On the other side, how the model uses "ideologies" presents another problem. Ideologies have fixed values and they should cover all the relevant regimes the game is expected to have. If a scenario designer chooses to have 10 classes instead of the original setting, the number of ideologies needed for the minimum flavor increases Extensively.

Ideologies have yet another problem. For representative regimes, pol.power shares must go according to demographic shares. Since pol.power shares are fixed in ideologies, this means the ideology itself needs to determine demographic shares, so coherency can be obtained. This isn't much of a problem with the current classes we're dealing with (excluding middle class) if we accept demographic shares are given by the values of PP, EP and SP, but if now one imagines adding/changing classes, then the relationship between demographic shares and ideologies can be very complicated.

IMO the govt model is simply not expandible. If this characteristic is a must in the team's view, then a radical change is needed in the model. I never thought about expanding classes, so it's my mistake.
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IMO some kinda balance is needed. It doesn't haveto be as customizable as the technology model is (which you can add/delete/change any application tech and probably and basic tech, pretty much anything but the technology engine itself).

You said yourself you don't want scerio designers to get frustrated at designing new kindof classes for scerios. IMO if you want to design a class for a scerio that cannot be done any other way, you should be able to do that. FE: One might want a small, but non-the-less important "Gestapo" type class or in an expansion for magic and such a wizard class (which i want and if there was an add-on for this could probably boost clash's userbase alot, atleast the people i know,but that's for later since right now were working on clash in the real world).

I'm stuck on trying to code that now. I'm thinking on my feet, but how about this, it's very similar to what you have above, but reorganized --

Each SocialClass has/chooses an Ideology, as above.

An Ideology holds:

1) Tolerance for ruler absolutism (a %?).
2) Their preference on govt spending (econ, social, military).
3) A list of Social classes the ideology has an opinion about. If no opinion, then a 'default' value will be used.

Then a Govt has a 'PowerStructure' object, which defines which SocialClasses have which level/percent of political power in that govt?

Then using these two, you could achieve all you asked above, and still expand it to include any number and type of Social Classes.

Perhaps I'll try this. Maybe it'll fail miserably. I'm just not sure how else to proceed, and I feel like coding. What the heck, I'll give it a spin.

Yes, ideologies are a problem for model expandability, but you're taking a rather dramatic way out! If you change what an ideology is (holds), you're changing one of the cornerstones of the model... I simply cannot imagine what am I going to do with your invention! For a start, the main reason for introducing the concept of ideologies in the model was that it was going to hold a political structure (classes and their respective pol.powers). Now you put totally different info. You also are making each class choose an ideology, while several ideologies can be supported by the same class. Your prototype will be something totally different from what I planned!

1) I didn't understand the table of my example either. It is now obsolete so forget about it. It has grown since... I have everything in an Excel spreadsheet and I am finishing details. (btw, can you help me with a macro I want to make, to make turns pass?)

2) Currently, the definition of the MC that I am using is being economically independant, possesing the capital to employ their own labor. That means that they will lean ideologically from time to time towards the UC or the LC, while in an earlier approach, their income was strictly 50-50, and so would be their profile. Any more ideas are welcome, after you all have seen my progress.

3) It's a hard time for us commies my friend...

Man, there has been a lot of action since I was last here... I'm going to respond to the coding debate in the other thread.

Unless I'm missing something, the only other thing that I really need to respond to is Rodrigo's question about the problems in the Econ model when there is only a lower and upperclass. (And also taking as the definition that the lower class cannot control any capital or land.) I have already described the problem in my post of July 5. I will elaborate on it a little bit here. The main problem comes near subsistence. If we assume that the UC controls all capital and land, it is natural to assume that they get a part of the profits proportional to the capital and land value in the production process. So I have assumed in trying to match the economic and government models that the class that controls a particular input to the production process gets a proportional amount of the production to call theirs. To figure out the value of each input to the production process (labor, capital, and land in the farm sector for example) I assume that the marginal productivity due to that resource indicates its value in the production process.

To make this concrete, the values that are at the top of the Econ spreadsheet for the very poor low-tech province show the extra amount produced if adding a single unit of each of labor, land, and capital in the farming sector. These amounts are 3.68 for labor, 0.93 from land, and 0.81 from capital. So if we assume that the UC gets all the food produced due to its contributions (both land and capital) in the current model it will get (0.93+ 0.81)/(3.68+ 0.93+ 0.81) = 32% of the food credited to it. Only the remaining 68% would be what the LC could call its own. So even Before Any Taxation the food left to the LC would be 68% x 5.27 = 3.6 units of food. This is on the brink of catastrophic starvation! (4 units of food per head are required for minimal nutrition and no net population growth) At this level of food the population will be declining approximately 1% per year! And this is a province with pretty good agricultural land, it would be much worse in a less well-endowed province.

So that is why I think we need one of two things, either an LC that allows for some control of capital, or a middle class. I think Axi's suggestion about calling free subsistence farmers middle class is basically a good one... We could also mess around with the way the Econ model works to avoid this problem, but the Econ model also has a lot of work in it, and is somewhat difficult to balance. I have already cited numerous other arguments for why a middle class is, I think, a good idea, and I won't repeat them here.

The beast is about ready to be put to work. After some cosmetic cleanup, I'll be spending time on the turnhandler code tonight. Which leaves me with a few questions:

1. Tax Rate -- Right now, the govt's tax rate policy automatically becomes the ruler's tax rate pref after one turn. I was wondering if the majority EthnicGroup (in the proportions of the govt's power structure) should have a say in taxation.
   
2. Numbers -- As I look at and play with this, it is slightly confusing for slavery and a few others to not use the 0%-100% range. Might just be me, but should we standardize the numbers?
   
3. Economic Class v. 'Job' -- it made most sense, from a data storage viewpoint, to seperate these two. But this will be seamless and invisible to the player. The values will cumulate and look exactly as ya'll have laid out.
   
4. Political Power Structure -- right now, the player can set the %'s. I assume that they have to add up to 100% total (might have been in the text and I missed it)? I think perhaps I'm suppose to have a selection of govt types (the ones in the 'ideologies' section of the govt post) for the player to chose from? If so, anyone want to come up with values there?
   

I tried to play with the beast last night and windows crashed while doing it. I'll try again tonight to give you more feedback.

As for the questions you rise now,

1)It's perfect how you have it now. We haven't invented a way (in terms of equations) to make a class choose a desired tax rate. Probably it won't be ness. either. Keept it how you have it.

2)There're some good reasons for the ranges I chose. It has to do with the outcomes needed. Preserve ranges as they're.

3)Job? I don't know what you mean, but if it's something you'll keep hidden and I can still be thinking of our regular social classes, I don't mind.

Oh, god, I'm sorry it crashed Windoze. That's not suppose to happen with Java, altho using IE as the platform can create problems. If it happens again, please let me know. Do be warned, the GUI stuff is *very* slow to load . . . my webspace is the freebie space that comes with my cable modem, and it's poor. Altho on my machine here at home it loads in about 15-20 seconds (at work it takes about 30-40 seconds).

The downloadable zip (which doesn't have the newest stuff yet, maybe I'll put that together tommorrow) has an application that alleviatest that problem, if you don't have a cablemodem yourself.

I am dying to get your feedback. I'm sure I've missed the boat on a few things, and I'm anxious to finish this baby and get on to other models.

For the last weeks I've been considering how to increase flexibility and scalability concerning social classes. This was triggered by F_Smith and others who wanted to see more classes than the ones I and Axi considered originally for the model. Unfortunately, I don't bring good news. I decided to change a couple of things to allow some more flexibility, but it's far from being what some of you wanted.

In order to let you all know why adding more classes is no easy task, I'm gonna enter in some details. Hopefuly this will help understanding the problem.

From the computational point of view, it's quite easy to add any number of social classes. You just have to add more objects and that's it. The problem comes in modeling classes' behavior. Objects hold two things. Data and procedures for the data. Procedures take data and process it with some equations to produce something we call "class' behavior", which is nothing but another set of numbers we interpret as classes' decisions. In order to have an arbitrary number of classes AND their behaviors, we need equations (procedures) that are common to all of them. Having common equations for all social classes is what makes possible scalability, because if you need to code new procedures for new behaviors each time you add a social class, then you have to admit there's no real scalability.

Having a common set of equations for all social classes assumes their behavior is similar. In that case it's the data (class' attributes) that produces the small differences. This is FE what we see in the military area. Each time we want to add a new unit, we just specify its attributes (attack strength, speed, etc) and the game engine uses the same procedures with these new numbers to generate the unit's behavior in the battle field. And this is good because military units are indeed very similar. Having a common set of equations for all units (of most of them) makes sense and therefore you have scalability.

Unfortunately this is not the case with social classes. If one starts to imagine classes like "farmers", "scientists", "religious warriors", "land-based aristocracy", "trade-based aristocracy", "freed slaves", "greenpeace fighters", "jedi knights", "elves", "robots", and a very long "etc", then it's pretty obvious that behaviors can get to be very different. If you try to create a set of equations valid for all of them it becomes a monumental task. Having a set of equations common to all classes was very problematic when I was developing the model and I only had 5 classes! I actually didn't achieve it. I found that to have a reasonable and believable class behavior for each of them I needed class-specific procedures in many parts of the game. Generic (or parametric)equations are hard to create, specially if you want social classes to have a sophisticated behavior like the one we're trying to implement.

Equation sophistication is just a part of the problem. Data input you need for behavioral equations will not be entirely held in classes' attributes. Scientists will be interested in tech variables, aristocrats in economic data, greepeace in ecological data, etc. A generic class behavior equation would actually have to access all available info in the game!

It's the nature of human behavior that complicates things. It can be so complex and different from group to group that it's ambicious to resume it all in a few equations, even if you are focusing only in some aspects of behavior.

Coding will allow us to create any number of social classes we want, but we have to realize this coding flexibility doesn't mean game flexibility. When a new social class is added, it will use the same procedures older ones used and so, class' behavior will be almost the same. The new social class is useless and senseless. It will behave as the others do, which means the game hasn't really changed. You can add 20 more classes and the same happens. We'd be fooling ourselves if we trust that adding more social_class objects will bring us new and different scenarios.

So, I'm sorry to say it, but the model doesn't have the capacity to scale up. One solution is to change the model and create a new one with a much simpler behavior for social classes. Simple enough so we can have generic procedures for all classes. But I wouldn't take that road. On one side the model will lose flavor and in the other it implies a more homogeneous behavior for all classes (as it happens with military units), and homogenity is the greatest enemy to social classes, because the fun in having more classes is having new behaviors.

The other solution is to allow scenario designers to code new behaviors. Add a class and code whatever it feels good for the class behavior. But, well, if players can get into coding, the word "game flexibility" takes another meaning...

This ends my explanation. Now I present to you the update to the govt model. It will allow having an arbitrary number of the so-called "economic classes". The model originally included the Upper Class and the Lower Class. With this update we can (if we want) include the Middle Class and as many other economic classes we want without reducing behavior flavor we have till now. The model, then, will have N economic classes, plus the Warriors Class (formerly known as Military Class), the Religious Class and the Bureaucratic Elite.

The update replaces UC and LC behavior equations with a generic set of behavior equations for "Socio-economic classes" (I hope the word "socio-economic" exists in english). I prefer the term "socio-economic" to simply "economic" because class behavior will be given by economic role AND cultural info. The scenario designer and we (when creating the "by default" game setting) have to choose a number of socio-economic classes and for each of them need only to specify 1)the degree in which the socio-economic class controls kapital and 2)the degree in which it provides labor. The exact measure in which both variables will be handled is still TBD depending on how they best serve the econ model. Political and economic behavior for socio-economic classes will be given using these two variables and cultural info from the social model. Equations for socio-economic classes' behavior will wait until we decide how variables for provision of kapital and labor will be measured. Equations shouldn't be a problem once that is solved.

One of the problems of adding more classes was ideologies. Ideologies were meant to have a list of all social classes and their respective political powers. Adding more social classes would make the list longer, which isn't a problem, but would complicate defining how any govt type should look like regarding pol.power distribution and would also encourage the introduction of an important amount of extra ideologies. To solve this, instead of a list of all classes, ideologies will posses this info:

Ruler's pol.power
People's pol.power
Capitalists pol.power
Religious Class pol.power
Warrior Class pol.power

(if you don't know why the Bureaucratic Elite doesn't appear here, refer to the model document)
This means Upper Class pol.power and Lower Class pol.power were replaced by People's pol.power and Capitalists pol.power. People's pol.power is pol.power granted to the masses in terms "one man, one vote". This means a social class has access to this pol.power proportionally to its demographic share. The RC and WC are very small because they're respectively the religious leaders and the high officers of the army. Then, demographically they're assumed to have a share of 0%. Then, only socio-economic classes have relevant demographic sizes and therefore only them have access to People's pol.power. Demographic shares for each socio-economic class are given by a TBD procedure currently in discussion in the govt-econ thread.

Capitalists pol.power is the pol.power granted to socio-economic classes that provide kapital. These classes have access to this pol.power proportionally to the amount of kapital controlled.

Having ideologies defined like this implies that socio-economic classes have a total pol.power computed as the sum of the People's pol.power granted in terms of demography (which may be interpreted as "votes") and the Capitalists pol.power granted because of its control over kapital (which may be interpreted as aristocracy privieleges).

Just as an example, the ideology for a democracy would look like this:
Ruler's pol.power___________20%
People's pol.power__________80%
Capitalists pol.power_______0%
Religious Class pol.power___0%
Warrior Class pol.power_____0%

Even though Capitalists pol.power is null, socio-economic classes providing kapital have pol.power anyway through People's pol.power, but only proportionally to their demographic share. In this way, you can see why Capitalists pol.power can be considered a priveledge. It gives more power than the demographic share.

Finally, this change in how ideologies are defined implies a change in how Warrior Class' mentality is computed. It was formerly computed as partly influenced by the Upper Class and partly by the Lower Class. It will be now computed using People's pol.power, Capitalists pol.power, demographic shares and kapital shares in a way I won't detail now.

One advantage of the new way to specify ideologies is that computing demographic shares can be (if desired) totally independent from ideologies themselves (that is, independent from the economic variables ideologies specify). In the old system, it was very "advisable" to compute demographic shares using ideologies info to achieve consistency.

It should be said that in order to make this update useful, the govt-econ interactions must be able to manipulate an arbitrary number of socio-economic classes. Since that thread is still under development, I guess we're still on time to get that done the right way.

I like it. I like it a lot.

I have to disagree, what you've built scales nicely and would allow a large number of different types of 'social classes' to be defined that acted very differently. Varying the values of the ideology produces a very different social class behavior.

I like 'ruler', 'people', 'capital' as an object design for political power. Then including any collection of 'social classes' defined for that game is fine.

We can define yours as the 'basic' social classes, for now -- in fact, I'll do that soon, in the beast.

And other 'social classes' with their own ideologies can be defined. Adding a 'Scientific community' social class can be a matter of defining it's ideology.

Obviously you thought about this a lot. Great solution!

I don't want to muddy the issue any, but I had one vague thought. For arbitrary class behavior of the 'scientist' type we might be able to use the tags that the tech system already has. If mostly using the tags some simple system that fit with your existing equations could be designed, then all you would have to do is interface with the 'hard science' tag (don't think there is one...). We are trying to keep the list of tags down to 10-20 or so, but still that would give potentially 10-20 additional classes that could be added based on tags. FE farmers... The Elves are clearly on their own

About the scientific class: If we accept the number of classes is a key decision, then we can start discussing about it. If, as a team, we feel a sci class is needed, then I have no problem generating equations for its behavior. Just please let's focus first in the arbitrary vs fixed number of social classes. IMO this is a more important subject and relevant for coding matters.

F_Smith:
Based on your comments above and some you gave in the object builder thread, I believe you have a little confusion with ideologies. I'll give a brief explanation below about them. If this confusion of your was only in my imagination, just ignore me.

Class behavior and ideologies:
Ideologies are a description of how the govt should work, regarding 1)who has the political power, and 2)what economic regime to implement. Variables describing an ideology are the same for all of them. Only numbers change from one to another. FE, a capitalist democracy ideology and a communist dictatorship ideology:

Variable__________capit.democr______comm.dict.
Ruler's pol.power__________20%_________70%
Capitalists pol.power______0%__________0%
Religious Class pol.power__0%__________0%
Warriors Class pol.power___0%__________30%
People's pol.power_________80%_________0%
Private Property___________90%_________0%
Social Policies____________15%_________100%
Economic Planning__________X%__________Y%

(I didn't put values for EP because we're not sure anymore how to handle this variable and it's likely to disappear from the game)

Just like the two examples above, we'll have around 20 ideologies in the game covering all the govt types we've seen in history. The values for each ideology are fixed during gameplay. Ideologies will be discovered as techs, just how in civ2 you discover "monarchy", "communism", etc.

Each social class has a behavior (or mentality). A social class has NOT an ideology. A social class' mentality covers several things, like its preference about slavery (not covered in ideologies as can be seen). As a part of social class' behavior, class members choose the ideology of its preference (among those discovered). FE, Lower Class members in western countries would be inclined to choose democracy as their preferred ideology. The model actually allows classes to be divided. Some class members may choose democracy while others choose communism. FE, the following is possible:

Class______communism_____democracy____monarchy
WarriorClass___5%_____________85%________10%
LowerClass___26%____________71%________3%

which means, FE, that 26% of the people within the lower class supports communism.

Class preferences for available ideologies vary depending on things like culture. Because of this, as culture changes, preferences do too. People can support monarchy in ancient times, but dislike it in modern ages.

The above shows that behavior/mentality is not equal to ideology. That's why a phrase like "Adding a 'Scientific community' social class can be a matter of defining it's ideology." is not correct. The sci class has a behavior which may include things like a preference for scientific investements. The sci class can choose, as only a part of its wider behavior, an ideology. This choice represents the sci class preference for govt type. In fact, several classes can choose the same ideology and still have different behaviors in other aspects.

I was not suggesting the scientists class as something that should be in the basic game. Rather it was just an example of something a scenario designer might like to do. I did not mean to throw off the discussion of the basic system you outlined, which I think is really good, with my comments about flexibility. My idea was simply one that to model a "landed aristocracy" class that one could basically use something that extends the behavior of the UC. So our landed aristocracy class would simply be a class that behaves like the UC in most ways, except that some fraction of its happiness with the government would involve increases in economic behavior related to "farming" tags in the technology model.

I think I understand the difficulties involved with creating an arbitrary number of social classes. In addition to interacting with things like the economic model, the classes interact with each other. Thus, the complexity of the system increases exponentially as more classes are added.

However, I think we should include the functionality anyway. The ability to design custom social classes is a powerful design tool. Perhaps the designer of a modern scenario would want to take out the Military Elite and replace it with Entertainer Elite. It would be hard to do it properly, but if the good Civ 2 scenarios are any indication, some people are willing to put lots of time and care into scenarios.

I think I do understand. Let me verify:

I need to give each civ a collection of known 'ideologies', correct?

Then each 'social class' needs to pick from among those available 'ideologies', and store it's choice?

Should the ruler also chose an 'ideology'?

Oops -- yes, that was suppose to be to Rodrigo.

Yep you did point out a glaring flaw in my ideology design. Your right we should have 2 basic idea stuctures for ideologies, social and economic, but under social there can be more than 1. I'll take your example of a democratic military rule. Those are both social ideologies, each one seperate. So what we need is to define certain groups for each, FE you cannot want a momarchial oligarchy...that just doesn't make sence.
Right now there are 3 possible 4 groups for idelogies.
Group 1: Economic Ideology
Group 2: Ruling Class Ideology
Group 3: Ruling Style Ideology
Group 4: Misc (Maybe Ethical Ideology(ies))

You got it. Just remember classes don't pick just one ideology. Whithin classes can be division as in my example above.

The ruler doesn't pick an ideology. At least human players won't. I don't know how AI players will be handled. (still unsolved). Players will put in the values for each individual variable in ideologies instead of picking the whole pre-set thing.
Allowing the player to choose each value for each of the variables in ideologies gives a huge of flexibility to the game. Even having a fix number of ideologies in the tech tree, the number of different govt types will be vast thanks to player intervention.

Mark (and all):
The thing is where the limit is drawn. We can have the landed aristocracy if behavioral equations take food production (for example) in consideration. A scientific class can exist if equations consider tech info. And so on. I know scenario designers can be interested in things like a sci-class or whatever. I'm saying we can't provide that flexibility without extremely complex equations accessing all sorts of info from other models. Richard said "My General Policy: If the programmer says it is feasable and the model lead can add it to the model without much trouble, I say go for it." I agree completely. But I have to say we cannot have whatever social class a designer may imagine.

If you all want a scientific class, I think we can make it. If you all want economic classes with some more specific behavior (traders class, land-aristocracy class, etc), I think we can make it too. What I'm saying is we can have several more classes, but each one (sometimes with luck, each family of classes) needs time to be developed (creating equations for them). So we have to draw a line. We need to decide what classes will be there (in all games, not only the "basic" game).

All I'm saying is the model has no flexibility (almost not at all). The social classes we choose, those will be there in every game. The only flexibility the model has now is allowing an arbitray number of socio-economic classes. But all games will have socio-economic classes (one or more).

I'll now take my own advice:
Sci Elite is differnet from other classes currently out there is that it has one goal for the most part, to further the knowledge of science. This can me adapted to fit whatever the circumstances are, such as within religious tolerance, etc. But that is first and foremost and will usually go against such things.

I admit to not being familiar with all the mathematical guts of the model. If you say we can't have flexibility, then we can't have it. In my example of the landed aristocracy class, I was only citing them as an example of flexibility. I don't think they in particular are more necessary than any of a handful of other possible classes I might select as important.

I support Rodrigo's classes as they are for the base game, which is what we are going to be working on for a Long time. For the "economic classes" I think we should stick to upper, middle, and lower class at least for the first round of playtesting of the model.

First, we're going to worry about how the govt policies play out. For now, we'll allow the tester/player to simply choose the govt type at will, without worrying about the people's govt choice. So you've got time to keep thinking along these lines.

2) This is just a suggestion, please don't take it as a challenge or anything -- but perhaps this type of 'ideology' object isn't really the proper way to handle a govt choice by the people during a popular revolution?

It doesn't seem to reflect how things actually happen. I don't think that the people of the French Revolution were screaming for Democracy, they just were dissatisfied and demanded change. Which in large part explains what happened.

I think that how it works even today is that when people are unhappy, they sieze on any change available. We must do something, this is something, therefore we must do this.

The actual direction of the change is entirely dependant on the individual that ends up with the most public support. Napolean. George Washington/Thomas Jefferson/etc. Lenin/Stalin.

The biggest difference between these revolutions was the goals of the men that lead them.

So, to sum up, I think that if people are "happy" (well fed and prosperous, and feel somewhat 'involved' in the national debate), they will not want govt change. Don't change horses in midstream, and all that. Only the ruler/rulers will attempt to affect change.

Until the people are unhappy. And then, they pick leaders (perhaps based upon nationality/religion/whatever). And those leaders set the course.

At least, that's what I see around me even today.

Rodrigo's idea to include a "People's power", shared by any demographic class, is really great. What really dissapointed me is the "Capitalist power" thingy which seems to be able to represent only a capitalist society, like the modern ones. As a Marxist, the first thing that came to my mind after reading the update is the case of a communist revolution: Marx has taught us that, during the transitional stage of communism, a "dictatorship of the proletariat" should be established, so no other economic class but the LC should hold pol.power (ideally, the LC should hold ALL the power, but in most known cases, the largest part of power was held by the ruler, the WC and the BE). But if we, in Clash, made people's power=100%, then the UC and the MC would hold some power too; while communism, in the transitional stage, is NOT democratic, so the correct value would be people's power=0%. Democratism exists, but only because the ruling class is the majority of the population instead of the minority, so it assumes democratic forms instead of oligarchic ones. At the final stage of communism, classes are abolished, so all people participate equally in public affairs and democracy is restored (people's power becomes 100%).
Although these proccupations may seem trivial to you, IMO this demonstrates the inconsistency of Rodrigo's model. To lift this inconsistency, a "Labor power" should have to be incuded along with the "Kapital power".

After this, another thought came into my mind: How about Sites? If power can be attributed to factors of production such as Kapital or Labor, why not attribute it to Sites too? Until the industrial revolution, the ruling class was the Landowning class. The capitalist class (the bourgeois) had in many cases to resort in revolution in order to take over political power from the hands of the landowning aristocracy. Of course capitalists and landowners were competing social classes for only a relatively short period of social history. In ancient economies, because of the prevalence of the primary sector and of low technology, the role of kapital was relatively insignificant and the nobility owned both land and capital. For the first time in classic antiquity (Greece and Rome) and then again during the Rennaisance, advanced merchant activity led to an enlargment of the secondary and (chiefly) the tertiary sector and to the emergence of a bourgeois class. During the industrial revolution, because of the prevalence of the secondary sector and of high technology, the bourgeois class became dominant and, after a while, it engulfed the landowning class, so that today, in the modern economies, the class distinction between landowners and capitalists is again abolished. So, IMO, "Landowner's power" should be also included.

How about the Middle Class? I believe that further flexibility concerning the economic classes should be avoided., because it increases complexity enormously (specially if we consider the economic system as 3fold, with power attributed to all 3 production factors: S, K, L), without providing us with novel behaviors. IMO, all we need is a single Middle Class, defined as follows: The Middle Class is economically independant: it posesses enough Sites and Kapital to employ it's own Labor. Thus the MC will be in the center of a 3fold socioeconomic system and it's power will derive from the power attributed to each economic factor, weighed according to the ratios demanded by the production function.

Where I believe that flexibility is really needed is in the "pure" social classes ("job" classes according to F_Smith, "non-demographic" or "institutional" classes according to me; how should we call them?). We can do that because institutional classes are much simpler; they have only a political role and not an economic one; they don't have demographics. Political power should be attiributed to each of the social contributions as well as to each of the economic ones; simple or complex institutional classes can be defined according to the type and analogy of their contributions (We can have f.e. a holy warriors class that provides 40% of the society's security and 20% of it's ethics, while a monks class provides 60% ethics, a mandarin class with the rest 20% ethics and 100% admin and finally a generals class with the rest 60% security). Their pol.power can be derived from the power attributed to their contributions. Their research and investment profiles can also be derived from their contributions, using the research tags and infrastructure classes related to their contributions. Their cultural profiles should derive from the majorities cultural profiles, differentiated by arbitrary bias, set by the author. Of course, (as Rodrigo has pointed out before) there is the ecxeption of the RC which relates it's cultural attributes to an independant religion submodel (RCM instead of MCA), but, as F_Smith has once stated, this type of behavior can be used by other classes too (wizards of different "spheres", scientists of different "philosophic schools", etc). Their (the institutional classes) ideologic profiles should derive in the same way, as it already happens in the formula given in Rodrigo's govt model.

I also feel that even mixed classes are possible for scenario creating purposes. Whole or part of a social contribution can be arbitrarily attributed to one of the given economic classes, so that it's power will be respectively augmented (Landowners that are also warriors and administrators are more powerful than simple landowners; that's the difference between Feudalism and Aristocracy). But no matter how mixed the classes are, the economic classes will never be more than 4 (That means that you can't have simple landowners AND feudal lords at the same time).

What we only need strict control of is the social contributions included in the game, because it will be them (and not the actual social classes) that will be directly related to the gamedata. Compartmentalisation of the game would help us alot, but I sincerely doubt that a scenario editor would simply be able to add a novel contribution to the system without editing the whole game. We should make provisions for some more possible contributions, even if they do not make it to the standard game. This is a list of possible areas that could be associated with a social contribution and be related to one or more institutional classes:

• Ecology/Nature/Environmentalism
  
• Media/Informations/Communications
  
• Entertainment
  
• Science/Education
  
• Wizardry/Psionics

• Ethics
  
• Security
  
• Administration

So an ideology in a standard game should hold the following (the actual names are TBD)

• Autocratic power
  
• Democratic power

• Landowner power
  
• Capitalist power
  
• Labor power

• Administrative power
  
• Religious power
  
• Military power

• Private Property
  
• Social Policies
  
• Economic Planning

Then, according to the classes that exist in the game, the ideologic structure should be translated into a class power structure. Democratic power is distributed according to demographics. Landowner, Capitalist and Labor powers according to the percentage of each factor's units that each class provides. Administrative, Religious and Military powers according to the percentage of each contribution that a certain class is stated to provide to society. With this layered approach (3 layers of power: political, economic and social), any ideology can be related to any class system.

I also think that this way we do not really need to distinguish between nominal and de facto pol.powers, but we have to discuss that a bit, since I'm not sure about this. Maybe the formulae for the de facto powers could provide us with some minimums for the powers of the respective contributions. The powers of the contributions seem more of the de facto type to me, although there is a multitude of historic examples of legal sanctions for these powers.

It is interesting to notice that, by autonomising the ideologies from the class system, we can achieve the creation and the destruction of social classes according to social evolution; we can achieve a dynamic class system, instead of a static one. We can start the game with a landowner class and, once kc (kapital per capita) surpasses a certain limit, we can generate a bourgeois class; once the Kapital to Sites ratio rises above another limit, we can merge the two classes anew. We can start the game with a RC and, once IR (importance of religion) drops below a certain point, abolish the RC. After RP per capita production has reached a certain level, we can introduce a scientist class. Even complex classes can be created (in an otherwise standard game) if cultural conditions allow it. This sounds like flexibility to me much more than the ability to have N middle classes.

I will adress other issues later, in their respective threads...

quote: Originally posted by F_Smith on 08-15-2000 11:51 PM 1) For now, I'm moving the beast on without ideologies. We don't need them yet. First, we're going to worry about how the govt policies play out. For now, we'll allow the tester/player to simply choose the govt type at will, without worrying about the people's govt choice. So you've got time to keep thinking along these lines.

So what exactly are you testing???

On your revolutions idea, clearly people being fed up with the current system is among the most important. And what comes out of a revolution is not easy to predict. But I think the underlying ideologies of blocks of the people Does influence strongly who comes out on top. So I think the truth lies between 'social determinism' and 'individual determinism'.

Axi:

Our inability to model the minor details of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is IMO not important. I agree your point about land-power (or resource-power) is a good one. But in many cases capital and land power go hand in hand, at least after some transition period. We just need to ask our selves if the added complexity is worth it. I am not sure either way yet...

Versatility is good. But have you looked over all Rodrigo's equations and seen how such an idea can work within the system? He thinks you can't do it, so you will probably have to give specific examples of how it can be done.

We'll be testing 'govt policies' turn logic code this weekend.

The beast now saves and loads

1) ruler govt prefs.
2) govt policies
3) political structure
4) Cultural Attributes details

All I have to add in tonight is the 'religion' details. Then the playtesters can either

A) change the ruler's govt prefs, and watch how it affects the actual govt's policies

B) change the govt type/political structure, and watch how that affects the govt policies

C) change the 'Cultural Attributes' of a civ's people, and watch how that affects govt policies

D) change the 'Religion' details of a civ's people, and watch how they affect govt policies

Or any combo of the above.

For the moment, the tester can just set the political structure values at will. Later we can work in ideologies to exert a change in the govt political structure at the appropriate times.

Lisa, my wife, goes out of town on Friday. Friday night I will be hammering on the code for the turn logic, and sometime late Fri or early Sat I'll need some critique/help.

Anyway, labor power has it's place in more ideologies than just the "dictatorship of the proletariat". It has it's place in a "meritocracy", where everybody's income depends on the quality of his work. It also belongs to an utopian "libertarian" society (where free market rules); there should be no democratic power and all power should be divided among the 3 factors of production according to their "market value" (remember the econ model's marginal profits). Do not also forget that in the current implementation, the MC generally provides more labor than the LC, because of it's higher education level (skilled labor), so granting power to labor would greatly affect MCpp as well as LCpp. If one proceeds to more liberal thoughts, one can also grant power to the labor of the exploited class, which of course will not be theirs, but be attributed to their owners/employers, which would be the state (ruler and BE) and the UC. So the slaveowner's pp may be enhanced by the labor of their slaves.

As for the contrast between landowners and bourgeois, I believe that, apart from the reasons of pure model consistency, there are severe gameplay reasons that dictate the use of both classes instead of the UC and, more important, the use of a dynamic class system. This contrast has been the motive power behind the social changes during the most interesting part of human history so far. So, if we do not include more than one middle class, (which I repeat that we don't need to) and keep the economic classes hardcoded into the design so than nothing more can be done upon them except the overlaying of parts or wholes of one or more social contributions, then we can achieve the desired simplicity and compatibility.

Flexibility concerning the institutional classes is totally feasible at the grade I have prescribed, given that the whole collection of contributions is either preset by us or provided for by us in advance. This flexibility doesn't make so much sense in a standard game, but it is desperately needed in scenarios, so that the author can create whatever class he wants. Notice that this kind of flexibility would be unattainable if the institutional classes were not devoid of economic and demographic data. Rodrigo's concerns about the complexity of the formulae are reasonable, but if the collection of existant and possible contributions is limited, there will be no problem. The formulae will have to be a little bit more orthologic than they currently are (f.e. we will have to readress the behavior of classes that provide security, like the WC), but the basic forms of class behavior are there (It was F_Smith who first made such a statement in some other thread). Of course, behaviors of complex classes will obviously be the weighted averages of the behaviors dictated by the respective contributions.

As you can see, in contrast to Rodrigo's suggestion, I propose that the flexibility is needed for the institutional and not for the economic classes. The funny thing is that Rodrigo's suggestion will mean more work for me, while my suggestion means more work for him. But of course my suggestion is way, way better...

To the point...

F_Smith:
Your suggestion that maybe what matters are leaders and not ideologies is quite clever. It sounds great for an alternative govt model. I really think so! However, there're two things to say:
1) Ideologies are not the elements preventing greater flexibility. They can be changed and adapted preserving their role to accomodate more classes. I've already done it concerning economic classes, as you saw. The problem with flexibility is at the behavior level. Creating more classes leads to creating more behaviors, not more ideologies. So, I think ideologies are not the center of attention by now.

2) Even if we go for the leaders approach (believing it's better than using ideologies), we'll get to the point of how people choose their leaders. I disagree if we say "if upset, people take whatever leader they find". In the 60's in the US there was a lot of discontent, but the masses never took Malcom X's ideas and founded an islamic regime... Choosing a leader would be the key in this alternative model and we'd probably end agreeing that people choose leaders more or less inclined to what the leader proposes as a solution for current problems. But a leader's "proposal" is nothing but an ideology, in essence. Leaders like Lenin or Jefferson had a vision and they tried to "sell" that vision to the masses (successfully in those two cases). Russians and Americans followed them for what they offered and Americans didn't follow Malcom X for what he offered. And the "offer" is a vision of how things should be. The "vision" is in its core the same thing ideologies are. So, I believe we would end up just where we're now if we took the leaders approach.
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F_Smith: I'll comment your list about the beast in the other thread.
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Axi:
You have expressed you ideas very nicely. That's maybe the best post I've seen from you

As a matter of fact, much of your analysis matches perfectly with my own thinking (off-forum) when considering flexibility issues. Here are my answers/comments:

1) I did consider putting the "Workers Class" (Labor providers) in ideologies like I did with capitalists. But it's redundant, so I took it away. I know you're concerned about (Marx's) communism and having it well modeled, even though it has never been implemented IRL. Believe me: I care a lot about it too. But your line of thoughts which takes you to the conclusion that my proposed update can't handle communism is wrong. During a communist revolution, kapital (and here I'm considering all kapital: land + infrastructure) is taken away from capitalists. By force, according to Marx. In Clash this means PP goes to zero. If PP=0%, then demographically there's NO upper class or middle class (or, in general, all economic classes that provide kapital disappear). Then, only the Lower class exists. Whatever level of People's pol.power the revolution ends up with is therefore controled solely by the LC. This shows why your analysis was wrong.

However, it can be argued that a workers class is still needed to simulate regimes where there ARE classes providing kapital and yet they have LESS power than classes that provide labor. This type of govt has for sure never existed and to me sounds extremely weird. Therefore, no need for a workers class.

Having the Capitalists and People Classes explicitly in ideologies let us model any type of govt known AND the never-implemented "real" communism. Sci-fi stuff out of the question (at least for now).

2) I share your thoughts about landed-aristocracy vs merchant/factory-based/service-based aristocracy. That part of history is for me very interesting too. But I'm sure you agree that what's really interesting about that part of history is how nobility found its end. And we must not get confused here. We could have, if we want, economic_sector-specific classes (like land-based aristocracy) if we sit down for a while to develop them. But this won't model nobility because nobility wasn't simply a land-based aristocracy. l-b aristocracy exists today in western countries while nobility doesn't. "Landowning", as you mention in your post, doesn't imply nobility. What made nobility what it was, was not its economic control of the land, but the military control of it. Nobility existed because feudalism existed. Feudalism existed because there was no real military and political control by a unique authority (unique govt). Each noble was actually the ruler in his land.

So I'm saying two things here:
a) Creating economic classes specific to economic sectors is IMO feasible, but useless. The behavior of those who produce apples and those who produce cars won't be different enough to add any flavor to the game. Also, this doesn't solve the nobility thing.

b) Nobility is something I'd like to model, but I'm not sure how. Maybe as a class... but then it doesn't make sense in my mind a noble participating in a non-existent central govt about policies that don't affect him. Nobility/feudalism is something that since the beggining of the model development bothered me. A territory ruled by a bunch of warlords instead of a centralized govt and where the king is nothing but a figure of weak union with close to null control beyond his feud is something I haven't solved and I feel it's more complicated than simply adding a nobility class.

Anyway, I'm saying this only to propose we have no economic_sector-specific classes. At a glance you have just seen one of the most secret unsolved parts of the model...

3) You tend to separate land and infrastructure/equipment and call kapital only the latter. I find this division unnecessary. I feel you do it because of the nobility thing. I hope the lines above encourage you to include all in kapital.

4) Middle Class and socio-economic classes: I feel too it's enough with the middle class. I only tried to give the model some more flexibility under everybody's preassure to do so.
Anyway, with the update players will be able to have:
>>Just one socio-economic class (if not interested about the conflict between them... boring right? )
>>The original model's two classes, UC and LC,
>>The extended, "Mark-styled" , LC, UC, MC
>>More than three (who knows what for)

I like this modest flexibility.

5) Real flexibility:
Your speech was fantastic! You have a very good vision of what the problem is about. As you stated, we can have an arbitrary number of classes if we have only a few "pure" classes and their behaviors based on what you call "contributions". Any class is then created as a mix class with mix behaviors. It's such a good idea that I thought about it too! I'm happy you wrote all that, so people can see things I had already dicussed with myself without any writting of my own

Here are the problems of that approach (and why I believe it's not useful):
a) Behaviors cannot be derived from contributions. The economic classes, FE, are based on econ role PLUS cultural info. Contributions are very poor variables to generate a behavior. The best example is the WC. Can the amount of tanks or any such measure produce a realistic behavior? I'm sure you remember our off-forums discussions about how difficult was to give the military a realistic behavior. Once one accepts that this info is not enough, then you have to think what is needed for better modeling. And in this process you end up creating a behavior that's very specific. The equations we have for WC behavior currently are useless to model low-rank soldiers, mercenaries, samurais and other military-related classes we can come up with. It's not an accident the model has almost one set of equations for each class. Behaviors we developed for each of them makes them interesting, but at the cost of being very specific and hardly usable for other classes.
In short, when adding a new class you'll be running way too short in defining its behavior via "contribution" parameters. It will act pretty much the same as the others you already have. This is, btw, why you find so boring having a lot of middle classes...

b)the approach tends to make inevitable the usage of a dynamic class system as you mentioned. I like this, but it forces you to control when classes appear and when fade away for historical consistency (so you won't have "holy warriors" in modern times). Since you have to make the class existence dependant on other variables like Importance of Religion, like you suggested, you'll find there're no general solutions (in fact you showed it with examples in your 2nd post). IR may work for holy warriors, but what about the "scholar monks class"? you know, those who were copying books and teaching math at the monastery's backyard... I don't think it was IR that took them out of business, but tech development. So in this case class existence must be refered to tech variables... and that's just a simple example. Imagine the "warrior middle class"!

So, contribution-based behaviors run too short and in the other side, complex (mixed) classes can arise and fade away depending on too many different things.

You know in detail the model, Axi, so if you really think this approach can work and want to insist, please, as Mark says, give me more (math) details on how to do it.
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Cool. It was just a suggestion.

Perhaps as an alternate choice, later. I was thinking that the leader gets chosen by the people also. But I was thinking that the leader choice would base first on 'shared' values -- an EthnicGroup would follow the leader that shared their etnicity, religion, Group Attributes and Tendencies -- and based upon a 'charisma' variable in the leader's 'GameCharacter' stats.

Axi:

Boy, would I like to talk about this over some beers and snacks.

I have a lot of questions and comments about Marxism that might be out of place here. For now, please don't take any of this as an attack, it is merely my silly opinion.

I'll just say that I believe 'Labor workers who don't own the capital produced from their labor' by definition will never have any real political power, regardless of what the political system claims/pretends to give them. Because 'capital' is power, even to 'pure communist' governments/systems. Even tho they pretend it isn't. There is no way around that rule -- 'he who has the gold makes the rules'. When a resource is scarce, the govt managers in charge of distributing that resource becoming their own 'priviledged' class -- by definition.

That's yy problem with Marx's theories -- they in no way reflect reality as I observe it. I am certain that's why no one has ever made one happen. It's as impossible as saying 'can't we all just get along'?

In summary, I would say that Rodrigo's system already allows a 'Communist' system. It just faces the game govt trying that with the same realities that a real 'Communist' system would have. Giving the vote to people who have no control over any assets will always be a hollow gesture, since those who do control scarce resources will use that control to twist the system (corruption/hoarding/refusal to comply/etc).

Rodrigo:

quote: Several "hard" comments to the govt model... I must say that I LOVE that type of comments! It's then when real discussions start!

From your original post:

quote: Finally, this change in how ideologies are defined implies a change in how Warrior Class' mentality is computed. It was formerly computed as partly influenced by the Upper Class and partly by the Lower Class. It will be now computed using People's pol.power, Capitalists pol.power, demographic shares and kapital shares in a way I won't detail now.

Concerning the "dictatorship of the proletariat": From a strictly economic point of view, it works as you say it does; with their kapital taken away, the UC and MC are forced to work, in order to survive and so, economically, there is nothing but LC. People's mentalities on the other hand do not change from one day to another and these people remain politically UC and MC. So if power is distributed to them too, democratically, they will try to use it, in order to revert to the old regime. They are counter-revolutionary agents and as such, they have to be suppressed. That is why Marx said that all the power was to be given explicitly to the proletariat and not to the people in general. So the UC and MC are actually reduced to the state of minorities (although technically they belong to the majorities population). This happens at the transitional stage of communism, where the old class structure is abolished externally but not internally, in the people's mentalities. After one or more generations, the mentality will be uniform and communism will enter it's final stage, where society will be truly classless and power will be distributed evenly to the whole population.

It is a general fact that the socioeconomic classes, during transitional politicoeconomic stages, can have one demographic percentage in economic matters and another in political outlook. This is what leads to counter-revolutions (like the Restauration of 1814 in France) and causes contrasts like "new money" vs "old money" and, in the grand scale, landed aristocracy vs bourgeoisie (although in that case the Sites vs Kapital factor intervenes). This separation seldom lasts more than a couple of generations (say 50 years), but while it exists, it is one of the largest driving forces in the political scene. Depending on the scale of the game, this might not matter very much (f.e. when a game turn lasts 50 years), but usually (and specially when radical changes, like revolutions, occur), it is important enough to question the consistency of the political system. In the govtecon field (in other words my spreadsheet), there is and there should be no inertia; during a revolution the UC will instantly dissapear. While in the political field (the govt model), it is inadmissible that large masses of population should change preferences instantly. If the UC didn't manage to supress the revolution this turn, it should at least be given a chance to revolt against it next turn.

If we indeed recognise a problem here, the solution shouldn't be very hard to accomplish. According to the length of the turn, a transitional stage of n turns should be declared and the class demographics used by the govt model should be the old ones (before the political change), converging (linearily?) to the new ones. For demographic changes during normal times, maybe the govt model should be one turn behind the econ model. Intra-class mobility is recorded anyway. I think that you have dealt with transitional stages in the govt model before, haven't you Rodrigo?

Nobility: You are right in your claim that nobility isn't tied to land ownership. Nobility is instituted where and when too much power stays in the same few hands for too long. Nobility is nevertheless linked with a certain social or economic contribution, whatever that is, the possesion or procuration of which is a hereditary right (land, capital, security and ethics have been under such hereditary rights in human history). When I was writing my original post, I considered of including "Nobility" or "Oligarchic power" between "Autocratic power" and "Democratic power", where it would naturally fit (inside the political layer of the power structure), but I thought I was stretching it too far. Now that I know it is concerning you too, I am mentioning it.

Possible implementation: Nobility could be attributed to the socioeconomic class with the higher concentration of power per capita and once instituted, it cannot change hands, unless it is reinstituted by some social reform. I feel that purely institutional classes should not have nobility because they consist of higher as well as lower members (Their power is attributed to the institutions rather than the members anyway), but at least for scenarios, nobility should be attributed to whomever the author wants. Nobility is linked with social elitism and as such, it should oppose or totally restrict intra-class mobility.

Classes per sector: I don't think we need them either, but, judging from the amount of options that will finally be available in Clash, they will probably be optional. As for Landowner power, I based this not on the (doubtful) nobility of the landowners, but at the inherent power held by the land (Sites), as a production factor, in correlation with the power attributed to Kapital and Labor. The econ model is using in general a production function of the style Y=A*R^a*K^b*L^c, where A is the tech factor, R is generic resources (#of sites in the primary sector, #of resources units in the secondary and 1 in the tertiary) and a+b+c=1. Although it is applicable only in the primary sector, Sites is a factor of production, so why shouldn't it be the vessel of political power (of the economic layer). Of course such an approach is complicating things very much, specially in what concerns the product distribution (which should have to be 3-fold) and it certainly invites us to do classes by sector. It would also appeal for a dynamic class system, so that we won't have capitalists in 4000BC. Each option here has it's pros and cons; I don't know what to support. What do you say?
- Classes per sector (9 classes)+Landowner power?
- Landowner power+Dynamic class system (3-4 classes)?
- The current system (unique UC (3 classes) + land and kapital bagged together)?

N Middle Classes: Their power would be proportionate to their demographics and to the share of total Kapital they hold (and to the Labor they produce, I would say), but how do we define them? Even the single Middle Class, which has a somewhat good definition, causes us big problems. I wouldn't want to define them by their income. They could be defined according to education level, which acts as a multiplier for labor (skilled labor, like in Imperialism), but I have my reservations about that.

Btw, your reference to "middle-class warriors" has reminded me a case where we find both that and 4 discrete (rated according to income) socioeconomic classes: the Athenian Democracy of the 5th century BC, where we had:
Pendakosiomedimnoi, >500, charged with the maintenance of a trireme each. Fought as ship captains.
Hippes, 300-500, charged with the maintenance of a warhorse. Fought as horsemen.
Zeugitai, 150-300, charged with the maintenance of a pair of oxes. Fought as hoplites.
Thitai, <150, with no economic responsibilities. Fought as sailors and light warriors.
(Income is counted in medimnoi of wheat per annum: 1 medimnos=52 litres)

So there was no MC (even the generals got picked by chance) and the military contribution was distributed among the socioeconomic classes. Since it was firmly tied together with tax collection (everyone had to pay for his weapons), the class distinctions were extended upon military organisation. Neat, isn't it?

Mixed and complex classes: You are insinuating that in real life the mixture rules do not apply; the scholar-monks will not have the average behavior of scientists and priests, but something quite different, so we should have to invent a new behavior for them. I aknowledge this problem of course, but that's (their behavior) not what we want them for. From a historic point of view I find them less boring than the N Middle classes. I foresee them to be the absolute must for scenario creators, who will demand historical accuracy rather than realistic behavior from their classes. I expect that scenario creators will have the capability to set class behaviors at pretty much what they expect it to be, overriding the system. Most of them I guess will leave quite a few liberties to the political system, or totally freeze it, like in some civ2 scenarios where you can't change the govt type. As for the normal games, I think that the standard should be to have only simple classes, which will be able to have the realistic behavior they are having now. What is great in attributing the pol.power to contributions instead of classes is that it gives us unlimited flexibility in the typical-historical context, while having exactly the same effect in the political arena. If we could invent a trustworthy and realistic dynamic class system, it would be even nicer in appearance, but I wouldn't expect it to make class warfare more interesting.

Axi:
You're very right about mentalities staying the same when capital is taken away. I overlooked this fact. Your solution of keeping an inertia for mentalities sounds attractive. For sure the model now needs an update on that part after this very clever comment of yours and I'll be thinking about how to do it starting now.

I'll skip the dicussion about nobility to concentrate on class flexibility.

Classes per sector: Your comments only reinforce my opinion of not having them.

Middle Class(es): Although I found your MC definition very good some time ago, I find unnecessary to restrict its econ/political behavior with a definition. The scenario designer (or us) has to specify how much K it provides and how much WH it provides. The econ model multiplies WH by class' skill level to generate L. And that's it. I don't see a need for a rigid class definition.

quote:"I foresee [mixed behaviors classes] to be the absolute must for scenario creators, who will demand historical accuracy rather than realistic behavior from their classes."
jeee... what are you saying here? Any time someone wants to add a class is because he/she wants the specific beauty and flavor of it. Like LGJ desiring the scientific class. He expects that if he adds that class, then it will behave as scientists do. He'd be very upset if after adding the class, it ends up behaving as the military! Your words seem to suggest players should be able to add classes just for cosmetic reasons. That is, having the class, but the class having no effect in the game in terms of what the class was supposed to do (historical accuracy but no realistic behavior). I find this totally useless.

Scenario designers won't achieve better historical accuracy adding classes if those classes don't do as historicaly they did.

quote:"I expect that scenario creators will have the capability to set class behaviors at pretty much what they expect it to be, overriding the system."
How... without getting into coding? Mixed behaviors cannot do the job. Mixing very specific behaviors (such as BE behavior, FE) will produce a very strange hybrid class.

quote: "What is great in attributing the pol.power to contributions instead of classes is that it gives us unlimited flexibility in the typical-historical context"
Sure, but we can't create realistic behaviors with contributions only. Contributions can only help.

It seems that you're leaning toward losing realistic behaviors in order to achieve more scalability in the number of social classes. This would be valid as an option if this choice in fact would give you MORE social classes. It's tricky, but simpler behavior allows you to have more classes, but in time makes classes very homogenous (like the military units example I gave in my "govt model update" post). This increased homogeneity makes you lose the desired scalability because what makes a class interesting is those little-details-that-matter. Just look at your greek classes you mentioned. Their differences are just details, yet are what makes them different. Losing in realistic behavior actually makes you lose "real" scalability.

I know that this analysis might rock some boats, but I actually think it is highly relevant to this discussion.

'Class' is defined by 'control of capital', agreed?

The Middle Class and Upper Class are seperated from the lower class by the difference in the capital they control.

In a 'pure' communist system, the capital is controlled by the govt buearacrats.

Which is why those Govt 'commisars' become, by definition, the 'upper' or 'priviledged' class. The Govt worker in charge of handing out housing assignments has power, and is 'priviledged'.

The current system can already model a 'communist' system, and will in fact confront a 'pure' communist system with the realities of what capital is. A 'communist' system in the game will have the same difficulties that such a govt faces in the real world.

I do understand Rodrigo's concern for realistic classes vs. many classes that might seem not to be quite realistic, but I would perfer more classes. Perhaps explaining how each of the social classes works currently might help expalin some stuff.

Another thing I really didn't understand why things must alwasys be negotiated with for a medium, why it can't be yes/no on changing with no middle ground.

Finally if you give anti-feelings for extreme mesaurs you should also give pro-feelings for rulers or groups that try to stand the middle ground or go with what the people want.

Also as far as revolts happening with extreme views insn't ness likely. Take pre-war Japan during the latter part of the Mejii Restoration. By this time anyone who critized the government or possibly would was killed (or banished if a foriegner). This is also coupled with the fact that the countries main religion, Shinto (specifically State Shinto) said the Emperor was devine and couldn't be contradicted or replaced because of his descions. This makes his policies when putting something through not ness for negotiation because anyone who doesn't like them is killed. Also revolts won't happen because those who would've started them have been killed.

Also Hitler did something similar. When he was denied things earlier on, he simply took the few minority people who agreed with him and taught the younger generations after seizing the government. Such policies would still need to be negotiated for atleast say 20 years, but after that, negotiation is irrelavant almost.