that are needed to support market economies and well-functioning democracies. And I think the corruption level that the culture is used to is the key between the societies that work and those that don't in making the transition to efficient market economies and democracies. I would like to hear everyone's thought on this. If we don't, how do we model the fact that it can take very long periods of time to make the transition to effective institutions even though the general recipes for the sorts of institutions needed are well-known. In terms of game play this would mean that you can't be a ruthless autocrat for the whole game, and then expect towave a wand and in very short order have a functioning capitalist democratic state. During your mis- rule the people will have gotten used to cheating on everything possible just to survive... this kind of thing cannot be undone over a short period of time IMO.
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I agree with this one. Good also for lowering nations stability and other stuff. This is generally never to high, but it is easier to make society more corrupt than less.
One final trait that may be important is language. Language differences can make it much more difficult for two cultures to get along, that if they spoke a similar tongue.
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I think it best to let ethic differance measure language differance as it can otherwise become too complex.
Another thing I thought of that you haven't included is that the player can try to affect the direction in which the culture is evolving. Of course, this shouldn't be a sure thing, but at least something they can try to do.
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Absoultely.
I don't like the idea of just one world religion per culture. It seems with the number of variables that you dedicate to keeping track of great religions that cultures could have an arbitrary fraction of each of them without overly complicating the system. Anyway, please think about it, because I think the clashes of religious fervor within the culture could be interesting.
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Read my post. I also agree with you there. Also added another type of religion for places like India where there isn't a GWR nor is Hinduism a PR.
I get the sense that your nationalism model needs to be much richer. I think it needs to involve critical communication distances in some ways. It should also include the education level of the populace IMO.
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Also should include technogy (or rather social advances) level of your civ.
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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Thanks for your nice comments, guys. Here are some answers/comments:
All of you:
I have really no problem adding more cultural attributes, but you have to realize this is the one most complex piece in the three "society models". When adding a characteristic, we need to figure out how its value is going to change overtime. This is terribly hard to do. Just pick one, like Individualism: What forces make it decrease, increase or stay at any given time? What variables exactly are needed from what other models to make a reasonable change in Individualism? Will whatever method I choose recreate history? Meditate it for a sec and you'll see it's damn complex.
When I wrote the model I knew more characteristics were going to be added, so I'm all positive in finding the good method for every needed new cultural attribute, but I Strongly recommend to keep the list of characteristics short. So, let's add only those we feel are of huge importance.
On Mark's ideas:
Ethnic Group's Education Level: Sure, NP. I think it's very ness for the econ model and easy to model. Consider it done for a future model update.
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"Even if the barbarians conquer your "high-tech" culture, they will usually end up taking over a lot of your cultural attributes, because their culture just doesn't really work very well at the new tech level IMO"
Let me rephrase what I think you're saying: "In order to have a high tech level, culture must take a given form". So, if an ascetic culture conquers your high tech civ, they won't be able to keep that tech level because they really don't care much about high tech machines. If that's what you meant, I feel we can have this effect if we take good care when building social-tech interactions. Here's my idea: As much as I understand the tech model, in order to just maintain your current tech level, you need to produce at least a given amount of Research Points. If the RP production process in the tech model is built considering Individualism and Asceticism, then in fact it'll be harder for the conquering civ to keep the techs they've just aquired. If we add to this your proposed Education Level, RP production would be even lesser if the conquering civ is something like a barbaric tribe. So, I believe what you want can be done if the RP production process is created using Individualism, Asceticism and Education Level.
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Corruption: We have already been in this topic before and in fact I also believe is very important. Just to clarify things, there's a "political corruption" in the govt model in the "de facto influences" variables. Do not confuse that corruption with the one you're mentioning here. The political corruption is like bribing a senator to have a given govt policy the way you wanted, while the corruption you're talking about is like a "productive corruption" at the economic level (State held econ activities and relationship between privates and State). I used to believe too that corruption was mainly a cultural thing. But recently I heard in a conference an expert from Israel who has studied this type of corruption in places like South America and Russia. His view was "productive corruption" has everything to do with the cost of providing law and govt administration. This means that if you're a company owner with a factory polluting beyond what's legal, you can keep your illegal activity if there're no or too few "pollution inspectors" or if you can bribe them because, if caught, law just take too much or even forever to trial you. In cases like this law and govt administration is not really working, so corruption arises from govt's failure in providing law and administration. The corrupt company owner sees the cost of corruption as low. We can still say that people get used to that, so it becomes part of the culture, but I disagree. Suppose the govt starts functioning with a lot more resources and can indeed efficently provide law and effective administration, monitoring sources of income on public & private sectors and demanding results from govt employees. In this case corruption just becomes much more difficult, so even a people used to it must adapt. The cost of being corrupt are now high. The arguments of the Israel's guy really convinced me, so I'd prefer to take care of this at that level instead of the culture level. I've proposed in the govt model an "Administration Effectiveness Level" (AEL) which takes into account the amount of Institutional Infrastructure in a province and the province's population to determine how good the local govt is providing administration. My suggestion would be to create a province-level "productive corruption" based on AEL. If your civ have just messed admisnitration for too long, it'll take time for a new govt to increase AEL and reduce corruption because further investment is needed in Institutional Infrastructure and this takes time.
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Language: Yes, but I guess it'll add a complexity of the order of religions. An ethnic group might have a language but take other depending on where it lives and whom it lives with, new languages can appear... I'd prefer to leave that out. It's not so important.
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Only one GRW per culture: Like languages, I think this only makes things harder with little gains on the other end, and, after all, tribes do have mainly only one religion or a bunch of them very similar to each other.
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Nationalism: Yes I believe communication techs should be included. Education level... I really don't see what it has to do with it.
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Merging ethnic groups in multiethnic civ: I've just revised the social model and I can't belive I didn't put the formula for creating the new ethnic group! Anyway, it'll work as you mention.
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On LGJ's ideas:
Religions: First, Great Religions of the World are not those with huge populations following them. As defined in the model,, they're the religions that con go beyond a nationality. Because of this, they'll tend to have huge population following them, but that's not their definition. Second, all the examples you give for a lot of religions are true, but don't forget to see the grand scenario. Currenlty, if you pick Christianty, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism you're nearly taking 90% of world population! I just don't think we should make an effort modeling sects and other minor beliefs. Third, ethnic groups are not destined to embrace a GRW. It'll be possible for some of them to simply never give up their Primitive Religion, so some of your examples will happen in the game. Fourth, Judaism is a GRW because, per definition, it goes beyond nationality. You can find french jews as well as mexican jews. However, Judaism has some modeling problems because all jews are still part of the "People of Israel" and by that I don't refer to the political nation of Israel. BTW, I've never known if the english word "jew" is offensive... should I use "jewish"?
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"I think you're wrong here. When you look at the world in many areas there is no clear cut dominant religion throughout history"
Sure, that's why you don't have to look at "areas", but at ethnic groups. That's why I'm saying an ethnic group can only have one GRW, which is mainly true after the arguments I gave to Mark.
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Holy Land: We can make possible for a GRW to have more than one GRW. That's no big deal. Just propose a good method to know what other places I can add in the list of Holy Places.
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Exantionistic: Do you really think we need it? Isn't enough using Aggressiveness?
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Rigidity: I like this one. I'll give it a thought.
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"if you had a low score for importance of religion, religious intolerance being high wouldn't make sense."
Yes, and the model does use Importance of Religion when calculating Religious Tolerance.
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Opennes: I think this effect is well handled by Ethnic Tolerance.
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Branches for religions: Yes, indeed I also was considering that. I think we should allow for a couple of branches.
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"I'm assuming PR is the inital religion when the game starts out? "
Yes.
Your idea about "Advanced Religions": Why doing this? As said above, having GRW as defined and primitive religions give the game sufficient flavor IMHO.
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OTL: It's good to hear it won't be hard to calculate. Anyway, I don't believe you have an endless list of tech advances so OTL wouldn't have a limit...
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"Finally can you or do you have a religious moral codes that I can use? This is a;so ness for the tech. model."
If you tell what you intend to do, maybe I can help you in a better way.
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"Also i do think we need to have cultural mixing/absorbing. As to the way social chnages happen, i like your approach better."
I hope you meant "I DON'T think we need to have cultural mixing/absorbing"... 
Rodrigo
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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:13
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I don't see any big problems with the model; it seems like it should work well. There seems to be some flexibility with the cultural attributes, and I think that we will see a lot more attributes spring up.
I agree that it is very important that a tech level/education attribute be defined for the culture. High tech level cultures will almost invariably become the dominant culture when the cultures are mixed.
I also agree that there should be a coruption variable. This should be linked with religion; people who believe that their actions will be judged after their death tend to be more honest.
The tech model needs two variables defined:
I represents innovation, the tendency of a culture to try new things and take risks. This variable influences the difficulty of raising technology levels. High I means more tech growth if there is enough research.
E represents education, the ability of a culture to retain old knowledge. This variable influences the difficulty of maintaining a technology. High E means more tech loss if there is not enough RP spent on a tech to keep it constant.
A culture with high I will usually have a high E as well, so it might be possible to describe them both with one attribute.
The ecology model needs an attribute that describes how a culture tends to treat the environment. This will be used to calculate the willingness of the people to alter the environment. It would help if the number is equivalent to the cost that the culture sees in disrupting the environment, so an Ecology attribute of zero means that the culture sees absolutely no value in the natural world and will alter it as they see fit, while a culture with an ecology attribute of 100 would always want to protect the natural environment.
These values, defined for the civ as a whole, could be weighted averages of the values for the cultural groups. I'm not sure exactly how they would change over time, but a good deal of the change should involve feedback from the models they relate to. For example, an environmental disaster caused by human activity will increase the Ecology attribute for most of the cultures in the civ.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited June 18, 2000).]
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Lord God Jinnai
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St. Louis
Sep 1999
time: 23:13
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Religions: First, Great Religions of the World are not those with huge populations following them. As defined in the model,, they're the religions that con go beyond a nationality. Because of this, they'll tend to have huge population following them, but that's not their definition. Second, all the examples you give for a lot of religions are true, but don't forget to see the grand scenario. Currenlty, if you pick Christianty, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism you're nearly taking 90% of world population! I just don't think we should make an effort modeling sects and other minor beliefs. Third, ethnic groups are not destined to embrace a GRW. It'll be possible for some of them to simply never give up their Primitive Religion, so some of your examples will happen in the game. Fourth, Judaism is a GRW because, per definition, it goes beyond nationality. You can find french jews as well as mexican jews. However, Judaism has some modeling problems because all jews are still part of the "People of Israel" and by that I don't refer to the political nation of Israel. BTW, I've never known if the english word "jew" is offensive... should I use "jewish"?
Your idea about "Advanced Religions": Why doing this? As said above, having GRW as defined and primitive religions give the game sufficient flavor IMHO.
First off, yes i believe "jew" is offenseive like "jap" is to a jananese.
As to religions, there should be more than 6, unless six is the max at a time. There have been more irl than 6, 2 already dead (Greek and Zoastiriansim).
As to AR and PR, PR differ from AR in that PR would be more flexible to change in their moral codes than AR and could more easily be abosrbed than PR.
As to moral codes...i need them for the tech/social advances for paramater reasons
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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Mark:
About centralization, I needed it mostly because of its importance in the Independence Feeling in the riots model. However, I do want it to have an economic impact and as I said it in the model document, that's something we have to discuss. I know we've had some discussions about it, but I feel nothing is clear. You go and take the first step: What kind of econ impact do you think it should have?
Please remember there's a related variable, Administration Effectiveness Level (AEL).
Richard:
"I" and "E" sound good to me and I think they shouldn't be computed only looking at the cultural variables. The "Civil Rights" variable in the govt model is IMO very important, since it defines freedom in the civ. The current economic form, defined by variables Private Property, Economic Planning and Social Policies should also be in. IMO capitalistic economies can lead to higher levels of innovation because of the huge monetary benefits you can get.
On ecology, maybe you're right about the need for a new cultural attribute related with it. I'll give it a thought.
LGJ:
OK. I believe you have a point there in the aggressiveness/expansionistic issue. I guess we can enrich the current Foreign Affairs govt model variable with that view of yours. However, I think we really don't need an extra cultural attribute. I believe Asceticism will do just fine for this. It's reasonable to say that a very ascetic culture will tend to be non-expansionistic and vise versa.
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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:13
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I didn't mean for the I and E variables to be based only on the cultural attributes. The culture is only a part of the equation, but it is a big part and I didn't see any other attribute that could be used in the calculation.
Perhaps the cultural attribute that helps calculate the I and E variables could be called Technology Volatility. Low values for this mean the culture does not advance as fast but holds on to the knowledge it already has. High values mean that the culture can advance quickly but will tend to forget things that are not being used or researched at the moment.
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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Richard:
I don't think we need that "tech volatility" cultural attribute. I believe I and E can be computed using Asceticism, Individualism, Educational Level and Traditionalism.
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LGJ:
Thanks for sending me the chars model.
About the moral code variables: Religious Tolerance, Individualism, Asceticism and Aggressiveness. They're all in the 0-100 range. I don't have any specific numbers for them, because actual numbers will be created kind of randomly when the game creates a GRW.
I'm not sure what part of the religious issue I didn't answer to you... If it's about the number of GRW: 6 is just a number giving you the order of magnitude. If it's about your idea for "Advanced Religions", I really believe we don't need them. As I said, with GRWs alone we get 90% world population so why badder about small cults.
Rodrigo
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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:13
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I and E: We could calculate them by those four attributes, but I'm worried about feedback effects. If something especially good or bad happens as a result of technological growth, the society's attitude toward growth should change. Would it be safe to change these four attributes in response to what the tech and economy models are doing?
Cultural technologies: I think that the tech model should be willing to change in response to the new social modelling of various things. For example, consider the Religion technology. I think that it is pretty silly to have such a thing; we only had it because other civ games have it. I think that can change. Rather than modeling religion as some tech level, we should be able to adapt to the new and much more detailed social model.
I don't think it makes sense to say that one religion or philosophy is more advanced than another because a civ has thrown RP's in its direction and it has a higher tech level. This isn't really fair and doesn't address the complexity of the situation like the social model does.
Rather than having applications depend on a religion tech level, we can have them depend on the religion attributes in the social model. So rather than having the Chivalry or Way of the Blade application/effect be given at "Religion Level 35", we can give it when the religion attributes are at a certain level and other conditions are met. This might be a bit harder to do, but I think it would give much better results.
Cultural technology does not fit into the linear deterministic system we have designed for the growth of scientific and technical knowledge. I think we are doing Clash a disservice my modeling it the same way. Cultural technology should be treated differently, ideally by combining the social and tech models.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited June 21, 2000).]
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Lord God Jinnai
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St. Louis
Sep 1999
time: 23:13
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Cultural technologies: I think that the tech model should be willing to change in response to the new social modelling of various things. For example, consider the Religion technology. I think that it is pretty silly to have such a thing; we only had it because other civ games have it. I think that can change. Rather than modeling religion as some tech level, we should be able to adapt to the new and much more detailed social model.
I don't think it makes sense to say that one religion or philosophy is more advanced than another because a civ has thrown RP's in its direction and it has a higher tech level. This isn't really fair and doesn't address the complexity of the situation like the social model does.
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OK. Your right and wrong at the same time. Yes the social model should be very important to religion. I never intended otherwise. However, there is such a thing as more advanced religions than others. How we go through this can change that's fine. Right now though the model doesn't take care of the advancement of religion, just the spread of it (except for advancement into GWR). The way i've worked out the social advances part of the tech model already does so that's why i'm saying this.
And as far as religions and philosophy go there are some that could be considered equal, and I've already come up with idea for that. But there are lesser advanced ones than that. This is agreed upon by all social scientistis.
Rather than having applications depend on a religion tech level, we can have them depend on the religion attributes in the social model. So rather than having the Chivalry or Way of the Blade application/effect be given at "Religion Level 35", we can give it when the religion attributes are at a certain level and other conditions are met. This might be a bit harder to do, but I think it would give much better results.
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Well in addition to Religion 35 or whatever such thing is needed, certain levels of enthic attributes are needed. I was planning on this all along. However i can see no other way to advance a progression of society like that w/o such. Whether social advances should be seperated from the tech model and simply use a similar method i don't have a prob with, but under the circumstances then all one would need is the app. enthic attributes and religion type and that is not concurrent with history. There needs to be a path of progression which isn't incorperated here.
Cultural technology does not fit into the linear deterministic system we have designed for the growth of scientific and technical knowledge. I think we are doing Clash a disservice my modeling it the same way. Cultural technology should be treated differently, ideally by combining the social and tech models.
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Exactly my point. I have already thought of that and how to get around it. But there is some linear progression even in social advances, just not as much.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited June 21, 2000).]
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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:13
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Just a bunch of thoughts before I disappear on vacation...
I still think we need a corruption number for the cultures themselves. I think that the guy you heard speak may be quite right about "production corruption", but there is also corruption in the political system, the legal system, and many other social institutions. I don't think solving all these is just a matter of throwing money into institutions. If the institutions are broken all the money in the world will not help! You mentioned that political corruption is part of the "de facto influences" in the government model. I think this captures part of it, but more of what I am looking at is that corruption is a source of friction resisting any movement in a good direction. Please consider putting corruption in as a cultural attribute, and if it can be shown that it is redundant with administrative spending within the model, then we can take it out again if necessary. But I feel very strongly it will be necessary.
In terms of the tech level of a culture being important, which we discussed above, I think the most important affect is that the strength of one culture to influence and other increases dramatically with its technology level. Basically, no matter who the barbarians are, when they take over a civilization, if you look 100 years later, you can usually hardly see the previous barbarian culture at all. Even though they were on top! It's because the barbarians don't have traditions to go long with much of the circumstances that occur in the higher-tech society. They frequently take on the court rituals of the higher-tech society, because they had no courts... Obviously there are some exceptions, but I think this is a very strong trend over world history. I think it needs to be included when cultures mix together into a hybrid culture.
I think I and E can be modeled ok in the way Rodrigo proposes (probably one variable suffices). However, I would also include corruption in the mix. (Why innovate when graft is more profitable, and less risky ) We need to keep some lid on the attributes, and using combinations is a good way to do that IMO. Richard, I think this will work out fine, although I may be deluded
Language: Agreed, lets ditch the languages for now...
More than one religion: Ok, leave simple is my vote. Easy to change if we decide otherwise later.
Expansionist and Aggressiveness: I think these are more a function of Government than culture, as someone pointed out a while ago in a thread far, far away.
Asceticism: I had always pictured this as Relative rather than absolute. I think one can at least call oneself an ascetic if one lives with expenditures typical of PCI = 50 in a society with PCI = 200. PCI = 50 still has a lot of material goods, just relatively less than the PCI would indicate.
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited June 21, 2000).]
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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LGJ and Richard:
(I understand you two are the tech guys... correct me if I'm wrong)
I've always been opposed to the idea of "social tech advances", at least in general terms. They just doesn't make sense to me. Something I hate about MPS' civ2 is when you discover something like "monotheism". What's that supposed to mean? that all your people suddenly turned to a monotheistic cult? aggg! Modeling social stuff is quite complex and my model is far from being the great answer, but I believe any social tech advance should be there only to model those effects we can't include in the social model. This is not only from the perspective of having better true-to-life modeling, but also because we easily can fall in prejudices and try to force the game to reach pre-stated results. The whole thing about religions is a good example. We've seen our countries' govts from deeply related to christianity to secular States, so we could say there's a social tech like "Secular States" and through it forcing civs to become secular no matter what. Fundamentalistic govts can only be seen as less advanced civs under this approach, which I believe is wrong.
The problem with techs is they assume something is better than what you had earlier. Techs "advance". This is great for things like metallurgy or math, but with social stuff is IMHO just arrogant. I've tried to leave prejudices aside when creating the three models. This is why there're no arbitrary bonuses or penalities for different cultures or for different govt styles. So, to sum up, I support Richard's idea to adjust the tech model to the social model and not the other way around. And this comittment should prevail for whatever social and tech models we could possibly have, present ones or others.
If this suggestion is supported, I think we need to re-evaluate what social techs still are ness. in the tech model, and that's a job I think we need to do together.
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Mark:
Well, on corruption we have a disagreement. I'd love to see what other think on the matter. I'll add it as a cultural attribute for now.
As for including it in I and E, I don't think so. Why cheating would decrease innovation? When cheating you're actually creating new ways to do things! I know your greatest concern is determining what makes an economy really work from the productive perspective and the tech development perspective, but I guess you're relying too much on the corruption variable. I think that before continuing a discussion about the relationship between culture and corruption we should really have a discussion about what makes an economy work.
On tech-culture: Yes, everytime nomadic tribes invaded settled civs they ended up embracing the conquered culture... I think I finally understood what you wanted. My question is: what made them change their barbaric culture? was it the fact that they were less advanced as you propose? was a lack of own identity (low nationalism) leading to a easy cultural break down? was it the mere fact that they were nomads and the settled lifestyle appeared attractive once faced so closely?
I agree on the effect you mention, now the question is what exactly provokes the cultural adjustment.
Rodrigo
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Lord God Jinnai
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St. Louis
Sep 1999
time: 23:13
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I've always been opposed to the idea of "social tech advances", at least in general terms. They just doesn't make sense to me. Something I hate about MPS' civ2 is when you discover something like "monotheism". What's that supposed to mean? that all your people suddenly turned to a monotheistic cult? aggg! Modeling social stuff is quite complex and my model is far from being the great answer, but I believe any social tech advance should be there only to model those effects we can't include in the social model. This is not only from the perspective of having better true-to-life modeling, but also because we easily can fall in prejudices and try to force the game to reach pre-stated results. The whole thing about religions is a good example. We've seen our countries' govts from deeply related to christianity to secular States, so we could say there's a social tech like "Secular States" and through it forcing civs to become secular no matter what. Fundamentalistic govts can only be seen as less advanced civs under this approach, which I believe is wrong.
The problem with techs is they assume something is better than what you had earlier. Techs "advance". This is great for things like metallurgy or math, but with social stuff is IMHO just arrogant. I've tried to leave prejudices aside when creating the three models. This is why there're no arbitrary bonuses or penalities for different cultures or for different govt styles. So, to sum up, I support Richard's idea to adjust the tech model to the social model and not the other way around. And this comittment should prevail for whatever social and tech models we could possibly have, present ones or others.
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I support ur idea in priciple, however, your ignoring fundimental facts of societial progression. I will take religion since it seems to be discuessed the most. In the begginning of societies religions were all what are termed "Nature God" religions. This is because man wanted some way to explain the world around it. Thus religion was borne. As time progressed and people come to understand more of reality they expanded their gods and ideas. The most advanced of the polytheistic religions were the Greeks (Hinduism isn't really, but for clash purposes we can call it that and thus it is more complex). Up to this point historians agree that the progression is pretty much advanced in a realative linear fashion. After this is when it varies depending on culture. 4 main things themes appear. In the west, its entirely monotheistic, with more complexities as things go along (although social scientistics will also argue that Christianity is polytheistic, but i won't argue that here). Anyway there is also more advanced polytheistic religions, like hinduism. There is a third kind, monastic where there is a belief in a spiritual place, but no god per say, just an existance. Budhism is the best example and finnaly there is a combination monastic/nature worship practiced in the far east mainly and to some extent in the americas earlier on. OK the new types would be set so that a certain level of social advancement must be met before people could have say monotheism. In addition they must meat the ethnic requirments for each ethnic group. Monotheism wouldn't be allowed to form in a far east society FE and mostastic vise versa. If not the culture continues onward on its present course. If we don't have these social levels implimented then people can automatically start out with monotheism which is entire inaccurate and would be like allowing a civ to start out with steel working. Also having becauses cultures are based on a act-react basis we cannot simply "force" religious types to slowly emerge at certain times and places.
If this suggestion is supported, I think we need to re-evaluate what social techs still are ness. in the tech model, and that's a job I think we need to do together.
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I think before we accept this, another working alterative should be set up. If it can work for every instance that the social advanced can handle with the aid of the enthic modifiers as good or better I'm all for it and would like to help since I am really into this.
Well, on corruption we have a disagreement. I'd love to see what other think on the matter. I'll add it as a cultural attribute for now.
As for including it in I and E, I don't think so. Why cheating would decrease innovation? When cheating you're actually creating new ways to do things! I know your greatest concern is determining what makes an economy really work from the productive perspective and the tech development perspective, but I guess you're relying too much on the corruption variable. I think that before continuing a discussion about the relationship between culture and corruption we should really have a discussion about what makes an economy work.
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As far as having it as a variable i think its good, but the use mark and rich descibed imo isn't good enough to warrant its use.
On tech-culture: Yes, everytime nomadic tribes invaded settled civs they ended up embracing the conquered culture... I think I finally understood what you wanted. My question is: what made them change their barbaric culture? was it the fact that they were less advanced as you propose? was a lack of own identity (low nationalism) leading to a easy cultural break down? was it the mere fact that they were nomads and the settled lifestyle appeared attractive once faced so closely?
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Probably depends on the culture. And don't think they were always simply "absorbed." They could bring ideas too. FE Hinduism was brought to India by the "barbarians" or rather its primitive version. These effects would be social usually, but can be technological. In fact many of the earliest barbaric tribes were respoble for a lot of the military technological advancements in other civs. FE the armor and a use for the wheel were given to the egyptians this way (as chariots), the Hitties brought iron, and the first ever wars as we know them came first from these barbarians.
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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:13
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LGJ:
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OK the new types would be set so that a certain level of social advancement must be met before people could have say monotheism. . . . If we don't have these social levels implimented then people can automatically start out with monotheism which is entire inaccurate and would be like allowing a civ to start out with steel working.
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This is simply wrong. The Jews had monotheism in 2000 BC. Clash could start as late as 1000 BC. I don't see how you can equate monotheism with steel working. Monotheism does not allow you to make or do anything advanced; it is simply a different way of looking at the world.
I think that there are only two good ways of dealing with religion. One way, which is used in the social model, models different religions and their characteristics but makes no value judgements. This allows religion spread to be accurately modeled and should be reasonably inoffensive.
However, LGJ had a point: The social model does not model the evolution of religious thought and the technology model does.
The other way to medel religion, which I was using earlier, is to leave specific religions out of the picture and have a tech that sums up your civ's religion. Higher values mean that the religion, whatever it is, is better meeting the spiritual needs of the people. Under this system, all religions are equal and they have the same effects. There is not even a hint of discrimination or stereotype.
We were never planning on discovering polytheism one day and suddenly being able to ride elephants as a result. This kind of silliness is what made me abandon the old system of tech growth and come up with the continuous tech level model we are using now.
The only differences we had planned on would be cosmetic. For example, the civ would get the "Spiritual Soldier" template application at Religion level 35. In a western culture it would be called Chivalry and in an eastern society it would be called Way of the Blade. The effect of the tech would be exactly the same, but it is appropriate to whatever culture you have so the Japanese are not forced to research Monotheism like thay are in Civ 2.
This way of modeling religion is somewhat simplistic, but it is fair and in the absence of anything better it seemed like a good way to model the progression of religious thought.
As I set before, a combination/compromise should be the way to go. I'll give one example of a way we could be able to combine the two models:
Each GRW is defined as a family of religions rather than a single religion. For example, one GRW would be "Western Monotheism." Each of these GRW's has characteristics like the current GRW's, but these characteristics are malleable. Furthermore, the GRW attributes change based on conditions within an individual civilization. This means that the attributes in one civ can be different than the attributes in amother civ; the GRW can have a different flavor in each civilization.
In addition to the different attributes, the GRW in a civ has a level, similar to a tech level. This level represents many things, including:
1) The GRW's ability to meet the spiritual needs of the people.
2) The logic and clarity of the GRW's doctrine.
3) The amount of literature and art devoted to that GRW.
This tech level increases due to tagged RP's generated by the religious establishment and sometimes by the people that support the religion. Helper techs are Philosophy and the various art techs.
A GRW with a high level will be more popular and spread faster. It will also provide more benefits to the civilization, in the form of lower corruption and crime.
Note that the level of the GRW is different in every civilization.
This combination should allow both spread and advancement to be modeled. I think it is a reasonable way of doing things. It should be non-offenseve because it makes it clear that we are dealing with the local application of the religion and not the core beliefs of the religion.
What does everyone think about this?
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Lord God Jinnai
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St. Louis
Sep 1999
time: 23:13
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This is simply wrong. The Jews had monotheism in 2000 BC. Clash could start as late as 1000 BC. I don't see how you can equate monotheism with steel working. Monotheism does not allow you to make or do anything advanced; it is simply a different way of looking at the world.
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Here's the thing. The latest clash will start out in a standard game is 4000 BCE. Most likely 5000 BCE. That means pretty much 2-3000 years when monotheism is unkown. Your right that it is a diff way at looking at things, but its something that society hadb't advanced to the point of. So except for scenrios no culture should be allowed to start out with it.
The other way to medel religion, which I was using earlier, is to leave specific religions out of the picture and have a tech that sums up your civ's religion. Higher values mean that the religion, whatever it is, is better meeting the spiritual needs of the people. Under this system, all religions are equal and they have the same effects. There is not even a hint of discrimination or stereotype.
We were never planning on discovering polytheism one day and suddenly being able to ride elephants as a result. This kind of silliness is what made me abandon the old system of tech growth and come up with the continuous tech level model we are using now.
The only differences we had planned on would be cosmetic. For example, the civ would get the "Spiritual Soldier" template application at Religion level 35. In a western culture it would be called Chivalry and in an eastern society it would be called Way of the Blade. The effect of the tech would be exactly the same, but it is appropriate to whatever culture you have so the Japanese are not forced to research Monotheism like thay are in Civ 2.
This way of modeling religion is somewhat simplistic, but it is fair and in the absence of anything better it seemed like a good way to model the progression of religious thought.
As I set before, a combination/compromise should be the way to go. I'll give one example of a way we could be able to combine the two models:
Each GRW is defined as a family of religions rather than a single religion. For example, one GRW would be "Western Monotheism." Each of these GRW's has characteristics like the current GRW's, but these characteristics are malleable. Furthermore, the GRW attributes change based on conditions within an individual civilization. This means that the attributes in one civ can be different than the attributes in amother civ; the GRW can have a different flavor in each civilization.
In addition to the different attributes, the GRW in a civ has a level, similar to a tech level. This level represents many things, including:
1) The GRW's ability to meet the spiritual needs of the people.
2) The logic and clarity of the GRW's doctrine.
3) The amount of literature and art devoted to that GRW.
This tech level increases due to tagged RP's generated by the religious establishment and sometimes by the people that support the religion. Helper techs are Philosophy and the various art techs.
A GRW with a high level will be more popular and spread faster. It will also provide more benefits to the civilization, in the form of lower corruption and crime.
Note that the level of the GRW is different in every civilization.
This combination should allow both spread and advancement to be modeled. I think it is a reasonable way of doing things. It should be non-offenseve because it makes it clear that we are dealing with the local application of the religion and not the core beliefs of the religion.
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OK the only thing i see that may need work is to allow non-GWR shouldn't change from their basic type (ie monotherisitic) but can have a couple of branches like i said. PR can change alot, well atleast some as time goes on. The moral codes and that could shift for each one, though much less for GWR.
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Lord God Jinnai
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St. Louis
Sep 1999
time: 23:13
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I've been working on a way to use social advances w/o the tech model. So far i've done well with religions and can probably use a similar version for philosophy. Fine arts may be a slight challenge, but i think i can handle it. The problem is the final social basic tech, Psychology.
Anyway I've figured out a way reviewing the old social thread and the way religions were handled their. I think changing some things around for how they advance (not spread since for the most part i like the GWR idea better than the former idea...its simpler and in some ways more realistic). I read a post that rodrigo made that seemed to be able to handle for the most part the advancement of religion. That is base it on the level of abstractness. There are some flaws with this though since higher abastactness doesn't ness. mean a more advanced religion. I think adding another variable could help, but i don't know yet. This will only affect how social advanced evolve over time. Note that even if this system is used, certain areas will still require certain types of techs before being advanced upon (FE in fine arts u can't start out with animation). I could use some ideas for variables for the others. I think fine arts will probably have to have atleast 2-3 advancement variables, one for visual arts, another for performing and a final for musical (though we could possibly get by with combining the last 2...i don't know).
Anyway I'm not posting it now cuz i wan't to know if i should continue with this social advancement sub-model first.
Another note, there will be more variable for religion. The 2 (well 3 if u count starting location) you have aren't enough).
Another note on religion, I think you should consider something like was mentioned about plurality practiced in eastern cultures. I think not doing that discriminates against them saying that a person must be at most 1 religion and i thought we were trying not to do that here like was done with the civ games.
Also on another note with religion, you say the only religions that can spread beyond the natural boudries are GWR. I think that's wrong in a few cases. FE if i have forced conversions by the sword i should be able to spread my chosen PR where i control beyond its natural boundries.
Also on the same note, say i chose a religion as the only religion legal or none (like the fomrer USSR), would i see the actual amount of unoficial worship or the assumed number that i'm wanting for my civ?
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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:13
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LGJ: Seems interesting. Go ahead and post a more complete version of your ideas.
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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First, if it's not too much to ask, LGJ, I'd prefer you to not post your sub model yet. I'd like to see us getting to at least some sort of agreement about the general social-tech picture before start discussing about a particular "social-tech sub model".
I in general agree with Richard's idea about modeling the whole social stuff half in the social model and half in the tech model. As I said, there're some things that can be incredibly complex to model in the social model context, like the "Spiritual Soldier", so they for sure should go in the tech model. If LGJ agrees too, I think the core of our problem would be then where to draw the line between models. Here are some things related to this matter:
1) I don't want to see "monotheism", "meta-life approach" or any such thing in either model. These should only be flavoring names applied arbitrarily to a just born GRW. Why? because they serve no use in gameplay terms and could only lead us to offensive problems. The very essence of each GRW should be there in characteristics WITH A CLEAR EFFECT ON THE GAME.
2) Religion should not be a tech advance in any way. As said by Richard, when new religions appear, they're just new ways to see the world and therefore it's not a good idea to tag some of them as more advanced than others, which is the main assumption we'd made if included in the tech model.
3) GRW characteristics and moral codes should not change. Two good reasons. First, modeling cost. Modeling that would be as complex as modeling a culture and the question about how each characteristic should behave is not easy to solve. Second, religions indeed have changed almost nothing in thousands of years. I know this can be an opinion you may find wrong, so I'm gonna try to convince you: When we look at religion practices and people's views about religious matters, we can for sure say things have changed notoriously, but this does not mean religion doctrine has changed. Take christianity for instance. All its doctrine has changed about nothing in these 2000 years. Today, it's the same story and beliefs first christians had. Even more, the church still is based in the words of the bible, which is the same book they have used all these centuries. There's a very good example regarding "the universe". Do you know when christianity officially accepted the earth not being in the centre of the universe? Less than a decade ago! Society has accepted Galileo's ideas for centuries so far. This shows how slow changes in doctrine are. The same happens with other religions. What do changes is people's view about religion, but not religion itself. People start to believe in non-religious things like Galileo's ideas or Darwin's ideas, while religion doctrine stays the same. That's why for the same cult you can find from very liberal practicers to fanatics. Fanatics are actually those believers taking doctrine in a rather unflexible way. The social model allows people to be less influenced by religion as techs advance using the "Importance of Religion" variable, so, FE, in a modern west country people would find in religion other roles compared to ancient times.
4) What I've being trying to say all along is "don't look at the religion form (natural, sky-based, monotheistic, polithesitic, meta-life, etc), but look at its effects on population and its spreading capabilities". Focus and meditate on this single phrase. My view is religion form is irrelevant IN GAMEPLAY TERMS because if people is monotheistic it makes no difference at all compared to being meta-life supporters. What really matters is what religion does to people and how many people it can reach. As defined in the model, what religion does is to change cultural attributes, making them ad hoc to religion attributes, as if people would be trying to behave according to religion's doctrine. And about spreading capabilities, that's where GRW come in. A GRW is nothing but a religion that can go beyond a particular ethnic group (not beyond a province, civ, nation, border, etc), while a primitive religion is someway attached to a nationality (ethnic group), so others cannot embrace it. An example of primitive religion is aztec beliefs, because in that cult there're elements like "God X protects the aztecs" and consecuently no other tribe feels interested in it (or at least not in a important level). Maybe the name "primitive religion" is not the best and should be called "ethnically attached religion" or such.
5) quote: "However, LGJ had a point: The social model does not model the evolution of religious thought and the technology model does." Again, "evolution" is a value judgement, so I can't suscribe to this view. However, I understand LGJ's worries about not having monotheistic beliefs in year 5000 BC or such. The social model allows some thousands of years before a GRW appears using a very simple method. Even though this can be managed in the tech model instead, I think it will make things only more complicated and we can also loose modeling flexibility given what's said in the next paragraph.
6) An important issue in the tech vs social discussion is tech model works at the civ level, while the social model works at the ethnic group level. So, when social techs advance in a civ, it's unclear what ethnic groups in the civ are affected by this. Consider the problems this leads to regarding religion, FE.
7) quote: "In addition to the different attributes, the GRW in a civ has a level, similar to a tech level. This level represents many things, including: 1) The GRW's ability to meet the spiritual needs of the people. 2) The logic and clarity of the GRW's doctrine. 3) The amount of literature and art devoted to that GRW." How can you possibly give a level to "spiritual needs satisfaction"? Are native american cults less satisfacory than christianity? This only leads to offensive problems. "Logic an clarity of doctrine"? Again, which religion has more logic? Concerning literature and art, I don't see what use it could have in gameplay terms. And also, I wouldn't consider more advanced a religion for which people dedicates a lot of literature and art to. This quote shows the core of the problem when using the tech model in social things: the assumption of something being better than others. I know we won't be able to completely escape from this problem, but what we can do is letting the social model handle as many things as it can and then putting in the tech model all other things we just couldn't put in the social model.
A couple of answers to LGJ:
1) "Also on another note with religion, you say the only religions that can spread beyond the natural boudries are GWR" No, as I've said, religion boundaries are NOT geographic, are social. That is, on the ethnic group level. GRW can go beyond the ethnic group that originally started it. In a civ only a few ethnic groups can have a GRW. One GRW can be found in several ethnic groups in several civs.
2) "Also on the same note, say i chose a religion as the only religion legal or none (like the fomrer USSR), would i see the actual amount of unoficial worship or the assumed number that i'm wanting for my civ?" The player cannot change people's beliefs with a simple govt policy. The USSR example is not currenly handled. A govt can have one religion as official or none (secular). Maybe we can add this feature later. When the govt discriminates, it makes minorities out of believers of non-official religion. The "conversion by sword" is a feature we can add too, and I feel this one is interesting for the game.
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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:13
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I would prefer that no names be given to any religion. That was the approach taken in the tech model. The social model is the one that gives names and characteristics to the religions.
I never said that any religion was better or more advanced than any other. Every GRW would start with the same tech level. This level changes with the popularity and official support of the religion. Also, I never said that the level made a religion "better." The level is there to create the religion based applications like Chivalry. Once a religion reaches a certain level of popular support and longevity, these applications will be given to the civ.
Again, a high tech level is not meant to imply that a religion is better. It means that the religion is a bigger part of people's lives and a bigger part of the civilization.
"Evolution" is not a value judgement. I simply meant it to mean, "change over time."
I'm sorry; I made a hasty decision. I should not have written that I didn't see any problems with the social model. While I still think that most of the social model is good, I didn't look closely at the religion part of the model and I assumed it would be as good as the rest of the model. After considering it more closely, I now think that there are some problems woth the religion modeling.
I do not like the way that the social model makes all religions static. This problem is compounded by the assumption that every follower of the religion follows the doctrine exactly. By Rodrigo's definition, this makes every religious person in Clash a fanatic. I think that this is a very bad thing to imply.
I agree that the emphasis of the model should be on the effects on the population and the world, not an arbitrary definition of the religion.
Rodrigo:
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When we look at religion practices and people's views about religious matters, we can for sure say things have changed notoriously, but this does not mean religion doctrine has changed.
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My view is religion form is irrelevant IN GAMEPLAY TERMS . . . What really matters is what religion does to people and how many people it can reach.
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Doctrine is simply one aspect of a religion's form. What religion does to people and how many people it can reach will depend on religion practices and people's views and not the form or doctrine of the religion.
The effects of a religion that are relevant to gameplay will be constantly changing. I happen to be more familiar with European history, so I will use the Catholic Church as an example: The current pope has a very different effect on the world than the popes in the middle ages. He does entirely different things. For example, he works for peace in the middle east while his predecessors sent people over there to make war.
For another example, consider the Japanese in this century. Only 55 years ago, their society and religion encouraged pilots to crash their airplanes into enemy ships. Nowadays, Japan is one of the most peaceful Asian countries.
We cannot use a model that assumes that the religious leaders and followers in 2000 will act the same way as they did in 1200 or even 1945.
While the doctrine may not change much, most relevant effects of the religion will change signifigantly. The religion attributes, defined as the way perople act and how they influence the civ, must change over time.
If it would be too much trouble to model changing attributes, then I think we should leave them out and return to the tech assumption that all religions have identical effects. Unchanging attributes would be worse than no attributes.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited June 27, 2000).]
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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Richard:
"I never said that any religion was better or more advanced than any other."
I know you didn't mean it. I'm sure none of us has a fanatic/fundamentalistic view about any particular religion. In my case, I'm atheist. My problem is you don't have to say a religion is better than other, it's simply assumed (intentionally or not) when you put religions in the tech system. This is because tech system has a structure of things becoming better and better. When you say Metallurgy-85%, it's obvious and inherent to the model that it means it's better than Metallurgy-75%. I'm affraid this can take us in the wrong way in the case of religions.
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"Again, a high tech level is not meant to imply that a religion is better. It means that the religion is a bigger part of people's lives and a bigger part of the civilization."
This is strange, you see... In the tech system all techs advance, but if you include religion as a tech advance, you'd be forced to make it back down, because religions are not today the big part of people's lives they were in ancient times, at least for western societies. If you include now the idea that nowadays religions have "grown" (in any sense) compared to older times, the meaning of the "religion tech advance" becomes unclear.
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"I do not like the way that the social model makes all religions static. This problem is compounded by the assumption that every follower of the religion follows the doctrine exactly. By Rodrigo's definition, this makes every religious person in Clash a fanatic. I think that this is a very bad thing to imply."
The social model doesn't assume fanatism for followers. It doesn't either make people follow the religion exactly. That's the main role of "Importance of Religion" variable. You probably overlooked this one. When IR is high, people is more like fanatics, caring a lot about religion and its role in society. When it is low, it's like a western country today. This is exactly why I have no problem at all with static religion's doctrine. The doctrine stays the same (which is in essence true), but people can see religions in different perspectives. This matches perfectly with something you say: "Doctrine is simply one aspect of a religion's form. What religion does to people and how many people it can reach will depend on religion practices and people's views and not the form or doctrine of the religion."
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"We cannot use a model that assumes that the religious leaders and followers in 2000 will act the same way as they did in 1200 or even 1945."
Sure! that's why I encourage you to consider seriously "Importance of Religion". In 1945 people won't care too much about holy places and therefore they won't accept easily a crusade. But they would in ancient times. And this has no conflict with the static characteristic of doctrine, which truly IS mostly static.
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"I didn't look closely at the religion part of the model..."
With that comment and some of LGJ's questions, I'm starting to think you two just overlooked the model. While this is alright if you just wanted to have an idea about the model, I think it won't work for a discussion about social-techs interactions. IMO deciding what must be managed by the social model and what by the tech model regarding social stuff is a Major decision with several important consequences. Said that, I'd suggest a closer and deeper look at the social model before continuing. On my side, I don't know the tech model fully, so if you can send me the latest version you have, I'd appreciate it.
I want to insist that I do agree about managing some things in the social model and others in the tech model. But, as I've said, the tech model should only handle those things the social model cannot. This opinion holds for whatever social and tech models we have. If we feel the social model must be completely changed, well, that's alright... somebody else will take the job. But still, the new model has to be the cornerstone of social stuff and the tech model should only help it with the things that are too complex to model. Do we agree on this, at least ?
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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:13
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I did review the social model and religious models before making that last post, thus correecting my previous mistake.
I don't think the IR variable can cover the problem of static doctrine. The current assumption is that people will either follow an ancient, unchanging doctrine to the word or ignore it completely. The form of religions will change; equally devout people will sometimes do entirely different things as the interpretation of the religion changes over the centuries.
I referred to the religious class in passing, and I'd like to make the statement more explicit: In real life, the actions of the RC change over time even though they are a part of the same religion. In the clash model, the RCM values for four important attributes will never change. Today's pope is not aggressive like previous popes were, but the model assumes that they will be the same.
I was planning on disguising the religion "level" and keeping it out of the tech tree. It would be in the social model interface, not the tech interface. The relation to the tech model would be hidden. And yes, the religion "level" will fluctuate up and down. It is not meant to only go up.
I agree that the social model should be the basis for most social applications. It should be possible to assign most applications like Abolition of Slavery based only on social attributes. The social attributes, plus a religion and/or philisophy level for each civ, should do the job well.
I'll be going on vacation tomorrow, so I won't be able to continue this discussion. I've said about all I can already; if I haven't convinced anyone yet I probably never will. The "level" idea is not menat to be final and other somutions could be found. But I remain convinced that religious attributes should change over time the same way that cultural attributes do.
Rodrigo: The tech models posted on the Clash website are accurate and up to date, with the exception of a few equation details you probably don't care about. If you want the tech spreadsheet and tell me before tomorrow morning, I can send them to you. If you want them while I'm gone, ask LGJ for them.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited June 27, 2000).]
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18-06-2000 22:28
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