Social Interaction and Unrest

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Guys,

I know this has been discussed in other threads, but I'd like to raise the issue of "Social Interaction" in Civ III.
Basically, I want to have some sense that the population of a Civ are not merely passive bystanders in history, but can actually affect change. A simple model was once proposed by a contributor to this site called "The Joker" and I'd like to put forward my take on this model.
Firstly, the keys to SI are "Influence" and "Absolutity", which I will now discuss:
1) There should be several major groups in a Civilization- Merchants, Military, Clerics, Workers, criminals and Scientists (later in the game you might even have environmentalists)
2) The base "influence" each group has on your empire is dependant on several factors: a) The # of relevent improvements
b) The # of relevent units.
c) The number of "Specialists"
d) The amount of certain "Commodities"
e) Certain tech advances
For example, a society with a large # of military improvements and/or a large # of armies would have a great deal of influence. Things like a war or tech advances like "Military Tradition" will increase their influence. On the other hand, a society with lots of Marketplaces, banks and tax men will be greatly influenced by merchants (this would increase according to the number of luxaries and trade deals)
NB. The combined base "Influence" of all these groups can be greater than 100%
3) This base "Influence" could then be modified by 2 things: Government Type and "Absolutity Index" (AI)
a) Different governments would give bonuses to the influence of some groups, and penalties to others (eg. a military government would increase the influence of the military, wheras a capitalist government would increase the influence of the merchants).
b) AI would be an integer from 0(Absolute democracy)-9(Totalitarian). You would set this index when you first form a new government, but could change it at any time (NB. certain government types would have built in minimum/maximum AI's).
Basically, an AI from 0-4 would give bonuses to the Influence of all groups and 6-9 would give penalties, with a corresponding change to happiness.
4) The first effect of SI would be to try and prevent you from getting all your own way in decision making. Essentially, several triggers for SI would exist; these would be: War and Diplomacy, Improvement and Unit construction (first time only), Tech Research and Government Changes.
5) When 1 of these triggers is enacted, a random number would be generated by the computer. This would then be compared to the following formula for each group:
AI (0=50% and 9=5%)+Groups' Influence+/-Groups interest (some triggers would interest certain groups more than others). If the generated number is less than or equal to the number generated by this formula, then the group opposes your plans. If the combined influence of the opposing groups is greater than 51%, then you must abandon your plans. You would be able to try again later, but each successive attempt would reduce civ-wide happiness.
6) "Influence" would also have another effect. If a revolution breaks out, the group with the greatest influence determines the nature of the revolt. eg. if your workers are in ascendence, then it will be a "Bolshevik" revolution. If it's the military, then an attempted Coup. Some groups, like merchants, won't revolt, but can hurt you by witholding the money produced by ALL financial improvements in effected cities.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I'd like to also discuss here the notions of Civil War and Revolution.
1) Essentially you could have 3 states: Unrest, Civil War and Revolution.
2) Each city would have a "loyalty factor" based on happiness;distance from capital; corruption levels; # of military present and the strength of the controlling Civ's culture.
3) When a cities happiness falls below a certain level, it's loyalty is checked each turn against a random number (generated by computer). If the city fails, then unrest occurs-resulting in lost income, slowed production and damage to garrisoned units! Additionally, each turn thereafter, each adjacent city would also check for unrest.
4) As long as the unrest continues, there is a chance of seccession. Basically each turn, loyalty is checked again (at ever-increasing difficulties!). If the city fails again, then the city will seccede, becoming neutral and possibly taking it's garrisoned units with it (depending on how far they are from the city that built them!). Like unrest, adjacent cities will might also potentially seccede, forming a new mini-civ (whose borders will depend on the amount of culture they take with them!) You would be able to get these cities back either by conquest, or by negotiation.
5) If an army from the seccesionists captures your capital, 3 things would happen-
i) You must select a new capital (and you gain no capital benefits until you've built the appropriate capital building(s)); ii) All surrounding cities must check for loyalty (cities that fail will join the seccesionists) and iii) you must immediately select a new government
6) Revolution is based on Civ-wide happiness. If regional happiness falls to critical levels, then the same loyalty check is made using the formula on a Civ-wide basis. Failure leads to unrest! The nature of the unrest depends on the most dominant group in your society (eg. workers unrest will lead to a slowing of production rates, wheras military unrest will lead to military units disbanding!)
7) Like Civil War, if this unrest is not quelled, then a revolution will occur. Basically, this is like unrest, but certain cities (where that groups influence is strongest-see "Social Interaction" thread for details) will go into open revolt. In the case of a workers revolution, these cities will cease gathering resources and cease all production and all garrisoned troops will be expelled (though some might defect). Additionally, these cities would begin producing guerillas/partisans to harass your central government. If they capture the capital, then you will be forced to change government (they would choose) and the unrest would cease (and happiness would go back to neutral)
8) Similar situations would occur with a military coup or a religious revolution (with the difference being that most military units will defect during a coup, and a religious revolt will produce "Fanatics")
9) Scientists and Merchants don't really revolt, in which case the nature of the revolt will be dependant on the next most influential group (however, in this case, merchants will join in by witholding money from financial improvements and scientists will withold the benefits of all research improvements).
10) Aside from being the result of general unhappiness. Certain triggers should also exist for potential civil war/revolution. For civil war these triggers would include: Wars, excessive, city based pollution/corruption, construction/destruction of an improvement, government change etc. For revolutions, triggers might include: Wars and Treaties, civ wide pollution/corruption, certain tech advances and wonder construction.
11) The chance of military units defecting during seccession/revolution should be based on certain factors like :Morale, experience, distance from "Home" city, unit type and, in the case of revolution, the group leading the revolution (eg. A coup attempt has a greater chance of unit defection than a religious uprising)

Anyway, sorry for extreme length of this post.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.


Yours,
The Aussie_Lurker.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

HI Again Guys,

I just remembered an additional element of Social Interaction which should be considered. Basically, when a new tech advance enables a new unit/improvement to be built, or a new government to be formed. Then the group to which this change is most relevent should be able to demand that the technology be used immediately. If you don't, then there should be a percentage chance (based on absolutity+influence) for that group to alter a build queue to produce the unit/improvement in question and even to Force a change in government. You can change things back immediately, of course, but this would lead to decline in happiness. In the case of a new unit/improvement, the cities whose queues would change would be those in which that groups influence is strongest (based on number of relevent improvements in that city; as described above).

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[DarkCloud]

Wow, this should be read and responded to, (I have little time right now)

so... BUMP!

[Dr Strangelove]

How about having the invention or adoption of democracy by any civ resulting in a decrease in the happiness of all adjacent monarchies and despots?

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Guys,

I'm not sure if "Joker" still posts to the Civ III site, but I felt inspired by a post he sent concerning Social Interaction to the original Civ 3 list. I confess that many of the ideas I've put forward on SI have been borrowed from his original idea. I recently found, however, the original post by Joker, and thought I'd show it on this list and see what people think and, if Joker's still out there, maybe he'd like to add a few thoughts to his original post.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

The Social Interaction (SI) system basically involve 2 categories: Your absolutity and who you are supported by.

Your absolutity:
This defines how much you can do without having to negotiate with your people. It is done with a slider bar, that goes from 0 (you must get your people’s support on everything) to 10 (you can do whatever you want without asking your people. They should work so that both extremities would be very unlikely and that they would never have occured historically. I have chosen to call the degree of absolutity for
the Legislature level (leg level). So if you have leg 1 you are not very absolute, and you can not operate individually, where if you have leg 8 you are pretty absolute. You would of cause want as high a leg level as possible, but unfortunately you wouldn’t decide this on your own.

Supported by:
This is where the system becomes interesting. You can not just rule because you feel like it. You need to be supported by someone. The groups you can be supported by is a representation of this. They each have a certain ”strength” over your civ (shown as a percentage of the ”strength” of the total of all the groups. One group might have strenght 41% where another might have strenght 3%), and the ”combined strength” of the groups you are supported by need to be a certain percentage (50% perhabs?) of the ”strength” of all the groups in your civ. Following is a list over each of the groups you can be supported by. In the parenthesis is how their individual strength is defined
(of cause the numbers of each groups strength are not directly comparable – how could you compare the percentage of the people in your
civ that a strong believers of a religion with the number of units in your civ? In other words all these numbers would have to be multiplied with a certain factor for each group to make it all balanced, and so it will be possible to compare the strength of the army with that of the religion).
The religion (number of people that are strong believers in that religion) – each religion in your civ (apart from atheism) would be an individual group that you could base your power on.

The army (number of units)

The ”ancient Greece/Rome type city based wealthy people that have earned their money on slave based farms” (?? – Food production? Number of slaves?)*

The ”medieval type rural based agricultural wealthy people” (percentage of people working in food production?) – the nobility*

The ”city based industrial bourgeoisie” (percentage of people working in production/factories?)*

The ”information age wealthy people” (percentage of people working in service/information professions if such are included?)*

The intelligentsia/philosophers (science output? Percentage of people being scientists?)

The bureaucrats/administrators (percentage of people working in the administration?)

The labour unions (percentage of people organized in unions?)

The police (your civs police rate?)

The coorporations (production?)

Organized crime? (corruption in your civ?)

The people directly (overall living standards, education levels and more)

The people representatively (overall living standards, education levels and more)

You would have to choose who to base your support on from all these groups. Each group would become availible after a certain tech (the religion and the army would come almost immediately in the game where the labour unions would be availible pretty late the people directly would as the only one be there from the beginning, but in most cases it should pretty soon become less powerful than the other groups).
This is of cause very chaotic, but it could be done so that you can support your power of several groups, and that you choose your support in ”10% intervals”. This would mean that you could be supported by: 40% on the army, 20% on the coorporations, 10% on the
administrators and 30% on the people representatively.

The key to this system is how it is chosen who you base it on. To make my idea workable each group would need a (very simple) AI. When choosing how to base your government you would make sort of a negotiation with all these groups. Each group will look after their own interests, and they will try to get as much power as possible. You could think of it as being like when a government is being made. The person trying to become prime minister (which in this case is you) want to get enough support to be able to form a government. Each group is like a party, and they want to get as much power as possible. The power of the group is like the number of seats a party has in the parliament. They want to get as many of their people becoming ministers as possible. Here this is described as the percentage you are basing your power on. The higher percentage a group gets the more power it gets (this will be described late). So each group want to get as high a percentage as possible. You on the other hand want to be supported by as many as possible, so you actually want to give each group as low a percentage as possible. This would mean that when you enter the SI screen each group is displayed with their power, and with a demand for how many percentages they want. The religion might demand 30% for it to support you where the intelligentsia might demand 20%. For this to work the groups need to have an idea on how strong they are, so that they don’t all demand 100%. So the very weak groups would be more than happy just to get 10% and actually have some power where the powerful one would deman much more.
Your leg level is showing how much you can do without having to get the support from your support groups. The groups would therefore want you to have as low a leg level as possible, as this also means more power to them. You would be able to interact with the groups, so you could offer them things, like ”no you can not have 40% of my governing being supported by you, but if you accept 20% I will go down from leg 6 to leg 4.” They would then interact with you, as they would accept or deny your proposal. It should work so that if your leg level is low enough then virtually every group will accept just 10% support.

This system is of cause a model, so some things are not included. The relationship between the individual groups are not included. In stead it is based on a ”pool” model of political decissions. Each group is a billard ball, rolling around on the table. The stronger groups are bigger balls, so they are more likely to push the weaker ones away, while heading for their goal. The player could be like the pool player. In the beginning he has no idea how to make the balls do as he likes, where the very advanced player could manipulate them to do as he pleases.
This system should work the same way, although a player should need to be extremely good to just make all the groups work for him.

The larger a percentage of the ”power” in your civ that is supporting your rule, the more stability there would be (the less likely would there be chance for the government to collaps – you could never be sure that this would not happend, but the higher stabilitity the lower the chance - or for cities to breake loose of your civ) and the less corruption there would be (as most people would support your civ). Of cause both stability and corrupion would be determined by other things than just this.
You would therefor need to balance a lot of things when making your government. Not only would you like as high a leg level as possible,
you would also want to get the support of as high a percentage of the power in your civ as possible. The more powerful a group is the more it could demand from you (again it needs to be aware of it’s powers). For instance, in the western world today the people would be by far the most powerful group in the civ. This could not only let them demand a high percentage of your support, it could also allow them to demand that you have a low leg level. You have to accept, as you simply need the people’s support to make a working government. This can explain why the leaders of the western countries have very little absolutity. On the other hand if there are a lot of equally strong groups in your civ you would be in a position to demand a lot from them just to let them get any power, as you would just be able to shoose someone else. In such a scenario you could get perhabs 10% support from 10 different groups and get a very high leg level. This would not only give you lots of stability and low corruption, it would also let you work more or less autonomously from your support groups.

A group should possibly also be able to negotiate with foreign powers, and you should be able to negotiate with groups in foreign powers. All civs on the globe having 14 AIs in them besides from the civ itself (especcially with more than 30 civs, as most of us want) means a lot of AIs. But again I don’t think the groups would need advanced AIs. In stead they would just be very simple forms, able to just figure out a few things. They would not have any city management, unit movement or even any overall strategies. They just need to be able to take a few concrete, short run decisions, based on a few parameters.

Making decisions:
This would all not make any sense if if wasn’t because you would need all these groups when making decisions. The lower your leg level the more you would have to consult your supporting groups when making decisions. Making this work, however, is the tricky part, and one of the main reasons why we have not yet been able to make a system in which you don’t have absolute control possible.

There are many possible ways to do this. Unfortunately it seems as if the most easy-to-implement ways are also the ones that are the worst. You could, for instance, have it so that if your leg level was 6 then 6 out of 10 times you made a decision then you would decide, and 4 out of 10 the computer would decide. This is, of cause, an incredibly poor solution, offering none of the things we want a system which interacts with the people to do.

I have not found an absolute answer to this problem, but I have found something that works, is realistic and playable. You would have to involve the people when making SE changes (economic, structure, laws etc), when changing diplomatic relations with other civs and when building things in your cities. Unit movement and city ressource management (although I hope you wont have to move workers around on the city squares in Civ3) would be done by you alone.

Each group would have an agenda. This should not be oversimplistic, but would also adabt to the overall status of your civ. If you had just been in a destructive war then not many groups would want to start a new one. On the other hand it should DEFINATELY not be so that the people would always want peace. In stead this would be decided by their militarism rating (described later). Each group would have some favorite things to build. The army would always want more units, so if you want to build a tank you could count on it’s support. The religion would want to build tempels, the coorporations would want to build factories, the intelligentsia would want to build libraries etc. Some of the agenda’s of the different groups would sometimes be the same. Both the coorporations and the industrial bourgeoisie would want to build factories, both the people and the intelligentsia might like libraries, where the religion might agree with the army on the need to go to war with a civ of another religion.

It means that if your leg level is 7, then you need to get 30% (100%-70%) of the 100% you are supporting your power on to support this thing. So if you have leg 7 and you are based on 50% people 20% coorporations 10% army and 20% administrators then you need 30% of these to support you in EVERYTHING you do! You could do this by having the people support your desicion (this would give 120%, which would just be the same as 100%), by having the army and the administrators to support it or something else. This gives the advantage that the system is easy to overview (no complex rules on when you have to negotiate with the people), that you always know how many ”votes” you need to do stuff, and that the higher your leg level is, the easier it will be for you to get what you want. The disadvantages of this system is, that a more elegant sollution could possibly be found, and that you always (except if you have leg 10, which should almost never happen) have to get your people’s support, even if you have a very high leg level. None the less I have chosen to use this system. If anyone can think of a better one please post it, as I would like to hear about it, but for now this is what I will use.

Besides this there should be a way of using propaganda and such to get the permanent support from one group. This would mean that you could spend some money on propaganda directed at the people. This might give lower stability in a few turns, but if it is succesful then it will make it so that the people would always support your desicions (so they will not demand that you do anything to support you – this would of cause only work if you were basing your power on the people). This would continue for a few turns. If you want to always have your people’s permanent support then you would need to permanently use money for propaganda. A similar thing could be done to the other
groups. If you are basing your power on the administrators then you would be able to make some sort of purge in the administration (meaning that you removed people that didn’t support you and put people loyal to you in the leading positions). Again this would give unstability for a few turns, but afterwards you would get always get the support of the administration. Similar things could be done in the army (although the US has a large army it is unrealistic to think that the army has a very important position in the country. In stead the government has made sure that people loyal to them are at all the important positions, and therefore the army is not an individual power) and
possibly in all the groups. You should be able to do these propaganda/purge thingsin both groups that you based your power on, and in groups that you weren’t. If you used it on a groups that you weren’t basing your power on then it would simply mean that this group would not cause any unstability and that it would not try to begin a revolution. Each group would cost different things to use propaganda on. The people directly would be easy and cheap to use propaganda against, where other groups like the intelligentsia would be far more expensive to get permanent support from.

You should also be able to give money to a group, which would give it more power in your civ. This could be workable if the groups you are basing your power on are not quite strong enough to secure a working government, and you don’t want to begin a revolution. You could then give some money to a group, and thus giving it more power which would make your government more stable. Of cause the effect of these money would be pretty limited, and if there is a powerful overall tendency that a group is weakening then you could do little to make it more powerful. Giving money to groups would mostly be for the short run.

Every groups should have some number (possibly just from 1-10) that described how much they liked your policy. This number would be determined by counting how many times you had done things following that particular group’s agenda. So if you were basing your power on the intelligentsia but never built any libraries and had all science things at a very low priority then this goup would have a low number – it wouldn’t like your policy. The lower this number is the larger the chance would be that this group would simply stop supporting you. It could make an ultimatum like ”You start the construction of 5 libraries now or we will stop supporting you and send the country into anarchy and civil war”. You would then have the choise of either doing what they want or try to make a new government with a period of anarchy in between. The same could be done by all the other groups. If you were basing your power on the army but never were in any wars it could
demand that you started a war with civ x or it would stop supporting you (finally a way to be forced into a war). On the other hand, if the group really liked your policy then it would, if you were not basing your power on it, not cause unstability and not try to throw over the government, and if you were basing your power on it then it would be likely to accept it if you raised your leg level. This would mean that if you were supporting your power on the coorporations and you switched labour unions off (with or without their support) then the coorporations would be likely to accept that you raised your leg level.

This would mean that when you are choosing your groups to base your power on then you would not only have to make sure that these groups had enough power to make the government stable, you would also have to try to get as high a leg level as possible AND you would need to choose groups that had an agenda that worked with the policy you wanted to go with.

Militarism: Would be an indicator of how much your people would support war. If it is high then there would be low unhappyness for units away from the city, and the people (if you supported your power on them) would be more likely to support a war. It would be determined by a lot of things. A succesful war with low casualties would raise it, where a destructive war with lots of civilians killed would lower it.

Individualism: This would be an indicator for how much your people liked individual freedom in an economic sence. If it is low then a capitalist system would not give much trade (as the people would not work well in such a system) and a communist system would give a lot of unhappiness. If it, on the other hand is high then a capitalist system would give a lot of trade, and a communist system would give a lot of corruption. It would be determined by different things. If you had a communist economic system for a long time then this would lower it, where a capitalist system would raise it. But at the same time a lot of poverty in your civ (there should be some indicator of poverty) either due to your civ just being poor or because of the economic system creating an economically very polarized population, would also lower it.

Accept of distance to power: This was originately a part of Individualism, but I chose to make this, the political individualism, it’s own indicator. It would show how much the people would accept an undemocratic government. If it was low then the people, if you support your power on them, would demand that you only had a low leg level. They would be harder to use propaganda against, and they would create more unstability if they were not in the government. If it is high then it should be possible for the people to accept that you had a high leg level (they would want to have someone to lead them), they would be easy to manipulate via propaganda and they would not create much unstability if they weren’t in the government.

[Adagio]

Oh my God, did you just write all this?

By looking at that text it reminded me on my homework, I have to read 2 books in the hollydays

I read the first 8-9 lines and they sounded promissing (unlike my homework)...if it wasn't because I'm half asleep right now I would have read it

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi ADG,
No, I'm afraid that I didn't just write all of that. I can't even claim credit for the idea. All credit must go to Joker, who originally posted it on the "If one Idea..." Civ III list. All I did was to Cut and Paste it into my post in order to show where I got the inspiration for my SI model (which is really nothing more than a cut-down version of Jokers).
Due to its extreme length, I wasn't able to post the entire thing, so I'll post the last paragraph now...

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

* I have chosen to have 4 types of wealthy people, as I had chosen one for each type of society: Slave society, feudal society, industrial society and information society. Each society had very different ways of getting wealthy, and a very different lifestyle, so they should be replaced by different groups. This is also needed if the system is to describe a french revolution type scenario: before the revolution the king’s power is based on the feudal wealthy, but due to the industrial revolution the industrial wealthy has become stronger and stronger, and eventually strong enough to throw over the government with the support of the people. Unfortunately for them it all ended with an army based dictator (Napoleon) getting a pretty high leg level.

I think I have been through it all. This is the first draft, and it propably seem a bit disorderly. But with a lot of constructive feedback I think it can be made pretty good.

[ancient]

hmm looks good, very good...


im starting to think more and more that we posters should make our own civ game.... we would just need some good programmers.. and a couple years..

[ancient]

the different people class should revolt, or become unhappy when the things they consider important are being denied of them.


lets say this people take a longer time to change then it does to make new buildings.


so if you have a militaristic city/civilization and dont build a collosus theyd get pissed, and then if you discover a new tech and dont build a new barracks they get more pissed...

the people shouldnt be flexible.

but your civilization should be.

lets say it could take me 200 years to change a population of 1 million from having the majority be militaristic to having them being scientific. during that time if you neglect your peoples deire of military they could get unhappy and revolt inorder to make there own militaristic society, while the population you have remaining would be interested in science...


well just an idea..

[connorkimbro]

im starting to think more and more that we posters should make our own civ game.... we would just need some good programmers.. and a couple years..

Hey, what an original idea!!!

[VetLegion]

Hi The_Aussie_Lurker

Yes, the Joker is still active on the forums, hop to Guns Germs and Steel section, he is an active designer on the project

This is a continuation of the SI story, on GGS forum:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...threadid=17601

there havent been any posts for a while, but if you have any comments to add, go ahaid.

I am particulary interested how to stop Religious unrest and Political unrest happening in same city at same time. Also, what do you think basic unit for social classes should be: civ, regions, cities, or even smaller?

ancient, the idea happens on this forum every now and then
GGS was also "born" on this civ3 forum, and at least one more game I never heard about again

[ancient]

Originally posted by connorkimbro

Quote:

im starting to think more and more that we posters should make our own civ game.... we would just need some good programmers.. and a couple years..

Hey, what an original idea!!!

never said it was origional

[ancient]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Hi The_Aussie_Lurker

Yes, the Joker is still active on the forums, hop to Guns Germs and Steel section, he is an active designer on the project

This is a continuation of the SI story, on GGS forum:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...threadid=17601

there havent been any posts for a while, but if you have any comments to add, go ahaid.

I am particulary interested how to stop Religious unrest and Political unrest happening in same city at same time. Also, what do you think basic unit for social classes should be: civ, regions, cities, or even smaller?

ancient, the idea happens on this forum every now and then
GGS was also "born" on this civ3 forum, and at least one more game I never heard about again

ive never heard about it. i guess its cause im new here... i meant tha we should make our own civ 3, name it civ 3 (despite copyright laws) and then distribute it among the members as if it was civ3, just leaving sid out of the name...

[ancient]

hmm it seems like ggs is taking too long though, it shouldnt be that much of a hassle to have it done in two years..

[VetLegion]

GGS is one year old. It takes a long time because we are not professionals, but hobbyists.

I meant tha we should make our own civ 3

I wish you all the best.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Vetlegion,

I've mentioned this before in previous posts, but I believe there should be 2 levels of political unrest: City based (which can lead to seccession) and Region based (which will lead to a "Revolution"). Whether unrest occurs would be based on "Loyalty". A city's loyalty to it's parent civ would be dependant on factors like: cultural strength, happiness/unhappiness, corruption, distance from capital, strength of previous culture (if applicable), economic strength and number of garrison forces. An unrest check would occur when Loyalty falls below a critical level. It would also be checked when you change government, build certain wonders/improvements/units or begin researching certain technologies or when your capital is captured.
If the loyalty check fails, then the city goes into a state of unrest (production slows, corruption increases, unhappiness increases etc). The unrest worsens each turn until you either stop the unrest or the city seccedes. If a city is in a state of unrest/seccession, adjacent cities must also make Loyalty checks. If enough cities seccede, then you have a state of potential civil war (and a new semi-civilization!) You can either try and conquer the seccessionists militarily, or you can attempt to deal with them like any other civ! If a seccessionist army manages to capture your capital, then loyalty checks must be made to see if any more cities break away (as well as losing all Capital city benefits).
Regional loyalty simply uses the average loyalties of all cities sharing the same Land Mass. If regional loyalty drops for any reason, then a regional unrest check needs to be made. In this situation, all cities are in some level of unrest, but cities with very low levels of loyalty will become "Hot-Spots". If this unrest is not checked, then a revolution will occur. This is like unrest, but all cities must check loyalty to see if theywholly join the revolution. These cities must be re-taken in order to put down a revolution and the nature of the revolution is dictated by which faction has the greatest influence in your society (Like workers or military, for example).

Anyway, just a few thoughts. Do you have any suggestions?

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by ADG
I have to read 2 books in the hollydays

Man, you've only got to read two books and you're complaining? Does nobody read for fun? I've polished off at least 20 books in the last month, in addition to working full time. I'm sure you can read two books in 4 months.

[VetLegion]

Ok, I ment something else with City-Region-State question, but it is material for another thread

1) There should be several major groups in a Civilization- Merchants, Military, Clerics, Workers, criminals and Scientists (later in the game you might even have environmentalists)

These groups are very different, but I assume you meant Industrial Workers, because all other groups are also workers in respective proffesions. In that case, only Enviromentalists are a different kind of group, since they are not a full time job. Any Priest (Cleric) or Scientist or anyone may be Environmentalist too.

You may devide your people by several factors: work, religion, nationality, race and some other too. If I had to pick one, the division by work sounds most reasonable. But the trend in making suggestions for next generation civ game is to have "models" for each of those categories.

So you have a model describing how those work classes behave, Religion model which describes how Religion behaves and so on. Some models are very advanced, and isolated, they look perfect. It becomes a "consistency problem" when you put (in a thought experiment) all those models to work together.

The nature of the unrest depends on the most dominant group in your society (eg. workers unrest will lead to a slowing of production rates, wheras military unrest will lead to military units disbanding!)

and

the nature of the revolution is dictated by which faction has the greatest influence in your society (Like workers or military, for example).

The two you mention belong to the same Characteristic Class, and same model. The problem occures when you mix models. Which group is dominant: Merchants or Protestants? Germans or Farmers? When some Merchants are obviously Protestant and some Germans are Farmers.

Since a guy can be Black, Merchant and Turkish (he can be more, depending how many models exist, and to how much detail you want to go) we need to know at certain times which model controles each man.

This is particullary important in Unrest, Riot and Rebbellion situations... but also in Peacetime. We can not have religious uprising and racial uprising happening at the same time.

Anyway, just a few thoughts. Do you have any suggestions?

I have come up with two things that may work:

1) having a "first come - first served" system, where we only allow one Unrest/Riot/Rebellion at a time in a given City. So if there are two or more cross model unsatisfied groups, we let the first to "explode" and "lock" the others in position to avoid number of rebels exceeding number of people that actually exist.

2) having a system where population would decide what is more important to it at the moment, for example their rights as a Black or their rights as a Muslim, and react accordingly. This dynamic "activity switching" would also allow flexibility in other areas, as we discussed in:
http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...threadid=17617

Both ways seem effective. The second one is a bit more sophisticated, since the population is self-regulatory, but is harder to implement. The first, where we have models that "get" control of people is easier to implement and will likely be the way to go. But there is room for discussion