To check the old thread click here

Regarding policy-setting methods, we agree to code two systems and test them in the beast. We'll let this thread only to discuss the so-called "default" system, which is the one originally planned in the govt model with some minor changes. I *strongly* suggest you, F_Smith, to open a new thread for your system. In this way both system can be developed with no bias to one or the other. It's fair! F_Smith's system can become a much better one if everybody can see how it's being implemented rather than seeing it as a black box in the beast. I also think that Axi could help you a lot there because of his doubts regarding the negotiation procedure and his ideas for election-procedures.

Alright then. The following are the last elements I found in the other thread related to the default system. They're suggestions by Richard:

Richard wrote:
(btw, can anybody teach me how to quote?)

"So beside the slider, there could be a botton that says "foul play limits." The button opens a window where the player determines the maximum escalation of foul play. The player could tell the game to stop at bribing, or set foul play to unlimited. The game would start with the most benign actions, and if they don't work it would keep implementing more harsh actions until the objective is met or the player's limit is reached.

Cool Idea: Sometimes overzealous agents might go beyond the player's limits. Then the player would have to deal with the consequences their actions."

And he also says:
"My view is that if a player really wants something to happen, that player should be able to get the thing to happen. For example, suppose that I really needed to raise taxes to support a last ditch defense of a valuable province. I wouldn't want to micromanage a lot of petty politics and run the risk of my vital tax increase being rejected. I would want to set foul play to unlimited and run the tax rate up into the red zone. I would want to make sure that I get my money.

Of course, I would still have to deal with the consequences of my actions."

My opinion is...
As Mark has said, it's important to have what the ruler wants (the ruler's govt profile) just like we have it in the beast. In this way classes can look at it and have feelings specifically aimed to the ruler himself, which is a separate thing than the govt as a whole. This is a little bit contradictory with the sliders interface because the player would have to set a value (which becomes the official govt value) and then the ruler's govt profile doesn't count at all. That was what made me offer the lattest proposal for the negotiation procedure.

In brief it was: "For a given policy, the player chooses the value he wants in his ruler's govt profile. Classes negotiate between them a value X for that policy. Value X is then modified according to what the ruler wants and how much power he has to achieve a final value. The more despotic, the more he is able to modify the value and the closest this final value will be to what he wanted. And vise versa."

So here the ruler uses his power as a modifier. Assuming for now and for simplicity that we take 0.5*ruler_polpower as the modifier magnitude, then if the negotiated value X for Civil Rights is FE 35% and the ruler has 50% pol.power, then the ruler could set the policy in whatever value in the range [35-25,35+25], that is [10,60]. This range I would put in green. This is the range where the ruler can move without interacting with anyone. He is in his right. But, we won't make the player choose the govt policy value. To make ruler's preferences count, the final value is set according to what the ruler putted in his preferences. If what he wanted was within this range, the official policy becomes that value. If not, the official value takes the upper or lower extreme value in the range. This happens automatically.

Now suppose the ruler didn't get what he wanted. I like the idea of setting a level of foul play considering things like bribing, threats and hits. Let's assume the player has already set this foul play level. Since he didn't get what he wanted, his goon squad would push other classes to make X closer to what the ruler stated in his preferences. According to the level of foul play, classes will be influenced and X would then change, creating a new range. Then, again, the policy is set automatically according to ruler's pol.power and preferred value. To help the player with more info, we should use here a color for the final value. Let's say we make the final value red. That means the range was achieved through dirty play. Or, even better, let's put a color from green to red that's sensitive to how much effort the goon squad had to put to get it. Here it's important to note that even if the ruler tells his squad to act aggressively, in many cases for some policies it won't be necessary to do anything because classes can think alike the ruler.

So, what the ruler does is to set his preferences and the level of foul play. The game does all the rest. It makes classes negotiate, creates the green range and compares it to what the ruler wanted and then uses the goon squad if the ruler preference wasn't achieved. A final value is found. At any given time, if the player looks at the "political interface" he should see for each policy:
A green range.
A (let's say) blue dot denoting X
A green, yellow, orange or red dot representing the final (and official) policy value.

And beside it, his preferences for all policies. The player knows everything here. He knows what are the values he can choose to be in line with the law (green range), he knows if his goon squad had or not to act and with what intensity, he knows what classes negotiated (X) and he knows what's the current official value for each policy. He can change his preferences and see what happens.
How does this sound?

I like it. It works well for all policies and changes in ruler's preferences can lead to an immediate change in govt policies, which is good in the sense that player will "feel" their control over the govt. For the political structure (pol.power shares) I suggest a less immediate and direct play. That's because changes in it can have a wide scope of effects and for realism is better if changes in it happen smoothly. So, for these variables the ruler has his preference too and affects the negotiated shares just like policies were, but if he changes his mind, he won't see a change immediately. As time passes, the structure of power changes.

The ruler can have other special actions in other interface for more radical changes, like closing the senate (sudden changes to the political structure) or banning and ideology. These would be less frequent actions under the exclusive hand of the player instead of his goon squad.

Browsing unhappiness in the civ should IMO be made in a totally different interface. There's too much to analyze and in too many ways to have it all incorporated.

I am too sleepy to comment sensibly on your new ideas. But I can tell you how to do quotes!

On the main forum screen follow the link to the faq that is near the 'post new topic' (top right).

I think both systems can coexist. I think that for government decisions, the pass/fail slider can appear first, and if there is no green zone there the player can ask for negotiations.

There is an important reason I think the negotiations should not always happen:

It does not allow you to ignore fanatical minorities. For example, assume that the ruler with 20% power and other groups with a total of 60% power all want a value at 90, and a minority with 20% power wants a value of 10. In real life, the government will not ususlly try to appease the fanatics. If 80% of the power base wants the same thing, then that is probably what will happen.

But the negotiations will adjust the value downward by quite a bit. The official policy is something that nobody wants. It is even possible that the new, "negotiated" value makes 60% of the people unhappy enough to riot!

So I think that the pass/fail should be the standard for government decisions. It is a more realistic depiction of the coalition process.

But there is a place where negotiations should always be the standard for calculating values. The culture is the average of the beliefs of all the people in the country. If something is not decreed by the government, then the conditions are usually the kind of average the "negotiations" system portrays. Even though nobody is negotiating or talking about things, the weighted average is what will emerge.

This is where that 20% minority has an impact. Their views will influence the cultural climate. If they all hate foreigners, then the average feeling of xenophobia will increase even if everyone else likes foreigners. The climate that a foreigner experiences will be changed by this minority, even if the official government policy is one of tolerance. The negotiation system should work very well for calculating the average like this.

What do you mean by the "pass/fail" system? Is it the 51% rule?

"Accidently" killing a lot of people: This can't happen if the player sets the foul play level to low. Only if the player sets a high level, but if so, where is the "accident"? He's actually saying "do whatever it takes to get it done"!

You seem to care a lot about "timing". What happens before and after or what the ruler knows before taking a decision. In the proposed system, every time the player looks at the interface he knows what was the negotiated value classes found and there is *already* a ruler's preference for each policy. Ruler's prefs are the ones from the last time he visited the interface or the start values in the very first turn in the game. With all the info above, the game has *already* computed the official policy values, so the govt already has a policy value for all policies. The political game has *already* taken place. In fact, it has taken place as many times as game turns have passed from the last time ruler's prefs were set. The main role of ruler's prefs is to tell the game what the player wants and each game turn the political game takes place using ruler's prefs as player's desires. The player is never "called" to negotiate or to set policy values. The ruler is "acting" every game turn, even though the player is really not.

So, the player uses the interface to change his preferences every now and then. And to change them, he has info there telling him things. He sees what classes negotiated the last turn, what was the final value achieved using ruler's current prefs and he knows how dirty he (automatically) played last turn to get govt values the closest possible to what he stated as preferences. For whatever change in prefs he is considering, he knows if he's going to heat up things or cool them down. He knows what's easyly achievable and what not. And whatever decision he makes, will have an immediate and a continous effect for the years to come. Because the ruler is continously playing politics, even though the player is not.

All the system is meant to model long-run politics. Negotiations between classes and the effect of the ruler are evolving all the time as time passes. There are no "negotiation times" or "policy setting times". It's all happening continously. The player won't change policies directly, but choose new preferences from time to time. Each game turn, the whole situation is checked again and ruler's prefs are seen as if the player was expressing his desire every single turn. Every time he changes his prefs, he's saying "I want govt policies to be like this for all the years to come". The game processes that every turn thereafter. As time passes, classes can change their mind and their negotiated value X may change, affecting automatically the whole process. They won't say "hey, ruler, now we want to make this tiny change, could you please tell us what you think so we can set the final policy value?" every time they change their mind a little bit. Doing that would be playing a short term political game caring about every single change.

Fanatic Minorities: You're overlooking all the deals and arrengements that could take place behind the scenes. In your example you're using a majority rule that makes it impossible for those fanatics to somehow alter the final value. All the interactions of political actors (I gave several examples of them in the old thread) are forgotten when you choose a system that overlooks classes or parties with low power. This is a must for realism, so whether we model a lot of individual possible political arrangements (maybe F_Smith's goal) or we allow an abstract level of political interaction like the one proposed here. Majority rules ALONE don't do the job. They, alone, are far from being realistic.

Yes, the "pass/fail system" is the 51% rule.

I understand the confusion now. Your "long term political system" is the same thing I referred to as the "social decisions." We actually agree, but we were using different terms.

When I say "government decision" I mean something like an emergency war bond bill or a drastic change like abolition of slavery. These are things that are decided once, in a single meeting.

Consider the slavery issue. If 70% of the people want to emancipate the slaves and 30% want to keep them, will the government institute a policy of "half slavery?" Usually, they won't. The 70% will have their way and free all of the slaves.

But the social climate will not be one of pure freedom. The 30% of the population that was former slaveowners will probably continue to treat the former slaves like dirt. So while the Government Policy is one of pure equality as decided by the pass/fail system, the Social Climate is mixed as per the negotiation system.

The negotiation policy is great at tracking long term change, and I now realize that was all it was meant to do. But there have been many times when big changes happened quickly because the majority wanted it to happen. F_Smith's pass/fail system does a good job of handling these one-time decisions.

That is why I was concerned with timing. I was thinking of setting the level of a one-time war tax or voting on a major change in policy. In those situations, you need to know what the other people will accept before making a preference. If you accidently ask for a tax that is way too high, you can cause a lot more trouble than you intended. But I now understand that in the negotiation system, the ruler is just making small changes to a preference that has existed for hundreds of years.

I think that the social model is the place for fanatic minorities to have an impact. There are many cases when minorities are completely ignored. In the US there are a lot of minor parties like Libertarian Socialists that have never really influenced any vote or government policy. The majority completely ignores them because they don't have power. But they do have an impact on the society.

I don't like majorities rules at all. They're to my eyes too "all-or-nothing" and unrealistic. Just like F_Smith has fought for having them, I'll make my fight for keeping them out of the default system. I simply believe they're too bad for long term modeling.

I understand your concerns about things like slavery or war-times decisions and how very weak parties have almost no effect at all in final values. Let me say a couple of things about that:

War-Times: Of course in general here we're refering to all kinds of sudden events that demand quick response by the player and not only wars. In the same framework of modeling long-term politics, we (Axi and me) never intended to include in policies things that are very short-termmed. Policies are meant to be overall guidelines for broad topics. We never thought about policies or laws like "penalties for robbery" or any such tiny thing. That's why the list of policies is really short. I'm putting them here just in case you don't know them (if you do, spare me the tomatoes):

>> 3 variables to determine the type of economy (PP, SP and EP). It's possible these will be reduced to just two.
>> 3 variables for discrimination (ethnic discrimination, religious dis. and slavery)
>> Tax Rate
>> Civil Rights
>> Foreign Affairs (how aggresive the govt is allowed to be in the internat'l arena)

With the exception of tax rate, they are, as you see, just general laws. A list this short is also very helpful to avoid micromanagement. Because they represent very general concepts, I don't expect sudden events triggering strong changes in policies. You don't dramatically change your type of economy just to face a war. Maybe as a player you would still want to change policies a little, but that will be possible in the new proposed system. So, I don't see policies as restrictive as you maybe were seeing them for these events. And even if as player you'd like to make a really dramatic change in the govt to face an event, in terms of realism this shouldn't be possible without some serious foul plays. I really don't see any problem in this area.
(Axi referred to this almost the same way in the old thread)

Slavery: An election or majority-rule system may sound better for variables like this where in real life they take discrete status. You have or not slavery. Since the majority rules work in a discrete fashion, they seem the perfect solution for something like slavery. But this is IMO a wrong interpretation. It's the nature of the variable that gives you the right flavor. ANY policy-setting system will work if you define the variable in a discrete form. If the variable Slavery has as possible values "0" or "1", then a negotiation procedure producing an outcome of 0.2 would mean, by approximation, "0". A negotiation system can be successful with all kinds of policies as long as you define the policy correctly. In fact, the govt model uses discrete values for all 3 discrimination policies to give us the right flavor, which simply means, in mathematical terms, "make a rounding to the negotiated value". So, I believe is better to use a negotiation procedure which can give intermediate results for continous variables (that are continious IRL) and can give you discrete results for discrete variables (that take discrete values IRL) instead of a system that forces all of them to behave as discrete/all-or-nothing variables.

Those little political parties: You're right in what you say. When a party is sufficently small, it doesn't even have the chance to negotiate deals behind the scenes. The negotiation system doesn't recognize this and the thing to blame, as you perfectly said it, is the averaging system behind it. My question is, Why would I throw away all the good things of the negotiation procedure just for this? And, Is it possible to refine the system to make it sensitive to this type of things? We can refine the negotiation system preserving its good things. This is not a take-it-or-leave-it decision.

Here's an idea to solve this that bothers you: Instead of a simple weighted average, we can make an exponential weighted average. Pol.power values will be exaggerated to the extremes, in a magnitude we can control, so if a party has a low pol.power value, it will appear in the equation as being zero. Therefore, the tiny party won't be able to affect the negotiation. Still, all the good things of the system are preserved. What do you think? What all the rest think? Note that if the exageration produced by the exponential is sufficently large, the system colapses to a "simple majority rule". Even more, we can control how much the "pure" simple-majority-rule applies and how much negotiations affect policy-setting.

So, I agree that the negotiation system is good for setting general policies that average out over the whole civ.

Still, I think there is a place in the default game for the pass/fail vote method. Rodrigo, would you agree to use this for things that are not covered in the policies you listed? I think that big, special actions should be voted on. For example, the construction of something like a wonder should be voted on by the pass/fail system.

And if someone wants to play the political games in detail, there are a lot of uses for the pass/fail method. They should still remain an option.

Basically, I agree with both F_Smith and Rodrigo, but it took me awhile to realize this. I agree that the negotiation system is good for long term average change, and I agree that the pass/fail method is good for short term political games. Unfortunately, I also disagree with both of them on some issues. I don't like the chaos in the pass/fail, so I tried to make it more steady, and in so doing came into conflict with F_Smith. I don't like the extensive averaging when the negotiation model is applied to certain situations, so that puts me in conflict with Rodrigo.

I think the default game needs both systems. Each is good at modeling a certain thing, but neither works for everything. I think we sould agree to use both of them and try to work out the proper place for each to be used.

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The exponential averaging sounds like a good idea, but of course it would need to be tested. As long as it can be turned off if it messes up, we should add it. We added a lot of similar things to the tech ststem. They are there for testing, and may or may not get in the final model. But flexibility is good, so we should put it in and test it.

I'm a bit concerned about the negotiation system and binary variables. When a model rounds something like that, it can create chaos and instability. The problem is again in the rounding. If a minority of 20% changes their attitude a bit, the negotiation system could cause the country to slip into slavery because the value went from .49 to .51.

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 09-04-2000 09:57 PM I don't expect sudden events triggering strong changes in policies. You don't dramatically change your type of economy just to face a war. [This message has been edited by roquijad (edited September 04, 2000).]

I believe frequently nations Do strongly change their economy in wartime. FE in WWII for the US & England I imagine before the war economic planning was about 10-20% whereas during the war it was probably 50-70% (production mandates, and restrictions, rationing, etc.). I think that is pretty drastic. And if the war had gone on for a long time, I think the negative effects of this kind of govt control of the economy would have produced serious repercussions in the efficiency of the economy.

But in terms of overall production and meeting the needs of the people, a free market will be more efficient than a bunch of government bureaucrats.

axi: I can e-mail you the spreadsheets if LGJ doesn't have them.

LGJ: It seems to me that wonders would be comissioned by the people in power. The pyramids were built not because the common people wanted them, but because the despotic rulers ordered them built.

quote: if the exageration produced by the exponential is sufficently large, the system colapses to a "simple majority rule"

I rushed my conclusions. In a situation like that, the system colapses to a system where the political actor with the highest pol.power is able to impose his will.
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Gentlemen: Forgive me for trying to stop a discussion here, but I'm affraid the socialism vs capitalism issue can lead to long and extensive talks. Most of us won't change their minds in a significant level in that regard, so I ask you all to please leave it, at least in this thread. The best place for that topic is in the govt-econ thread. This way we can move on in this thread with the things that need implementation and can be agreed more easily.
Just for the record, the last agreement I recall about efficiency in economic system is that the more socialist a system is, the higher the penalty (waste) will be for GNP. BUT, the magnitude of this penality is still TBD and for sure, it will be easily changeable by players, so free-market lovers can make it sky-high and communists can make it low (or null).
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quote: Rodrigo, would you agree to use [the fail/pass method] for things that are not covered in the policies you listed?

I see the fail/pass method as a short term political thing, but I also see it as too democratic. Are we going to have votings in a divine monarchy? If the system can be generalized a little to make sense in any type of govt AND if it can be generalized a little to accept more majority rules than only the very specific (US-like?) 51%-rule AND if it's used only for short-term play AND if at least a little of intelligence can be included in votings to simulate the "interactions", "coalitions", "strategic voting", etc between parties, then I'm willing to accept it for any policy, listed or not. Otherwise I'd accept it only for short-term decisions for new more specific policies with a low impact in the game.

That's just my opinion. It's still a team's decision.

quote: So I propose that, to make a big change [in slavery], the negotiated value should have to go farther than .5 If the value is currently 0, the negotiated value should be about .66 before things change, and if it is 1, the negotiated value should go to something like .33 before things change.

That's exactly the kind of things the exponential average can achieve. I'll give you all a more detailed example of this type of averaging in a future post. Just note your concerns here are not resolved by the 51% rule system and any "chaos" problem discrete variables produce, will appear in ANY system, because it is the inherent discrete nature of the variable rather than the system used the core of your concerns.

We wouldn't have to worry about these things if we make all variables contineous, but as you have said it yourself, variables like slavery NEED a discrete approach if we want to have the kind of flavor that a message "slavery is abolished!" produces.

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LGJ: You never commented my idea to include the things you say about extreme positions colliding within the political body. If you're INSISTING on the subject, should I understand you didn't like it?

quote: LGJ: It seems to me that wonders would be comissioned by the people in power. The pyramids were built not because the common people wanted them, but because the despotic rulers ordered them built.

First off you're right Rich, the pyramids were built because the egyptian government wanted them, but just building them doesn't make them a wonder. That was one of the unbalancing things about the Civ2 and other models, ie you already knew what the wonders were, what they did and and 'raced' to produce them, first the ones you wanted then the rest or the ones you thought you could complete before someone else.

That's not how it works here. Yes the government can ask for something to be built and be built in a grande scale, but that doesn't make it a wonder. Take the Shinto Temple to Amaterasu. The most decorate, largest and most authentic Shinto temple in Japan (making it also in the world), but its not a wonder.Also many things were not built by people in government (well atleast not because they were in government).

So someone could build the pyramids, but that doesn't mean they'll have the same impact or as much impact as in the reality. Take FE the Great Wall of China. It wasn't considered a wonder until the Europeans arrived and marveled ats its size and the effort it took to build it.

quote: LGJ: You never commented my idea to include the things you say about extreme positions colliding within the political body. If you're INSISTING on the subject, should I understand you didn't like it?

Rodrigo:

quote: I see the fail/pass method as a short term political thing, but I also see it as too democratic. Are we going to have votings in a divine monarchy?

The game won't always be a divine monarchy. In the "Who is the player" thread, we agreed that we should have the flexibility for different scenarios. I'll quote F_Smith because he gave the best example:

quote: I'm currently coding under the assumptions it can be any of the three [play options], depending on how the scenario designer sets up the scenario. In other words, you can play the 'Greeks' in a 'Persian Wars' scenario, play 'Athens' in a 'Rise of Greece' scenario, or play 'Pericles' in a 'SimAthens' scenario.

Besides, I thought that the player would be the king/ruler in a command government and the president/speaker in a democracy or republic. I never thought the player would be some deity like in Populous; I assumed we were using the Civilization model (without the power to change religion and order revolutions).

quote: If the system can be generalized a little to make sense in any type of govt AND if it can be generalized a little to accept more majority rules than only the very specific (US-like?) 51%-rule AND if it's used only for short-term play AND if at least a little of intelligence can be included in votings to simulate the "interactions", "coalitions", "strategic voting", etc between parties, then I'm willing to accept it for any policy, listed or not.

That is exactly what we are trying to do. For example, the strict 51% rule was abandoned a while ago, and we had planned on two-thirds majorities and other such things. That is why I am now calling it the pass/fail system or the vote system.

quote: Otherwise I'd accept it only for short-term decisions for new more specific policies with a low impact in the game.

I only have one quick interjection -- the 'politics' system is not actually a 'voting' system. It's a 'power politics' system. You don't try to get 51+% of the 'votes'. You try to amass 51+% of the total 'political power'.

Which is why 51+% is actually the perfect number thru 85% of history, and why the 'political power' system actually models kingdoms far better than democracies --
The basic rule about power is, was, and always will be -- if you want to do something, and you overpower your opponents, you will be able to do that something over the objections of your opponents.

The only time this changes is when a system of laws specifically limits a ruler's power.

And this option only comes up in the last several hundred or so years, I believe (I'd like someone's thoughts on that, tho). Perhaps the 'Magna Carta' was the first such attempt to limit ruler power, agreed?

I actually disagree with that, for the most part.

The policies get followed and implemented. Then, the people make their feelings known in a 'reactionary' way, thru civil disobedience.

I think your example states it perfectly.

The law gets changed, then the bureaucrats 'bend' the rules if and when they want. But the official govt policy still remains the same. The policy does not change.

Which is exactly how it works in the 'political power' game. You should be able, as a ruler with the power to pass laws, to pass a law against slavery. Now, if you find that the groups whom were made unhappy by that change are staging some sort of 'protest' by not enforcing that law, you should have a chance to take action, if you chose, to make that group happy (or force them to comply!). If the bureaucrats are unhappy, they may refuse to enforce the laws. If the people are unhappy, they may riot. If the church is unhappy, they may preach against you (inciting the people to riot?). If the Military 'class' is unhappy, they may try to murder/replace you. It should depend on who, what, why.

The 'negotiated' game doesn't really simulate this. The law doesn't ever get changed to what the person in charge of laws ordered in the first place.

The 'negotiation' method of setting govt policies does work moderately well, as you said, in simulating 'big, long term policies' -- how government policies average out over the years.

But there is no such thing, in a game like this.

Setting government policies is *always* a question of the moment. It is always the moment in time when you change the 'status quo'.

quote: I only have one quick interjection -- the 'politics' system is not actually a 'voting' system. It's a 'power politics' system. You don't try to get 51+% of the 'votes'. You try to amass 51+% of the total 'political power'. Which is why 51+% is actually the perfect number thru 85% of history, and why the 'political power' system actually models kingdoms far better than democracies -- The basic rule about power is, was, and always will be -- if you want to do something, and you overpower your opponents, you will be able to do that something over the objections of your opponents.

Doing this forces all events to counterbalance the one in control to be special actions which are usually considered at the best underhanded. This is far from the case.

What you say is true F_Smith, but not with such a slim majority. Maybe when they reach 65% or so they might force their will on others like you said, but with such a slim majority they usually don't do too much for fear of being on the other side of the fence.

Also you've yet to explain how a 50/50 powestuggle would go.

quote: I actually disagree with that, for the most part. The policies get followed and implemented. Then, the people make their feelings known in a 'reactionary' way, thru civil disobedience. I think your example states it perfectly. The law gets changed, then the bureaucrats 'bend' the rules if and when they want. But the official govt policy still remains the same. The policy does not change.

quote: Which is exactly how it works in the 'political power' game. You should be able, as a ruler with the power to pass laws, to pass a law against slavery. Now, if you find that the groups whom were made unhappy by that change are staging some sort of 'protest' by not enforcing that law, you should have a chance to take action, if you chose, to make that group happy (or force them to comply!). If the bureaucrats are unhappy, they may refuse to enforce the laws. If the people are unhappy, they may riot. If the church is unhappy, they may preach against you (inciting the people to riot?). If the Military 'class' is unhappy, they may try to murder/replace you. It should depend on who, what, why.

quote: Setting government policies is *always* a question of the moment. It is always the moment in time when you change the 'status quo'. In the long run, things can and should work themselves out thru systemic methods. But *at that moment* you change a government policy, you should not 'average' out how the policy will play out over the next several years. You should wait those several years to see how that plays out.

If you're saying that the player with 51% would do better to rarely, if ever, push their will -- then you're certainly right. If you outlaw slavery, then arrest those that continue to traffic in slaves, that group might become so angry they'll create civil unrest. And the only way to quell that unrest might be to grant them a larger % share of the power. Only a very strong despot dare risk ignoring the desires of the people.

A 50/50 split is a stalemate. You don't have the force to push the issue.

And yes, every change in govt policies will require a power struggle. But with 1 year turns, you'll only change policies rarely. At most once a decade, I should think. Usually in response to some stimulus, otherwise you'd just set the govt policies where you feel is 'optimal' and let it run.

* * *

Guys:

What breakdown for 'political power' should we offer the players at the beginning of the default scenario 4000 bce?

One pattern that seems obvious is to have a player start with total control, 100% of the power. Then the player can 'dole' out %'s to groups to win their support, etc.

Does that seem reasonable?

What to expect at 4000bc?
I think the best way is to give each civ an "almost" random regime out of a small list like:
divine monarchy
"typical" monarchy
total despotism (warlord rule)
oligarchy

A though just suddenly smacked me in the head. Why does the ruler or anyone else ever haveto know what their exact political power is? Can't we just give them an estimate so that say the ruler had 51%, he might see something like "You have about have the total power of the realm", but he wouldn't know what side of the line he was on nor by about how much. This would reduce the player from micromanaging things to get certain percentages. Same thing with alliances "Through various alliances your reign is all but complete control over your realm." or just say what the various groups hold.

?

"Reseting every turn"?

I'm not sure what you mean by this . . . but of course someone could make changes every turn, if they wanted to. But remember that every time you change a law against the will of the people, there will be increased unhappiness in the ignored groups.

And this will lead to various forms of civil unrest.

IRL such power is fleeting anyway and often varies depending on what the subject is. FE Kings of latter middle ages/early renassaunce (with the exception of England) had little/no control over the religion and often there were 2 sets of laws which someone accused under king's law could recieve sanctuary from the Church. Yet the church couldn't disctate battles. Sure they could impose ethical standards and on occasion ask (sometimes with threats) for mediation, but their power varied depending on each area.

BRIEF SUMMARY
The power in the govt is distributed among the ruler and a set of social classes. All of these political agents (including the ruler) participate in the definition of the Government Policies (or govt laws) which in time define how the civ should work.

List of Govt Policies
Tax Rate
Ethnic Discrimination
Religious Discrimination
Slavery
Private Property
Economic Planning
Social Policies
Foreign Affairs
Civil Rights

The political agents interact with each other to define policies through the "negotiation procedure", which is an abstract way to handle all the possible real life interactions between political entities, like voting, making alliances, discussing legal initiatives, bribing the opposition, etc.

In general terms, the negotiation procedure ensures that the greater the power an agent has, the more alike the final govt policy will be to what the agent wanted it to be.

The ruler enters his preferences for each policy, while what the social classes want for them must be modeled. To this end, the govt model takes info from the culture and social role of each class to determine what they want.

Social classes preferences are divided in two groups. For the first group of policies (called Directly Negotiated Policies-DNP), the value a class wants for each policy is computed individually and independently from all the rest. For the second group (called Ideologically Negotiated Policies-INP), the class is forced to choose first an "ideology", which is a pre-set group of values. An ideology is really a "govt type". Given this election, the class preference becomes what the govt type dictates.

Division in DNP and INP allows flexibility, consistency and flavor in other areas of the game.

In terms of game-play, the political entities are constantly struggling every game turn to force the govt be what they want it to be. The shape of the govt is constantly in change, smoothly. The player, though, doesn't need to interact with the model every turn. He/she just puts what he/she wants and the game engine plays the ruler for him/her in the political arena automatically.

The player will also have a set of Special Actions to (or attempt to) make sudden changes to the govt, like "closing the parliament".

The Riots Model is in charge of handling violent attempts by social classes to change the govt.

Social Classes
We're trying to make the number of classes flexible. To do this, we've created 4 "families" of social classes, so you can have as many classes as you want from each family, each behaving slightly different to the rest in the same family and sensibly more differently compared with a class in other family.

Families: Socioeconomic social classes, Religious social classes, Administrative social classes and Military social classes. For now, the default game will have these social classes:
Upper Class-UC (Aristocracy) (Socioeconomic)
Middle Class-MC (Socioeconomic)
Lower Class-LC (Socioeconomic)
Religious Class-RC (Religious)
Warriors Class-WC (high officers of the army) (Military)
Bureaucratic Elite-BE (Administrative)

GLOSSARY (MOST IMPORTANT TERMS)
Government: All persons who take part in defining policies. It can be the great priest and the great military leader in a small tribe or the whole senate plus the elected administration in a modern democracy.

Political power: The power or capability to influence the final value of govt policies. Any form of influence is counted in, legal or not. In a modern democracy, any party with at least one senator in the senate has political power, for example (very small in this case, though).

Social Class: A group of people with a certain social role and common mentality in general terms.

Govt Policy: A generic govt regulation including in theory a whole set of laws to define how the civ should operate in a given field.

Political Block: Group of social classes sharing the same condition that allows them to participate in politics. "Conditions" are 1)Economic power (control of kapital), 2)Military power, 3)Spiritual power/recognition, and 4)Inherent. The latter means you don't need nothing to participate in politics. It's your unalienable right.

Political Structure: How political power is distributed among political actors. Expressed in pol. power shares distributed among political blocks.

Government Profile: The current political structure and policy values in the civ.

Ruler's Govt Profile: Ruler's preferred values for the political structure and policy values.

Ideology: A pre-set group of values consistent with each other describing a political structure and an economic system (values for policies Private Property, Economic Planning and Social Policies). It's a more sophisticated concept for "govt type", but the terms are interchangeable.

Ideologically Negotiated Policies: Variables defining an ideology. The pol.power shares and Private Property, Economic Planning and Social Policies.

Directly Negotiated Policies: Policies not defined in ideologies. That is: Tax Rate, Ethnic Discrimination, Religious Discrimination, Slavery, Foreign Affairs and Civil Rights.

Negotiation Procedure: Method that produces the Govt Profile given the preferences of all political actors having political power.

CURRENT STATUS
The model is being coded by F_Smith in the "Beast". You can check it in http://home.austin.rr.com/lostmerchant/Clash/Editor/ClashEditor.html

The current effort in model design is to allow greater flexibility in the number of social classes. The "families of social classes" approach seen above is an implication of this. The development in this part is still in progress. Some equations in the model need to be changed to reflect this and that's part of the current work.

An alternative system to the "negotiation procedure" has been started by F_Smith under the assumption that a straight forward voting system is more realistic. You can play with this also in the "Beast". Decision to which one use for the final game waits for play testing.

The negotiation procedure has been in doubt for several reasons. No agreement yet.

quote: For all what follows minorities are irrelevant. That's because this model simulates the political game in the government leading to set the values for each government policy and minorities are definitely out of the government and have no political power to play this game

What?!
What if a Civ. has an Ethnic Tolerance of 1 or 2, meaing they have a majority, but the others aren't discriminated against very much. There should still be the change of those said minorties being in government! Look at the US, FE: White Caucasion Male would be the Majority. Does this mean there are no Blacks, Females, or Asians ever in government? Obviously not; there may be less of them, but theyre still there.

Another Small question: are you planning on including True Democracy (Basically, you control next to nothing, and any polices and the like are put to popular vote) as a possibility in the government model?

Your points are good ones, and I have raised some of them myself too. I don't know when Rodrigo will get a chance to respond... but if you want to dealve deeper into the previous discussions on this stuff, you should search on "minority" or "minorities" and you should get plenty. (Search function is to the upper right of the main forum window.)

Although I'm "in charge" of the govt part, I've been away for a couple of months, checking the forums like twice a month. I won't be able to participate intensively in Clash until March/April. So please be patient with me. In the meantime, I strongly recommend aiming to Axi all questions about the govt model, since he's the co-author and understands all the details.

On to your points:

Majorities/Minorities: I think I chose very badly the names for these categories of people since many people in the forums have taken the "typical/usual" meaning of them rather than following the definition I put in the model. That's I guess the source for your disagreement.

Majorities are all the people who can participate in the govt. Minorities are all the people who don't participate at all in the govt.

Based on that definition, it's senseless to say that minorities can/should have some level of power. Because if they do have some power, then they're in majorities, by definition.

Using the same definition, your US case is solved: White and black people is within majorities. The problem you see is because your using your "usual" idea for the term "minorities" and therefore you're considering blacks within minorities.

As I said, it's a problem of wording that I foolishly created because of my choice of names. But once one uses the majorities and minorities terms according to the definitions, everything works and has sense.

It should be noticed that the model doesn't handle societies where different people have different levels of participation in govt. That is, the usual concept of minorities (as with blacks in the US today) is not handled. Once a group of people has earned the chance to participate in govt, they do it in equal terms as any other. This was decided so only to simplify the model.

"True" Democracy: It's already included in the sense that it's perfectly possible to put it in and it'd work just like you say. But through conversations here in the forums I've noticed people don't like much the idea of loosing control of their civ, so although it's possible, maybe in the standard game you'll see a democratic regime that wouldn't be so different from a tyranny. Fortunately, the way the systems works, makes it extremely easy to customize this for player's preferences.

Discrimination: I'm not sure what's your criticism here. I'll take your last phrase: "Your Civilization hates all Asians, but they're still fine because the belive in Jedaism". I suppose you're asking what happens if people is discriminated by one side, but they're not on the other. The answer is if you're discriminated in any way, then you're discriminated. It's really how hate "works". If I hate you because of your ethnicity, I don't care if you have a religion I tolerate. I hate you anyway, because you have something I hate (your ethnicity).

Representation and Knowledge Level: It's very important to have both variables because they model different things. Although in some cases like the one you mention a certain effect can be achieved using any of the two variables, in other cases you need a clear difference to get another effect.
KL handles popular knowledge about a type of regime, while Representation handles how biased people in govt is regarding the known regimes.
Imagine the USSR. While the people in govt was anti-democratic, the democratic system was known by the people. This allows the game to model how pissed off people can be because their country is not a democracy (assuming they like democracy), while still keep the govt line anti-democratic. If we collapse both variables into one we can't have this effect. Controlling it through the KL alone as you propose, would make people unaware of the existence of an alternative system, making them more passive.
It's important to have both because they play different roles.

quote: And on the negotiating thing, there should be some sort of limit to how often you can do it or disadvantages to doing it often in a short time.

I hope everything's great with you.

I had forgotten your definition of majority/minority... I suggest at the least that they be put in the glossary in bold with your definitions clearly marked. I think its also a bit confusing that there is a huge functional gap between ED=0 and ED=1 even though the scale has many levels. That is because for ED=0 everyone's in the govt but for ED=1 only the chosen few are. IMO the scale should probably allow for more in-between states ideally. Whether that's practical or desirable we can address in playtesting I guess.

Can I suggest 'enfranchised' and 'disenfranchised', for the two terms?

quote: The answer is if you're discriminated in any way, then you're discriminated. It's really how hate "works". If I hate you because of your ethnicity, I don't care if you have a religion I tolerate. I hate you anyway, because you have something I hate (your ethnicity).

That's not what I saw defined in the model! It looked to me like they had to be discrimated in both religion & ethnically to be "refused". You might of changed it or I might of read it wrong, but that's why I found it wrong... I read it as I said: If you have 10 ED & 0 RD then people are still fine with you. As I said, this might of been changed, but that's how I read it.

And on the negotiation thing: It just seems like you could abuse changing it too often. (Drastic changes, anyway) I mean, if you could just change the settings every turn and make it one turn a lot of settings all the way up and the next all the way down and the next all the way up again, just seems a bit.... weird.

quote: 01001101 01100101 01110010 01110010 01111001 00100000 01000011 01101000 01110010 01101001 01110011 01110100 01101101 01100001 01110011 00100001

About the discrete changes in ED & RD, you're right. Continious variables would give us a better feel. I admit I don't like either the way I managed discrimination. In the future I'll re-think that part and make some proposals for an alternative system. For now, at least we have something concrete that works.

Twinge: I recall the definitions were there... Maybe I'm wrong. And I confirm: just one-sided discrimination is enough to be considered "out". If there was another thing in the document, that's an error.

Enfranchised was the first word that came to my mind too. But its not a very common word, esp. for the non-native speakers as Rodrigo says, so I settled for the other choice.

Rodrigo:

Just as soon as I finish the technology coding (and that is close).

Cheers

The curch is given 3% control, now this seems hardly reasonable, if your not familiar the catholic church post roman empire pre rennesance basicaly had more power than the king himself. The power (and subsequent abuse of power) was insane! Howerver early roman times, before emperor constantine making christianity the official roman religion the emporor was in fact the one and only god, so his ruling was in fact the ruling of god. This is also the case with egyptian.

And as you have more than likley noticed the control the church has in present time is dwindling.

My proposed solution is that as you advance through the different stages in history the poitical power is varied, different amounts for each period.

quote: Originally posted by Jordan A on 04-30-2001 10:37 PM The curch is given 3% control, now this seems hardly reasonable, if your not familiar the catholic church post roman empire pre rennesance basicaly had more power than the king himself. The power (and subsequent abuse of power) was insane! Howerver early roman times, before emperor constantine making christianity the official roman religion the emporor was in fact the one and only god, so his ruling was in fact the ruling of god. This is also the case with egyptian.

Your point is quite good for Europe Middle Ages, because Church had power. However, it is mainly because the Pope had also a lot of military and land power. The other examples I don't like because church power is not god-power. In the Roman empire, the church(es) had very little power. In Egypt, they had some, but it was often antagonist to the Pharaoh's.