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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I was thinking. Maybe to simplify disease handling we could make it so every person that dies (except of war and such things) would die form a disease.
This would make the diseases an incorporated part of the whole pop model, and it would remove diseases as being just plagues. Diseases should exist throughout the game, and would mostly (when a pop has gotten used to them) just kill a few people each turn.
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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I have completed my pop model demo.
Right now I am subscribing to some free website service, so you can download it.
EDIT: Damn, I couldn't add files to the website I created - only text and images was allowed. In stead I will mail it to Heardie, and then he can upload it either to his site or to the GGS website (I think we should propably just upload everything we've got to the GGS website, just so it will all be stored in one place).
It has really poor interface, but I can't change that yet. The program prints the amount of people in each age group one turn, and then the amount the next turn, using mortality rates and kids per family.
It doesn't use any OO techniques yet. What I was thinking was, that population would be a class, and then the pop of each province of social class would be objects.
It seems the program closes itself when opened, so right now the only thing useful is the sourcecode. It is propably not very good sourcecode, but this is the first "real" program that I've designed, so I'm happy about it! 
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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting
[This message has been edited by The Joker (edited October 20, 2000).]
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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Ok. So I guess including a pop class in the econ demo will make it easier to implement pop changes, when we are ready to do that, right?
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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I have been thinking about how to handle one rather important, yet unsolved problem with the pop model:
How do we calculate the mortality rates for each age group?
I mean, it's easy to say that mortality for kids should be 10% per turn, but what we need is an algorithm that takes in a very small amount of variables and finds the mortality rate for each age group (each of these would be different).
So, what should these variables be?
They could be these:
- Food per capita. I think if 1 PU eats more than 20 food per turn this should just have no effect. 20 would be a reasonable diet with a bit meat, some vegetables and bread etc. 10 per PU would propably mean the mortality of a population would only increase a small bit. It would be like eating a bowl of rise a day. Not healthy, but still it wont mean people will go ahead and die from it. Maybe this would cause the mortality of a population to rise with 5% or something (this would mainly be old people, of cause). When the food decreased even more mortality would start rising drastically. When the food per PU is down to 1 the mortality would propably be upwards of 97-99%. And when people have no food mortality would be 100%.
- Diseases present. I think we need to handle pop changes hex by hex, since diseases are handled on a hex basis. I think the disease model would combine all diseases present with the current resitance level of the population, and propably also include food per capita, since people are more likely to have diseases when they starve. Here the medical level would also have some effect on the mortality of each disease.
- Accidents etc. I don't really know if we need this. Has it caused many deaths throughout history?
I then think these things would be used to find 2 or 3 variables that are constant for this hex, and then put these into the following function:
Mortality = 1 - ageconstant1 * foodvariable - ageconstant2 * diseasevariable (- ageconstant3 * accidentsvariable)
Would this make sence? Also, we need to make sure that people per square km has some effect on the spread of diseases. Cities were virtually death traps before 1900 as they had a mortality rate that was constantly higher than the birth rate, and the only reason they survived is because of a constant flow of immigrants from the countryside. We should implement this.
But maybe adding all these features on a hex level would cause too many calculations needed by the computer? If we are to have over 1,000,000 hexes I can see why it should. But maybe we can save computer power by taking short cuts, like calculating all hexes with the same characteristics within a province all at the same time. But I don't know. I just think, that if we are to have diseases we have to do it properly, and to do it properly we have to have realism. And we are going to have diseases.
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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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Elmo: Yes, the intention is, that other people could test the program and fine-tune its workings. This is a necessity, because we have so few programmers. Also slightly modifying the code should be quite easy, at least when it is not very much. Though I don't think it would be good to go tweaking the code itself, since that leads very easily to mysterious errors hard to fix. Instead, I try to put everything that is reasonable for the people to change in the game in a text file, so the workings of the program could be modified easily, just as I did with the map prototype (though modifying the map was not easy).
Mortality:
Yes, I agree, those are the key factors in that. Though the accidents are a little way off, I think. That could be dealt with the tech level. Every level should add some factor to the mortality figure.
Here are the things affecting the mortality listed as I see them:
-food supply: as you told. Perhaps 10 should be a "normal" level that does not affect mortality in any way? And doesn't eating too much affect mortality also? Not as much as eating too little, but still... remember the figure is an average.
-age structure: the more there are old people (proportionally) the more this affects mortality. Child mortality is completely another figure.
-diseases affect mortality "indirectly": they kill some people, and that is then added to the total mortality, after the other people have been killed. Some "common diseases" could eventually be made a constant effect on the mortality, that would just be added to the rate. Though this would be needed to check and change once in a while.
-wars have a similar effect.
-natural disasters, famines and so on also work in the same way.
About the effect on cities, I agree.
Also I agree that the calculations need to be done in per hex basis. It will be a strain for processor, but necessary. We will see if it causes problems, and find ways to simplify the calculations when it's time. I'm sure we will find solutions to all problems.
About the actual formula I cannot say, but it might work.
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited November 02, 2000).]
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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Elmo:
I have thought about this, too. Especcially in the pop and econ models could this be done.
Amjayee:
I guess you are right, that accidents are too far off. So there would just be 2 factors determining mortality? The main problem is, that it is truly hard to find what mortality levels actually works...
I have found some age diagrams for modern day countries, and I should be able to use these to find some mortality rates in a modern civ. But ancient times is still a problem. We will have to do some research in this area.
Food supply:
Yes, what I had in mind was, that 10 food per 10,000 people would be the minimum level - the level just above starvation. A bowl of rice a day or something. So you're right that if people eat more than 10 food per day their mortality will not (directly) be effected by it. But 10 food per PU would not be a very balanced diet. Therefor anything below 20 or 30 food per PU would have an effect on the mortality of different diseases, since people are more likely to die from diseases when they don't get a balanced diet. So indirectly it would increase mortality even when people eat more than 10 food per turn. This is also how we can have the shrinkage of population that S. Kroeze has suggested. New epidemics would come along pretty often, but when people are well nurchered these wouldn't have a high effect. But then, when the land is overpopulated and people, although they don't starve, don't get a lot to eat, and an epidemic comes, it would be devastating!
Diseases:
I am not sure whether diseases should be divided into plagues (with Heardie's stats) and "common" diseases, like malaria. Dividing them would propably prove simpler and easier to do, so maybe we should do that?
Wars, disasters etc:
Yep, these would kill people directly, so they shouldn't be included in this "general" mortality rate.
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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.
GGS Website
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I have been thinking a lot about the pop system (how to handle population and age) lately, and I have some dificulties implementing both a hexbased pop model, and a province based age group system.
Basically to have diseases work properly we have to do them hex by hex. But at the same time we have to have age groups be done on a province level, since the required amount calculations would just be too large, if age groups should be done on a hex level with over 1,000,000 hexes on a map.
But we can't just seperate the two. Diseases pretty much decide how many people die on each hex, but at the same time we will have to calculate how many people die in each age group in the entire province, and have the total amount of deaths in all hexes to be the same as the total amount of deaths in all age groups.
How do we do this properly? Maybe I am just obsessed with pointless details, or maybe this is just not hard to do. But I just can't find a sollution right now.
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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.
GGS Website
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S. Kroeze
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the Hague, the Netherlands, Old Europe
Dec 1999
time: 05:14
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Dear Joker,
I hope the following suggestions and data are of some use. I do not pretend to have a solution to your current problems, but I am just trying to think along with you.
When I was obliged to choose between population counted by tile without age groups versus population counted by region with age groups I would definitely prefer the first alternative. In my view it is of the utmost importance to know how many people live, work and eat in a given tile. Without knowing that you cannot introduce migration nor development of cities, production etc. And the age groups are certainly interesting ,but when one would know the average expectation of life it would still be possible to calculate a realistic estimate of population growth under favourable conditions, without having age groups. Perhaps you should only count units of 1,000 or 10,000 people.
Another less radical solution would be to reduce the amount of different age groups. A system with only four or five different age groups could save the quantity of calculations. You could have children till 15 (after deduction of infant mortality), a group of 16-30 year, of 31-45, of 46-60 and the elderly (only in advanced societies). The only groups reproducing are of course the second and third.
The decision to make disease for the moment the only case of death seems to me a sound one! And you could without unreasonable distortion use only four different mortality rates for the various age groups, when you would decide to keep them: infant mortality(very high), and figures for children(quite high), adults(low), and the elderly(high). The words in brackets refer to a pre-industrial society.
I am very pleased you followed my convictions regarding the importance of sufficient food supply and its relation to disease. I also agree that when 10 food units would represent subsistence level (let's say about 2500 calories a day), more food would improve health. Not because it contains more calories but because people can afford to eat more expensive products, like meat and cheese. Many people on subsistence level are on a protein deficient diet.
I think I did already post quite enough figures about birth and death rates in an agricultural society. I'll copy some of the more important:
quote:
'Any agricultural society - whether sixteenth-century Italy, seventeenth-century France, or nineteenth-century India - tends to adhere to a definite set of patterns in the structure and movements of birth- and death-rates. Crude birth-rates are very high throughout, ranging between 35 and 55 per thousand and the average number of children born to a 'married' woman (using the term 'married' in its broadest connotation) by the end of her fertile period (at the age of forty-five or fifty) is at least five. Within the above indicated range, the actual value of the birth-rate in any given agricultural society varies according to numerous factors: age and sex composition of the population, sanitary and economic conditions, the prevalence of war or of peace, and, last but not least, socio-cultural factors such as the attitude toward marriage, the attitude toward birth-control etc. Death-rates are also very high, but normally lower than the birth-rates - ranging generally between 30 and 40 per thousand.
The population of an agricultural society is characterized by a normal rate of growth of 0.5 to 1.0 per cent per year.
In normal times, a large proportion of the deaths were represented by infant mortality. Of 1000 newborn children, 200 to 400 died within a year. Many of the remaining ones died before reaching the age of seven. A famous sixteenth-century physician, Jerome Cardano of Pavia, used to maintain that he could cure anyone on condition that the patient was not younger than seven or older than seventy.
The high toll of infants and youths drastically reduced the average length of life. All available information for numerous societies seems to indicate that the 'agricultural' life expectancy at birth generally averages twenty to thirty-five years and of those who reach the age of five few have good chances of surviving beyond fifty.
The prevailing high birth-rates have distinctive effects on the age composition of agricultural populations: the number of young people is very high. In general, between one third and one half of the population is below 15 years of age; in other words, the population pyramid of an agricultural society is very broad at its base. From an economist's point of view, this means that the young non-productive population represents a heavy burden for the active adult population and this is one of the reasons why agricultural societies put children to work at an early age.'
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(source: C.M.Cipolla:'The Economic History of World Population',1962)
I would like to add some figures: all ~1900AD
birth-rates / death-rates (per thousand):
India: 48.0 / 43.0
Mexico: 46.0 / 32.9
Egypt: 45.2 / 26.5
Russia: 48.0 / 29.5
Infant mortality (total infant deaths per thousand live births):
India: 232
Chile: 264
Russia: 260
Expectation of life at birth / at sixty:
India: 23 / ?
Russia: 32 / 14
U.S.A.: 48 / 15
And finally some information about pre-agricultural conditions:
'Some time ago the belief was common that early man's fecundity was lower than that of civilized man, and that this was the main cause for the small size of Paleolithic societies. Today this theory is generally disregarded. We do not possess reliable figures, but indirect evidence supports the view that the Paleolithic populations had very high mortality. Since the species survived, we must admit that primitive man also had a very high fertility.
High mortality and high fertility were associated with a short average length of life. Here we run into the difficulty of extremely poor information and we can express our concept only in rough quantitive terms. By analysing fossil remains of 187 Europeans of the Neanderthal group, Vallois was able to ascertain that "more than a third died before reaching the age of 20, and the great majority of the rest died between the age of 20, and the age of 40. Beyond this limit, there are only 16 individuals, most of whom certainly died between the age of 40 and the age of 50." Weidenreich, analysing the fossil remains of 38 individuals of the Asiatic Sinanthropus population (a much earlier group than the Neanderthal) substantially confirmed the results of Vallois. Out of 38 Sinanthropi it was possible to assess probable age at death for 22. Of these, it seems that 15 died when less than 14 years old, 3 died between the age of 15 and 29, 3 between 40 and 50, and only one seems to have survived beyond 50. These figures are vitiated by a number of factors and their real meaning if highly dubious. They refer to quite different generations of people, they tend to disregard infant mortality and their number is too small to represent a reliable sample. However, evidence collected for hunting-stage societies of historic times generally agrees with these findings. The age of fifty is rarely attained and "the centre of gravity of these societies moves toward the lower-age groups".
In regard to causes of death, Weidenreich observed that most of the fossil remains of prehistoric man clearly indicate a violent death. For Paleolithic man of historic time, Krzywicki arrived at a similar conclusion, observing that the most frequent causes of death were infanticide, war, and headhunting.(!) Acsádi and Nemeskéri point out that, in general, death was closely related "to accidents, violence, and diseases resulting from factors of the natural environment or their changes". The low density of population was in a way a protection against epidemics. It is indeed difficult to see how, with spare populations organized into small bands wandering over limited territories, contagious diseases could have had the importance that they have assumed under other demographic conditions. But it is not diffcult to believe that starvation and diseases connected with nutritional deficiences must have taken on the whole a heavy toll of human life in Paleolithic and Mesolithic societies, especially among infants.'
(source: C.M.Cipolla:'The Economic History of World Population',1962)
I honestly think that combining the figures presented(expectation of life, distribution of the age groups etc.) could result in a both workable and realistic model for the pre-industrial period. My advice is to try to fill in the missing parameters and to compute the results on the longer term. I hope I do not sound too high-handed? I am actually too lazy to do it myself. And mathematics was really never my strongest point!
You can always fine-tune the rough results and add new factors influencing birth or death rates.
Is it already decided that GGS will start in 4000BC? As you probably know I am rather interested in the millennia before. Quite an interesting thread is In the beginning: An article about Ancient Civilization
Best wishes!
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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Joker and S.Kroeze: The population/age group/tile population system in the game is a hybrid of those two systems: We have regional population, age groups, and we store the amount of people in every tile, assuming that every tile has the same properties as the whole region.
So, what we can do with the diseases killing people: we find out the percentages of people killed in each age group. Then we simply take the tile population, subtract percentage*age group percentage*tile population from each age group, count all those figures together, and finally subtract the total amount of people killed from the tile population.
About nourisment: Isn't the demand figure for food just the _amount_ of food eaten? It does not tell how balanced diet that is. I think we could use the grade of the food to determine that; grade 1 is badly balanced, 3 is normal, 4 and 5 would have some bad effect since they would most propably be some heavy, fatty and non-healthy diets, so they are also badly balanced, but not as deadly as 1 and 2.
Your messages always contain lots of interesting data. I'm sure they are of help when creating a realistic model for population changes. We should make the model ready, and then balance it so that it works as much like reality as possible. The tech level system should perhaps be used for that.
About the starting year:
It hasn't been decided. Personally, I would like to start from somewhere around 6000 BC, when cities were started to be built more commonly. It might be interesting to go as far back as 10000 BC, when agriculture was invented. But that depends on can we make enough interesting things to do during a non-developed era like that. 5000 BC might be quite good year to start.
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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S. Kroeze:
Thank you! It is really great to be presented with some actual numbers from reality. This is the only way we can figure out what mortalities should be at what tech levels.
I agree with you that tile population is more important than age group population, and I agree on the food effecting resistance to diseases thing.
Amjayee:
Unfortunately doing that will mean that changes in total population will occur on a province level, and not on a hex level. So it would mean that the pop would increase/decrease by the excact same amount in all hexes in a province, which is unfavorable, since e.g. city hexes (before modern times) constantly should have higher mortalities than rural ones.
So I have been thinking about maybe making the age groups a "pro forma" system, where we just find out how many people are killed in the province, and then have the tech level decide from what age groups they come from. It wont be entirely accurate, but it should work pretty much as good as handling age groups hex by hex, something that is just too powerconsuming.
Nutrition:
No, that is the whole concept! People don't eat tons of food just because they get more wealthy! In stead they eat better food. But in a grand scale strategy game we don't really care whether they eat McDonalds burgers or Italian sandwiches. What we do care about, is what type of food they eat. And the food grading system should show this, nothing more. So maybe we just need 3 grades of food: Grain products, meat products and vegestable products. And especcially between the two first there is a relation. To make 1 kg of meat you need 10 kg of grain. And this is primarily the relation I based the food demand thing on. When people become wealthier they want more meat. When they eat 10 food per turn they don't get any meat. So I thought that later on we could just replace the single food grade with 3, and then have the demand for each type depend on people's incomes.
Starting year:
I think it should be up to the player. Personally I would actually prefer a starting date a bit slower, llike 2000 BC, since the first 2000 years with 1 year turns could become a bit boring. But it should be up to the player.
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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.
GGS Website
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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Joker: No, no. I was meaning, that also the "hex population" would be changed. We might decide that hex y is infected by a disease, and it kills people like this. From the tile we get how many people there are; that information we would use to kill the right amount of people from the region population; meanwhile we would keep track of the people killed, and finally subtract the right amount of people from the tile population.
About food grading, I don't think it is that black and white. People don't eat either grain or meat, but both, if they can. I think we should use 5 grades, as with other goods, and it tells the quality of the food.
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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Hmm...
Yes, maybe you're right. Again I am too tired right now to think more about it.
I have been working on a way to implement diseases, using Heardie's disease model, in a way so they are ready to be put into a map and a pop model. There I have left out age groups, for now, since it will add a lot of complexity. But age groups could be added later on (I think) on a province level.
Food:
No, what I meant was that people would eat some grain, some meat and some vegestables. And a balanced diet would include the right ratio of all. What I think may be most important here is, that to create 1 unit of meat you need 10 units of grain. So it will take much more food to have a healthy population.
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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.
GGS Website
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I don't think there should be "many" grades of food. Just the 3, and maybe, as you said, a 4th for luxury food. I think this system is more versatile, since all people eat the same food. Wealthy people just eat more of one grade and less of another. This will mean that you could easily rationalize food, if there is an emergency, without having to change the production of virtually all food producing hexes from high to low grades.
Tile pop versus age group pop:
Yeah, your system would work. But that will mean that age groups will be stored independantly in each hex, in stead of at a province level. I don't have anything against this, but I fear it might mean too many calculations (1.000.000 hexes, 10 or more age groups, and several diseases on each hex). If I am wrong about that then we should use your system.
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"It would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence."
- A Clockwork Orange
GGS Website
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Guildmaster
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Up your butt and around the corner
Jun 2000
time: 05:14
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I actually agree that we don't really need agegroups to calculate death rates.
If we can get away with not having them it would take up a lot less computing power
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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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Age groups are needed for also other things than death rates, so I think we should keep them. And about hex population, no; in every hex, we would store _only_ the amount of people. All population statistics would be assumed to be the same as in the mother region. Generally I think we just have to accept that our game will require less computing power and memory; but of course we try to control the situation.
About food, that sounded like good reasoning. If we can make that work, let's use it! But would it be that there are grades, or would the grain, meat and vegetables be different goods? If grades, how would that work? Of course if we use floating point grade value, we could consider that as the "average" grade the people buy, and that would decide the "balancedness". Or what?
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I think that we should propably try to implement at least diseases without age groups first, and then we can add them later on. But if it is possible I think they should be there.
Food:
I think the difference between grades and goods would not really matter. It could be seen as different grades of one good, and it could be seen as different goods.
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"It would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence."
- A Clockwork Orange
GGS Website
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Guildmaster
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Up your butt and around the corner
Jun 2000
time: 05:14
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Something has occured to me:
Age groups DO affect birth rates. We can do the pro-forma thing and base it on the tech level to determine death rates, that would be fine. BUT:
What about birth rates? What about social changes?
The easiest example is war, it kills young men depending on what tech level between the ages of 16 and 30 or thereabouts. War doesn't kill too many men older than that and unless you're talking about genocide or infantacide it doesn't kill as many younger than that either. So there's a death factor taken from a very specific age group.
Childhood diseases like polio or chickenpox, which mainly affect young children, you might see a vast number of adults with strong immunities while the deathrate would be raised substantially for a very small part of the age group.
All sorts of things.
I never really said anything about age groups before but this is my beef on it:
If I look at the thing from a practical viewpoint, that is in terms of what we can use in the game, this is what I see:
1) Children that are too young to do anything no matter how oppressive the government is
2) Children that are too young to work or fight but could be forced to do so if the rest of society is desperate enough
3) Technically old enough to work or fight or marry but wouldn't do so in modern society (under 18)
4) Full-fledged adulthood in any age
5) Too old to work high-octane jobs or fight in the trenches, but still plenty of vitality
6) Old enough to retire, but still can work
7) Too old to work
You as a dictator could, for example, force all but 1 and 7 to work in concentration camps if you felt like it, but you would incur great penalties. No player under any circumstances force either 1 or 7 to do anything no matter what, the individual would simply be killed in the process-try to imagine a 92 y/o man working in an anvil factory. If 2 and 6 are forced to work or fight, you will incur severe penalties both social and productive (eg, a 7 y/o or a 60 y/o won't produce as much in a factory or put up as much of a fight as a 22 y/o, doesn't have the strength) no matter what age or tech level. Depending on your tech level and also the tech level of your competitors, you might incur a social penalties for forcing them to work. 3 and 5 have more to do with tech level and social attitudes than anything else, and there are no production penalties for employing these age groups. It can be assumed that in the modern age a vast majority of the work force is age 4 while in an ancient society it will be 3 and 4.
It all, of course, depends on the player and what he wants to do and how desperate he is.
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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray
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VetLegion
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I think that we should base our population model on social classes or social groups..
(Group in sociology: a collection of people with a set of common goals and rules of behaviour, and has an individual tied to it by feeling of belonging.)Individualism is not needed as a group variable. Group is by default opposed to individualism. If people have high individualism they cannot belong to group.
Now add a few more important group characteristics like job/wealth. There are some groups that need them to be modeled correctly, some need others.
The single most important action of a group is conflict with other groups, with you, revolutions etc.
So the basis of conflict are needed.
which is the most important characteristics of a group?:
location /old times, war times
ethnicity /old times mostly
religion /old times, new times (some countries)
nationality /modern times
job /all times
[ other maybe ]
I may sound like a marxist, but peoples jobs are what qualified them most of the history (in peaceful periods especially). Sometimes it was religion, Sometimes others were most important. Very early, it was ethnicity. So as groups are dynamic maybe it is good their properties have also dynamic importance -- not set in stone. People can switch groups they belong to.
Like this.
From the definition of group it is obvious that they must have a tie that links people in them together. All group charcateristics should have a percentage. In
order to have a group, more then 50% is needed for one property. That is the most important property then. If it falls group falls apart.
inforcement_strength is also a variable that could find its place in there. When it comes to fight, can a group resist? Controll over military best be represented in here rather then have military as a separate group.
How it works in game on Russia example:
1900-1917.
Job/wealth based group "Aristrocracy" has most power. Efforts to better living conditions in the country are ruthlessly crushed by them.
1917.
People are divided by what they do, religious and nationalistic groups are small and not powerful. Revolution comes because job based groups villagers and proleteriat had little wealth and power (hunger etc).
1917-1939.
Education level grows. Industrial workers grow in numbers and villages are becoming towns, villager groups fall in numbers. Job based group of services
grows but is small.
1939-1945.
War time. job division is military, worker, villager, but Nationality (soviet) is the strongest characteristic. Groups and group conflict therefore doesnt exist.
1945-1990.
Across the country in all cities, simmilar groups are formed. Development of industry and services. Groups divide among work again. Class of politicians is emerging.
1990-2000.
The dissipation of middle class. Job becomes secondary in group priority. People group around religion, ethnicity and nationalism again. In cities, the
groups of oligarch and merchants (mafia too) dont care about religion, they are pursuing to perserve their wealth only.
2000.
Which is most important now? It depends on area. In some areas religion (islam) is rising again as workers, ingeneers, politicians see it as the thing to fight for. In the areas where there is peace...like in all history people divide themselves among the wealth line.
So to conclude:
I propose we make a set of dynamic groups. Each time something happenes we check should the action form a group or should an existing group respond. For example if you raise taxes on priests they may try to use their enforcement strength against you... or in a newly occupied region people may gather around nationalism and try to break away, etc...
do you think it can be done like this? There are alternatives...not to do classes, but to calculate percentages of people in a different way... Anyway, shoot. I d like to get closer to a solution, because I could speak all year about possibilities, but some compromises have to be made .
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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Guildmaster:
Yes, this was the reason why we should have age groups.
I still see some rather large problems with implementing them without spending loads of computer ressources while doing it, though.
For instance, like you said, most adults should have resistance to a lot of diseases, while kids will not. But since diseases are done at a hex level we will have to have age groups at a hex level, too, or things wont work.
Vet:
Cool chat we had sunday night!
Anyway...
We are going to have social classes. Check the econ thread for information.
And we will also have nationalities and religious groups.
generally I like your ideas. They wont be too dificult to make. Just have certain things determine whether peopel care about work or nationalitity etc.
------------------
"It would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence."
- A Clockwork Orange
GGS Website
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20-10-2000 00:15
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