I guess I just don't understand how the importance of religion variable works then. But it's fine, I'll take your word for it. I'm sure your right I just don't see it yet.

I think we should use real religions like Christianity, Islam, etc., mainly for people like me. I love ancient history and these religions played major roles then, I'd just like to see them play as large a role in my games. I want Islam to act like Islam in the game, and Christianity to act like Christianity, I don't want just a bunch of random numbers that the game tells me is my religion.

Why couldn't you have a different M class planet if you have real religions? You already have a different planet with real civs, and real "characters" from history...why not religion? I think we would do a great disservice if we didn't do real religions.--Also, we could always have the option to use historical religions or not.
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Well, if its optional, OK. I just personally like creating other class M planets that have as little to do with earth as possible. The only problem with modeling things like earth, is where does it end. Should we have civs with names of real-world countries? cultures? ethnic groups? application techs like F-117A?

"What i showed you was correct for Christianity, opposite for budhism and well really can vary for Hinduism as far as Asceticism, but Natural Affinity is high always."
ooops, I still don't see it... You now say NA is high always, but back then you said NA was low for christianity and this explained why western culture is more inclined to tech development...
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-_- Hehehe. Ooops my fault. I meant to say that NA is higher for the last 2 always. Basically Christinaity High ASC, Low NA; Budhism, Low ASC, High NA, Hinduism Moderate ASC and High NA (Depending on brach for ASC...all braches of Hinduism have high ASC)...that's probably what I meant. That religion along with a few others is the major reason i think we should have branches in religions because we'd be insulting them by saying all Hindu's are the same (religious-wise). Without this we wouldn't have the ability to have inter-religious warfare like Iran/Irag had or have the reformation like in Christianity.

I mean you'd have to introduce new equations or new variables in equations in order to produce the social effects you want. This changes would be introduced only for social tech advances, while the rest stays the same, thus producing two (or more) ways to handle tech advances depending on its type (social or not). IMO this is a mistake because the tech model works very good how it is now for all "real" techs and it is straight forward and clear in all its interpretations and uses, with no exceptions. All techs are treated the same and can be interpreted in the same way, which is a very very good characteristic that can be lost introducing social techs.

There are times when a culture just doesn't want a war and doesn't spend the money on war technology. That is the type of variables we use. Any culture can in theory have such."
Agree, but I don't know why you're saying this... culture changes in the social model so no problem with this one.
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Why am I saying this? Because the way you're making it sound you don't want ethnic and religious modifiers to affect non-social techs also like discovering the earth (or whatever planet your clash is on) isn't the center of the universe or having harder time developing the technology for better farming in a civ that want's to develope better factories.

I totally agree. I also don't want to see "modern" stuff in 4000 BC or so. So far the social model will not do this, so you can expect a historically accurate social simulation in general. If you see some specific modern idea appearing in ancient times as a result of how the social model works, name it. As for the two examples you give, ab. slavery and atheism, the latter is not present in the social model and shouldn't be in the game either because unfortunately (I'm atheist), atheism is practiced by 1% of population or less in any country, even in our high tech current era, so IMO that's a useless detail to add to the game. As for slavery, people will take one position or another based on cultural variables Ethnic Tolerance and Asceticism (high desire for material goods and low respect for other tribes leads to slavery). This is IMO a much better way to handle it, because it's unbiased. We don't need to introduce something like a "higher moral code" in order to terminate slavery, so if it is supported in one time by a given culture, it can be abolished later when culture changes. The way culture changes in the social model will produce (as a general trend) an increasing ethnic tolerance as time passes and therefore, in some moment you can expect to see people claiming an end of slavery, but it'd be very unlikely to happen in ancient times, so you'll have what you want. Of course, it's senseless to talk about ab. slavery for a culture that never supported it, so, since the model allows also to some cultures to never be interested in slavery, there's no problem here.
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OK...here's the thing...even if they don't have slavery they must have something like serfs until the industrial revolution takes hold because of the fact that the economies are based mostly on agriculture which until the industrial revolution took a lot of manpower.
Also on atheism...I think a good way to show that would be on IoR variable...but we'd also haveto have someway of determining the number of fanatics, ordinary people, people who claim to be religion, but that's all and atheists/agnostics. The reason why is IoR can be 1%, but that 1% are all fanatics...and that can be worse sometimes (depending on the religion) than 100% who are ordinary people because fanatics are more drastic and depending on the aggression level and tolerance level may decide to destroy things and start wars.

Finally I must say that we should allow more than 1 official religion and the player can atleast ban certain types of religions (if not specific ones). The reason for having 2 official religions would be like the case of pre-British India where Hinduism and Islam were side by side (sometimes more aggressively than not), but those were the only 2 religions given official blessings...others like Jainism existed but weren't given this status...they were allowed but that's all. Another example is in several Arab states where Christianity and Judaism were allowed to be practiced, but only those and no others and Islam is considered the main religion. The player should be able to give the status of official religions to as many as he wants (or say atleast 2-3), and this would only the stats for all 2-3 slightly less than for just 1 official religion. Also you should put in the ability to have no religions legal like USSR.

TK:
"I guess I just don't understand how the importance of religion variable works then. But it's fine, I'll take your word for it. I'm sure your right I just don't see it yet."

Well, thanks for taking my word, but anyway, this is how IoR works in general: It's defined as people's care about religious issues in their lives and what role they assign to the church in society. If you have an ethnic group following a GRW, then the EG tends to "copy" religious attribute into cultural attributes, so if religion says Asceticism should be 35, then cultural asceticism will tend to 35. How similar to religious attributes cultural attributes can get to be is handled by IoR. When IoR is high, chances are they'll be almost the same. When IoR is low, the model makes cultural attributes less influenced by religion values and mostly influenced by what I called "environment", that is, several other factors people face in their daily lives, like the type of economic system the civ has. That's the main role of IoR, but as per definition the same variable is used affecting other things, like people and the clergy choosing a type of government they prefer in the govt model (high IoR-->monarchic/fundamentalist, low IoR-->regimes with a less powerful religious class). In the case of crusades, although actual modeling would need the diplo model involved in a way not yet determined, IoR would be the crucial variable (because it tells you how much people care about their holy places), modified of course somewhat by religious aggressiveness.
How IoR evolves overtime? People is assumed to give high importance to religion when 1)there's little scientific knowledge, so things like thunders, rain, deseases, etc cannot be understood or controled, producing fear and need to seek religion; 2)the world appears unstable, a dangerous place to live leading to higher fear. IoR, then, depends on the overall tech level (from the tech model) and govt model's variable, "Empire's Stability". So, as a general trend, IoR will decrease as the game advances, being small in modern times, where the right interpretation would be people seeing religion as a strictly spiritual thing, with no or little role in other aspects of society. Because of how IoR is computed, you'll see cultures valuing religion greatly in ancient times, embracing regimes where the church has significant power, where things like prosecuting other beliefs or going to crusades are possible. But in modern times this won't be so. Hardly you'll see people excited about crusades and even more, they'll possibly push their govt to become secular.

I hope that helped understanding why IoR has such an important role. It's probably my falut not saying these things in the social model document.
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"I think we should use real religions like Christianity, Islam, etc., [...]I don't want just a bunch of random numbers that the game tells me is my religion."

If what you only mean is giving GRW historical names (christianity, etc) and having them with their "true" values for attributes, then I'm all for it too. Indeed my intention was to give the player the option to choose 1)random or 2)historical. I guess I specified this in the social model document only for ethnic groups (so romans would behave as such and the same for other tribes), but I wanted it that way too for religions.
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"On Eg's following one religion, you're right, most of the time. But if you take a look at the U.S., FE, we have one EG, "American", but have varying levels of religions being practiced, that is unless you plan on having a country like the U.S. made up of many EGs, in which case, I guess your way will work."

The US would have only one EG in modern times (post civil rights granted to black population). I'm certain the US is about 85% christian, so it doesn't represent an exception to the rule. Probably the best examples of really multi-religious cultures are found in the east of Asia... However, I'm not saying there're no multi-religious cultures. I know there're. The thing is in the grand picture, yesterday and today, the widely most common case is a culture with one religion supported by something like 85%. Under that situation I don't see as critical to allow EGs to support more than one religion.
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LGJ:
On Natural Affinity: OK, I'm convinced. NA will be in the next version of the social model.
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"the way you're making it sound you don't want ethnic and religious modifiers to affect non-social techs also like discovering the earth (or whatever planet your clash is on) isn't the center of the universe or having harder time developing the technology for better farming in a civ that want's to develope better factories."

Sorry if I gave that impression. Cultural modifiers are IMO extremely important to be introduced in the tech model. Cultural attributes should be the ones deciding most of people's inclination to innovation for "real" techs. As for religious attributes, I think there's no need to have modifiers for them affecting tech development directly. Why? Because it's people (not religion itself) who produce development. Religious attributes will be, however, affecting tech, but indirectly because culture is influenced by religion. If you have a culture following a religion with low NA and with a high IoR, culture will in time be low in NA. Using NA (and maybe others) as a modifier in the tech system, you get cultural/religious influence on tech development.

I'm not against cultural/relgious modifiers, I'm against social techs. I have the feeling, based on your comment about me opposed to using cultural/religious modifiers, that probably you and me are not using the same "definition" for social techs. I mean that maybe some things you consider social techs, I don't, and vise versa. I guess we could solve some of the "philosophical" problems we've so far in this thread looking at the list of techs you're considering to have in your model up to now. Do you have a list like that? If not, why don't we discuss in more detail what specific techs you and I think are social-related?
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"but we'd also haveto have someway of determining the number of fanatics, ordinary people, people who claim to be religion..."

That's something we can do in the social model if we need it. IoR tells you the "average" level of fanatism, so some demographic assumptions can be made to calculate those populations you mention.
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"even if they don't have slavery they must have something like serfs until...."

Sure, NP with that. My question is why put "serfdom", "slavery" or any such thing in the tech model when it isn't needed. And it isn't needed because the social model takes care of that realisticly. As I have said, putting social stuff in the tech model has several problems, so let's avoid doing it if the social model can handle it. It's just the simpler and better way to go.
You say serfdom should disappear after industrial development and I agree. Does that imply you have to introduce something like "no serfdom" tech in the tech model with "industrialization" as preriquisite? I don't think so, even with a much better name than "no-serfdom"... And I don't think so because the existence or not of things like slavery or serfodm can be well modeled with the current social and govt models. And by "well modeled" I mean social and govt models can give you those with cultural background and according to historical time. Under this perspective, there's no reason to double-model them introducing them in the tech model too.

Now let me get deeper in one phrase I just stated: "And by "well modeled" I mean social and govt models can give you those with cultural background and according to historical time"
I believe one of your biggest concerns and the reason why you have proposed using techs for "ethics", "slavery", "serfdom", etc is you feel social/govt/riots models are "timeless". I really feel I found the core of our problem here! Let me rephrase: You feel these 3 models cannot "see" the moment in history the game is at. If they cannot see it, they can easily produce no serfdom in ancient times or other bizarre effects. Also, social things would be tech-independent, while we know many social transformations were triggered by techs, like the effects of industrialization. It'd be obvious, then, to introduce those social transformations as "social techs", so they can appear at the right historical time. If my three models were indeed "blind" about the historical time the civ is going through, then I'd totally agree with you and by now we'd be working on social techs... But they're not blind. I have shown how abolishing slavery would appear late in the game or how crusades would be possible in ancient times but not in modern times. These 3 models can be historically accurate because of how they work and because of some interconnections with the tech model, like using an "overall tech level" when computing Importance of Religion.

I think this is THE explanation for you wanting to have social techs and me rejecting the idea. You feel we need to have social techs so some of the most important social things would appear at the right historical time. If I can show you the social model can be historically accurate without social techs, I guess we'll be closer to agreement.
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"we should allow more than 1 official religion and the player can atleast ban certain types of religions"

"you didn't answer my point about how GWR will be able to cope in the new era without variable change..."

Rodrigo:
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Where EXACTLY in the social model you concluded this "The current assumption is that people will either follow an ancient, unchanging doctrine to the word or ignore it completely." ?
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That conclusion came from the RC's actions in the government model. They always acted the same. Giving them the "importance of religion" variable like you suggested should erase most of my concerns there; their actions will change over time even if doctrine does not. I am happy with this; I'm glad we could agree.

I think that the name of this variable should be changed to, "importance of doctrine". That way, the player knows that the new leaders and people are just as devoted to the religion, but they are now willing to change it.

No...sorry we don't have a "list" yet. We have things we want to put down, but atleast I don't have them written down anywhere.

You're right about my concerns of the social model being "timeless," but since you seem to be able to show its not then OK.

Now then...can you answer the other 2 questions?:

"we should allow more than 1 official religion and the player can atleast ban certain types of religions"

Oh, I see. It was the word "people" that confused me. I prefer to refer to RC members as "the clergy" and preserve the term "people" for common people (not church-related). Anyway, I'm also glad you see this solved. A big step forward!
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"I think that the name of this variable should be changed to, 'importance of doctrine'. "

Maybe a change of name would help, but the one you propose can lead to confusion too. Since Importance of Religion is also used by people and the church to decide how much power the RC should have, then if you change it to Importance of Doctrine it's strange to use it for that. I'd suggest the name "Passion for Religion" or something like that. In this case when it's high, then it's understandable people care a lot more about doctrine and also want the church to be a integral part of the govt.
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"You're right about my concerns of the social model being "timeless," but since you seem to be able to show its not then OK."

I knew it! That was the big problem behind all your protests. We should be happy we now know what the problem is. It should help us move forward. Of course this doesn't end the tech-social discussion. I said I can show many social things can be modeled in the social/govt models being accurate about historical time. I have already done it for some variables like slavery. If others come to mind, must be named so we can analyze if they're or not well modeled (in the historical time sense) in the social model. I know the social model won't be able to cover all social stuff, so we must be aware.
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About a list of techs, let me name some "advances/applications" I consider social-related that I feel must be managed in the tech system rather than in the social model for better results:
Philosophy
Art
Worshiping Building (temples, etc)
Holy/Spiritual/Religious Warrior
Ideologies (for the govt model)
Code of Law

how do you like those?
For those and for any other you can think of, we have to give them a good definition (so we can know what we're really modeling) and think how Research Points would be generated, based mostly on social and govt variables.
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"we should allow more than 1 official religion and the player can atleast ban certain types of religions"

That's something I'd like too. My problem with that when building the model was that, although it's easy for the player choosing what religions are official, what are forbidden, what prosecuted, etc, it's not easy to make classes take those decisions. Since the govt model needs what classes want to define govt policies, your proposal becomes a bigger problem to cope with. I'm not entirely happy either with the way I'm handling religious discrimination. I cannot promise you I'll be able to change it, but I promise you I'll think again about it and see if another solution can be found.
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"you didn't answer my point about how GWR will be able to cope in the new era without variable change, espically when doctrine changes and IoR is on the increase as well as decrease (in differn't aspects)."

how do you like those?
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Philosophy---needs to be broken up...this is almost, if not more, complex as religions.

Art- Again needs to be broken up into differnt parts.

Worshiping Building (temples, etc)---fine. the type would depend on the flavor more than the relgious type and also the achitecture basic tech as to how complex of a design it is...also sculpture (art) would be nessary at a descent level.

Holy/Spiritual/Religious Warrior---Rich proposed this...i'm not sure how it differs from non-religious warriors other than being either a member of the clergy or "blessed" which blessing have no RWE in clash.

Ideologies (for the govt model)----i'll haveto review that part...been a while since i looked it over.

Code of Law---yea...definnatly...need to have a system of writing (i assume your meaning an unchangeable code of law available for all to see like Hanarabi used).

There are some others like idea of abolition of slavery or others...i wish i still had my old tech tree...i had them all listed there...maybe there's some on the openciv3 page.

How GRW will behave in modern times? is that the question? If so, first we have to be clear that it's not religion itself that behaves a certain way, but people who follow it. The people who follow it belongs to two groups. The clergy (Religious Class) and the rest (all other people). Change in behavior is given by IoR. As a general trend, and assuming no catastrophies, IoR goes down and down pushed mostly by scientific advances. So in modern times IoR is low for both groups (clergy and people) because techs are sky high. Being low, people and clergy's mentalities are less influenced by religious attributes and more influenced by other factors, like the environment where they live. Given this, chances are both groups will behave in modern times based mostly on other things than on religion attributes. IoR is also used directly to make people choose secular regimes and be less inclined to things like religious discrimination. So, for a typical western nation in modern times, chances are the church and the people will agree on having a secular state, with freedom of worship and no interest in things like crusades (although the latter must be worked along with the diplo model for the right result).
As you can see, the key is IoR, and since it is mostly dependant on the "overall tech level", the most probable scenario a player would face is churches and people behaving one way before the boom of techs during the industrial revolution and other after it.
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OK...This takes care of a all the major problems i have about it except 1. The breakup of religions or reformation through cults (mostly charasmatic). These people have more IoR than the others, but, usually follow doctrine even less, branching off on their own ways. Thus just because IoR is higher doen't mean the populous will tend to follow doctrine moreso. I think keeping track of the numbers of people who are fanatics, just barely religious, etc. and the percentage of cultish or whatever you want to call it variable would solve this problem...The only other way is to have it become ER (which isn't right since these don't usually fall on ethnic lines). These "cults" can sometimes become quite big, such as the Mormons in Christianity or Tenrikyo in Shinto religions.

Clash Object/Scenario Editor, Mark I

http://home.austin.rr.com/lostmerchant/Clash/Editor/ClashEditor.html

Just a test for compatability. Please hit this page, and if you experience any errors or bugs, post them in one of the 'coders' threads.

Art- Again needs to be broken up into differnt parts."

I see what you mean. These are social complex things. But, IMO the key here is gameplay implications. The effect of Art in the game should be 1)Affecting creation of wonders (wonders model); 2)Increasing people's happiness (riots model); 3)maybe increase innovation?... If so, the approach I propose is to not crash our heads modeling art tendencies or styles, but only the amount of artistic work your civ produces. People produce Research points for art someway (probably depending on PCI, so low PCI produces little art because people is more worried about eating rather than any other thing). The "art tech" goes up and down depending on the civ's capability to produce art, so in prosperous civs there'll be likely more art, but we'll never say how good it is. If, FE, the wonders model uses a fraction of the art tech level as the probability for a master piece to appear, we'll be having the right outcomes. FE, if art is at 60% and in the wonders model we define the prob of one master piece appearing as 1/10 of art level, the chance of a wonder of this type coming up would be (1/10)*60%=6% each turn. If the amount of art increases, so does the prob and vise versa.

In the case of philosophy, I'm inclined to the idea of it only affecting the chance to generate a new ideology. Ideologies are like a regime or govt form. I believe philosophy shouldn't be used for anything else. Again, the "philosophy tech" only counts as the amount of philosophical activities in the civ, never caring about its type or line. So, the more philosophy there's in you civ, the more likely new ideologies can arise.

Worshiping Building: Now I'm not sure about this. I remebered in the econ model there're no individual buildings, but a continous level of religious infrastructure. I wonder what sense this tech would have then...

"Holy/Spiritual/Religious Warrior---Rich proposed this...i'm not sure[...]"
OK. Let's leave this one for some time in the future.

Ideologies: I have some ideas about this. I'll post them someday. No rush.

"Code of Law---yea...definnatly[...]"
Great. Yes, I imagined something like the Hammurabi's code. In my head this tech would represent the existence of written and explicit law. Low levels for this tech means law is expressed by tradition, changing from province to province and more difficult to apply. A higher level would be a complete and explicit legal code like in modern times or as in Rome. In this case IMO RP's should come mostly from govt's spending in such area.

With that said:
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I see what you mean. These are social complex things. But, IMO the key here is gameplay implications. The effect of Art in the game should be 1)Affecting creation of wonders (wonders model); 2)Increasing people's happiness (riots model); 3)maybe increase innovation?... If so, the approach I propose is to not crash our heads modeling art tendencies or styles, but only the amount of artistic work your civ produces. People produce Research points for art someway (probably depending on PCI, so low PCI produces little art because people is more worried about eating rather than any other thing). The "art tech" goes up and down depending on the civ's capability to produce art, so in prosperous civs there'll be likely more art, but we'll never say how good it is. If, FE, the wonders model uses a fraction of the art tech level as the probability for a master piece to appear, we'll be having the right outcomes. FE, if art is at 60% and in the wonders model we define the prob of one master piece appearing as 1/10 of art level, the chance of a wonder of this type coming up would be (1/10)*60%=6% each turn. If the amount of art increases, so does the prob and vise versa.
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The reason for differnt art types is directly related to interaction with clash, espically on the 3 models i'm working on (technology/reaseach model, character model and the wonders and achievements model).
Art-Sculpture: Refers to works of art such as statues and buildings. This will definatly affect the wonders and achievemnts model for wonders.

Art-Drawing/Painting: This refers to anything from cave paintings and mosaics to canvas art. Animation might be in the same area early on, but for the last 10-15 years its really been almost completly seperate (except the sketches),so i don't know. Anyway this would affect the wonders model for masperieces, which are not wonders. Works of art such as these are usually more portable.
Art-Literature/Theatre: Things from folk tales to plays to books to motion picture...again MP might have its own seperate one, but i don't know... Anyway this would affect masterpieces and also spread ideas around. Same could be said for drawing/painting, but you can't easily pass on a painting to many people by showing it to them than by telling them a story.
Art-Music: This is used like literature/theate and often in conjuction to pass on ideas. It affects the wonder model by producing masterpieces. The differance is music is usually considered non-ethical, or atleast less so, except by the people who use it for religious purposes and such. It might not change attidutes as well as literature, but it is easier spread.

These are the 4 basic forms of the arts. I believe an Importance of the Arts (IotA) added to there could take care of the "level" of it for the cultures. We might need some ways of decideding which ones are more-or-less valued of the 4 basic types, but i believe some atleast can be done with existing ethnic modifiers. Some might have to be added though.

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In the case of philosophy, I'm inclined to the idea of it only affecting the chance to generate a new ideology. Ideologies are like a regime or govt form. I believe philosophy shouldn't be used for anything else. Again, the "philosophy tech" only counts as the amount of philosophical activities in the civ, never caring about its type or line. So, the more philosophy there's in you civ, the more likely new ideologies can arise.
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again it should not be handled by the civ, but by the ethnic groups. The Importance of Philosophy {IoP) could be used as such.
One thing though, reguadless of even if IoP is at 100, if the ethic modifiers aren't close enough for a new ideolgy to take hold it won't. This is even harder if the IoR is high at its against that ideology.

Also like religions there are usually ideologies that expaned much further than others. I'm not sure if we need something like a Great World Ideology (GWI) type deal, but it could be an idea. Whatcha think? Again, philosophies spread differntly than religions so it might not work.

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Worshiping Building: Now I'm no=t sure about this. I remebered in the econ model there're no individual buildings, but a continous level of religious infrastructure. I wonder what sense this tech would have then...
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At first it thought there was, but mark cleared that up for us. The problem is, this contradicts directly with what the Wonders and achievemnts model is trying to do with wonders.

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Ideologies: I have some ideas about this. I'll post them someday. No rush.
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Well lets decide how philosophy will act first.

"Code of Law---yea...definnatly[...]"
Great. Yes, I imagined something like the Hammurabi's code. In my head this tech would represent the existence of written and explicit law. Low levels for this tech means law is expressed by tradition, changing from province to province and more difficult to apply. A higher level would be a complete and explicit legal code like in modern times or as in Rome. In this case IMO RP's should come mostly from govt's spending in such area.
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Yea it is related much to the government model (except the intial need for a system of writing and some other small indivisual application techs).

"'PrimitiveReligion' object is for designing and loading religions from a file"
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There're no primitive religions to load. Primitive religions are just a model's "trick". They don't really exist, and the model does nothing with them, ever. That's why the code should not have them either. In the model, an ethnic group "is said to follow a primitive religion", but that's it. No traits or anything is ever needed for them. What really exist are the GRW and they can be loaded from files and anything you want.
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Here's the thing that i see is a problem. There should be seperate variables for Ethnic Religions. Why? Because of the IoR. If the IoR is high, yes the ER and EG will tend to be the same variable, however, the less the IoR, the greater the distance or "lag time" for the ER or EG.

sorry it took me so long to get back to you on this

I understand the basics of how IOR works, it's basiclly how my "Centralization' was supposed to work. It's the details I'm more interested in. You've basically explained the detail that I was worried about already (that the higher IOR, the more it influences the change to cultural attributes). So I, now, see no problem, it's just that I thought I remembered reading that the GRW's attributes completely replaced a culture's attributes, I could be wrong, but you may want to check the document again, I'm possitive that was in there.

On real religions, yes I meant "historical" as you described it, names and attributes, and possibly even birth dates, but that may be too far if not using the Earth map. What else did you think I meant?

Yes, all what you say is truth. However, this "trick" for primitive/ethnic religions was meant to keep the number of "religion objects" low. If each EG has a religion with attributes of its own, then the model increases its memory requirements Greatly, which I was trying to avoid.

I still believe this is the way to go, even knowing it's not entirely accurate with history, because this way we save a lot in memory and we don't lose too much, given most of EGs will in in time embrace a GRW where things are modeled "correctly". However, it's possible, under F_Smith approach of not caring much about computational resources, that the trick will never be used and primitive religions will end up being modeled correctly anyway.

TK:
We share the same opinion on historical religions and tribes. As I said, I'd like to see an option for the player where he can choose "historical" or "random".

I still believe this is the way to go, even knowing it's not entirely accurate with history, because this way we save a lot in memory and we don't lose too much, given most of EGs will in in time embrace a GRW where things are modeled "correctly".
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Actually, not really. At most it little more than doubles it for that area, but it need not do that even. Whenever a change occurs that would affect an ER or EG, the program figures out based on IoR how much lag time there is. As far as for my adaptability scenerio is concerned, the higher IoR, the faster EG attibutes change compared to ERs, until they reach the same number. When they are the same it doesn't matter.

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However, it's possible, under F_Smith approach of not caring much about computational resources, that the trick will never be used and primitive religions will end up being modeled correctly anyway.
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Yeah! Now i can everyone convert to my choesen ER or die by the sword!!!!!!! Then spread it as i conquer more land angainst that GWR infidel! (Getting a little carried away here, but oh well).

Continuing our discussion on techs:

1) psychology a tech... yes. btw, what are you planning for it to be useful for?

2) If you feel it's important to split the "art tech" into more art styles, I'm alright with it. However, you didn't tell me if you agree with me about having art(s) in the tech system defined as the AMOUNT of art.

3) An "Importance of Art" I feel is unness. I think all civs and tribes in history have shown the same level of interest in art so this variable wouldn't make a difference. Differences from tribe to tribe are 1)styles and 2)amount of it. This is why I suggest having art(s) in the tech system representing the amount of it and just never care about styles. The amount, in time, would be given not by cultural inclination, but by things like wealth and freedom.

4) About Code of Law, it's related with the govt, but IMO this relation should exist only for RP's. The Code of Law itself should IMO be a tech and govt actions simply change the amount of RP generated for this tech. Your opinion?

2) If you feel it's important to split the "art tech" into more art styles, I'm alright with it. However, you didn't tell me if you agree with me about having art(s) in the tech system defined as the AMOUNT of art.
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Yea i do think its ness. And as for the second part, well i haven't gotten a chance to answer till this message. I'll asnwer that below.

3) An "Importance of Art" I feel is unness. I think all civs and tribes in history have shown the same level of interest in art so this variable wouldn't make a difference. Differences from tribe to tribe are 1)styles and 2)amount of it. This is why I suggest having art(s) in the tech system representing the amount of it and just never care about styles. The amount, in time, would be given not by cultural inclination, but by things like wealth and freedom.
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Oh, your wrong there. There are societies where it is at differnt levels. Granted almost every society has some importance to it, even if it might only be for religion, but there is a differance in importance. This is why it should be done here, not in the tech model. Besides, IMO it can get even more complex than religion because there is even less linearage in the arts than in religion.

4) About Code of Law, it's related with the govt, but IMO this relation should exist only for RP's. The Code of Law itself should IMO be a tech and govt actions simply change the amount of RP generated for this tech. Your opinion?
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Yea...religion might also use it, but won't help in rp production for it. It would probably be under Government/Administation basic tech with a hard rq of the application tech System of Writing.

I find it very difficult to follow discussion here. Alot is said and alot is repeated in every post.

I want to ask something from LGJ. In your posts, I think it's better to stop quoting whole pages in order to make a short comment afterwards, because alot gets repeated and the tread gets so big that it's difficult to load. You could also use the [.quote]...[./quote] (remove the points) UBB tag, to make quotes that are more clear to the eye.

Nothing constructive to say, I just HAD to grumble.

it was in my insane rantings I mentioned the Spanish Inquisition as an instance of the Catholic Church's attempt to suppress innovation and therefore scientific growth. It was an example of something that I feel needs to be in the game... some religions suppressing new ideas. I don't know if you had planned on this or not, but the simplest solution would be to reduce RP's... but I'm not sure if that's the best route to take.

2) Self-constrained: People refrain themselves. They are less interested in science because of their intense beliefs. This can only be achieved if RP production is computed at the ethnic group level.

I: This variable multiplies the effectiveness of research. High I means more tech growth. The default value is one, and the normal range is between .3 and 3

E: This variable multiplies the difficulty of maintaining a technology. High E means more tech loss and more difficult tech maintenence. The default value for this is also one, and the range should also stay between .3 and 3

These variables combine all social impacts on research. You can include whatever you want in the calculation of these variables, as long as the numbers stay close to the ranges provided.

I can easily make I and E differ by tech Tier. That makes more sense with all aspects of society, not just the religious part. People can be very clever with one Tier and incompetent with another.

I was thinking about having I and E differ by tech tag. It would be easy to implement in the tech model, but the social model would have to provide all of the values. Do you think that would be worth it?

I'm Beör, popping in from the Apolyton SMAC(X) section. I posted some rambling regarding social techs in the Social Techs thread.

Here I would like to draw your attention to a point that has not been covered in the current Social thread as far as I can tell: Migration. This could prove to be uncomfortable, so brace yourselves.

Migration has played a major part in the rise and fall of civilisation. Hardly any spot on earth has not been completely altered by it. If you cannot model this very well, you will not get the feeling of recreating history (if that is the aim here). An effort was made in the old thread: New Social (well, now it is old, but never mind), but seems to have been neglected since.

I realise that there are major problems: At the proposed CLASH starting point 4000 BC all of the civilisations that we could envision being played by a player were historically in a more or less nomadic state geographically distant from their later core areas (with the exception of sumerians, and possibly egyptians). The indoeuropean cultures were only beginning to differentiate on their 2000 year long push from Western Asia (Armenia or Northern Iran?) SE to the Indian subcontinent, and N/NW to Europe, whence they have further spread during the succeeding millenia (from India to SE Asia, from Europe to the Americas, Australia and parts of Africa). This is a major problem since indoeuropeans gave rise to many if not most of the civilisations that could be included in a game ranging from Hittites, Celts, Greeks, Romans, Germans and Slavs to Americans. In fact I could probably mention at least 40 different indo-european civ-prospects. In fact many of these civilisations were not differentiated until recently (Australian civilisation - now there's a contradiction in terms ) and most likely some interesting ones are not even created yet (Europeans?!).

So if a player is appointed leader of the righteous Franks, in historical terms he has no nation until 200-300 AC, and no civ for a further couple of hundred years. You could of course make him leader of the righteous German nation instead - at least he could have a nation maybe around 1500 BC, but then the Germans would later have to be divided into their various constituents, and how could this be handled game-mechanics wise. Another possibility is to grant the player a miniscule nation with a prohibitive tech-achievement possibility. and place him in the Steppes of Central Asia with three tents, a herd of goats and a possibility to catch a horse around 3000 BC! The chances of surviving are low indeed.

Another concern is that if the game is started this early, with people wandering around the steppes for a couple of thousand years, the human controlled Franks might end up in France, if played by a player wanting historical accuracy, but his neighbours might be the semitic Assyrians controlled by the AI, and his historical neighbours the Burgundians might be slaughtering the Romans in Uzbekistan. Thus nomadic nations will most likely give a very unrealistic feeling to the game, which I find most disturbing. Alternatively you could prematurely place the Franks where they belong - in France, that is - at 4000 BC. But where would you place the Gauls then? Should they not have a place in life. So if you start the game early the geographical framework, that could give the game a real feeling, is not in place.

This leaves an obvious solution: Start the game later, maybe around 1500 BC: You could have major civ-would-bes in place at this point with some minor historical twists: Basks, Iberians and celtiberians in Spain; Etrurians and Italic people in Italy; Greeks in Greece and Asia Minor; Minoic people in Crete; Early Balkan people in the Balcans (i.e. Thracians, Illyrians, Macedonians, Dacians, Albanians etc); Celts in a zone from Ireland to the Black Sea; Scythians in Crimea and on the Ucrainian Steppes; Germanic people north of Celts and Scythians, to the east of them Slavs and Baltic people, then Huns, Avars, Hungarians, Turks and Bulgarians. Chinese in China, Japanese in Japan, Koreans in Korea, Manchurians in Manchuria (get my point?), Mongols in Southern Siberia, Semitic people (Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Arabs, Jews) in the Near Orient (mixed with indoeuropeans: Mittani, Hittites, Armenians) and Arabia, Persians and Parthians in Iran, Egyptians in Egypt, Ku****es in Ethiopia, Hyksos in the Aegean/Cilicia/Cyprus, North African people in North Africa etc. You would loose 2000 years of history in Mesopotamia and Egypt, somewhat less in the Indus valley and in China, but you gain a lot more historical feeling. Some early tech advances would already have taken place in some civs, but as far as I understand the Tech Model this would only mean FE that the civ would have something like 25% Writing, probably still using pictograms or cuneiforms, but not having developed an alphabet yet. It would let the player choose between controlling an already ancient civ, but probably with some inherent social/ecological/demographic etc problems, that would be hard to overcome, or choose a rookie civ with a small chance of succeeding, but a potential to get it all!. Imagine the potential tension in the game, when Ku****es and Assyrians race to conquer Egypt from their decadent childless ruler, when Ramases suddenly siezes power in Egypt and levies enough forces to ocunterattack etc. There would still be problems though. What is to stop the Mayans from entering the bronze age at some point, build some seafaring vesels and discover Europe 800 BC? How are you going to keep the Americas isolated and indeed relatively undeveloped for 2000-3000 years? Indeed it has always been a mystery to me, that Mesoamerican and Peruvian civilisations crumbled before the conquistadores. BTW I find the inclusion of a Sioux civilisation in CivII misjudged. I have great admiration for the Sioux nation, but I beleive that cities is what makes differentiates a nomadic tribe from a civilisation (this might actually spawn a comment on the economy thread).

Yet another possibility which I would definitely not prefer is to allow the game to be grossly ahistorical - maybe even taking place in a generated world with arbitrary civ placement. This could of course be an option, but I think there has been several attempts at this - all OK, but I have a feeling this is not what we really want here. Please correct me if I am wrong

So you see migration is really an issue. What I would like to experience in a game could be:

I am trying to guide my Illyrian nation through history. I begin the game at the N end of the Adriatic and manage to carve a small empire out for myself (and my people) protected from the ferocious celts by the Alps, and having rather friendly relations with other Italic nations in the neighbourhood. I have fended of the Etrurians and am now ready to take on this crummy little nation in Latium. During recent years small bands of Dacians have raided my easternmost belongings, and quite a lot of Dacians have actually settled within my borders making a decent contribution to my populace. Suddenly around 800 BC the Dacian immigration steps up. Thousands and thousands of Dacians are pressing against my borders. Some Thracians are trying to enter from the south. I decide to allow the Dacians to enter my territory, rather than fight them. A good deal of them settle down reinforcing my holdings while some of them drift on into Italy where they are lost from recall. Later it becomes clear that a large population boost in Scythia has expanded the Scythian civilization all the way to the Bosporus, driving the Dacians and Thracians out. Most of the Thracians were driven south where they were amalgamated into the rising Macedonian Civ. For a couple of hundred years I strive to assimilate the Dacians and fight of the Scythians. suddenly the pressure from the east lightens and I can concentrate on my southern expansion plan where in the meantime greek citystates have joined and defeated the Romans. Etc etc.

or

Being Visigoths I start the game somewhere around the Prpiet Marshes in northern Ukraine. My people farm the land by burning the forrest and harvesting for a couple of years, living conditions are decent and the people thrive and multiply. We have horses and cherish them. However, space is getting sparce, and slowly my people are moving W/NW, where there is rich soil and some decent pillaging to perform among my western germanic relatives, who for some time now have been in contact with a large, extremely wealthy celtic empire in northern Italy, southern France and northern Spain. To the east suddenly appears a fierce horse-people: the Huns, forcing us away from our land of birth. For a couple of hundred years we are forced to wander west, west, ever west, never settling down, but still numerous. In the end we reach the ocean, now being pushed forward by a large Slavic empire coming from the northeast. Instead of fighting we move across the sea to the Legendary British isles where a large part of our population converts to the new strange religion of Christ, introduced here by the legendary minoic merchants trading tin.

or…

We are not trying to recreate history exactly. That would be impossible in a dynamic environment. Even if we started the game in 1800 AD, the Clash world in 2000 AD would be nothing like the one we live in today. In fact, after a bit of time goes by, nearly identical starting conditions will always produce wildly different results, even if the player does the same thing. (Chaos Theory again!)

There are just too many things that could happen. Different random events will happen, the AI will make different choices, and the world will end up being entirely different.

What we are doing is creating a random class M planet, filling it with cultures loosely based on Earth people, and having them interact via models that are based on reality and altered to provide fun gameplay.

If you want to recreate history, you have to create a lot of linked scenarios with specific goals like they have in AoE. That way, you can make sure history stays on track. While you will be able to do that with the the scenario editors, it will not happen in the default game. The game is intended to be an open ended simulation of what could happen, not a replay of what did happen.

Yeah, oddly enough the 'population' model, the very first, most important model that the entire rest of the game will be built on, was not done.

In coding the beast, I had to build a population and a map model.

People will, on a mapsquare by mapsquare basis, act very much like people in our world.

Back to migration
Here are my rather lengthy thoughts as to some important factors in building such a model. I am definitely not an expert in these things (actually I'm a physician) but here goes:

Nomadic cyclic movement:
From the beginning of time, tribes have been following the wanderings of their preferred prey. At some point some animals were semi-domesticated (raindeer) or domesticated (sheep, goats, cattle), but still in many areas it was necessary to change location during the year seeking better pastures. IMO it is not necessary to model most of this sort of 'migration': The number of people were small, the length of the displacement rarely exceeded the 100x100 km map square, and even if it did the cyclic pattern with a 1 year duration would mean that the people would have to be represented in all squares crossed. It could be argued that if one of the squares crossed on the tribe's yearly migration was captured, they might not be able to follow their normal pattern and thus had to be assimilated into the occupying population or eliminated (IRL some of these tribes e.g. the Bachtiari in central Asia, have actually kept up their wandering despite the coming and going of countless invaders and marauders). Effect on gameplay would IMO be negligible, and I think it would be sufficient to model these tribes as primitive inhabitants of said squares. If, however, turn length were less than a year it could be necessary to model the tribe being some place in summer and another in winter. (Note: turn lengths of less than a year could have serious implications in the ecological modeling as well).

Uncontrolled migration:
'Hey, the grass is greener over there, let's grab the kids and move'. Slow steady migration of small to moderate (occasionally large) numbers of people. This goes on all the time. If people think that living conditions would radically change for the better if they moved somewhere else then they will. This of course depends on the conditions where they live: general living conditions (income per capita, taxation, goods shortage etc), social status in their present country (discrimination because of ethnic or religious status), how 'fond' you are of the place you live (land connection?), can they leave their origin (slavery, serfs, economic dependency). It also depends on how difficult it is to reach the destination: What means of transportation can they use, how far away is it, any dangers along the road. And finally it depends on the perceived conditions at the destination: General living conditions, social status, are they allowed to settle down. Characteristically, this sort of migration will only be done by a smaller part of the population at the origin, maybe only some ethnic or religious groupings, and almost entirely from the lower to middle classes. Frequently but not necessarily, people from the same origin will go to the same destination. For a couple of generations these people may stick together in enclaves, preserving their original culture, and making it easier for followers to settle down, but eventually they will be more or less assimilated in the population of the destination, of course depending on how they are treated, how different they are from the original inhabitants, and how large a fraction of the population they are. This sort of migration is not coordinated in any way - it just 'happens', and thus cannot be instituted directly by the player. However, sometimes it could be necessary for the player to react to such a situation. If valuable or large parts of his population are moving away, it could be necessary to try to stop them, either by force or by improving their living conditions. If the region the player is controlling is the target of immigration this could be an advantage, thereby increasing the number of people under his control, which he should encourage by offering good living conditions. It could also be a mixed blessing, if the immigration causes unrest FE if resources are scarce, the immigrants are numerous or very different from the original population. In this case it should be discouraged by not granting the immigrants decent living conditions of even using force (from border patrols to Endlösung).

Controlled migration:
At points in history migratory movements have been controlled to a larger extent, and this would allow the player to get at least some control. Forced displacement of entire populations or large parts thereof is known: Jews to Babylon and back to Palestine, the Diaspora after the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans, Saxons by Charlemagne, slaves from Africa to the Americas, Germans from Eastern Europe after the 2nd world war and probably many more. Founding of new communities is another point, Sct Petersburg probably being the most obvious example, but several other cities have been founded by central authorities (Oslo (Christiania at the time) was founded by Christian IV of Denmark, Alexandria by Alexander the Great etc). The settlements of the Western part of the USA and of Siberia were also to some extent encouraged by central authorities by legislation, infrastructure-builds or economic support. Also the colonization of Australia could be seen in this light. The Roman Empire founded colonies all over the conquered provinces, frequently granting farm land to retired roman soldiers. Many European cities were founded around encampments of the Roman armies (Vienna, Cologne etc).
What I am saying here is that it should be possible for the player to found and encourage some sort of settlement either by founding a city, a military encampment, and maybe even by forcing entire populations to move from one place to another.

Mass migration:
So far there has not been many problems from a game point of view, but this one could prove to get tricky. I named it mass migration for lack of a better term: Large numbers of people can be involved in migration (Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans and African slaves to America) without qualifying as mass migration in my terms. What I am thinking of here is mainly the large movements of entire nations from central Asia to Europe/North Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Eastern/Southern Asia. Similar migration has taken place in Africa I believe. This is characterized by entire nations (Cimbrians, Ostrogoths, Huns, Mongolians) under some sort of central control moving from one location to another. At times it may be very slow, but sometimes thousands of kilometers can be crossed in half a century (Vandals). On the way more or less temporary settlements may be established (Goths in Balkan), depending on how the lay of the land is, other tribes may be assimilated (there was a considerable Slavic component among the Visigoths (even Huns!)), new customs incorporated (Goths were christened during their wanderings) and generally the situation is very volatile. The tribes wandering are generally very aggressive (they had to be). Along the way many are left behind, but subsequently these left-behinds will disappear in the general turmoil.
What is important is that it is the people wandering that are identified with the nation, and thus are carriers of the civilization. And the wandering is very militaristic. This makes it difficult in game terms, since as far as I can see, most of the modeling is based on the assumption that a civilization has a territory under its control that can be developed. This gives the civ a focus or gathering point. When the entire nation is on the prowl, how do you keep them going in the same direction, and how do you model the inevitable military conflict? Should the entire population be modeled as military units with the capability of settling down? A migration unit? Maybe not a bad idea. Another problem is that we know very little about what actually made these people act like they did.

Migration following conquest:
This may not be a separate entity, but I had difficulties organizing the Arab conquest of the Middle East and North Africa into the above. What happened here is that driven by a religious fanaticism a smallish somewhat nomadic tribe with highly mobile troops conquers a large more or less disorganized territory. Subsequently some migration of Arabs takes place, but mainly the original population takes on an Arabic guise, becoming as Arabic as the Arabs themselves. Thus the Arabic civilization took control of an area almost as large as the Roman Empire in a matter of 50 years! And most of this territory is still to be counted as Arabic (the major exception is Spain).
A similar conquest took place when the Mongols under Genghis Khan conquered most of the Eurasic continent, and established a long-lasting empire in China. But here the outcome was somewhat different, since the conquerors after some time were assimilated into the powerful Chinese civilization.
This made me wonder: If I were playing the Chinese and the Mongols conquered my territory, only to become the very essence of Chinese civilization, will I 'win' or 'loose'? In other words: Am I controlling a dynastic empire or am I in some way being the immortal bonus-pater-familias (a sort of non-magical 'Gandalf') of a civilization?

F_Smith,

Right now, there's no 'migration' code in the turn logic for 'ethnic groups'. There's a place for it, can add it quickly, but we've been busy coding up the govt system and haven't fleshed out code that isn't directly relevant to testing govts.

quote: However, this implies the importance that the models be built so that they will function in shorter scenarios, maybe with a different turn length.

This has been one of our main goals for some time now. The models usually measure actual time rather than turns, so if you change the time frame the models should adjust automatically without too much trouble. Look at the Population Model thread to see an example of this.

Animal migration and hunting: I considered including this when I first made the ecology model, but it didn't seem important enough. You made a good case for including it, though. I can easily add a "hunting potential" attribute to the ecological provinces. This would be affected by human habitation, water availability, etc.

quote: (Note: turn lengths of less than a year could have serious implications in the ecological modeling as well).

You are certainly right about that. I am encountering some big problems with adding seasons to the ecology model. When I first built it, I assumed all game turns would be a year or more, so I could ignore the seasons. But then I realised that turns could be a month or less, so I had to add seasons. It definitely is creating problems. It might also force me to model seasonal migrations of animals.

Just for your info...
The current social model is a "version 3". Two attempts to manage social stuff were made before this one. The first by Manurein (not anymore with us) and the second by Toubabo Koomi (still with us). From the very first model migrations were something we wanted to include, but it never intended to model what you've called "mass migrations" where entire tribes move and settle like goths did, FE. The sort of migrations in mind for the social model were those from a settlement to another, like FE, european migrations to the new world where things like economic conditions and ethnic/religious discrimination play the greatest role as the initatiors of the movement.

There isn't a migration sub-model in this last "version 3" social model covering the above only because I rushed the release of this model. I planned to develop it later. Maybe now it can be developed as a model of its own or within the new population model Richard is creating. But I believe it's important for this migration model to handle only the type of migrations described above (non massive).

Mass migrations are for sure needed. Although there has been little discussion about it, we have envisioned "nomadic civs" in the game to model such tribes as the mongols. In those situations the whole civ would be moving with its population, economy, "govt" and techs. Most of the examples you mention should be handled via this method, like germanic invasions or, in general, the whole indoeuropean movement. This part of the game is still unsolved in the sense that some adjustment would have to be done in each current model (all made for settled civs) to model a moving civ. Nomadic civs IMO is the way in which most of the things you're saying will find a place in Clash.

So, what I mean is I see all the migration issue divisible in two. Mass migrations handled as a per se characteristic of nomadic civs, and non massive, from a settlement to another, handled in the social and/or population models.

All:
About historical accuracy, I think we all agree that the game is not intended to recreate world history exactly as it happened. But now that Beör has brought this subject up, I see the settlement of tribes as something we should take care of more carefully. It's IMO not simply a matter of difining a time framework (scenario). If I want to play a "fall of roman empire" scenario, starting, say, in 300ad, I'd be frustrated if the Huns, goths, etc don't migrate to Europe but to the middle east, FE. We can't guarantee nomadic civs will move where they are supposed to.

Maybe we're not giving enough attention to mass migrations. In games like civ2 these things appear in a very crude way with random barbaric units attacking you. IMO we've given an excellent step forward when considering "nomadic civs", but maybe it's still not enough. In a random world this isn't relevant, but as a player, I'd love to play a "historical" game in earth from 4000bc and ahead, where at least tribes appear in their historical location. I'd like to see in the beggining of the game egyptians and chinese already settled, but I don't want aztecs settled as well. And this is problematic as Beör has shown.

Here's a proposal: What if, as an option for the player when setting his game, he can choose, when playing in planet earth, "historical settlements". This would put some civs already settled in the starting year, but many others would appear as nomadic civs wondering within a small territory. At the "right" historical time, the game would force these AI-controlled nomadic civs to move to pre-set historial locations and try to settle. In terms of code this is really simple, since each nomadic civ only needs to store a date and a few locations to move to and when the date is the right one, simply move the people to those locations. This would give more satisfaction for those who don't want to see germans trying to settle in China.

Cyclic nomadic movement patterns
In the default 4000 BC scenario these movements IMO do not have to be modelled: Rarely a nomadic movement pattern would exceed the 100x100 km square, and even if it did the turn-length of at least one year would mean that you would have to model the presence of 'unmoving' nomads in every square along their route. Do not take me wrong, there is no doubt that the nomadic state would have to be modelled, but not the movements.

Uncontrolled migration
This migration should be modelled in a way that it is outside the player's influence. This is probably pretty close to what F_Smith describes as:

quote: People will, on a mapsquare by mapsquare basis, act very much like people in our world

Controlled migration
This is acquainted to the previous discussion on Settlements and How much should the player control. I think that a consensus has been reached that this kind of action should be possible in various ways: FE founding a military encampment might spawn the growth of a city, because people seek the security and the increased trade possibilities of the nearby encampment. Such settlements could be encouraged by local geography (a river), by infrastructure investments (I am not sure of the details here - a major road, a bridge, a port perhaps) or by financial support (simply placing an amount of capital on a square, making it available for the people in the founding of their settlement). I believe it should also be possible but very expensive for the player to found a city outright, by making massive investments and ordering people to go live there.

Mass migration
I have given this a good deal of thought. I think that the initiation of a mass migration should be controlled by the riots model: Given the present circumstances, the people is sufficiently agitated to actually leave the land of their forefathers to seek better pastures. This could spawn a 'Mass migration'-event (MME). The nation splits into two EGs: One EG rallies under whatever leader is available and go adrift across the continent, while the other EG remains in the present location. The player controlling the nation should be given an option to lead the migrating EG or the remainder. The migrating EG converts a proportion of the population of the nations original squares into Migration Military Units (MMU): These are powerful units representing tens of thousands of people moving around. On their way they will leave some people, tired of wandering, behind, while absorbing discontent, maladjusted people from the nations of the squares they cross. This could lead to a snowball effect, creating massive invasions of multiethnic masses, capable of collapsing any empire (rare). On the other hand the Migration Units could slowly diminish, until the EG is lost to history (common). The squares crossed will of course be exploited heavily, leading to potential military conflict along the way. The migration units should have the option of settling down in any squares crossed, provided that the people is sufficiently provided for in the present location, absorbing whatever people are living there. If at some point along the road the cultural attributes are sufficiently different from the remainder EG or the geographical distance is large the two EGs are separated into two Nations (maybe this should happen automatically, the moment the MME occurs). The migrating EG will enter a Migration State, where special production mechanics will apply. Something like: No basic research, but maybe easier acquiring of new tech from the people met on the way. If an MMU stays in the same square for more than a few turns, there is increasing ability to harvest resources in the usual way, but parts of the people will settle down in the square, making the MMU weaker.
The player has little influence on the occurrence of an MME other than tampering with society in the usual way.