I. Introduction

The Clash of Civilizations will be a challenging game not only because of the better AI it will include, but also because the Clash world will be more complex compared to games of this type. Most of models developed in the Clash Project have assumed so far the existence of civ's cultural attributes where they can get inputs from to simulate how different cultures act in different ways and how civilizations can appear to have their own styles and histories based on social effects. It is the main role of this model to produce that necessary social base we're all counting on. This model only describes how people can be characterized through cultural attributes and which mechanisms exist to make attributes change overtime according to the civ's experiences. The effects of culture in the game are supposed to be managed in the rest models. In particular, the Riots Model will take care of major social events such as revolutions, independence attempts, etc.

For the nature of the subject, it's possible for some people to take in the wrong way some opinions about culture and culture evolution. Audiences are encouraged to be open minded when reading the model, because, of course, the only goal here is to replicate what we've seen in history as a general trend and avoid discussions on what's good or bad about cultures.

II. Model Overview

The problems to solve are mainly two: How cultural attributes change as time passes by and how different ethnic groups interact with each other. Modeling the first one is obviously needed, while the importance of the second one needs an explanation: Civs won't interact with each other always like nations, each in its own space. If romans take Egypt, then egyptians end up living under roman rule and they won't necessarily will become roman citizens and support the new regime. Even more, Rome can invade just a part of Egypt, so you can find egyptians in roman provinces and in egyptian civ. In other words, the problem here to solve is the interactions between cultures when more than one occupy the same space (provinces).

The approach I took for the model is this: Each civ can hold several ethnic groups (tribes/nationalities) in it. At a civ level, each of them is described with a set of cultural variables or characteristics. It is assumed that all people with the same nationality have the same characteristics regardless of the place where they live within the civ. This means, FE, that romans in the capital province share the same characteristics that romans living in central Europe provinces. At the province level we only need a dynamic array of the existent nationalities and the populations of each. FE, a roman province in central Europe could be something like this:
Romans-1200
Celts-950000
Franks-1200000

while in a roman province in the greek peninsula would be:
Romans-2600
Greeks-1700000

The number of elements in the arrays change as migrations and other events happen. Populations will be stored on a tile/square basis. Province populations are just the sum of the populations in the tiles forming the province.

The set of ethnic groups (EG) in one civ will be called Population Composition (PC). Each EG in the PC has the following information:

• Nationality (FE, romans)
  
• PR%: Primitive Religion (share of population who follow the "primitive religion")
  
• GRW: Great Religion of the World (which GRW is followed)
  
• GRW's spreading rate
  
• Religiously Discriminated (dummy variable describing if the EG is discriminated or not by the govt because of religion)
  
• Ethnically Discriminated (dummy variable describing if the EG is discriminated or not by the govt because of nationality)
  
• Slavered (dummy variable indicating if the ethnic group is "brutally" slavered, as defined in the govt model when Slavery=2)
  
• Characteristics (several variables describing the culture)
  

It should be clear from what has been said above, that "civ" and "tribe" (or ethnic group) are not synonymous. A player plays a civ, not an ethnic group. The player playing the roman empire controls the roman govt and through it, all what happens in the controlled provinces (the civ), but romans are just one of many EGs in the civ. The romans having a special position respect to other tribes and calling the civ "roman civ" is, above all, a govt decision. The civ may indeed have a nationality of its own. FE, a player might be ruling Yugoslavia (civ's nationality=yugoslavian), while EGs in this civ, although generally referred as yugoslavians, have other nationalities (serbs, croats, etc) and there's no EG above the rest. This example also shows that in this model "nationality" means the tribe you feel you belong to, not something imposed or declared by a govt.

II-1. Modeling Religions
Religions are definitely needed in the game. They have given shape to culture for most of (if not all) history and they have also played huge roles in wars and politics, so they're a cool ingredient to add in Clash. The govt model handles how the Church acts in the political arena. In this section it's explained how religion affects EGs.

A religion will be described by several attributes, many of which are the same that describe a culture. The idea is religions "dictate" to their followers how to behave, so they show the people what values cultural attributes should take. FE, if one religion has an aggressiveness of 70, then all the people who follow that religion will tend to have their cultural attribute "aggressiveness" equal to 70. So, the main role of religions in this model is being culture changers, making cultural attributes alike to religion attributes.

There've been many religions and there're still many of them. Their evolution from their primitive forms to how they're today is a complex matter. In order to avoid the game from keeping track of a lot of religions, their birth, evolution and possible disappearance, I've chosen the following approach: The really important religions are what I've called "the Great Religions of the World". There'll be from 3 to 6 of them in the game (the number will be decided by the team, but that should be the order of magnitude). The model will manage how an EG goes from following primitive religions to following one of the GRW. What makes the difference between a primitive religion (PR) and a GRW is the "exportability" of GRW. PRs are extremely associated with the particular ethnic group that practices it, so it's very difficult for others to embrace the same beliefs and therefore these religions cannot spread. Other peoples can sometimes take elements or even the whole cult, but always adapting it to their own nationality (FE, greek religion passing to romans). If you take ancient egyptian religion or aztec beliefs, it's clear to see how religion has to do with the egyptians and aztecs respectively, but not with humanity in general. GRW go beyond the tribe, so no matter where you come from, it's sufficient to follow what the religion dictates to be part of it and therefore it can spread through the world.

GRW will be described with several attributes shown later. The model won't keep track of PRs' attributes, only GRW.

At the beginning of the game EGs will support a PR with 100%. It's assumed that a PR in one EG is different from one in other EG because of the relationship primitive religions have with nationality. PRs have no name (or can be called after the EG, like "egyptian cult" FE).

The game will randomly give birth to each of the GRW after some thousands years of play. Any EG in any civ will be picked as the starting tribe to embrace it. From that point, the new GRW starts to spread as will be explained. Any EG will be allowed to support only one of the GRW. This is not true in real life because in a group of people different cults can coexist, but when we see the world we notice there's always a very dominant religion and some small groups following other beliefs, so I think the restriction I'm using is good enough and it helps keeping the model simple.

For spreading purposes, in each civ there'll be 2*N dummy variables indicating if each of the GRW is known there and if it has followers, where N is the number of GRW in the game. These will be called "Contact Variables" as in "The civ has/hasn't contact with GRW X" and "Acceptance Variables" as in "There are/aren't EGs accepting the GRW X". FE, in one civ there's contact with christianity and Islam, but not with Buddhism, so the contact variables are CHR-1, ISLAM-1, BUD-0. But only Islam is practiced, so Acceptance Variables are CHR-0, ISLAM-1, BUD-0.

Also for spreading purposes, each civ needs to store its level of "social contact" with the rest civs. For simplicity, that level will be given by the number of trade routes between the two civs. That info will be stored in a list (Known Civs List). Each time a trade route is created or deleted, the lists are updated for involved civs.

II-2. The role of government
Usually a civ's govt is related to a particular EG (a nationality) and it's also common for a govt to be related to a religion. The govt model uses the Ethnic Discrimination (ED) Policy for the first type of discrimination. ED can take the following numbers:

0: No discrimination (uncommon. Think Yugoslavia). When ED=0 the civ is said to be "multiethnic" and the player will be asked to introduce a new name for the civ, like Yugoslavia. This is important, not just flavor. As will be shown, EGs with low Nationalism will tend to lose their identity and adopt the civ's nationality, so a player ruling an empire with many EGs with low Nationalism might choose as a strategy to use a multiethnic civ in order to unite the tribes. This is how the model makes possible the rising of new nationalities like the french from gauls, franks, celts and others. However, this strategy wouldn't work in Yugoslavia, where nationalism in the EGs present was high.

1-9: A nationality is preferred (i.e. only one EG) and all others are ethnically discriminated (Minorities). The civ is named after the EG's nationality (e.g. Roman Civ). This is the most common case. Going from 1 to 8 gives different levels for treatment toward minorities, from respect to other tribes and their customs and the possibility to change nationality to the "dominant" one, to very disrespecting treatment (think nazis).

When a govt chooses to be multiethnic and after a new tribe name is picked, the model merges all cultures to create the characteristics for the new people using relative populations as weights in a weighted sum of the original characteristics. This is no sudden forced culture mixing. The new tribe will have zero population. As the game advances, EGs with low Nationalism will slowly drop their current nationality and become part of the new EG.

The govt can also discriminate via religion. If there's a govt with an intolerant official religion, EGs supporting other beliefs can be considered minorities. This is done in the govt model via the Religious Discrimination variable. Since an EG can follow two religions when the EG variable PR% is greater than 0% and lower than 100%, there's ambiguity in knowing if the EG should be discriminated or not. In that case we'll apply the rule of considering the EG as supporting the GRW alone. This is done because as will be shown, once the EG takes a GRW, it'll inevitably embrace it a 100%, so it's just a matter of time to consider the EG as totally committed with that GRW.

Minorities, then, are all EGs discriminated via nationality and/or religion. The govt discriminates and the whole thing about discrimination has as purpose, here in the social model and in the riots model, to change the attitude of each EG and the things affecting them.

III. Cultural Attributes (Characteristics)
These are the cultural attributes and their role in the game. More can be added given the needs in each of the rest models. All variables are in the 0-100 range.

Ethnic Tolerance: It represents how you see other tribes and what kind of relationship you think exists between your tribe and others. A low ET means you feel your tribe is superior and the rest hardly qualify as human beings. A high ET means you respect other tribes and you're willing to live together with them.

Religious Tolerance: This is the tolerance of other religions (by other I mean the ones not followed by the EG). Low scores mean people feel upset about having to live with people with other cults.

Aggressiveness: This defines how aggressive the culture is. A high score indicates a very warlike culture while a low score indicates peaceful. Leaders of an aggressive culture will find it easier to wage war against their neighbors. A very high score could also give a bonus to the efficiency of troops.

Traditionalism: This represents the people's ties to the past. Its role is force culture to stay as it currently is.

Nationalism: Will be defined as "The notion of being a part of something bigger than your local clan (a nation) and the people's willingness to form that nation and live under one same government of their own". This variable was sometimes known as "provincialism/nationalism". Low Nationalism means you care only about your local clan and you don't see much difference between your tribe and others. A high Nationalism shouldn't be confused with a fanatic or blind nationalism. It's only a rather strong feeling of belonging to a specific tribe and a high opposition to be ruled by other tribe. Nationalism is very low at the beginning of the game (thousands of years before Christ), with some random small differences from tribe to tribe (values in the range 1-10).

Land Connection: This is the people's feeling of belonging to the province they occupy. The love for where they live and the idea that the land they occupy belongs to them. Initial LC will be high because the EG is assumed to have lived there for some time. It'll be used in the Riots Model.

Asceticism: This represents the people's desire for material goods. A high score indicates a lack of interest in material goods, while a low score indicates lots are wanted. It has a role in people's behavior in the economic field.

Importance of Religion: The highest this number, the more influenced the rest characteristics are by religion doctrine. This happens because people want to do what religion says. Importance of Religion will be in general very high at the beginning of the game for all cultures and in general terms it will decrease as time passes by.

Individualism: This is the people's value of self. Its main role is modeling what type of economy people wants. The more individualistic, the more inclined to capitalism and vise versa.

Initial values will be given randomly or using pre-set values defined by us and ad hoc to each historical tribe. The player will decide which option to use.

IV. Attributes of GRW

Each GRW has the following cultural attributes: Religious Tolerance, Aggressiveness, Asceticism and Individualism. They represent the moral code the religion tries to impose on its followers. Religion has no say about the other characteristics described above. The following attributes also exist in GRW:

Sacrifice: The higher this score is the more is required from the followers of the religion. This is money and economic resources the clergy takes away from the people that allows the church to act. The economic model should use this variable to know how much people invest in religious infrastructure.

Countdown: Used to determine when the GRW is born. Its initial value in the game is equal to the date the player chooses to start, doubled (FE, 4000BC implies countdown=2*4000=8000).

Holy Land: The tile in which the religion was born (randomly picked at the moment of religion's birth). This is to model crusades and that sort of things.

After the GRW is born, its moral code remains fixed for the game. Religions have shown to be very reticent to change their doctrines, and although we know some changes have occurred, the assumption made here is still very accurate and keeps the model simple. Sacrifice and Holy Land are also fixed and Countdown stays at zero once the religion is born.

Primitive Religions are supposed to be described with the same variables, but the game won't store that info as with GRW. We'll assume that if you take a EG, the PR associated with it has attributes equal to the EG's cultural attributes. In other words, cultural attributes and religion attributes for PRs are indistinguishable. If you want to know what the chinese PR thinks about individualism, just look at the current individualism score of chinese EG. This is made to avoid keeping track of each of the dozens primitive religions existing and their attributes and to give GRW the importance they deserve, being much more autonomous and homogeneous through out the world. As for sacrifice and holy land, which is info we can't read from the EG attributes, holy land is never needed for PRs and Sacrifice will be assumed to be equal to the average between (100-Individualism) and Asceticism.

V. How the model works

Each turn we do the following:

1. Apply the "GRW birth" sub-model to the game.
2. Apply the "Religion Spreading" sub-model to each civ.
3. Apply the "Nationalities" sub-model to each civ.
4. Apply the "Cultural Evolution" sub-model to each civ.
5. Apply the "Migration" sub-model to each civ.

V-1. The "GRW birth" Sub-Model
The countdown variable for each GRW is checked. If it's zero, do nothing. If it's greater than zero, it's decreased by R*L, where R is a random number between 1 and 3 and L is the length of the game turn in years. If after the decrease it's zero or negative, then set it to zero and give birth to the GRW. This means a random tile is picked anywhere in the world. If no population exist in the tile, another is chosen until a tile with people is found. If there's more than one EG in the tile, one is picked randomly. Contact Variable for the GRW in the civ where the EG lives is turned to 1. The religion's moral code is made equal to the corresponding attributes in the EG. Sacrifice is made equal to the average between (100-Individualism) and Asceticism and Holy Land is made equal to the tile's code number.

V-2. The "Religion Spreading" Sub-Model
For each EG in the civ:

First: If the EG has PR%=100% (no GRW is known and accepted), the model looks at the Contact Variables and for each of them equal to "1", the religion is checked for acceptance by the EG. The EG will accept the GRW if the religion's moral code is not too different from EG's culture. A "distance" between culture and religion's moral code is computed as D=square_root( (C1-R1)^2 + ....+ (Cn-Rn)^2 ), where Ck is the EG's value of the kth cultural attribute and Rk is the religious value for the same attribute. If D is less than a given threshold (TBD), it is accepted. The GRW variable in the EG is turned to the name (or code number) of the GRW accepted and the Acceptance Variable for the GRW in the civ is made equal to 1. A GRW spreading rate is then computed for the EG as (1-Traditionalism)*(K1-D)/K2, where K1 and K2 are scale factors allowing to use D in the calculation so the more similar attributes are, the fastest people will take the religion.
If a GRW is at the govt (i.e. it's official), it has more power to convert people. So, instead of comparing D directly with the threshold, we'll really use D*(1-G*RC%), where G is a dummy being "1" if the GRW being checked happens to be the official one and "0" if not. RC% is the political power of the Religious Class, from the govt model.

Second: If PR% is greater than 0%, then PR% is decreased by the magnitude of GRW's spreading rate. If the final value is less than zero, it's set to zero. GRW's spreading rate is zero if no GRW is known and accepted by the EG (i.e. zero is its default value), so PR% will remain at 100% until a GRW is accepted by the EG and will decrease slowly thereafter (i.e. the primitive religion will be inevitably replaced by the GRW).

Civ to Civ Spreading: A random civ is picked in the Known Civs List. If the level of social contact with it is greater than a given number (TBD), continue: Contact Variables in this random civ are changed to represent the contact with the followed religions in the civ being processed. Each Contact Variable in the randomly picked civ is changed to MIN(1,a+b), where a is its current Contact Variable and b is the Acceptance Variable for the same religion in the civ being processed. Example:
"Acceptance Variables" in civ being processed: CHR:1, ISLAM:0, BUD:1
"Contact Variables" in random civ picked: CHR:0, ISLAM:0, BUD:1
New values for Contact Variables in random civ picked: CHR:min(1,0+1)=1, ISLAM:min(1,0+0)=0, BUD:min(1,1+1)=1.
The example shows how the civ being processed exports practiced GRW to a civ with high enough social contact, allowing the latter to have knowledge about them, which will make possible (in the next game turn) for some EGs in it to embrace them if they're accepted. The mechanism also ensures that a civ can only export religions practiced in it, but not those it has contact with, but nobody likes.

The first step makes possible a EG start embracing a GRW. Step two is the EG's internal spreading process leaving the PR in the past. The third step is what makes GRW to spread through the world.

V-3. The "Nationalities" Sub-Model
Nationalism is updated as new_Nationalism=current_Nationalism+C*L, where C is a constant depending on the case (see table) and L is the length in years of the game turn.

________Case______________________________C
EG in a "barbaric province"____________________0.025
EG in a civ with matching nationality______________0.1
EG in a civ with different nationality________0.03*(1/(1+exp(-14+.2*current_Nationalism)))

The rules increase Nationalism as a "natural tendency" as time passes by, making it faster if the tribe has its own civ (govt). But, under the rule of others, Nationalism goes down because it's hard to preserve identity in this conditions. However, it's much easier for tribes with already low Nationalism to lose it than those that already have a great sense of identity and that's why the exponential formula is used.

Nationalities (EGs) with low Nationalism tend to be absorbed by the dominant culture. This happens because the tribe has no sense of itself and easily give up its identity to become something else. This mechanism allows for some tribes to be lost during the game, as it happened with saxons and many other tribes.

The following must be done in each province for each present nationality: If the nationality doesn't match the civ's one, then a dice is rolled to see if some of its population adopts the civ's nationality. The probability of doing so is

P=(1/(1+exp(0.06*current_Nationalism)))*exp(-K*ED)

where ED is the Ethnic Discrimination level the govt imposes and K is a scale parameter. If the dice indicates nationality shift, a population of P*600*L is deducted from the EG's population and added to the EG having the civ's nationality, where L is, again, the length of the game turn in years. This conversion can be up to 3000 persons every 10 years or null, depending on how nationalistic people is and the attitude of the govt regarding other nationalities.
If the population for a given EG falls down to zero, the EG is deleted from the Population Composition (the EG has disappeared at least in this civ).

V-4. The "Cultural Evolution" Sub-Model
This sub-model is the one that changes cultural attributes (characteristics except Nationalism). There are two questions: In which direction the characteristic should go (increase, decrease, stay) and at which speed. Modeling changes in culture is really difficult. It's not easy to answer these two questions (specially the first) in a general way. That's why I grouped characteristics in three categories according to the complexity of the variable:
1) Land Connection
2) Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion and Traditionalism
3) Religious Tolerance, Individualism, Asceticism, Aggressiveness

1) Land Connection

LC can only rise, since it's the love for the province where you live and the notion that the EG has lived there "always". It should increase by around 1 point every 4 years.

2) and 3)

The approach I took is characteristics tend to a value, so in each turn we only move slightly the characteristic in the direction of that value. The magnitude of the change is given by Traditionalism, so the more traditionalistic, the slower the change. The following is made to each characteristic:

new_value=current_value + ((100-Traditionalism)/100)*T*L*(TV_value - current_value)/ABS(TV_value - current_value) (*)

where TV stands for "Tendency Value", T is a time-scale constant and L is the length in years of the game turn. Now the question is what is the TV for each characteristic. The difference between categories 2) and 3) is the way TV is computed.

2) Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion and Traditionalism (TV)

TV_ET=MAX(100-Nationalism, 60)*(1-Aggressiveness/100) (i)

Ethnic Tolerance decreases slowly as a result of the rising Nationalism level and the need to clearly make a difference with other tribes, but Nationalism won't push it below a certain level (60). ET can go lower than this only by the presence of a high Aggressiveness level.

TV_IR= 100-OTL*0.4-ES*3 (ii)

The assumption here is religion's attractiveness is mostly given by the incapability of human beings to understand and control their world. Then, the importance of religion in people's daily lives goes down as science gives us new and useful explanations for our environment and as our society appears to be stable. OTL is the civ's "overall tech level" in a 0-100 range. A measure I hope we can build in the tech model. ES is "Empire's Stability", a variable from the govt model in the range 0-10.

TV_Traditionalism=95-(CivilRights/100)*15 (iii)

This means Traditionalism goes in the 80-95 range depending on the current value of Civil Rights, which is a government model's variable describing how free is people in the 0-100 range. I'm assuming Traditionalism always tends to be high and the differences are from high to very high, depending on freedom. IMO cultures with high freedom give more space to innovation and changes are more acceptable, so Traditionalism tends to be somewhat lower.

3) Religious Tolerance, Individualism, Asceticism, Aggressiveness (TV)

For all these variables religions have something to say and that influence must be merged with other existing factors. The TV will be a mix of the values different factors encourage.

There are 3 factors:
Religion- Through the religion's moral code, religion tries to impose certain values in these characteristics.
Dominant Culture- Majorities tend to impose their customs.
Environment- Effects of economy, govt and others which the people are exposed to in their daily lives. Environment values should be seen as those people would tend to as a result of the environment they live in. In other words, people tend to recreate the environment where they live, making cultural attribute ad hoc to the current environment.

Religion's values are taken from the GRW the EG follows and from the EG's characteristics themselves for PRs. Values majorities imposes are taken from the Majorities Cultural Attributes. (The MCA is created by the govt model using majorities populations. For civs where one EG is above the rest, MCA values are equal to that EG and MCA is a weighted sum of all EGs in the civ for multiethnic civs, where populations are used as weights.) Environment values are the following:

Individualism: You tend to be as individualistic as your environment is. The level of individualism in environment is given by the current economic system (the more capitalistic, the more individualistic) and by the current Civil Rights level, where high CR encourages heterogeneity in population (individualism). The level of individualism by the economic system the govt imposes can be computed as econ_Ind=10*(PP+(10-SP)) where PP=Private Property and SP=Social Policies (both govt model's variables). The civil rights level is given by the Civil Rights govt policy. Assuming economy counts for 70% of total environment influence on individualism, Environment value for Individualism is (econ_Ind*.7+CR*.3).

Aggressiveness: Not yet determined, but it should be a measure of the relationship with neighbors. The more dangerous the world is and the fewer friends abroad, the more aggressive people is as a response in order to survive.

Religious Tolerance: The tendency is to accept other mystic beliefs in the same degree other ideas and lifestyles are accepted. Using the Civil Rights govt policy as a measure of the current level of heterogeneity in population (i.e. level of acceptance of other lifestyles), we make RT_Environment=CR.

Asceticism: Environment (Nature perhaps) imposes the need to survive and gather material goods for it. The assumption is people desire goods and more and more of them until at least a level where you have an accommodated life. We'll define a constant variable for the game: a PCI (per capita income) representing that minimum level of material goods. If the current civ's global average PCI is lower than that, then Asceticism is equal to 100*current_PCI/reference_PCI. If it's higher, Asceticism keeps its current value.

Each of the three factors (religions, Dominant Culture and Environment) push characteristics to given values. The level at which each prevail is another matter. We'll say religion imposes its doctrine depending on the Importance of Religion variable. So, if IR=60, then 60% of the TV for any of the attributes is given by the religion's value. The rest (40%), is influenced by Dominant Culture and Environment and we'll say Environment is responsible for 80% of that:

TV = IR%*religion_value + (1-IR%)*(0.8*environment_value + 0.2*MCA_value) (iv)

Since an EG can support two religions (PR and GRW) each with its own value, the religion_value in the formula is really: PR%*EG_current_value + (1-PR%)*GRW_value.

So, in short, what this sub-model does each turn for each EG is:
1-Increase Land Connection.
2-Compute tendency values for Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion and Traditionalism using (i), (ii) and (iii) respectively.
3-Compute tendency values for Asceticism, Individualism, Aggressiveness and Religious Tolerance using (iv). ("3 factors approach")
4-Apply equation (*) for Ethnic Tolerance, Importance of Religion, Traditionalism, Asceticism, Individualism, Aggressiveness and Religious Tolerance.

Three Comments on the Cultural Evolution sub-model:

1) The model moves characteristics to TV as if TV were an equilibrium point. But, TV values change slowly as things happen, so during the game this "equilibrium point" is moving and characteristics are constantly chasing it.

2) The way TV are computed for characteristics in category 3), i.e. via the three factors approach, allows the model to do at least three interesting things: a)EGs in the same civ will tend to be more homogeneous as time passes by; b)Empires can export their culture to tribes within the empire, like barbaric tribes in central Europe being "romanized" or native americans being "europeanized"; c)The influence of religion on culture will decay overtime.

3) This sub-model is by far the one that needs more computational resources. I guess we can make the model just apply steps 1 and 4 each turn using stored TV, which is really cheap. TV would then be updated less frequently, like twice a century or so.

V-5. The Migrations Sub-Model
NOT YET SOLVED

VI. Final Comments

A lot has been lost from previous attempts to create a social model. This model doesn't have a mixing culture procedure, doesn't model races and race mixing and it's mainly managed at a civ level instead of a province level. Social changes in real life do happen at the local level and then spread, but that kind of modeling is much more expensive in computational resources, so that's why I take care of cultures at the civ level assuming all changes occur simultaneously in each province. As for mixing cultures, it's a growing problem the more nationalities and religions coexist in the same civ and there's no way to have true-to-life effects once the civ-level approach has been adopted.

Your system looks very practical and flexible, and yet should inject a lot of fun into the game. I think you've done a good job in holding down the number of calculations and still getting a lot of the right flavor in the model. I just have a general bunch of comments at this point. I haven't looked in-depth at most of your equations and whatnot, since I think we need to assess the general thrusts of the model first before worrying about the details.

So, since most things look really good, I will mostly comment on the things that I think are missing...

I get the sense that there are some critical cultural attributes that may not be there that other model heads need.

The one that most struck me as missing is an overall notion of the "tech level" or perhaps PCI that the culture has evolved to function with. I think this one is Very important, seeing as one of the main historical directions of cultural diffusion have been from civilizations with high tech level to those with low tech level. Even if the barbarians conquer your "high-tech" culture, they will usually end up taking over a lot of your cultural attributes, because their culture just doesn't really work very well at the new tech level IMO. Another related important criterion is education level. Probably we would combine the two of these even though the correspondence isn't always one-to-one.

Another similarly important thing is Corruption. Does the society have an "if it's not nailed down its mine" attitude? I have read a lot about the institutional frameworks that are needed to support market economies and well-functioning democracies. And I think the corruption level that the culture is used to is the key between the societies that work and those that don't in making the transition to efficient market economies and democracies. I would like to hear everyone's thought on this. If we don't, how do we model the fact that it can take very long periods of time to make the transition to effective institutions even though the general recipes for the sorts of institutions needed are well-known. In terms of game play this would mean that you can't be a ruthless autocrat for the whole game, and then expect towave a wand and in very short order have a functioning capitalist democratic state. During your mis- rule the people will have gotten used to cheating on everything possible just to survive... this kind of thing cannot be undone over a short period of time IMO.

One final trait that may be important is language. Language differences can make it much more difficult for two cultures to get along, that if they spoke a similar tongue.

Another thing I thought of that you haven't included is that the player can try to affect the direction in which the culture is evolving. Of course, this shouldn't be a sure thing, but at least something they can try to do.

I don't like the idea of just one world religion per culture. It seems with the number of variables that you dedicate to keeping track of great religions that cultures could have an arbitrary fraction of each of them without overly complicating the system. Anyway, please think about it, because I think the clashes of religious fervor within the culture could be interesting.

I get the sense that your nationalism model needs to be much richer. I think it needs to involve critical communication distances in some ways. It should also include the education level of the populace IMO.

I generally like the way you picked to handle new "civ cultures" that are amalgamations of the other cultures in the civ. That's a fine idea and will help out a lot in modeling the dynamics of a country like the United States IMO. My one criticism is that when you form the new culture that the new culture's characteristics should shift depending on which cultural groups choose to join it. So, for instance, if I want to form a new group out of the previous multiethnic civ composed of three cultures named smelly, noisy, and obnoxious. Now suppose the obnoxious ones have a very high nationalism. So they will never really join in the new culture, and the new culture will end up being a hybrid of smelly and noisy! So I think you need to modify the characteristics of the hybrid culture to reflect a population-weighted average of the cultures that join it, or something like that.

Anyway here's what I have questions/comments on:

-----
There've been many religions and there're still many of them. Their evolution from their primitive forms to how they're today is a complex matter. In order to avoid the game from keeping track of a lot of religions, their birth, evolution and possible disappearance, I've chosen the following approach: The really important religions are what I've called "the Great Religions of the World". There'll be from 3 to 6 of them in the game (the number will be decided by the team, but that should be the order of magnitude). The model will manage how an EG goes from following primitive religions to following one of the GRW. What makes the difference between a primitive religion (PR) and a GRW is the "exportability" of GRW. PRs are extremely associated with the particular ethnic group that practices it, so it's very difficult for others to embrace the same beliefs and therefore these religions cannot spread. Other peoples can sometimes take elements or even the whole cult, but always adapting it to their own nationality (FE, greek religion passing to romans). If you take ancient egyptian religion or aztec beliefs, it's clear to see how religion has to do with the egyptians and aztecs respectively, but not with humanity in general. GRW go beyond the tribe, so no matter where you come from, it's sufficient to follow what the religion dictates to be part of it and therefore it can spread through the world.
-----
OKay what you say is fine, in and of itself, for the most part. However, there are exceptions. FE not all civs or cultures have to move toward one of the GWR. Most notably Japan and India have not and almost guaranteed will not for any length of time worth mentioning, if at all. Instead they still hold mostly to their original religion, although influenced from outside forces. In the case of Japan, as with all far eastern religions, religion isn't seen as homogenius and once can be multiple religions at the same time ephasizing differnt aspects of each.
Also this doesn't allow for religions like Judaism which isn't major (it only has a small % of the world population), but it is very far reaching and very influential. It is however, not a GWR. The only reason it has expanded is because of the forced migrations do to the Romans and others.
-----
The game will randomly give birth to each of the GRW after some thousands years of play. Any EG in any civ will be picked as the starting tribe to embrace it. From that point, the new GRW starts to spread as will be explained. Any EG will be allowed to support only one of the GRW. This is not true in real life because in a group of people different cults can coexist, but when we see the world we notice there's always a very dominant religion and some small groups following other beliefs, so I think the restriction I'm using is good enough and it helps keeping the model simple.
-----
I think you're wrong here. When you look at the world in many areas there is no clear cut dominant religion throughout history. Also GWR tend to spring up in many of the same areas. These have noticably been the birthplaces of civilzation, but i don't think it has to be. I will use the example of China/SE Asia. Here there are 3 major religions in the area, depending exactly where you are. Islam, Christianity and Budhism (everywhere for the latter). Each of these is supported by similar groups of people for the same reason. In fact, as i mentioned above, there is quite possible people who are mixed religions of those types (in fact i know there are a few indivisuals who are). This doesn't include the native religions of Confusicanism and Taoism which are also present in this area (although Taoism to a much lesser extent).

Cultural Attributes:

I think there may need to be a few more:
Exantionistic: How much your population wants to settle more land. Low values mean they are content with what they have. High values mean they want the civ to control more land. *You don't have to be agressive to be exantionistic or vise versa*

Rigidity: How laws are in your society. The more rigid, the more laws there are (atleast enforeced) in your society. High rigiity also has very strict set of classes, while low ones may have none or very fluid set.

Religious Tolerance could also be used for ethnic tolerance. Since if you had a low score for importance of religion, religious intolerance being high wouldn't make sense.

Openness: This is how your society runs and treats people (usually outsiders). Closed societies distrust outsiders and will attempt to keep them away while open societies will embrace others and welcome newcommers in.

IV. Attributes of GRW
-----
Holy Land: The tile in which the religion was born (randomly picked at the moment of religion's birth). This is to model crusades and that sort of things.
-----
Holy land doesn't have to be to specific. FE India is the birthplace of Budhism, however, it can be. Jerusalum is the birthplace of Chirstianity. Also Holy Lands shouldn't ness be limited to birthplaces. Every GWR religion has (a) site(s) that is not affiliated with the birthplace of the religion and/or more than one holy birthplace such as in Islam (Jerusalum and Mecca).

-----
After the GRW is born, its moral code remains fixed for the game. Religions have shown to be very reticent to change their doctrines, and although we know some changes have occurred, the assumption made here is still very accurate and keeps the model simple. Sacrifice and Holy Land are also fixed and Countdown stays at zero once the religion is born.
-----
If your going to do that, then there should be branches for GWR. No GWR throughout history has had a single branch for a very long time. NONE. Most branches take place 100-500 years after the birth. At most, GWR have 3 major branches so it won't get too complex. We don't have to do minor branches which would get really confusing, but not doing any IMO isn't right because it makes it too simplified and doesn't allow for the changes that have occured in GWR over time.

On PR: I'm assuming PR is the inital religion when the game starts out? Well in that case a PR should be able to be changed into something other than a GWR, say an Avanced Religion (AR) ARs differ from PRs in that they are complex enough to withstand being absorbed by GWR much better. They differ from GWR in that they are local. They cannot be found outside the area to any major extent (Exeptions can be made for refugees fleeing homelands and such). ARs can exist in the same area as GWRs. Generally there is only 1 AR per ethnic group. ARs can be can be spread, though not very far beyond its home origin (FE Hinduism is no a PR and not a GWR, it would be a AR. Hinduism is generally limited to the land of Hindi aka India. It can however be found in minorities elsewhere, but will never reach a majority in another other area unless conquered by indian gov who supports Hinduism and prob makes a conscious effort to promote Hinduism there. Finally what causes a RR to become an AR? The insurgance of another religion, usually a GWR. People with high traditionalism will have thier PR become ARs, but slightly differntly to show the absorbtion of some of the ideas from the GWR.
-----
The assumption here is religion's attractiveness is mostly given by the incapability of human beings to understand and control their world. Then, the importance of religion in people's daily lives goes down as science gives us new and useful explanations for our environment and as our society appears to be stable. OTL is the civ's "overall tech level" in a 0-100 range. A measure I hope we can build in the tech model. ES is "Empire's Stability", a variable from the govt model in the range 0-10.
-----
OTL...I don't see anything wrong with it not being possible just avergae the Basic technolieis out. The problem is that 100 is not the limit. There is no limit. This is because Clash will be allowed to go into the future so technologies will advance beyond what they are today.

Finally can you or do you have a religious moral codes that I can use? This is a;so ness for the tech. model.

Another similarly important thing is Corruption. Does the society have an "if it's not nailed down its mine" attitude? I have read a lot about the institutional frameworks that are needed to support market economies and well-functioning democracies. And I think the corruption level that the culture is used to is the key between the societies that work and those that don't in making the transition to efficient market economies and democracies. I would like to hear everyone's thought on this. If we don't, how do we model the fact that it can take very long periods of time to make the transition to effective institutions even though the general recipes for the sorts of institutions needed are well-known. In terms of game play this would mean that you can't be a ruthless autocrat for the whole game, and then expect towave a wand and in very short order have a functioning capitalist democratic state. During your mis- rule the people will have gotten used to cheating on everything possible just to survive... this kind of thing cannot be undone over a short period of time IMO.
-----
I agree with this one. Good also for lowering nations stability and other stuff. This is generally never to high, but it is easier to make society more corrupt than less.

One final trait that may be important is language. Language differences can make it much more difficult for two cultures to get along, that if they spoke a similar tongue.
-----
I think it best to let ethic differance measure language differance as it can otherwise become too complex.

Another thing I thought of that you haven't included is that the player can try to affect the direction in which the culture is evolving. Of course, this shouldn't be a sure thing, but at least something they can try to do.
-----
Absoultely.

I don't like the idea of just one world religion per culture. It seems with the number of variables that you dedicate to keeping track of great religions that cultures could have an arbitrary fraction of each of them without overly complicating the system. Anyway, please think about it, because I think the clashes of religious fervor within the culture could be interesting.
-----
Read my post. I also agree with you there. Also added another type of religion for places like India where there isn't a GWR nor is Hinduism a PR.

All of you:
I have really no problem adding more cultural attributes, but you have to realize this is the one most complex piece in the three "society models". When adding a characteristic, we need to figure out how its value is going to change overtime. This is terribly hard to do. Just pick one, like Individualism: What forces make it decrease, increase or stay at any given time? What variables exactly are needed from what other models to make a reasonable change in Individualism? Will whatever method I choose recreate history? Meditate it for a sec and you'll see it's damn complex.

When I wrote the model I knew more characteristics were going to be added, so I'm all positive in finding the good method for every needed new cultural attribute, but I Strongly recommend to keep the list of characteristics short. So, let's add only those we feel are of huge importance.

On Mark's ideas:
Ethnic Group's Education Level: Sure, NP. I think it's very ness for the econ model and easy to model. Consider it done for a future model update.
------
"Even if the barbarians conquer your "high-tech" culture, they will usually end up taking over a lot of your cultural attributes, because their culture just doesn't really work very well at the new tech level IMO"
Let me rephrase what I think you're saying: "In order to have a high tech level, culture must take a given form". So, if an ascetic culture conquers your high tech civ, they won't be able to keep that tech level because they really don't care much about high tech machines. If that's what you meant, I feel we can have this effect if we take good care when building social-tech interactions. Here's my idea: As much as I understand the tech model, in order to just maintain your current tech level, you need to produce at least a given amount of Research Points. If the RP production process in the tech model is built considering Individualism and Asceticism, then in fact it'll be harder for the conquering civ to keep the techs they've just aquired. If we add to this your proposed Education Level, RP production would be even lesser if the conquering civ is something like a barbaric tribe. So, I believe what you want can be done if the RP production process is created using Individualism, Asceticism and Education Level.
---------
Corruption: We have already been in this topic before and in fact I also believe is very important. Just to clarify things, there's a "political corruption" in the govt model in the "de facto influences" variables. Do not confuse that corruption with the one you're mentioning here. The political corruption is like bribing a senator to have a given govt policy the way you wanted, while the corruption you're talking about is like a "productive corruption" at the economic level (State held econ activities and relationship between privates and State). I used to believe too that corruption was mainly a cultural thing. But recently I heard in a conference an expert from Israel who has studied this type of corruption in places like South America and Russia. His view was "productive corruption" has everything to do with the cost of providing law and govt administration. This means that if you're a company owner with a factory polluting beyond what's legal, you can keep your illegal activity if there're no or too few "pollution inspectors" or if you can bribe them because, if caught, law just take too much or even forever to trial you. In cases like this law and govt administration is not really working, so corruption arises from govt's failure in providing law and administration. The corrupt company owner sees the cost of corruption as low. We can still say that people get used to that, so it becomes part of the culture, but I disagree. Suppose the govt starts functioning with a lot more resources and can indeed efficently provide law and effective administration, monitoring sources of income on public & private sectors and demanding results from govt employees. In this case corruption just becomes much more difficult, so even a people used to it must adapt. The cost of being corrupt are now high. The arguments of the Israel's guy really convinced me, so I'd prefer to take care of this at that level instead of the culture level. I've proposed in the govt model an "Administration Effectiveness Level" (AEL) which takes into account the amount of Institutional Infrastructure in a province and the province's population to determine how good the local govt is providing administration. My suggestion would be to create a province-level "productive corruption" based on AEL. If your civ have just messed admisnitration for too long, it'll take time for a new govt to increase AEL and reduce corruption because further investment is needed in Institutional Infrastructure and this takes time.
----------
Language: Yes, but I guess it'll add a complexity of the order of religions. An ethnic group might have a language but take other depending on where it lives and whom it lives with, new languages can appear... I'd prefer to leave that out. It's not so important.
----------
Only one GRW per culture: Like languages, I think this only makes things harder with little gains on the other end, and, after all, tribes do have mainly only one religion or a bunch of them very similar to each other.
----------
Nationalism: Yes I believe communication techs should be included. Education level... I really don't see what it has to do with it.
----------
Merging ethnic groups in multiethnic civ: I've just revised the social model and I can't belive I didn't put the formula for creating the new ethnic group! Anyway, it'll work as you mention.
----------

On LGJ's ideas:
Religions: First, Great Religions of the World are not those with huge populations following them. As defined in the model,, they're the religions that con go beyond a nationality. Because of this, they'll tend to have huge population following them, but that's not their definition. Second, all the examples you give for a lot of religions are true, but don't forget to see the grand scenario. Currenlty, if you pick Christianty, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism you're nearly taking 90% of world population! I just don't think we should make an effort modeling sects and other minor beliefs. Third, ethnic groups are not destined to embrace a GRW. It'll be possible for some of them to simply never give up their Primitive Religion, so some of your examples will happen in the game. Fourth, Judaism is a GRW because, per definition, it goes beyond nationality. You can find french jews as well as mexican jews. However, Judaism has some modeling problems because all jews are still part of the "People of Israel" and by that I don't refer to the political nation of Israel. BTW, I've never known if the english word "jew" is offensive... should I use "jewish"?
----------
"I think you're wrong here. When you look at the world in many areas there is no clear cut dominant religion throughout history"
Sure, that's why you don't have to look at "areas", but at ethnic groups. That's why I'm saying an ethnic group can only have one GRW, which is mainly true after the arguments I gave to Mark.
----------
Holy Land: We can make possible for a GRW to have more than one GRW. That's no big deal. Just propose a good method to know what other places I can add in the list of Holy Places.
----------
Exantionistic: Do you really think we need it? Isn't enough using Aggressiveness?
----------
Rigidity: I like this one. I'll give it a thought.
----------
"if you had a low score for importance of religion, religious intolerance being high wouldn't make sense."
Yes, and the model does use Importance of Religion when calculating Religious Tolerance.
----------
Opennes: I think this effect is well handled by Ethnic Tolerance.
----------
Branches for religions: Yes, indeed I also was considering that. I think we should allow for a couple of branches.
----------
"I'm assuming PR is the inital religion when the game starts out? "
Yes.
Your idea about "Advanced Religions": Why doing this? As said above, having GRW as defined and primitive religions give the game sufficient flavor IMHO.
----------
OTL: It's good to hear it won't be hard to calculate. Anyway, I don't believe you have an endless list of tech advances so OTL wouldn't have a limit...
----------
"Finally can you or do you have a religious moral codes that I can use? This is a;so ness for the tech. model."
If you tell what you intend to do, maybe I can help you in a better way.
----------
"Also i do think we need to have cultural mixing/absorbing. As to the way social chnages happen, i like your approach better."
I hope you meant "I DON'T think we need to have cultural mixing/absorbing"...

Regarding the centralization number, what are the Effects in terms of province functioning? FE if you model a feudal society as one with a capital province with C=100 (the king's) and a number of other provinces with C=20 (king's vassals), then what effect does this have on taxation, who controls the provincial armies etc. Does only 20% of the taxes get to the central government? Can the king call on the whole army (including vasalls') indefinitely or only in specified cases?

I agree that it is very important that a tech level/education attribute be defined for the culture. High tech level cultures will almost invariably become the dominant culture when the cultures are mixed.

I also agree that there should be a coruption variable. This should be linked with religion; people who believe that their actions will be judged after their death tend to be more honest.

The tech model needs two variables defined:

I represents innovation, the tendency of a culture to try new things and take risks. This variable influences the difficulty of raising technology levels. High I means more tech growth if there is enough research.

E represents education, the ability of a culture to retain old knowledge. This variable influences the difficulty of maintaining a technology. High E means more tech loss if there is not enough RP spent on a tech to keep it constant.

A culture with high I will usually have a high E as well, so it might be possible to describe them both with one attribute.

The ecology model needs an attribute that describes how a culture tends to treat the environment. This will be used to calculate the willingness of the people to alter the environment. It would help if the number is equivalent to the cost that the culture sees in disrupting the environment, so an Ecology attribute of zero means that the culture sees absolutely no value in the natural world and will alter it as they see fit, while a culture with an ecology attribute of 100 would always want to protect the natural environment.

Your idea about "Advanced Religions": Why doing this? As said above, having GRW as defined and primitive religions give the game sufficient flavor IMHO.

First off, yes i believe "jew" is offenseive like "jap" is to a jananese.
As to religions, there should be more than 6, unless six is the max at a time. There have been more irl than 6, 2 already dead (Greek and Zoastiriansim).
As to AR and PR, PR differ from AR in that PR would be more flexible to change in their moral codes than AR and could more easily be abosrbed than PR.

Agrressive/Expantiontic: Culture that will constrantly make wars to increase the size of its empire as far as it can, usually to far.

Non-Agressive/Non-Expantionistic: Would live in the "natural boundries' of their civilization. Would more willingly accept the need to move a civilization in the threat of an invasion for safety.

Non-Agrressive/Expantionic: Would want to expand its territory as much as it can, but not ness. by open warfare. These are more willing to set up colonies so long as it doesn't require to much defenses/offenses.

Richard:
"I" and "E" sound good to me and I think they shouldn't be computed only looking at the cultural variables. The "Civil Rights" variable in the govt model is IMO very important, since it defines freedom in the civ. The current economic form, defined by variables Private Property, Economic Planning and Social Policies should also be in. IMO capitalistic economies can lead to higher levels of innovation because of the huge monetary benefits you can get.

On ecology, maybe you're right about the need for a new cultural attribute related with it. I'll give it a thought.

Also could u comment on the various parts on the religious part i brought up.

About the moral code variables: Religious Tolerance, Individualism, Asceticism and Aggressiveness. They're all in the 0-100 range. I don't have any specific numbers for them, because actual numbers will be created kind of randomly when the game creates a GRW.

I'm not sure what part of the religious issue I didn't answer to you... If it's about the number of GRW: 6 is just a number giving you the order of magnitude. If it's about your idea for "Advanced Religions", I really believe we don't need them. As I said, with GRWs alone we get 90% world population so why badder about small cults.

As far as PR vs GWR, i guess that's okay but we'll need to change some stuff because of the social advances part of the tech model. FE There are more advanced religions than others and if a local religion (PR) comes up against a less advanced GWR chances are the PR will stay, maybe altering slightly, if that. Also GWR should be allowed to change somewhat. This can be dealt with though by the branching effect i mentioned earlier. PRs should also reach a sense of stability eventually also, though much later than GWR and even in stability can still be altered slightly. There will also be differn't types of religions depending on the cultural attidutes...which reminds me...we need something in enthinic attributes that will distiquish eastern/mid eastern/western etc. type people because it is important to the whole social advances structure. Some already are incorperated, but i don't know if it's enough.

Cultural technologies: I think that the tech model should be willing to change in response to the new social modelling of various things. For example, consider the Religion technology. I think that it is pretty silly to have such a thing; we only had it because other civ games have it. I think that can change. Rather than modeling religion as some tech level, we should be able to adapt to the new and much more detailed social model.

I don't think it makes sense to say that one religion or philosophy is more advanced than another because a civ has thrown RP's in its direction and it has a higher tech level. This isn't really fair and doesn't address the complexity of the situation like the social model does.

Rather than having applications depend on a religion tech level, we can have them depend on the religion attributes in the social model. So rather than having the Chivalry or Way of the Blade application/effect be given at "Religion Level 35", we can give it when the religion attributes are at a certain level and other conditions are met. This might be a bit harder to do, but I think it would give much better results.

I don't think it makes sense to say that one religion or philosophy is more advanced than another because a civ has thrown RP's in its direction and it has a higher tech level. This isn't really fair and doesn't address the complexity of the situation like the social model does.
-----
OK. Your right and wrong at the same time. Yes the social model should be very important to religion. I never intended otherwise. However, there is such a thing as more advanced religions than others. How we go through this can change that's fine. Right now though the model doesn't take care of the advancement of religion, just the spread of it (except for advancement into GWR). The way i've worked out the social advances part of the tech model already does so that's why i'm saying this.

And as far as religions and philosophy go there are some that could be considered equal, and I've already come up with idea for that. But there are lesser advanced ones than that. This is agreed upon by all social scientistis.

Rather than having applications depend on a religion tech level, we can have them depend on the religion attributes in the social model. So rather than having the Chivalry or Way of the Blade application/effect be given at "Religion Level 35", we can give it when the religion attributes are at a certain level and other conditions are met. This might be a bit harder to do, but I think it would give much better results.
------
Well in addition to Religion 35 or whatever such thing is needed, certain levels of enthic attributes are needed. I was planning on this all along. However i can see no other way to advance a progression of society like that w/o such. Whether social advances should be seperated from the tech model and simply use a similar method i don't have a prob with, but under the circumstances then all one would need is the app. enthic attributes and religion type and that is not concurrent with history. There needs to be a path of progression which isn't incorperated here.

I still think we need a corruption number for the cultures themselves. I think that the guy you heard speak may be quite right about "production corruption", but there is also corruption in the political system, the legal system, and many other social institutions. I don't think solving all these is just a matter of throwing money into institutions. If the institutions are broken all the money in the world will not help! You mentioned that political corruption is part of the "de facto influences" in the government model. I think this captures part of it, but more of what I am looking at is that corruption is a source of friction resisting any movement in a good direction. Please consider putting corruption in as a cultural attribute, and if it can be shown that it is redundant with administrative spending within the model, then we can take it out again if necessary. But I feel very strongly it will be necessary.

In terms of the tech level of a culture being important, which we discussed above, I think the most important affect is that the strength of one culture to influence and other increases dramatically with its technology level. Basically, no matter who the barbarians are, when they take over a civilization, if you look 100 years later, you can usually hardly see the previous barbarian culture at all. Even though they were on top! It's because the barbarians don't have traditions to go long with much of the circumstances that occur in the higher-tech society. They frequently take on the court rituals of the higher-tech society, because they had no courts... Obviously there are some exceptions, but I think this is a very strong trend over world history. I think it needs to be included when cultures mix together into a hybrid culture.

I think I and E can be modeled ok in the way Rodrigo proposes (probably one variable suffices). However, I would also include corruption in the mix. (Why innovate when graft is more profitable, and less risky ) We need to keep some lid on the attributes, and using combinations is a good way to do that IMO. Richard, I think this will work out fine, although I may be deluded

Language: Agreed, lets ditch the languages for now...

More than one religion: Ok, leave simple is my vote. Easy to change if we decide otherwise later.

Expansionist and Aggressiveness: I think these are more a function of Government than culture, as someone pointed out a while ago in a thread far, far away.

If this suggestion is supported, I think we need to re-evaluate what social techs still are ness. in the tech model, and that's a job I think we need to do together.
------------
Mark:
Well, on corruption we have a disagreement. I'd love to see what other think on the matter. I'll add it as a cultural attribute for now.
As for including it in I and E, I don't think so. Why cheating would decrease innovation? When cheating you're actually creating new ways to do things! I know your greatest concern is determining what makes an economy really work from the productive perspective and the tech development perspective, but I guess you're relying too much on the corruption variable. I think that before continuing a discussion about the relationship between culture and corruption we should really have a discussion about what makes an economy work.

On tech-culture: Yes, everytime nomadic tribes invaded settled civs they ended up embracing the conquered culture... I think I finally understood what you wanted. My question is: what made them change their barbaric culture? was it the fact that they were less advanced as you propose? was a lack of own identity (low nationalism) leading to a easy cultural break down? was it the mere fact that they were nomads and the settled lifestyle appeared attractive once faced so closely?
I agree on the effect you mention, now the question is what exactly provokes the cultural adjustment.

If this suggestion is supported, I think we need to re-evaluate what social techs still are ness. in the tech model, and that's a job I think we need to do together.
------------
I think before we accept this, another working alterative should be set up. If it can work for every instance that the social advanced can handle with the aid of the enthic modifiers as good or better I'm all for it and would like to help since I am really into this.

Well, on corruption we have a disagreement. I'd love to see what other think on the matter. I'll add it as a cultural attribute for now.
As for including it in I and E, I don't think so. Why cheating would decrease innovation? When cheating you're actually creating new ways to do things! I know your greatest concern is determining what makes an economy really work from the productive perspective and the tech development perspective, but I guess you're relying too much on the corruption variable. I think that before continuing a discussion about the relationship between culture and corruption we should really have a discussion about what makes an economy work.
------
As far as having it as a variable i think its good, but the use mark and rich descibed imo isn't good enough to warrant its use.

I think that there are only two good ways of dealing with religion. One way, which is used in the social model, models different religions and their characteristics but makes no value judgements. This allows religion spread to be accurately modeled and should be reasonably inoffensive.

However, LGJ had a point: The social model does not model the evolution of religious thought and the technology model does.

The other way to medel religion, which I was using earlier, is to leave specific religions out of the picture and have a tech that sums up your civ's religion. Higher values mean that the religion, whatever it is, is better meeting the spiritual needs of the people. Under this system, all religions are equal and they have the same effects. There is not even a hint of discrimination or stereotype.

We were never planning on discovering polytheism one day and suddenly being able to ride elephants as a result. This kind of silliness is what made me abandon the old system of tech growth and come up with the continuous tech level model we are using now.

The only differences we had planned on would be cosmetic. For example, the civ would get the "Spiritual Soldier" template application at Religion level 35. In a western culture it would be called Chivalry and in an eastern society it would be called Way of the Blade. The effect of the tech would be exactly the same, but it is appropriate to whatever culture you have so the Japanese are not forced to research Monotheism like thay are in Civ 2.

This way of modeling religion is somewhat simplistic, but it is fair and in the absence of anything better it seemed like a good way to model the progression of religious thought.

As I set before, a combination/compromise should be the way to go. I'll give one example of a way we could be able to combine the two models:

Each GRW is defined as a family of religions rather than a single religion. For example, one GRW would be "Western Monotheism." Each of these GRW's has characteristics like the current GRW's, but these characteristics are malleable. Furthermore, the GRW attributes change based on conditions within an individual civilization. This means that the attributes in one civ can be different than the attributes in amother civ; the GRW can have a different flavor in each civilization.

In addition to the different attributes, the GRW in a civ has a level, similar to a tech level. This level represents many things, including:

1) The GRW's ability to meet the spiritual needs of the people.
2) The logic and clarity of the GRW's doctrine.
3) The amount of literature and art devoted to that GRW.

This tech level increases due to tagged RP's generated by the religious establishment and sometimes by the people that support the religion. Helper techs are Philosophy and the various art techs.

A GRW with a high level will be more popular and spread faster. It will also provide more benefits to the civilization, in the form of lower corruption and crime.

Note that the level of the GRW is different in every civilization.

This combination should allow both spread and advancement to be modeled. I think it is a reasonable way of doing things. It should be non-offenseve because it makes it clear that we are dealing with the local application of the religion and not the core beliefs of the religion.

The other way to medel religion, which I was using earlier, is to leave specific religions out of the picture and have a tech that sums up your civ's religion. Higher values mean that the religion, whatever it is, is better meeting the spiritual needs of the people. Under this system, all religions are equal and they have the same effects. There is not even a hint of discrimination or stereotype.

We were never planning on discovering polytheism one day and suddenly being able to ride elephants as a result. This kind of silliness is what made me abandon the old system of tech growth and come up with the continuous tech level model we are using now.

The only differences we had planned on would be cosmetic. For example, the civ would get the "Spiritual Soldier" template application at Religion level 35. In a western culture it would be called Chivalry and in an eastern society it would be called Way of the Blade. The effect of the tech would be exactly the same, but it is appropriate to whatever culture you have so the Japanese are not forced to research Monotheism like thay are in Civ 2.

This way of modeling religion is somewhat simplistic, but it is fair and in the absence of anything better it seemed like a good way to model the progression of religious thought.

As I set before, a combination/compromise should be the way to go. I'll give one example of a way we could be able to combine the two models:

Each GRW is defined as a family of religions rather than a single religion. For example, one GRW would be "Western Monotheism." Each of these GRW's has characteristics like the current GRW's, but these characteristics are malleable. Furthermore, the GRW attributes change based on conditions within an individual civilization. This means that the attributes in one civ can be different than the attributes in amother civ; the GRW can have a different flavor in each civilization.

In addition to the different attributes, the GRW in a civ has a level, similar to a tech level. This level represents many things, including:

1) The GRW's ability to meet the spiritual needs of the people.
2) The logic and clarity of the GRW's doctrine.
3) The amount of literature and art devoted to that GRW.

This tech level increases due to tagged RP's generated by the religious establishment and sometimes by the people that support the religion. Helper techs are Philosophy and the various art techs.

A GRW with a high level will be more popular and spread faster. It will also provide more benefits to the civilization, in the form of lower corruption and crime.

Note that the level of the GRW is different in every civilization.

Anyway I've figured out a way reviewing the old social thread and the way religions were handled their. I think changing some things around for how they advance (not spread since for the most part i like the GWR idea better than the former idea...its simpler and in some ways more realistic). I read a post that rodrigo made that seemed to be able to handle for the most part the advancement of religion. That is base it on the level of abstractness. There are some flaws with this though since higher abastactness doesn't ness. mean a more advanced religion. I think adding another variable could help, but i don't know yet. This will only affect how social advanced evolve over time. Note that even if this system is used, certain areas will still require certain types of techs before being advanced upon (FE in fine arts u can't start out with animation). I could use some ideas for variables for the others. I think fine arts will probably have to have atleast 2-3 advancement variables, one for visual arts, another for performing and a final for musical (though we could possibly get by with combining the last 2...i don't know).

Anyway I'm not posting it now cuz i wan't to know if i should continue with this social advancement sub-model first.

Another note, there will be more variable for religion. The 2 (well 3 if u count starting location) you have aren't enough).

Another note on religion, I think you should consider something like was mentioned about plurality practiced in eastern cultures. I think not doing that discriminates against them saying that a person must be at most 1 religion and i thought we were trying not to do that here like was done with the civ games.

Also on another note with religion, you say the only religions that can spread beyond the natural boudries are GWR. I think that's wrong in a few cases. FE if i have forced conversions by the sword i should be able to spread my chosen PR where i control beyond its natural boundries.

I in general agree with Richard's idea about modeling the whole social stuff half in the social model and half in the tech model. As I said, there're some things that can be incredibly complex to model in the social model context, like the "Spiritual Soldier", so they for sure should go in the tech model. If LGJ agrees too, I think the core of our problem would be then where to draw the line between models. Here are some things related to this matter:

1) I don't want to see "monotheism", "meta-life approach" or any such thing in either model. These should only be flavoring names applied arbitrarily to a just born GRW. Why? because they serve no use in gameplay terms and could only lead us to offensive problems. The very essence of each GRW should be there in characteristics WITH A CLEAR EFFECT ON THE GAME.

2) Religion should not be a tech advance in any way. As said by Richard, when new religions appear, they're just new ways to see the world and therefore it's not a good idea to tag some of them as more advanced than others, which is the main assumption we'd made if included in the tech model.

3) GRW characteristics and moral codes should not change. Two good reasons. First, modeling cost. Modeling that would be as complex as modeling a culture and the question about how each characteristic should behave is not easy to solve. Second, religions indeed have changed almost nothing in thousands of years. I know this can be an opinion you may find wrong, so I'm gonna try to convince you: When we look at religion practices and people's views about religious matters, we can for sure say things have changed notoriously, but this does not mean religion doctrine has changed. Take christianity for instance. All its doctrine has changed about nothing in these 2000 years. Today, it's the same story and beliefs first christians had. Even more, the church still is based in the words of the bible, which is the same book they have used all these centuries. There's a very good example regarding "the universe". Do you know when christianity officially accepted the earth not being in the centre of the universe? Less than a decade ago! Society has accepted Galileo's ideas for centuries so far. This shows how slow changes in doctrine are. The same happens with other religions. What do changes is people's view about religion, but not religion itself. People start to believe in non-religious things like Galileo's ideas or Darwin's ideas, while religion doctrine stays the same. That's why for the same cult you can find from very liberal practicers to fanatics. Fanatics are actually those believers taking doctrine in a rather unflexible way. The social model allows people to be less influenced by religion as techs advance using the "Importance of Religion" variable, so, FE, in a modern west country people would find in religion other roles compared to ancient times.

I never said that any religion was better or more advanced than any other. Every GRW would start with the same tech level. This level changes with the popularity and official support of the religion. Also, I never said that the level made a religion "better." The level is there to create the religion based applications like Chivalry. Once a religion reaches a certain level of popular support and longevity, these applications will be given to the civ.

Again, a high tech level is not meant to imply that a religion is better. It means that the religion is a bigger part of people's lives and a bigger part of the civilization.

"Evolution" is not a value judgement. I simply meant it to mean, "change over time."

I'm sorry; I made a hasty decision. I should not have written that I didn't see any problems with the social model. While I still think that most of the social model is good, I didn't look closely at the religion part of the model and I assumed it would be as good as the rest of the model. After considering it more closely, I now think that there are some problems woth the religion modeling.

I do not like the way that the social model makes all religions static. This problem is compounded by the assumption that every follower of the religion follows the doctrine exactly. By Rodrigo's definition, this makes every religious person in Clash a fanatic. I think that this is a very bad thing to imply.

I agree that the emphasis of the model should be on the effects on the population and the world, not an arbitrary definition of the religion.

Rodrigo:
---
When we look at religion practices and people's views about religious matters, we can for sure say things have changed notoriously, but this does not mean religion doctrine has changed.
---
My view is religion form is irrelevant IN GAMEPLAY TERMS . . . What really matters is what religion does to people and how many people it can reach.
---

Doctrine is simply one aspect of a religion's form. What religion does to people and how many people it can reach will depend on religion practices and people's views and not the form or doctrine of the religion.

The effects of a religion that are relevant to gameplay will be constantly changing. I happen to be more familiar with European history, so I will use the Catholic Church as an example: The current pope has a very different effect on the world than the popes in the middle ages. He does entirely different things. For example, he works for peace in the middle east while his predecessors sent people over there to make war.

For another example, consider the Japanese in this century. Only 55 years ago, their society and religion encouraged pilots to crash their airplanes into enemy ships. Nowadays, Japan is one of the most peaceful Asian countries.

We cannot use a model that assumes that the religious leaders and followers in 2000 will act the same way as they did in 1200 or even 1945.

While the doctrine may not change much, most relevant effects of the religion will change signifigantly. The religion attributes, defined as the way perople act and how they influence the civ, must change over time.

I don't think the IR variable can cover the problem of static doctrine. The current assumption is that people will either follow an ancient, unchanging doctrine to the word or ignore it completely. The form of religions will change; equally devout people will sometimes do entirely different things as the interpretation of the religion changes over the centuries.

I referred to the religious class in passing, and I'd like to make the statement more explicit: In real life, the actions of the RC change over time even though they are a part of the same religion. In the clash model, the RCM values for four important attributes will never change. Today's pope is not aggressive like previous popes were, but the model assumes that they will be the same.

I was planning on disguising the religion "level" and keeping it out of the tech tree. It would be in the social model interface, not the tech interface. The relation to the tech model would be hidden. And yes, the religion "level" will fluctuate up and down. It is not meant to only go up.

I agree that the social model should be the basis for most social applications. It should be possible to assign most applications like Abolition of Slavery based only on social attributes. The social attributes, plus a religion and/or philisophy level for each civ, should do the job well.

I'll be going on vacation tomorrow, so I won't be able to continue this discussion. I've said about all I can already; if I haven't convinced anyone yet I probably never will. The "level" idea is not menat to be final and other somutions could be found. But I remain convinced that religious attributes should change over time the same way that cultural attributes do.

1) I don't want to see "monotheism", "meta-life approach" or any such thing in either model. These should only be flavoring names applied arbitrarily to a just born GRW. Why? because they serve no use in gameplay terms and could only lead us to offensive problems. The very essence of each GRW should be there in characteristics WITH A CLEAR EFFECT ON THE GAME

4) What I've being trying to say all along is "don't look at the religion form (natural, sky-based, monotheistic, polithesitic, meta-life, etc), but look at its effects on population and its spreading capabilities". Focus and meditate on this single phrase. My view is religion form is irrelevant IN GAMEPLAY TERMS because if people is monotheistic it makes no difference at all compared to being meta-life supporters. What really matters is what religion does to people and how many people it can reach. As defined in the model, what religion does is to change cultural attributes, making them ad hoc to religion attributes, as if people would be trying to behave according to religion's doctrine. And about spreading capabilities, that's where GRW come in. A GRW is nothing but a religion that can go beyond a particular ethnic group (not beyond a province, civ, nation, border, etc), while a primitive religion is someway attached to a nationality (ethnic group), so others cannot embrace it. An example of primitive religion is aztec beliefs, because in that cult there're elements like "God X protects the aztecs" and consecuently no other tribe feels interested in it (or at least not in a important level). Maybe the name "primitive religion" is not the best and should be called "ethnically attached religion" or such.
------
OK. I think I can work with that apporach, however you will still need atleast a couple more variables. These do affect daily live and clash game itself because the concept of religion is so differnt in ways from the orient and the west w/o even using the meta-life/god apporach.

I have gone through and based on what u said only put the ones i think need to be added and a good reason why. And don't complain about the numbers...i cut out about half of them because of what u said.

Alignment - (0-100) I didn't want to put this in. Beleive me I don't want to complicate things further than nessasry and this would gladly be the first thing to go if it would simply things enough without destroying what makes a religion different from another, but I can't. Anyway, to keep from saying one religion is good and another evil, instead Alignment is pro-social/anti-social behavior, based on the general morals of the originating ethnic group.

Why is this nessary? Lets take Christianity and its counterpart Satanism (I am usuing the offical religion of Satinsim, not the cults). The only differance between the two would be without this that Christianity would require material sacrifices and Satanism wouldn't and that Christianity is more centralized than Satanism. Hardly enough to show the rivalry (to put it nicely) between them. That is why this is needed.

Another reason is because it is the only way to show many of the so called darker religions. These will have effect in the game by promoting anti-social behavior and turmoil (depending on the civ and alignment) Also pro-social obes might insist on not starting wars even if they are aggressive, but finding other ways to attack.

Aggressiveness - (0-100) This is used for several areas. First it represents the overall assertiveness of a religion. It also is used to determine the overal tolerance level for other beliefs (high aggressiveness=low tolerance). The more a belief structure differs, the more aggressively it will tend to act toward that religion.
Aggressiveness is also used to determine the rate of expansion of GWRs. This doesn't mean highly aggressive religions spread faster or vise versa. It depends on the variables of the other religion.

OK i'm not adding this...just expaning its role so that i don't have to add something like tolerance.

Nature Affininty - (0-100) This represents how the religion views nature and how much of the religion revolves around it. Highly Natural Affinity religions revolve heavily around nature and vise versa. In addtion high Nature Affinity religions will view humans as equal or even less than nature and should try to live in absolute harmony with it, while low Nature Affinity religions view humans as the superior of nature and that they have the right to control and tame nature to do their will.

Why is this needed? Because this is the main driving force for why the western type was the first to develope industrialization, its expansionism, etc. All the eastern religions and the native american religions have much higher levels for this and it has drastically changed the way they act, technologically, socially, economically, etc.

Sacrafice - (0, 1, 2; 0-1) This represents the types of sacrifices one must make for the religion. This doesn't include moral sacrifices to the way you think and act in your daily life as this is inherant to all religions and thus shouldn't be modeled. Instead this represents additional sacrafices one must make. There are theree groups (1-3), each with an on/off switch (0-1) to represent the various types of sacrafice. To keep this model from becoming to complex, if a sacrifice type is "on" it is considered mandtiory in some sort and pretty high on the scale so we don't have to worry about modeling that.

0: Material Sacrifice - This can be anything from money and articles to food and a drastic change of lifestyle, ie beyond what most people would do (such as Traditional Budhism).

1: Animal Sacrifice - One must sacrifice animals to appease the gods or forces around them. These sacrifices can be such as a farm animal, pet or an animal u hunted or just some random aninal.

2: Human Sacrifice - This requires the sacrifice of a human. The one sacrificed can be willing and/or not (prob dependant on aggressiveness). This is different from animal sacrifice for religious and sociatal technological reasons (ie most people usually think human sacrfice is barbaric).

Well these need to be seperated because just having a high level doesn't mean u will sacrifice humans or animals, etc. just something. FE To budhist sacrifice is extermly important. They sacrifice money, clothing, everything materialistic (everything they get they must beg for or get donated to them. This is for tradtional budhism). So there sacrifice would be like around 100. Whether u think u still need the 0-100 range is up to u.

Traditionalism - (0-100) This represemts the resistance to change in the way society is and the religion itself. Older religions tend to have higher levels, up to an extent. At some point they must either change or die out.

Um well this is needed because religions do change slightly, primitive or enthic religions moreso, but even GWRs do to. This could be also used for modeling branches. This is needed also because more tradtional religions who would have low tolerance would be farther behind the times like ur example of christianity.

3) GRW characteristics and moral codes should not change. Two good reasons. First, modeling cost. Modeling that would be as complex as modeling a culture and the question about how each characteristic should behave is not easy to solve. Second, religions indeed have changed almost nothing in thousands of years. I know this can be an opinion you may find wrong, so I'm gonna try to convince you: When we look at religion practices and people's views about religious matters, we can for sure say things have changed notoriously, but this does not mean religion doctrine has changed. Take christianity for instance. All its doctrine has changed about nothing in these 2000 years. Today, it's the same story and beliefs first christians had. Even more, the church still is based in the words of the bible, which is the same book they have used all these centuries. There's a very good example regarding "the universe". Do you know when christianity officially accepted the earth not being in the centre of the universe? Less than a decade ago! Society has accepted Galileo's ideas for centuries so far. This shows how slow changes in doctrine are. The same happens with other religions. What do changes is people's view about religion, but not religion itself. People start to believe in non-religious things like Galileo's ideas or Darwin's ideas, while religion doctrine stays the same. That's why for the same cult you can find from very liberal practicers to fanatics. Fanatics are actually those believers taking doctrine in a rather unflexible way. The social model allows people to be less influenced by religion as techs advance using the "Importance of Religion" variable, so, FE, in a modern west country people would find in religion other roles compared to ancient times.
-----
Well i know your wrong there about religions not changing. I know history of religions and such about them very well. And they have changed in very fundimental ways.

Since your on christianity i'll take up that. Chirstianity first off has had the bible changed by several popes during the middle ages to fit there will and hasn't been corrected. Thus Doctrine changed. This didn't happen in the eastern orthodox branch, just in the roman catholic which was later past down to the protostant branches.
Also another thing. In the begginings of christianity there was no such thing as saints...they were invented later to commenerate people they considered worthy.
Another thing. In the begginning there was even battle over wheter christianity should be monotheistic or polythesitic (not that this matters for ur model), but it's just another example. If you want i can even come up with better examples and for other religions.

2) Religion should not be a tech advance in any way. As said by Richard, when new religions appear, they're just new ways to see the world and therefore it's not a good idea to tag some of them as more advanced than others, which is the main assumption we'd made if included in the tech model.
-----
Well he's right about how religion and philosophy will be handled (as well as fine arts). This isn't that hard to do since techs can even go down in levels if u can't afford their upkeep.

I would prefer that no names be given to any religion. That was the approach taken in the tech model. The social model is the one that gives names and characteristics to the religions.
----
I agree totally with this. However the player should be able to name him themselves or something other than GWR of (insert enthic group parameter here).

Again, a high tech level is not meant to imply that a religion is better. It means that the religion is a bigger part of people's lives and a bigger part of the civilization.
-----
Actually i'm with rodrigo on this. We should use the religious importance variable for this instead of the religion level.

For another example, consider the Japanese in this century. Only 55 years ago, their society and religion encouraged pilots to crash their airplanes into enemy ships. Nowadays, Japan is one of the most peaceful Asian countries.
-----
In addition they are the most secular nation in the asia, although they are very religious. This is because the east defines religion differntly. It doesn't define it by doctrine or belief, but by practices and riturals in daily life. There is belief, but that takes a second seat. And doctrine is very uninportant.

I don't think the IR variable can cover the problem of static doctrine. The current assumption is that people will either follow an ancient, unchanging doctrine to the word or ignore it completely. The form of religions will change; equally devout people will sometimes do entirely different things as the interpretation of the religion changes over the centuries.
-----
Actually i didn't think about this, but he does have a point. I mean even with working with that there is still going to fanatics and those who don't give a shit, but will call themselves a certain religion.

Finally on a totally differnt note:
Resurectting dead religions:
It should be possible, even after 1000s of years. It has happened IRL. the 2 examples are greek religion and druidic religion.

I hope, however, you can answer at least this question before going on vacations: 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." ? I ask it because I consider the comment totally wrong. The social model does not do that.

OK. So far I've been unable to convince you two about the religion topics we've discussed. I'm gonna give my opinions for the last time because otherwise I'll just repeat myself endlessly. If we can't solve this, well, I guess it'll be Mark's call to decide what to do. The following goes for LGJ and any other interested (not-on-vacation) soul:

Here I go....
I) Let's not forget our final goal: Build a couple of models (social and tech) able to produce interesting scenarios for players regarding social effects. We are NOT modeling society in all its richness nor attempting to have a completely detailed social world. That goal is what decides what should be and what shouldn't be in the models.

II) Another thing is modeling approach. Things like static religious doctrine or dynamic religious interpretations or whatever, are just means to achieve the goal and they're all valid if they guarantee giving a true-to-life outcome. Crusades, religious discrimination and all that kind of things are the desired outputs and they're what the player sees in the game. It really doesn't matter how those outputs were actually produced or what assumptions were made. It's the visible outcome that matters, not inner processes.

III. All social effects incorporated in the tech system have an inherent assumption, intentionally or not, explicitely or not, which is "something is better than other". It's the tech system structure that forces this assumption. This is so evident that already we're talking about "tech-social sub-models", because we aknowledge we can't simply put in social stuff in the tech system without messing things or creating prejudices. We are considering changing and expanding the current tech system because it really cannot hold social changes in a proper manner, and that's wrong IMO. If you get to that point, you've to realize you're not creating a tech system anymore but something else, larger than that. As a game design decision, my opinion is "keep the current tech system as it is and just don't add social stuff in it". This way it will do wonders out of REAL techs, like matallurgy, and it won't produce problems for social things. Social things must be managed, at least mostly, in the social model. My social model or any future one.

Now...
Based on I), do we need models to incorporate every single cult? every single religious practice? No. What for? It only complicates things. What we need is modeling general trends, general changes in religion. Otherwise we start modeling each detail of society and that's not what we want. See the world in the big picture. What do you see? Just three religions different enough from each other. If you want to compare catholics and protestants sure you'll find differences, but seeing them in the grand picture they're just the same. What relevance have differences between catholics and protestans when in the same picture you have native american beliefs or buddhism? None!
We can find infinite particular cases just about everything. Details are an infinite space. Consider "holy cows"! How tempting is to add such thing and force the econ model to be less food productive in civs with religions embracing this idea? This is why I don't like looking at each particular practice a religion has. Instead, I prefer to look at the general effects. In this case, "Sacrifice". All religions dictate to followers some sort of material sacrifice reducing the potential economic productivity and wealth. Some religions choose high sacrifice, some low, but that's it... why adding any more details? what good it does to the game? Modeling small differences adds close to null fun to the game and a lot of computing effort.

Based on II), is static religion doctrine better or worse than other approaches? The only important thing is to see if the model is able to give us the outcomes we want the player to face. So, let's see... My model says doctrine is static, while the "passion" for doctrine (Importance of Religion) changes. As a result, the model allows from fanatics to "just believers". Doctrine can be followed just a bit, more than a bit, a lot or to the word. The outcomes the player faces go, then, from passioned peoples wanting to discriminate other beliefs or go to crusades, to just going to church on sundays... From people supporting monarchies or fundamentalistic govts, to people prefering a secular State... Are these desireable outcomes? Do these outcomes reflect the general aspects of religions through history? Yes, I think so. Does the "static doctrine" characteristic prevent the model from producing these fun-to-play features? No. They'll be there and even more, they'll be there at a low cost as opposed to the complexity of modeling doctrine change. So, if you want a changing doctrine, tell me what do I gain as an extra. Tell me what relevant fun-to-play features I'm missing as a result of a static doctrine.

Based on III), all social stuff included in the tech system should be placed there veeeeery carefully. For the same reason, the less we put in the tech system, the better. The tech model should not be THE answer for such important social things as religions. Also, tech info is valid on a civ-wide level, while social stuff is better handled at the ethnic group level. This helps preventing bizarre effects or an arbitrarily homogenization of all civ's ethnic groups based on what the civ-level tech info dictates.

As a result of the previous arguments, here are some comments on some of the things LGJ and Richard have said:
"The form of religions will change; equally devout people will sometimes do entirely different things as the interpretation of the religion changes over the centuries."
>>Yes, that's a change in how people see religion, not religion itself, therefore, the effect desired is already included in the model via "Importance of Religion".
-------
"In real life, the actions of the RC change over time even though they are a part of the same religion."
>>This is a very good criticism, although it belongs to the govt model. It's true, the RC is currently acting politically the same in any point of time. The criticism is so good that I will change the way RC Mentality is computed to include the effect of "Importance of Religion", which is the way, as has been explained, the social model manages different perspectives of the same religion.
----------
A religion "level" on the tech model... I'm totally opposed. It has several problems:
1)It's ambiguos. Explaining what "level" means would help, but I think it hardly can be done in a non-offensive fashion.
2)It would tend to have the same role "Importance of Religion" has.
3)It's not clear which ethnic groups in the civ would be affected by this civ-level tech info.
----------
LGJ's "Alignment": We can easily incorporate the existence of anti-social/evil religions without this attribute. Just imagine a religion with low religious tolerance, high aggressiveness and high individualism. Anyway, I'm not interested in modeling "dark cults" because they're a detail in the grand scheme, so if they can or cannot fit in the social model is something I really don't care about.
-----------
LGJ's "Agressiveness": Why did you merge the role of this attribute with the role of "Religious Tolerance". I think they work well separetedly.
-----------
LGJ's "Nature Affinity": This one is really interesting. It's a possible good adition. I think it can also help with the proposed cultural attribute "ecologial view". There's some similarity with Asceticism (low Asceticism->low care about nature), so I'm not fully convinced. Maybe you can help me see why we should have Nature Affinity AND Asceticism...
-----------
LGJ's "Sacrifice": You have entered in the detail level for this one and I prefer to keep it as it currently is in the social model. The only worth discussing thing is IMO human sacrifice. It'd be worth modeling if the number of sacrificed people would have an impact on demographic growth or on economy (labor force), but IMO this type of sacrifice has been so low-impact in history that it doesn't deserve modeling.
------------
LGJ's "Traditionalism": My intention is to keep religious attributes unchanged overtime. Traditionalism would enter only I'm forced to change the model to flexible doctrines, which, you can see, I'm fighting hard not to...
-------------
"Resurectting dead religions": What would be the impact in gameplay terms? A resurrected religion wouldn't be so different from a newly born one in all the relevant parts of the game. I don't see the need to include this.

Anyway to your points:
I> Let's not forget our final goal: Build a couple of models (social and tech) able to produce interesting scenarios for players regarding social effects. We are NOT modeling society in all its richness nor attempting to have a completely detailed social world. That goal is what decides what should be and what shouldn't be in the models.
------
Yea I agree. But in some ways i think your simplifying the religious aspect too much.

II> Another thing is modeling approach. Things like static religious doctrine or dynamic religious interpretations or whatever, are just means to achieve the goal and they're all valid if they guarantee giving a true-to-life outcome. Crusades, religious discrimination and all that kind of things are the desired outputs and they're what the player sees in the game. It really doesn't matter how those outputs were actually produced or what assumptions were made. It's the visible outcome that matters, not inner processes.

Based on II), is static religion doctrine better or worse than other approaches? The only important thing is to see if the model is able to give us the outcomes we want the player to face. So, let's see... My model says doctrine is static, while the "passion" for doctrine (Importance of Religion) changes. As a result, the model allows from fanatics to "just believers". Doctrine can be followed just a bit, more than a bit, a lot or to the word. The outcomes the player faces go, then, from passioned peoples wanting to discriminate other beliefs or go to crusades, to just going to church on sundays... From people supporting monarchies or fundamentalistic govts, to people prefering a secular State... Are these desireable outcomes? Do these outcomes reflect the general aspects of religions through history? Yes, I think so. Does the "static doctrine" characteristic prevent the model from producing these fun-to-play features? No. They'll be there and even more, they'll be there at a low cost as opposed to the complexity of modeling doctrine change. So, if you want a changing doctrine, tell me what do I gain as an extra. Tell me what relevant fun-to-play features I'm missing as a result of a static doctrine.
-----
First off religion insint static. On changing doctrine (i assume in this context in means underlying beliefs), as far as GWR is concerned, if you want it to stay the same, that's fine. However, PR or Ethnic Religions (ER), are not static in the least bit earlier on, espically when they are appraoched by new religions. Therein lies the problem though, where to draw the line. I think making ERs static is stripping away to much in favor of simplicity and doesn't address the fact that ERs adapt when GWR come in and theaten them. They change and model some aspects of the GWR, but not enough to become the GWR. This might not have an immediate impact, but later on it will because they will act more like the GWR, but not entirely so. I'd say the best way to model this is the first time the ER comes in contact with the GWR the check for conversion, adaptabilty, etc. is made, and then no more for adaptability. Even GWRs change because of competition, but we not as much so for the sake of simplicity, unless something catestrophic needs to happen to keep the religion alive we can say it stays the same.

III> All social effects incorporated in the tech system have an inherent assumption, intentionally or not, explicitely or not, which is "something is better than other". It's the tech system structure that forces this assumption. This is so evident that already we're talking about "tech-social sub-models", because we aknowledge we can't simply put in social stuff in the tech system without messing things or creating prejudices. We are considering changing and expanding the current tech system because it really cannot hold social changes in a proper manner, and that's wrong IMO. If you get to that point, you've to realize you're not creating a tech system anymore but something else, larger than that. As a game design decision, my opinion is "keep the current tech system as it is and just don't add social stuff in it". This way it will do wonders out of REAL techs, like matallurgy, and it won't produce problems for social things. Social things must be managed, at least mostly, in the social model. My social model or any future one.
-----
OK, but we still need for the tech level some understanding for you to gain "Code of Conduct" or "Ethics." Societies don't start out with them, they evolve into them. I'm not dictating that enthics of group A are better than B, but that it takes a certain level of understanding, cooperation, etc. and knowledeg of the social world around you before you can gain this.
How Ethics work is up to the social model for each ethnic group or civ. The point i'm making is that this is just a "marker" for when a scoeity has learned enough about society to have ethics or any similar type social advance, such as Abolishment of Slavery.

LGJ's "Alignment": We can easily incorporate the existence of anti-social/evil religions without this attribute. Just imagine a religion with low religious tolerance, high aggressiveness and high individualism. Anyway, I'm not interested in modeling "dark cults" because they're a detail in the grand scheme, so if they can or cannot fit in the social model is something I really don't care about.
------
If you can come up with a way of doing it otherwise that's fine. I just didn't see a way. And i wasn't talking about the samll cults, but of bigger grander religious ones (and yes there were a few).

LGJ's "Nature Affinity": This one is really interesting. It's a possible good adition. I think it can also help with the proposed cultural attribute "ecologial view". There's some similarity with Asceticism (low Asceticism->low care about nature), so I'm not fully convinced. Maybe you can help me see why we should have Nature Affinity AND Asceticism...
-----
OK. I'll use 3 major religions for this, Christianity, Hindsuism and Budhism. Both have low Aesticism, though christianity is not quite as low. Hinduism is tricky since it varies from place to place and the type of path u choose so we can say its 40-60. This is one reason i wanted branching system for such complex religions as Hinduism which can't really be defined by an overall agenda. Anyway, Hinduism, despite even the branches with really high Aesticism (around 80) would still value nature as extremely important and would not do anything to upset the balance of life and nature, thus one reason they have lagged behind technologically until recently. Budhism is the same way, though it is more inclined to be devoted to the few who follow the path and isn't the type of religion that "tells" you that this is means this and that means that. Again this depends on the branch since there are two branches that go in almost completely opposite directions, one that has a much higher Ascetism than the other (that's the more common one, but the one with the monks u usually hear about is the lesser branch). Finally Christianity has a very low natural affinity. The view throughout its history has been that the land, sea, etc was put here to serve humanity and thus that humans can do with it pretty much as they please so long as its not a holy place. This may however be one of those "catestophic" things that could change the attributes of a GWR because it may need to change this attitude soon because many are adopting a more "eastern" thought for this particular issue.

LGJ's "Traditionalism": My intention is to keep religious attributes unchanged overtime. Traditionalism would enter only I'm forced to change the model to flexible doctrines, which, you can see, I'm fighting hard not to...
-----
Well ur right about that, but i think it is nessary for a good sense of how religions evolve. Otherwise your going to haveto come up with ways of creatings many new religions over time because attitudes will change and there will be religions who embrace those attitudes. There will also be rulers who will try to create their own religions.

BTW, I just finished reading the characters and tech models. The latter is really good... for "real" techs, though You'd probably like to know the new future techs poll is not working. I voted and it didn't work...
As for the chars model, I think a first and good step toward creating interconnections between it and the govt and riots models would be introducing Radicals' effects on these two models. I'll give it a thought for some days on how exactly to do it and I'll open a new thread for us to work on this matter in a couple of weeks or so. Hopefuly, it'll be an easier task to accomplish than agreeing on social matters!

Now to our thing...
"First off religion insint static. On changing doctrine (i assume in this context in means underlying beliefs), as far as GWR is concerned, if you want it to stay the same, that's fine. However, PR or Ethnic Religions (ER), are not static...."

Three things to say:
1) I like the name ER. Let's use that from now on.
2) The model currently has static religion attributes only for GRW. ERs are not static. This happens because I assumed ER attributes match cultural attributes of the ethnic group in question, so, given culture change, ER changes too... I hope this makes you a little bit happier...
3) Regarding the staticness of GRW, you have to give me a new argument, not just insist that they're not static. Why? Because I've given you a totally new argument for keeping staticness in the model: I'm not saying anymore doctrine is static (although I still think is true), I'm saying it doesn't matter if it is or not static in real life, what matters is staticness asumption DOESN'T prevents the model to give us the fun-to-play features. Given this, let me ask it again: What do I gain as an extra introducing doctrine flexibility? If the model is currently producing the main outcomes for religion behavior, why should I change it?
----------

Alignment: So... you didn't like my idea about a religion with high aggressiveness, low tolerance and high individualism for your satanic religion?

----------
Natural Affinity: What you say only reinforces my opinion. You kind of sorted three religions by their Asceticism level and they turned out to be sorted by Natural Affinity as well... so I guess we can use Asceticism alone as a substitute for NA.

-----------
"The point i'm making is that [ethics] is just a "marker" for when a scoeity has learned enough about society to have ethics or any similar type social advance, such as Abolishment of Slavery."

Just look closely to your phrase: "A society has LEARNED enough about society to have ETHICS or any similar type of ADVANCE". Isn't it clear to you, as it is to me, that here you're simply putting your western/american culture as the reference? You simply can't see slavery as a sign of progress! It's impossible to you to see it that way! In your mind, social progress means things like abolishing slavery. And that's alright, so do I, but we cannot impose this, otherwise we're simply imposing our values to just everybody. For ethics and any other social thing. There's no value at all you can say "Oh, well, this one is really valid for everybody". Just think in the most bizarre things and you'll find some tribe somewhere in some point of time seeing the same things as non-bizarre.

When you try to base your arguments on the existence and "development" of ethics, you're actually saying some social customs cannot exist in ancient societies, like it'd be ness a "higher understanding" or a "higher level" of ethics to produce a given behavior. This is not true! what special social thing is present today that didn't exist yesterday? Ethics don't have levels, they're simply different and when saying ethics "advance" you're making a value judgment with your own culture as a reference. You say societies didn't appear with ethics, they "developed" it, they "understood" the world and then "produced" ethics. I say no, it just takes two guys for producing ethics. Ethics are invisible, they appear with the simple existence of two persons and the way they interact with each other, the behaviors accepted between them. They don't have ness to write or express these implicit moral rules. Rules appear at the same time the two persons meet and start to interact. This is BTW what makes interesting Robinson Crusoe's story. It just takes two to produce a society and in that story Friday was a slave, but later he and Robinson were friends... it sure didn't take any ethic advance for that, they just changed the way they interacted.

Anytime you introduce a social variable in the tech system you have to give it an interpretation. You need to know what means a low value for it and what means a high value. This is no easy task and can lead to tough problems. Like ethics. We couldn't model the rise of nazis in germany by the 20th century. German "ethics" would be too high by then as a result of centuries of existence... they just couldn't come up with the idea of gasing jewish! The only way would be to reduce ethics, and therefore you need something in the tech system reducing ethics by some strage means. And by strange I mean methods applied only to this particular variable, but not for all the rest techs. This only leads you to having a tech system with "special rules" and "exceptions" which I believe only destroys such a good and coherent model as the tech model is.

The next time you think about a possible social variable for the tech model, before proposing it, think what interpretation its tech level is going to have and then think if that's biased to your own culture. My belief is you won't be able to create them without a bias, and that's not your fault, it's a problem derived from how the tech model works and the relativity of values and morals from culture to culture, religion to religion.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM 3) Regarding the staticness of GRW, you have to give me a new argument, not just insist that they're not static. Why? Because I've given you a totally new argument for keeping staticness in the model: I'm not saying anymore doctrine is static (although I still think is true), I'm saying it doesn't matter if it is or not static in real life, what matters is staticness asumption DOESN'T prevents the model to give us the fun-to-play features. Given this, let me ask it again: What do I gain as an extra introducing doctrine flexibility? If the model is currently producing the main outcomes for religion behavior, why should I change it?

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM Alignment: So... you didn't like my idea about a religion with high aggressiveness, low tolerance and high individualism for your satanic religion?

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM Natural Affinity: What you say only reinforces my opinion. You kind of sorted three religions by their Asceticism level and they turned out to be sorted by Natural Affinity as well... so I guess we can use Asceticism alone as a substitute for NA.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM "The point i'm making is that [ethics] is just a "marker" for when a scoeity has learned enough about society to have ethics or any similar type social advance, such as Abolishment of Slavery."

Basically i'm not saying "lets model these in the tech model." I'm saying we should have some sort of progression, sometimes like abolishment of slavery and Aethism linked to advances in the tech model, but not inherantly a part of them. But if we don't have some sort of progression, once a group meets the fundimental requirements for a philosophy via religious status and/or ethic status, they automatically know it even if they can barely comprehend what religion and philosophy are? That's not right. Not only that, but if they loose that status they would A> keep the old one and gain the new philosophy automatically...again not right because you can also learn philosophies via contact with other civs thus potentially learning them all before 0 BCE even! or B> loose the first one and gain the new one...not right. Also there are historically some types of philosophies that have only appeared more recently such as secularism.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM Anytime you introduce a social variable in the tech system you have to give it an interpretation. You need to know what means a low value for it and what means a high value. This is no easy task and can lead to tough problems. Like ethics. We couldn't model the rise of nazis in germany by the 20th century. German "ethics" would be too high by then as a result of centuries of existence... they just couldn't come up with the idea of gasing jewish! The only way would be to reduce ethics, and therefore you need something in the tech system reducing ethics by some strage means. And by strange I mean methods applied only to this particular variable, but not for all the rest techs. This only leads you to having a tech system with "special rules" and "exceptions" which I believe only destroys such a good and coherent model as the tech model is.

OK what exactly do you mean by modifiers to the tech model? Are you saying we should strip social modifiers from controlling how much rp generation (along with other variables) is created for basic techs? If that's the case your wrong. You couldn't model FE the Christian Church's power to slow the growth in areas like Astronomy or Ecology. You couldn't show why the Eastern civilizations went from being the most advanced in the world during the first millenium to dropping off rather low by the second. You couldn't show the mogel advancement in military technology while leaving behind other aspects.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM The next time you think about a possible social variable for the tech model, before proposing it, think what interpretation its tech level is going to have and then think if that's biased to your own culture. My belief is you won't be able to create them without a bias, and that's not your fault, it's a problem derived from how the tech model works and the relativity of values and morals from culture to culture, religion to religion.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 06-29-2000 09:50 PM OK, for sure you have an answer for the above, at least as long as mine... Now let me put this another way to see if we can really advance in this thread... When you propose a social tech variable like you did with ethics, what I guess you're trying to do is to add something you consider very important that you think the social model is not able to do. Am I right? If so, why don't you give me a list of things you want to see AS A PLAYER that you think the social model won't be able to produce as an outcome? Please concentrate on the things you think MUST be there... the most important effects. Maybe with such a list we can work some things out.

As a player i don't think its right to start out with ideas that might not have come until the 2nd century ACE. And that if i do discover these earlier, I'm not guarateed to keep them if my culture changes that much.

Also as a player i don't want to be overwhelmed at the beggining with ideas such as abolishment of slavery or equality of everyone or perhaps Aethism.

But...on to the comments:

1.) I have to agree with LGJ and Richard...Religious characteristics need to evolve or change over time. If not, then how do we show, FE, how Christianity was once very aggressive (the Crusades), and now it promotes world peace? Also, in recent years the Catholic church has publicly accepted some long-accepted scientific beliefs, such as evolution and the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe (yes, they only recently admitted they were wrong on this one), which is a dramatic change in the fundamental teachings, or doctrine of the religion.

Though the changes should be slow and small, I must admit.

2.) I thought we agreed that Religions would be best if their atrributes modified, not replaced, a culture's attributes? The way you have it now, the GWR religous stats completely replace the cultures stats...which IMO should not be done.

Why?...I just think it would work better as a modifier. FE, if a culture had a Aggressivness of 70 before, and then they aquired a GRW, why would they suddenly or even gradually change to an Aggressiveness of 10 (if that's what the GRW had)?

It would also allow 2 different cultures with the same GRW to have different levels of stats, while still following the same religion.

Your Improtance of Religion variable could be like the Centralization variable I had, increasing or decreasing the amount the religion modifys the culture's stats by.

3.) I really think we should use real-world religions. Think about it...we have all this realism and complexity, then you get to religion and we just have mumbo jumbo...it would piss me off as a player (and history buff), if with all the realism I've already experienced in the game, I get a GRW, and it's nothing but a cardboard cut-out with some numbers and some "fantasy" name that acts like Christianity. Or even worse, if a religious fanatic leader came to me and said, "You must declare war on the Egyptians, Miss Piggy our eternal Goddess wills it."

I personally don't care if I offend anyone, but since it's more than me making the game, I think the best solution to not offending anyone and using real religions would be to look at my #2 post above, and using religions as modifiers, as realisticlly as possible (with input from everyone), try to decide what the relion's stats would be. This would be difficult, but IMO much better than having my citizens worship Mahabu the Almighty.

4.) Why didn't you use the missionary/priest idea for spreading and converting? Just asking.

5.) I also don't like the fact that an EG must all follow the same GRW. I probably just misinterpreted it, so forgive me if I did, but why should all Egyptians follow the same GRW?...I mean you did say that an EG can only follow one GRW.

quote: Originally posted by Toubabo_Koomi on 06-30-2000 11:19 PM 1.) I have to agree with LGJ and Richard...Religious characteristics need to evolve or change over time. If not, then how do we show, FE, how Christianity was once very aggressive (the Crusades), and now it promotes world peace? Also, in recent years the Catholic church has publicly accepted some long-accepted scientific beliefs, such as evolution and the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe (yes, they only recently admitted they were wrong on this one), which is a dramatic change in the fundamental teachings, or doctrine of the religion. Though the changes should be slow and small, I must admit.

quote: Originally posted by Toubabo_Koomi on 06-30-2000 11:19 PM 2.) I thought we agreed that Religions would be best if their atrributes modified, not replaced, a culture's attributes? The way you have it now, the GWR religous stats completely replace the cultures stats...which IMO should not be done. Why?...I just think it would work better as a modifier. FE, if a culture had a Aggressivness of 70 before, and then they aquired a GRW, why would they suddenly or even gradually change to an Aggressiveness of 10 (if that's what the GRW had)? It would also allow 2 different cultures with the same GRW to have different levels of stats, while still following the same religion. Your Improtance of Religion variable could be like the Centralization variable I had, increasing or decreasing the amount the religion modifys the culture's stats by.

quote: Originally posted by Toubabo_Koomi on 06-30-2000 11:19 PM 3.) I really think we should use real-world religions. Think about it...we have all this realism and complexity, then you get to religion and we just have mumbo jumbo...it would piss me off as a player (and history buff), if with all the realism I've already experienced in the game, I get a GRW, and it's nothing but a cardboard cut-out with some numbers and some "fantasy" name that acts like Christianity. Or even worse, if a religious fanatic leader came to me and said, "You must declare war on the Egyptians, Miss Piggy our eternal Goddess wills it." I personally don't care if I offend anyone, but since it's more than me making the game, I think the best solution to not offending anyone and using real religions would be to look at my #2 post above, and using religions as modifiers, as realisticlly as possible (with input from everyone), try to decide what the relion's stats would be. This would be difficult, but IMO much better than having my citizens worship Mahabu the Almighty.

In addition Rodrigo says he doesn't want to model god/meta-god or whatever type religions and doing that would require him to do so to some extent.

Finnally, people like me will want to create a differnt type of class M planet totally unique and can't do this if there are religions from this world.

quote: Originally posted by Toubabo_Koomi on 06-30-2000 11:19 PM 4.) Why didn't you use the missionary/priest idea for spreading and converting? Just asking.

If those fanatics don't realize that this is a GAME modeling history, and that's simply the way history unfolded, I say that's their problem. The only thing I'm worried about, in regards to offending religious types, is if we totally get the characteristics wrong, like giving Buddism an agressiveness of 90, which is ridiculous.

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.

4.) That was something probably only Rodrigo or maybe Axi also, would know about. It was something that was in my social model that I never completed...not what you are thinking.

"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...
-----------

"what exactly do you mean by modifiers to the tech model? "
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.
-----------

"As a player i don't think its right to start out with ideas that might not have come until the 2nd century ACE [like abolishing slavery or atheism]. And that if i do discover these earlier, I'm not guarateed to keep them if my culture changes that much."
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.
------------

"I have to agree with LGJ and Richard...Religious characteristics need to evolve or change over time. If not, then how do we show, FE, how Christianity was once very aggressive (the Crusades), and now it promotes world peace?"
This is exactly how I like questions asked. As long as you keep your eyes on the scenarios players would face, we'll be able to advance in this thread. Discussing about religious attributes being static or not is irrelevant and what matters is if the model can or not produce things like crusades in ancient times and don't produce them in modern times.
The social model CAN give you crusades in ancient times and a more friendly behavior in modern times without the need for changing religious attributes. The key is the "Importance of Religion" variable. This variable tells you how important and relevant religion is for people or, if you want, how fanatic people is regarding religious issues. The social model, as a general trend, will give you high IR for most of the game and it will decline in modern times. Therefore, for earlier times you can expect the church to be really concern about things like holy places and support crusades, but in modern times this support would fall. The good thing is crusades can exist in the model at a CHEAP cost (just one variable, IR). So I don't need to make the model more complex having changing religious attributes to produce these effects. Doing so would be work for nothing.
-----------
"The way you have it now, the GWR religous stats completely replace the cultures stats..."
on what do you base this comment? The social model makes religious attributes influence cultural attributes, which does not mean cultural attributes suddenly change to the exact values religion is dictating as an ideal. Again, Importance of Religion tells you how much people care about this, so if your people is fanatic, cultural and religious attributes would be really alike, but if IR is low, this is not ness so. As for the speed of changes, all changes in the model are very slow. Any exception to this speed rule could arise from interconnecting this model with the chars model and its Radicals.

"It would also allow 2 different cultures with the same GRW to have different levels of stats, while still following the same religion."
As explained, this would naturally happen because religion has only a level of influence and doesn't control cultural attributes completely.
------------

"I really think we should use real-world religions. "
I agree with LGJ. However, could you be more explicit? What exactly do you mean?

"In addition Rodrigo says he doesn't want to model god/meta-god or whatever type religions and doing that would require him to do so to some extent."
It's not that I don't want to, it's the fact that nothing changes in gameplay terms when you say "this religion has a single god" or "this one believes in reincarnation". So my suggestion is we can have these things but only for flavoring with no real modeling, like simply labeling religions.
-------------

"Why didn't you use the missionary/priest idea for spreading and converting? Just asking."
As I once told you, I really liked your priest idea. However, once I developed the spreading process I found a much easier way to model converting. Anyway, there's nothing said about converting in the current model because I indeed liked so much your idea that I want to introduce it someway or another, so I just left aside converting for this first version post. I'll post your priests idea soon so others can see it and comment on it too.
-----------

"I also don't like the fact that an EG must all follow the same GRW."
My main argument for this has been: everytime you pick a real-life/historical ethnic group, in an overwhelming majority of cases you see only one religion having like 85%-90% support plus a variety of other small cults or branches. I take advantage of this and assume then there's only one religion, gaining a lot in simplicity without having absurd results.
-----------

"Which reminds me...how are ethic types created/destoryed/absorbed?"
created: in civs with multiethnic govt it is possible for a new EG to appear.
destroyed: if killed
absorved/disappear: EGs with low nationalism will tend to be absorved by other tribes.
-----------

There's something really good in these last posts, which is you giving gameplay features you want/don't-want to see AS PLAYERS. Rather than discussing philosophical matters, it's way more productive to see if specific things like "abolishing slavery" or "crusades" can or not be produced in the social model. Those are the really important things. That's the way I prefer to see this thread going...