Historians and sociologists are called!! So state your opinion now!

2) Is corruption more or less related to a specific govt. type?

In theory corruption would seem to be more apparent in monarchial/dicatorship type governments because of the fact that they hold virtual absoult power over everyone else. In practice however, this doesn't hold out since it doesn't incorperate the ideas that all people are corruptable, reguardless of their upbringing. So although it may be harder to corrrupt a system of government run by many indivisuals, most people IMO look at it through as though they themselves might want to corrupt that government, where it should be viewed that each person wants to have there influence and therefore tries to persuade as many as possible to their side.

3) What makes a centraly planned economy perform worse than a free market system?

First off there are disadvantages to a free market system. One is that prices do change and this can also affect the cost of living, esp when wages do not increase to meat this demand.

But as to the disadvantages of a centrally planned economy, one is that it does make it harder to cope with supply and demand. Also since a person/company may be resticted as to what they can produce/sell or the price they can sell it at, they will usually choose not to sell it if they can't make a profit, thus limiting the amount of goods for consumer use as well as raw materials.

4) Do multiethnic civs have a lower chance of success compared to monoethnic civs?

Can u be more specific as to what chance refers to?

5) In what way culture affects the performance of an economy or a govt. type?

A more religious culture will tend toward more mystic ideas, promote ethics, usually downgrade science. Culture can also affect how it reacts to other civs, esp wether or not it wants a isolationist policy. There's more but i can't think of much right now.

6) Clergy political power: does it keep a nation away from advancing technologicaly and/or economicaly?

You know Mark, it isn't that I would like to have the penalties lifted from the totalitarian governments or the planned economies, but it is my belief that the negative or positive implications of such choices should not be awarded arbitrarily, through a certain percentile modifier or something like that. They should be applied as results of the inner workings of the chosen system and they should logically derive from them.

LGJ and Rodrigo have just made some extremely interesting comments, that touch the core of the problem, concerning the government model. The corruption of the state is proportionate to the corruption of the ruling body, whatever this is, a single dictator or the entire citizenry. The catch is that, since the whole population always follows a normal distribution curve, concerning those traits that mark a person's quality or corruptibility, then, if you pick a sample to be the rulers (so that the mean of their quality will characterize the quality of the state itself), the smaller the sample, the likelier it is for it's mean to deviate from the mean of the population. And truly enough, a dictator is much likelier to be the saviour or the demise of his nation than a parliamentary body, which will always make a fairly moderate ruler. A utopian democratic state, where the whole population participates in the government, will never be better or worse than it's people are.

Let us see now: we already have a character/dynasties model. Although in my opinion it is still quite obscure and needlessly complicated, we should try to consolidate it's links with the government and social models. If I understood it correctly, the trait "willpower" is the proper indicator for a character's corruptibility (If not, we should add such a trait). In that case, all we have to do is apply the proper modifier in the domains in which the character is affecting. If an anonymous group of people is concerned, it's corruption should be computed, using statistical methods (as mentioned above).

Here we should raise anothe question: What is a character's effects on the government in which he participates? This has not yet been thoroughly discussed, but here are a few of my thoughts:

a) According to the totalitarian/egalitarian outlook of the government (represented by the repartition of political power through the classes), the effect of a character in office should be greater in an authoritarian state, while that of a character that simply is a professional should be less. Par example, a good general (a MC member) should be more effective in a military junta (MC rule) than in a theocracy (RC rule).

b) Although the effects of most characters should be local and quite specific, the effects of the ruling character should be wide. The ruler should be able to make or brake a nation. This would cause interesting fluctuations in a civ's potential, since a great leader will not last long and, after his death, the civ's path to glory will come to an abrupt end. What is even more interesting is the player's position, when a charismatic leader knoks on his door: should he grant him dictatorial powers, in order to take full advantage of him, or make a milder use of him, by embedding him into the existent political system? The first choice yields more, but it leads posthumously to political instability and it might get him stuck with a series of corrupt despots, since dynasties (of any form) are bound to decline. If we would make the drawbacks of a really bad leader much more devastating than the respective advantages of a good one (an assumption which I believe to be a fact), that alone would prevent the player from sticking to the totalitarian way.

c) On the other hand, due to the nature of a one man rule, or an oligarchy, there are some things that any such ruler is susceptible to do, as opposed to a more democratic regime. First, an authoritarian regime is likelier to produce discontent among the non-ruling classes, leading to waste, inefficiency, low morale and rebellious spirit (I believe that this is covered by the government model). Conforming to the general unpopularity of the regime, is should be more likely that characters should come up with more negative alignments and there should even be a better chance of a radical, emerging to tear down the established order. This should happen even in the case of a charismatic leader, since people would then be ever more jealous of his position.

d) We should consider implementing the opinion that power is a corruptive force, which was held by many philosophers throughout the ages and also consists the cornerstone of anarchist thought. This does not mean that an all powerful leader should cause him or his nation to be wasteful or inefficient in a scientific, economic, or military aspect (The 3rd Reich was none of the above, although it was founded on power-worship and corrupt to the core). Corruption comes in a cultural aspect, making the regime (and ultimately the whole civ) more aggressive, militaristic, diplomatically untrustworthy, culturally insensitive, barbaric. This kind of attitude, especially if it impresses itself on the civilisation itself, could prove to be disastrous both in the internal and the external political front.

Before we go on discussing the above points, I feel that there are two existing model elements that need to be readressed:
a) From the government model: The role and substance of the Principle Class. I feel that it should consist of a distinguished part of one or more of the other classes rather than being a class of it's own. We should also consider the cases where one or more of the classes utterly vanish, both from the power and the population chart (E.g. there are no RC or UC in communism). How can we reach this situation? Under what circumstances can an extingushed class reappear?
b) From the Characters/Dynasties model: The whole traits system, which should be sorted out, in order to provide us with a few solid and well understood modifiers to interact with the other models.

Thanks for the interesting and thought-provoking post. Although I'm not quite happy with the extent of my analysis of it so far, I think at least my thought processes are such that what I say won't be completely incoherent! So I will bravely charge on with my thoughts about it at this point.

First, your point about not having model affects arbitrarily assigned is a completely valid one. But I have what I think is an equally valid counterpoint. I think at this point in the design it would not be prudent to require that the character model be used for vital and central functions of the government model. In a few words, some players won't Like characters. They will want to turn them off. If characters are absolutely required to balance the government model this will be impossible. So, at least as I see it, that is one fundamental problem with your proposal.

My second major point, is that in your write-up you treat corruption as if it exists in a vacuum. And that a person is either corruptible, incorruptible, or somewhere in between depending solely on themselves. I think that the culture and environment that a person grows up in are Absolutely Critical to determining the corruptibility an individual. Therefore, if we were to use the character model to generate corruption levels for different government forms, there would in my opinion need to be a feedback between the existing governmental form and culture when the character grew up and their tendency toward corruption.

My third difficulty with your proposal, is that I was using corruption as a stand-in for other additional factors. Specifically, even a totalitarian leader that is not corrupt in any way, can still through honestly held beliefs, seriously derail the progress of his or her society. One example of this was the closing off of oceangoing trade by a succession of Chinese emperors, I IRC in the early 1400s. I believe these emperors acted in good faith on the behalf of their people, believing the biggest threat to them was from the pastoralist nomads of the steppes. However, these emperors did not see that the true threat to China lay in its ossification and insulation from the outside world. My views on this subject are fairly well mirrored in the excellent book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy. A more pluralist society in China, would very likely not have embarked on such an extreme course, and history of the last 500 years might have turned out rather differently because of that.

I believe that the above pointis a big problem given that the player knows how history is likely to unfold. Specifically, if the totalitarian leaders in history always had a clear vision of the future, totalitarianism would work Much better than it does in the real world. This is also true, but to a much lesser extent, for less authoritarian systems. The totalitarian leader is much better able to harness the complete resources of the society in a particular direction. This is just another case where I want the system to avoid being biased In Favor of totalitarian regimes.

I also have some reservations about how your proposal would actually work out in gameplay. I think it would be very frustrating for the player to have huge swings in the capacity of absolutist government over relatively short period of time. We will already have the somewhat with characters, for instance when the great conquering general disappears, and I think putting such swings into the capabilities of the whole civ, in a strong fashion, will result in the game that's Not Fun. I want to stress, that I don't think this is unrealistic, but I think it will make for a very frustrating game experience. Of course, we could arbitrarily tone this down if it turned out to be too bad. But in toning it down, I think we would need to put back in an "arbitrary bias" in order to preserve what I think are the real-world problems of absolutist systems.

I do especially like in your point b about the difficult choices that this would present the player with. However, I think with the current dynasty model that such choices are already there, if perhaps toned down a bit from what would result from your model.

On axi's point c):
I don't agree. A one-man ruling will make people more Anti or more Pro only in a degree given by his acts and not by the fact of being a dictator. Hitler in Germany and Tito in Yugoslavia are examples of dictators with wide support from the masses and the "jealous" factor does not convince me at all. If the ruler does what the people want, the Anti feeling shouldn't go up much.

On Mark's Chinese example:
I'm not sure corruption should include such effects like that you mention. The emperor decision there was simply a bad decision. A player in Clash can take bad decisions and those bad decisions can happen in a democracy (vietnam) or in a dictatorship. Saying that corruption penalties reflect also bad ruling decisions is like saying a priori that the ruler/player is a bad ruler.

A simple proposal: I like what Axi is saying about getting models more related with each other to reflect things like corruption and how your civ's people affect the govt. What about not considering chars affecting govt, but using social model's meta-agents? Agents represent the culture of a particular group. Meta-agents are agents for greater (added) groups. Suppose you have an attribute in agents like "corruption tendency". The meta-agent will also have a value for that attribute built using agents values. That value we can use to acount the culture factor on corruption and with it (and possibly using other variables we believe are important) determine corruption penalties for the econ and govt models. This is good from the point of view that some players don't like chars and because it's a way to include the cultural factor in corruption.

Another simple way to simulate corruption is axi's power corruptive force: If the ruler/player has a large pol.power, we can lower public funds to simulate the dictator getting some money to himself. So, each turn, if tax collection totals X, the player is only left with 80%X to play, FE. The number (80%) may depend on the magnitude of ruler's pol.power. Having less money to do things would make a dictatorship harder to play.

Hitler, in Clash terms, is an extremely corrupt, althow somewhat efficient ruler, with an exceptional charisma ( corr 1/20, effi 13/20, char 19/20 or sth like that). He made extensive use of force and all the anti-Nazi elements (socialists, communists, etc) were the first to visit his concentration camps, so it's not that the opposition didn't exist, they unfortunately didn't survive . He made use of his charisma to make fanatic dupes of the German LC. He treated the UC the bait of uncontrollable profits through the exploitation of the subject races. He gave the MC all they ever dreamed of: guns and conquest. He kept a strict understanding of mutual non-interference with the RC. Finally, he severely victimised the Minors Class (represented by minorities like Jews, gypsies, homosexuals etc) which had the least political power and could not react.

Tito on the other hand was rather good as dictators go, quite efficient and moderately charismatic (so I give him say corr 11/20, effi 16/20, char 14/20) and btw was one of the few who managed to make the best of a multinational state with a long history of nationalistic struggles (hence the whole chaos and turmoil over Yugoslavia, which originated from the void that his death caused). So his actions went in favour of him concerning the people's opinion. Nevertheless, even he had to revert to coercion, in order to suppress nationalistic feeling throughout the country and also to neutralise the early opposition (chiefly a guy named Michailovic).

On the other hand, I totally agree with your remark concerning the Chinese example.

As for your proposal, I believe that it is a way to make things easier for us, and to solve the problem of the optional use of the characters model. It would be great to have a meta-agent to represent each power group. You have studied the models extensively - I have not.

As for the last point, you're kidding, right? 20% of MY country's public funds is approx 8 billion $. What the hell would I do with all that money on my own?

Now, to adress some of Mark's points:

I think that Mark's second point is very interesting, right in the spirit of Clash. I am pondering that this effect, streched into a fair amount of game time has even the chance to lead to 1984 type worlds, or, in the other end, Utopia itself. Yeees, veeery interesting...

Concerning the gameplay worries, I believe that there is a major decision to be taken here, which will affect the whole game outlook. I peronally dislike the stability of the civ2 and ctp games and would not like to see this repeated in Clash. I believe that the fluctuations in a civ's capacity will actually enhance gameplay, by bringing up sth new every 20 or so turns. Anyway, if a player is good at picking his crew, he won't have any problems with that. A good solution for him will be to go more democratic, so that the characters effects will be reduced (evened out). If anybody has a real problem with that, well he should play characterless.

Taking the cue from the above remark, let me raise a new question. Will the AI civs be exactly identical in function with the player civ? I am afraid that for simplicity they have to be characterless, and maybe devoid of other (mostly internal) functions as well. I am also afraid that this question belongs to some other thread...

Regarding point #2 (corruption), certain gov't forms certainly DO have greater corruption than others. It's not just a question of people all having the ability of being corrupt, but it also depends on the vulnerability of the system of gov't itself to corruption. The less efficient (read: bureaucratic) the system, the more likely it is to be corrupted. I would argue that this is exactly the cause of a lot of problems in American gov't today. Firsthand experience has shown me the problems inherent in a system that relies so heavily on bureacracy to accomplish the day-to-day work of the gov't. Petty politics and ambitions strip efficiency out of the system through every level of business. There ARE benefits to the system as well, as there is some security in diluting the power base, but you lose a lot of the accountability in the process (pro or con...hmmmm)

Disadvantage of command economy vs free market = loss of initiative to improve on anything. #1 disadvantage in my book.

Can I spend my 2 cents here?

I believe a 'planned' economy loses to a 'free' market system specifically because of flexibility.

The theory for 'planned' economics is that a single, powerful person can more effectively focus/deploy the resources of any system/organization. In practice this has always lead to one of two flaws.

1. No one has all the answers. This is the biggie, Stalin proved this perfectly. No one leader can always correctly know what next direction/product/goal/research is needed. A 'free' system, in which people with different ideas are allowed to try those ideas, can therefore better respond to the ever-changing real world. No one knows what will be required for success ten years from now.

2. Micromanaging everything from the top is impossible, inefficient, and a stress nightmare!!!.

The 'curse of beauracracy'. People at the bottom become afraid, unwilling, unable to make decisions that must be made on a day-to-day basis without orders from the top. A 'one-size-fits-all' approach dominates the organization, which causes the system to serve only needs that a mass of people share. Very little or no 'market-segmentation' is possible.

I also believe that the more power concentrated in fewer hands, the more corruption will affect the system.

There will always be corruption. In all systems. The entire goal (genius?) of our 'beauracratic' system is to limit the damage any single corrupt person can cause. But all govt systems will have a large level of corruption, period. As long as people earning $80k a year control millions in assets/contracts/etc. It's the nature of the beast.

Altho that said, I agree with Mark that culture will greatly influence this. Living here in Texas, the Mexican culture completely accepts/glorifies the mordida/payola system. As a culture, the ideal is to get a piece of the graft, not to stomp it out.

But even a utopian culture will have corruption.

Perhaps my problem was that I did not pick a sufficiently boneheaded example! For those who haven't read the whole thread, my point is that totalitarian rulers are capable of doing some particularly stupid things that no governmental form with a broader base "at the top" would ever do. And that if we did not account for such effects by hobbling the player who runs a totalitarian regime, we risk presenting the image that totalitarianism is a better form of government.

I'm only going to give three examples because I'm pressed for time. Examples of boneheadedness in totalitarian regimes that Far exceed any stupidity I can think of that has come out of a democratic system:

China: The Cultural Revolution & the Great Leap Forward (Backward)
Cambodia: Massacring a Substantial Percentage of Population, and Deindustrializing the Country
(feel free to add your own...)

B. I think you're going to far, F_Smith. A centraly planned economy is not ment to be managed by a single person, that's simply dictatorship. In communism the govt is supposed to determine econ activities, but in no way that govt should be ruled by a single powerful person. I do agree communism has a huge lack of flexibility, but to state that's because of a single guy is really mixing dictatorship with an economic system.

Yes, but only slightly. Religion is what mainly affects it so if you consider that part of culture then it would a lot more.

2) Is the size of the State (beauracracy) an important element to determine corruption levels?

Generally no because each person would have a certain level of corruptablility and it would just be evened out at differnt levels. Besides a low man on the totem pole is just as likely to take a bribe (or not) as a higher up offical.

3) Is the level of investment in the justice system and law enforcement another important element?

Yes, so long as the system itself isn't corrupt. Well maybe not on justice system since it could very well be biased to serve a particular person/group(s).

4) Does poverty encourage corruption?

This one is tough. I'd really haveto say no because they wouldn't have the money. Instead it encourages crime. Sure there still will corruption at that level, esp if there is a welfare like system, but i don't think it encourages it.

5) The fewer the people with power, the more
corrupt a govt is?

No, just the more evident it is. When there's just a few people its easy to point fingers and hard to hide behind anyone else. The thing is the people in charge of a democracy are just as human as those in a communist government.

5) Would you say the above 4 are the MAIN variables determining curruption?

Well since i argued against most of them no.

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LGJ: multi/mono ethnic civs: The main question in my mind is what exactly makes unstable a large civ. Is it the difference in the culture of peoples under the same regime? Other factors may help, such as bad communications, but, Can different cultures under the same govt influence unstability?
-----

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THE GAME
--------
I don't want to repeat what someone else has already said, but here is it anyway:
This is a game, it's not reality. The game can simply NOT be a copy of reality so just stop trying to make it a copy of reality...
Instead, just make rules that will make a fun game and then gives name to the things in the game so that it looks like a copy of reality, but in any case DON'T DO IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND... (That is getting a list a things similar to reality and then patching rules around to make everything work together...)

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CORRUPTION
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Simply, corruption is not a question of government, it's a question of 'free-will'...
The more 'free-will' an entity has, the more it is/can-be corrupted...
If an entity has no 'free-will', that entity simply CAN'T be corrupted!

Maximum 'free-will' for everyone = maximum potential corruption
Minimum 'free-will' for everyone (including ruler(s)) = minimum potential corruption

But then, there is corruption AND efficiency(and also a bunch of other things)

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EFFICIENCY
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Perfect Efficiency = The best way to do something while include all factor(which are reality in it's sum)

Perfect efficiency is impossible, and, actually, everything the man has done so far could be compared has an hamster in an hamster's wheel: 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000001% efficiency... (and even there, I'm making it look better for man that it realy is)

On a more mundane scale, efficiency can me compared to 'brain-power' (human's that is)
The more one task has 'brain-power' the more efficient it will become... Each entity has a certain amount of 'brain-power' that allows it to learn ways of doing a certain task... The more 'free-will' that entity has over that task, the more 'brain-power' it can use on it...

Total 'Free-Will': Max. Potential Corruption, Max. Efficiency.
No 'Free-Will' (including ruler(s)): Min. Potential Corruption, Min Efficiency.

----
LAWS
----
The laws are the wisdom of the community...
By themselves, laws ARE 'Brain-power', maybe not intelligent, but at least knowledge.
If the law system is 'universaly perfect', then that law system is providing perfect efficiency by itself, so there is no need for individual 'Brain-power', thus no need for 'Free-will' and at same time 'corruption'...
But that's a 'perfect' case...

As a general rule, the more a system has good laws, the less 'free-will' it's entity should have...
(Because increasing 'free-will' over a certain point will increase 'corruption' more than 'efficiency')
Sadly thought, our law systems are still very poor, so we still need to use most of the 'brain-power' that we can get... That's the reason why anarchy based system (capitalism/fachism/etc.) are working better right now...

That's all I have to say (for now)

roquijad--
I believe that a centrally planned economy puts entire industries in the control of one person (or at most a committee). Like the U.S. publicly managed education system. And the lack of flexibility in those systems is nigh unto legendary.

1) yes, culture affects corruption. Esp religous/moral/philosophic cultural attributes.

2) not in my opinion, no. The size of the state is not much of a factor. The term 'banana republic' comes to mind.

3) yes, law enforcement and justice system quality must be a factor.

4) no, not poverty. Not for corruption, really. Unless you mean poor govt officials -- then yes.

5) absolutely yes. The smaller and more powerful the govt officials, the greater the payoff for a payoff.

Bizmut--
I consider myself a secular Taoist, if that makes any sense.

Personally, I believe that one job of a game designer is to make games that are as 'realistic' a simulation as possible, and to then make rules that are as real and playable as possible. A great game is one which is both playable and real. One of my favorite things about gaming is to vicariously live out a reality.

But that's just me.

And I'd still say that corruption is a function of $80k a year govt managers controlling tens of millions of $$$ in contracts/rights/regulations/etc. As long as that is true, corruption will be a fact of life.

F_Smith-

Wow! Until I met you I was the only one I knew who considered himself a Secular Taoist.

Anyway the point i wanted to make with you is in response to number 3.
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3) yes, law enforcement and justice system quality must be a factor.
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This is only the case if the judical system is not under the direct control of corrupt leadership, such as the US system, where the judical system is independant. Throughout history though, courts were usually biased toward religion of some sort, or were in control of leaders, both of which would convict or release people for their own means.

I beleive you are searching for a rule system to define corruption/waste in your game...
So here is my 'formula'...

Efficiency = 100% - ((100% - RulerTech) * (100% - RulerPower))
Corruption = (100% - RulerTech) * RulerPower * (100% - NonRulerPower)

RulerPower = RulerAverageSkill * PopRuler%
NonRulerPower = NonRulerAverageSkill * PopNonRuler%

RulerAverageSkill = the average 'Ruling Skill ' of individuals that are in the ruling class
PopRuler% = Percentage of the population that are in the ruling class

NonRulerAverageSkill = the average 'Ruling Skill' of individuals that are NOT in the ruling class
PopNonRuler% = Percentage of the population that are NOT in the ruling class

PopRuler% & PopNonRuler% should consider individual as dividable...
For example, even if in the US 'everyone' can vote, the signifiance of individuals in the ruling is much less than what it should be...

If 5% of someone's skill is used for ruling, 95% of that someone's skill will be used for 'anti-corruption' purposes...

....

That's the basic idea...
YOU BETTER LIKE IT ... OR ELSE!!!

Give me your opinion about these proposals to improve govt and econ models regarding corruption, stability and centrally planned economies. They try to take into account several elements you have mentioned that I agree with:

CORRUPTION
Suppose corruption can be summarized as a fraction discounted from the govt public fund, so if tax totals X, the player only has (1-C)% of X to do things, where C is the magnitude of corruption. This is to simulate a number of corruption effects such as: a)people paying less taxes than they should; b)govt employees keeping a part of the govt money through different mechanisms; c)corrupt companies/persons paid by the govt to do things that eventually they don't do (or do in a deficient way in order to keep most of that payment to themselves); d)etc. So, (1-C)X is the Effective public fund the civ has and the larger C is, the less available effective funds are and the worse the govt performs. The question is how C is determined. IMO C is determined by the following factors:
1. Bureaucracy: As long as the govt. have specific rules and regulations regarding how money is spent and reports are demanded giving info about govt. spending for supervisors and rulers to see, the corruption level should lower. These regulations and controls over govt. employees are essentially bureaucracy implementation. In Clash, I propose the govt should have a "Bureaucratic Spending". That is, the ruler/player invest money in implementing bureaucracy to lower C. It's important to notice that this is a double-edged sword. The greater the investment in bureaucracy, the lower the C, but at a certain point, you start to spend in bureaucracy the money you "rescued" from corruption, so there's no real gaining. In an extreme case, you spend more money in bureaucracy than you get lowering C through bureaucracy implementation. In this way bureaucracy is simulated in its correct way, since it's good in a general case, but it might become a problem if enlarged too much.
2. Law Enforcement: In the econ model provinces invest money in such things as police and justice system. We can get a measure of how good the civ law enforcement policy is looking at those investments. The greater the investment, the lower the C. This is to simulate the justice system controlling corruption and sending to prison the offenders and then making corruption less attractive. Also, police officers are less sensitive to corruption if their wages are good (high investment in police).
3. Govt. Transparency: If the people is allowed to take legal actions against their govt and their employees and politicians using public govt information, one may expect corruption should be low. IMO these practices are much of the cornerstone in developed countries regarding corruption control. So, if at the govt. level we have some variable describing the level of legal power the people has over their own govt., the higher its value, the lower C you have.
4. Telecommunications/Transportation techs: This factor should change the effectiveness of the three factors above. If you have bank accounts to collect taxes instead of sending mounted soldiers to collect them or if you have public internet access to govt. policies or if the police have computers to help their tasks, then the effectiveness of those policies should increase.

We can see that a dictatorship can indeed have a low C within this scheme, but probably a democracy would do better, since the people would have political power to force govt policies to go in the direction of better law enforcement and more govt. transparency. In this way, a democracy is not the only govt type to have a low level of corruption, but the most likely to. Also, in democracy we wouldn't have a zero C, but only low. I think this goes just in the way Paul Crocker and LGJ envision democratic/not-democratic govts.

STABILITY/CORRUPTION
I think Axi's comment on the unpleasant stability of civ2 and ctp govts and the comment regarding "corruptive force of large political power" are very good. However, Mark's right about the possibility of having too many fluctuations that may lead us to a frustrating game play. I think it can be solved like this: Suppose C is also affected by the magnitude of ruler/player pol.power, but the amount in which this pol.power affects C is given randomly using pol.power value. This means that ruler's pol.power value (maybe re-scaled to a more suitable value) is used as a range in which we choose a random number to influence C. So, the larger its political power, the greater the chance of being corrupt, but only a Chance. The random number is changed (chosen again) after a number of turns (say, 50). This is to reflect the change of ruler (the player is the same, of course, but the king is other) and this way each king has its own level of corruption. This way you have corrupted monarchs and "good" monarchs along the way and causing the govt. to be somewhat more unstable. Under a more democratic rule, ruler's pol.power is low and the mean of ruler's corruption level is lower, leading to a more stable govt.
This proposal puts in some elements to make the govt more unstable in dictatorships and also makes dictatorships more likely to be corrupt, but not making it corrupt by default. The fluctuations can be easily managed just changing the number of turn in which the random number is recalculated.

CENTRALLY PLANNED ECONOMIES
I see two major drawbacks in CPE that I'm proposing to include: First, the flexibility mentioned by F_Smith: You need a Huge State apparatus to determine prices, where and what to produce and all kind of economic variables. Second, a low productivity. This one rises from the fact that in a communist system (the extreme case) all people earns about the same no matter what they do. This element tell us that even if you work harder, you get the same, and if you work less, you get the same.... so, obviously, you work less!! In fact, TFP (Total Factors Productivity) in the USSR were going down and down in the last 20 years aprox. of its existence. That means for each year they produced less than the past year with the same labor and machines!. To include this in Clash, I think people should have a productivity value (maybe they already have it in the econ model, I don't remember). The more centrally planned an economy is, the lower their productivity. Also, scientific development should be lowered in some similar fashion representing the impossibility of someone getting profit from inventing something, then reducing common people's inventive.
To include the first element, flexibility, I think we can use Mark's "80% penalty" (I know you didn't want to be cited on that, Mark ) with a 100% tax. My reasoning is this: After people has produced economic goods and given it all in taxes, the State has to spend lots of money planning the economy and then give back to the people. The penalty reflects exactly that: the money used to maintain the Huge State apparatus. Since it's Huge, the money needed to maintain it should also be huge. In a freemarket economy, there's still exist some planning and also special agencies to deal with monopolistic markets and other market imperfections, so the penalty should still exist, but being much lower. One important thing is that the money used in planning should have an effect. In the case of dealing with monopolies, controlling them actually prevents abusive behaviors creating a healthier economy. So, under this view, the penalty shouldn't be called such, but a "Planning Investment" (PI). In this sense, the govt (player) should be allowed to choose the level of PI. Choosing a large PI leaves him less money to do things, but that money he resigns to is used to control markets. If he wants, he can set a 0% PI leaving a crude "pure" free market or going to the other extreme with a 100% for a communist system. The effect of the level of PI should be: The greater the PI, the lower the productivity (to include what I said about productivity) and the flatter the income distribution. This, of course, implies we have to get track of an income distribution, but I believe it's a very important variable to measure social tensions that actually may lead to communist revolutions, FE. So there you have all the ingredients and PI becomes THE variable to define how centrally planned your economy is. Going to a centrally planned economy (high PI) protects people from the abuses of a free market making income distribution nearly flat, but loses in productivity/science. Going to a pure free market system (low PI) makes income distribution very extreme (social tension) but gains in productivity. Furthermore, you can set PI somewhere in the middle which is the most common case today.
The real goodness of any economic system will be measured computing people's happiness regarding economic goods they posses. That's the bottom line. All what I described above only represents the mechanisms to know people's wealth, so there isn't really a bias toward any particular system.

If the people is allowed to take legal actions against their govt and their
employees and politician

Just wondering about this statement are you sure you ment employees and not employers which I think would make more sense.

It looks really good!

Your notion of corruption being represented by losing a factor of revenues, is a good start at what I had in mind. I also envisioned it having a dampening effect on technology, the people's happiness, and other things. But as I said, what you have is a very good start, and we can certainly tack on more things later as appropriate.

On bureaucracy with respect to corruption, I think bureaucracy is a two-edged sword. A Byzantine bureaucracy can also enhance corruption. But I will allow that throwing money at corruption to reduce it is certainly possible, so let's not quibble too much on this one. I agree completely with your point on law-enforcement! Government transparency is also very good... part of this really comes from how much power the "little guy" has in the system. Other things like freedom of the press are also clearly important. On No. 4 these again cut both ways. In my opinion good telecommunications and transportation can make both a democracy and a totalitarian state stronger. So I'd like to hear a little further what you had in mind for No. 4.

I think your proposal is very solid! The only point I'd like to raise is that I don't think corruption levels should change immediately with the new king or whatever. Once corruption gets going, IMO it is very difficult to reverse. I think this is the problem a lot of regimes in the middle of Africa are having. So, in short, I think the culture should have a corruption level associated with it. Even a great ruler IMO cannot turn around a corrupt culture in a very short period of time. So the dynamics would be such that when the new ruler comes along, it will change both the inherent corruption level a little bit immediately, and the amount that the corruption changes each turn by a great deal. As to what exact corruption mechanism we should use, heck if I know.

I don't have any criticism of your proposal for handling non-market forces (Surprise! ) It may need to be tweaked later, but I think it is good enough to start with.

I guess we'll have to see what everyone else thinks...

Kanzid:

I think we are pretty much viewing the player as a "guiding spirit" of the civ. So individual rulers, dynasties, and forms of government will come and go, but the player is still there.

About your second point, I do agree with you about the player being the only responsable for the ruler's actions and behavior, but I fear in that way we cannot simulate a dictator keeping some money to himself from the national fund or a king building to himself a huge palace full of riches in which he uses an important share of public funds. The reason is a player doesn't really need that super palace and he doesn't want to steal money from the govt. because he wants that money to play (build units, etc). What I was trying to do was to FORCE the player to accept less money to play with if he wants a large political power simulating the ruler he is playing has some level of corruption. Does this sound reasonable to you?

Mark:
You wrote: "I also envisioned [corruption] having a dampening effect on technology, the people's happiness, and other things". I'm looking forward to see a more precise speech on that since that's exactly what I was trying to encourage with this thread!

Telecom/Transport techs: I'm not sure I'm understanding why you want me to go further on this. It seems you're maybe worried that the type of govt. has no effect on the bonuses techs can add to corruption control. If that's the case, I think in fact techs can help democratic or despotic govts in the same way.

About corruption changing with the ruler, we're on the same side, man! For sure corruption is much harder to change than only changing the ruler. That's why my proposal computes corruption with variables like govt.transparency or law enforcement which are independant from the ruler and allowing a civ to change ruler but keep their corruption level. The corruption coming from the ruler I proposed is only one more ingredient, so a corrupt ruler just steal some extra dollars. A corrupt ruler only enlarges corruption levels a little more...
About including culture as a factor for corruption, I chose not to include it because I wasn't seeing much concensus in this thread about that topic.

Planned Economies: No criticism! Indeed a surprise... I guess that's good coming from the econ model developer... I'm hoping Axi will give me a comment on this since he was worried about the econ model being able to simulate centrally planned economies.... are you still there, Axi?

The original Six Questions:

1)Gov't Stability: It may seem obvious, but ultimately it comes down to peoples' willingness to accept a certain type of rule. We talk about Democracy as if it's the greatest form of government ever devised, and it may be, but the experiment is really rather short. The Chinese had an autocratic Emperor for thousands of years, and their culture was more stable than any other in history. It's natural to be blinded by what I'll call the "Today Effect". In other words, it looks like all of history has come together to create what we see before us today. Which it has. But there is NO INHERENT PERMANENCE in what you see today. It will soon be "tomorrow", and mankind will have moved on to something else. This applies equally to technology AND governments, IMO. It's quite possible that Democracy, as currently practiced in the West, has some form of inherent weakness which will ultimately doom it to failure. This will be just as obvious to historians of the future as Democracy's inherent superiority is obvious to us today.

My point is that Government Type should not be the deciding issue. The true determining factor in Government Stability is Popular Acceptance. (I'm reluctant to call it happiness.) So long as those you rule are more afraid of change than they are of the status quo, your government will be stable.

2) Corruption relationship to Gov't Type: Others have addressed this far more eloquently than I!

3) CPE vs. MFS: Again, I defer to the earlier discussions. Adding my opinions would be the equivalent of "making the rubble bounce".

4) Multiethnic Civs vs. Monoethnic Civs: Remember my comments about the "Today Effect"? Here's a classic example. We live in a time in which Nationalism is so omnipresent, that it seems to be the natural order of the universe. But it's a VERY recent phenomenon, in it's current form dating back only a 100 years or so. (albeit with roots several centuries older.) I don't want to bore you with a string of examples, but they are legion. If you think back to the Middle Ages, the nobility often switched allegiances from one King to another, without the slightest consideration that their people were "German" or "French". You SPOKE French or German, YOU weren't French or German. That's a pretty fundamental difference in mindset! The Roman empire was one of the most multiethnic civs in history, and it was VERY successful for a long period of time.

So where am I going with this? Ethnicity should play almost no part in determining civ "success" until the development of Nationalism. Even then, some forms of government are more sensitive to it than others. For example, look at what happened to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia once Communism gave up the ghost. We should also consider that Nationalism is probably not a permanent condition, but rather one more phase humanity must pass through on the road to wherever it is we're going!

5) Cultural Impacts on Economy and Gov't: Will there be any? Yes. Can we model it? Probably. Is it incredibly complicated?
I'll defer to others on this.

6) Is Religion a Technology Inhibitor? There are plenty of examples which would suggest that it is, such as the Catholic Church's anti-scientific attitude in the Middle Ages and today's Fundamentalist Iran. But if you go way back to the beginnings of civilization, religion was probably one of the chief technology drivers! We are fairly certain that Astronomy was developed and encouraged by priesthoods throughout the world. Architecture and Writing probably received a similar boost. I think we need to be VERY careful about this one. Perhaps over time religion changes from a plus factor to a minus? On the other hand, insofar as religion encourages cultural cohesiveness and stability, the improvement in THOSE areas would ipso facto be a plus to research. So this whole issue may be too complicated to model effectively.

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Why do dictators generally keep money? would it be possible to make the players think these were good reasons, on building palaces prehaps make them useful for improving morale, or giving diplomats a plae to stay when they come
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The reason is a player doesn't really need that super palace and he doesn't want to steal money from the govt. because he wants that money to play (build units, etc).
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But what if he wants to build the palace to show off to the other players.
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First I will only say this once and further discussion should be put in the app forum. We have addressed the prob of religion and tech in the social forum. Go check it out and if you don't like what was decided give us your opinion and perhaps a solution there.

quote:

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Planned Economies: No criticism! Indeed a surprise... I guess that's good coming from the econ model developer... I'm hoping Axi will give me a comment on this since he was worried about the econ model being able to simulate centrally planned economies.... are you still there, Axi?

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Don't worry pal, it's just that I'm a busy man (although my collegues don't think so).

Rodrigo, I think you've got it! I can hardly find something to criticise about your post. It is clear, simple and easily transferable to the econ model through some quite simple formulae. I believe we should stick to it. Unfortunately, all that praise is meant only for the corruption part of your post.

At this point, I am compelled to make a case on behalf of planned economies, a thing that I have intended to do further on, since my earlier posts concerned only the government issues.

I will begin by stating that I firmly believe in planned economics, even though this goes against the current trend, in my country as much as globally. This belief is based on three axioms:

a)Man is a benevolent creature, which means that an ordinary person, if treated fairly, will strive to be helpful.

b) One should be rewarded according to his efforts, and not according to his actual output, since it's nobody's fault if he was born less able than the others.

c) In a liberal economy, efficiency is compulsory and justice is voluntary, while in a planned one, it is the other way around.

The result of those three combined is that a planned economy is the likelier vessel to host both of these values, since promoting justice encourages efficiency, while promoting efficiency discourages justice.

Of course, the prime requisite for a successful planned economy is that power should emanate from beneath. (beneath means the productive base - Mark's "little guys") An authoritarian system with a centrally planned economy (like the communist states we have seen up to this date) although it grants justice, it makes some exceptions for the elite (vide Animal farm: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others") thus killing the motive for efficiency in the "little guys". Such a state can persist only by using deceit.

If you dislike my theoretical outlook, here are some facts, to show that a liberal economy, although it may be more productive(in it's peak - the inevitable periods of crisis are another matter) it is in the same time extremely wasteful, thus being inefficient:

1) A liberal economy is haunted by unemployment, while a planned one makes full use of the labor provided.

2) In a liberal economy nothing is produced unless it yields some profit, in spite of the actual demand. For the same reason all installations usually function below their capacity.

3) A liberal economy creates a needlessly vast number of jobs that are go-between or outright parasitic to the system, thus not productive.

4) In a liberal economy vast resources are wasted on products with little or no social returns, since all values are distorted by marketing.

Let's return to Rodrigo's post now: I think that the PI idea is a must, but the effects of raising the PI should be reconsidered:

Why should PI affect the income distribution? A big corporation internally functions like a planned economy, but there are great inequalities of income. The fact that economic planning performed by western governments is usually targeted to such an effect (through taxation, social security, etc), only means that PI gives the ruler control over the income distribution. What the ruler does with the control he gains is another matter. In the case of western governments, some low PI is maintained chiefly in order to prevent excessive unbalances in the income distribution. A very unbalanced distribution of income indicates only that axiom b) that I have mentioned above is violated, and nothing more.

Why should PI directly affect productivity? It should affect it, but only in indirect ways. Productivity should be affected by:

1) Class specific happiness level [ I propose: P=Po(1-expH) ], while happiness, apart from other factors, should be affected by:
a) Working hours (Remember ctp?)
b) The income distribution (Maybe from the difference between the class's mean income and the total PCI, with either a positive or a negative effect, or from the % of population to earn x% of the total income, with a predetermined effect for each class).
c) Material standards (Percentile rate of amelioration/deterioration of the the clas's mean income, with effects balanced a little bit towards positive numbers, to indicate belief in the necessity of progress).
d) What else?

2) Bureaucratic spending (Maybe the diminishing returns of bureaucratic spending will derive from productivity losses, and not from the spending itself, urging the player to find more inventive ways to deal with corruption.)

3) Any administrative techs (optional)

4) What else?

1) What makes a govt stable?

i believe what makes a government stable is a combination of these factors, popular acceptance of the government's rule, people have to accept the legitamacy of the government's decisions...politics determine what people get, and since there is a limited amount of resources some group will alway get less than they want...to use an example, in a football game one side must lose (at least in the playoffs) nobody wants to lose but as long as the officiating is correct the losing teams agrees the loss was fair and accepts the loss...for a stable government people must accept when they don't get what they want, and to maintain the stability they must be willing to work within the confines of the government framework to change things...groups willing to go outside the constitution to change things will lead to instability...keeping groups from going outside of the government means that you have to make them accept the rule of law and means that your government has to provide enough services for your people to keep them satisifed with your government...if your government is inadequate then people will look outside of your government then this will cause instability, the government doesn't have to be all things to all people but it does have to provide adequate services to enough people, to keep them satisfied with your rule...also the army and beurocracy must submit to rule of law too...the government must not be above the laws

2) Is corruption more or less related to a specific govt. type?

i think that corruption is not specifically related to government type...but i think that besides corruption you also have to address inefficency and waste...let me define corruption waste and inefficency...

you have a government run farm right beside of a town you have three government warehouse a great distance away...the food from the farm goes from the farm to the warehouses then to the town...along the way a government official takes 10% of the food that is corruption...it goes the great distance and sets in the warehouse for a while, during this time the government lets half the food rot...that is waste...along the way at each and every warehouse the truck driver has to write a 100 page report on his trip...that is inefficency

i think that corruption is most related to the individual and the culture of corruption that exists in the government...prosecution of these corrupt individuals can end corruption, but waste and inefficency are more a result of poor performance or poor government organization or size than individual action

3) What makes a centraly planned economy perform worse than a free market system?

planned economies don't have the flexability or the economic incentive to improve performance like what a free market system does

4) Do multiethnic civs have a lower chance of success compared to monoethnic civs?

other people have handled this question better than me

5) In what way culture affects the performance of an economy or a govt. type?

need to put more thought into this one

6) Clergy political power: does it keep a nation away from advancing technologicaly and/or economicaly?

i definantly do not think that a clergy's political power would always hurt a nation either technologically or economically...indeed there are many examples both for and against the clergy helping and hurting technology and the economy...i think it depends solely on the values that the clergy holds

Your theory on central planning is beautiful! Unfortunately it doesn't fit the facts IMO... it seems that fear and greed are much more powerful motivators than the desire to do good. A market economy uses fear and greed for a laudable purpose; to accomplish the task of distributing goods in an at least somewhat reasonable manner. Central planning IMO has two major defects. First, and foremost, rather than using the whole "intelligence of the market" it uses some very much smaller set of inputs to determine which goods to make, and where they should go. In essence, the effective power of the computations is Very much less than that for a market economy. Secondly, because the actual administrators of a centrally planned economy don't share in the rewards of good decisions, and the punishment for bad decisions, anywhere near as strongly as in a market economy, the quality of those decisions is IMO somewhat degraded.

I don't mean that all central planning is bad by any means. For instance scientific research is one area where central support of the endeavor is Essential to maximizing progress IMO. And I would characterize this system in the U.S., which I don't think is too bad, is at least of the order 20% to 30% centrally planned. I clearly don't think that an unfettered market economy is the best solution either. The evils that result from such a system are I think we can agree, larger than the good which would come from it.

Your point b is laudable in spirit, but leads to some really bizarre consequences in practice. This is because people generally look to their own good, and perhaps the good of their family, rather than the general good. For instance, one can use the example of a brain surgeon, and a house painter. If they are paid equally, then it is quite rational for the brain surgeon to take a month off to paint his house. Unfortunately, the consequence to society of this is that many fewer brain surgeries are undertaken, and many people that desperately need this operation don't get it. The house painter clearly cannot take his place in the operating theater. However, If the brain surgeon receives a salary much larger than the house painter, then it is an obvious good from everyone's point of view for the brain surgeon to keep performing his operations, and to pay the house painter to paint the house.

You may be able to raise objections to my particular example. Feel free to do so. However, endlessly debating topics like this, that have kept many of the great minds of history well occupied, isn't going to get us anywhere. At this point in history it appears that the balance of the (admittedly incomplete) experiment comes down on the side of "bridled" capitalism (as opposed to unbridled) as the better functional system given the facts of human nature.

Anyway, the really constructive (IMHO) part of my post, concerning what should really affect productivity is still not criticized or confronted or extended. I believe that the essence of our discussion is there.

You tried this in off topic? Ouch.

But remember when you say "capitalist scum", that there are scum of every persuasion in every society. That's just life. No system is devoid of lousy people, just as no system is devoid of good people.