FreeOrion

this thread combines some ideas in other threads
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1078
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1701

Since the issue of Citizen behavior has been brought up, I am presenting some ideas about how things may fit together

The first concept is that the smallest "unit of action" in FO society is the planet

Besides its Economic Meters, Specials, Health Meter, Population, Environment, etc. A planet also has some strictly Behavioral Meters

Those would basically be Allegiance Meters that tell how the planet responds to the various Empires (ie Players) that it has contact with. (one Empire for Each Allegiance Meter)... This is the primary factor in determining how a planet will "want" to behave [things like security/power of empires will determine how it will actually behave]


The effect of events in the galaxy on the allegiance meters would depend on the planet's characteristics.
1. (already mentioned) Economic meters, etc. (a higher construction meter planet might respond differently to an event than a low construction meter planet)

2. (already mentioned) Allegiance Meters (if my allegiance meter for Red empire is high, anyone at war with Red will lose allegiance... if my allegiance meter for Red is low, anyone at war with Red will increase allegiance)

3. Values (new) purpose is Strictly to help determine a planets reaction to events, could be
Pacifistic or Militaristic, Technophobic or Technophilic, etc.
(points on values here are similar to the Ethoi in Eleazer's model)


The way Values for a planet would be determined is through two components
1. Race Picks of the Species on the Planet
2. Values of the Cultures on the Planet

Species is already understood... those values of a species wouldn't be changed unless Genetic Engineering tech is available.

Culture is the concept being introduced, similar to religion and Moo3 Ethoi ideas a Culture would be a seperate entity from species/government

Culture:
Each Culture would have certain Values and an "Identifier"... the Identifier is a hierarchical classification of the Culture (ie ACM would be an A type culture, subgroup C, Specific Type M just information about how similar/different two cultures were (not counting the info in their values))

A Culture would be present on a Planet with a certain Strength, that would determine the level of effect it would have on the value meters

The Strength of Culture on a planet would be influenced by player action combined with random chance, it could increase or decrease, spread to a new planet, or a new culture can be created.

When a Planet is colonized it would automatically acquired a Culture is automatically created there (either an existing one or a new one) at a certain strength.

Player Action
For player action to impact the direction of Culture, the player would have to spend Money.

The money that a player spent on impacting Culture, would have limits (and could hurt Allegiance levels) Those limits would be based on Technology and how much allegiance level the planet had.

A player Could
Encourage/discourage certain Values
Encourage/discourage specific Indentifier groups (down to specific Cultures)
Encourage/discourage the Spread and change of Culture

The numbers should be devised so that maintaining Values and Cultures is much easier than Changing it, Except at particular Rare points (once every 30-300 turns depending on species) when a Culture that is reasonably different from the dominant that was at low strength grows particularly high...at those points maintaining Cultures will be hard and Switching to the new would be easy (essentially they are moments of opportunity).

One other things cultures can do is Clash with each other

Cultures with different Identifiers or different Values can lead to problems on a planet, the degree of problems depends on the degree of 'Xenophilia/phobia' Value that there is on the planet and the Strength of the different Cultures.

Culture's role is basically to help keep your planets in/get them out of line.

Well planet could be said to have a different culture, but if two planets both had 'd,e,f' "Cultures" present on them, they would be more similar than
a planet with 'd,e,f' and one with 'd,e,e' or 'd,f,f' or 'r,d,e' [from most to least similar] (ie which leters are the same... first one more significant than second/third ones)

so it would be a way to get similarities between planets (other than species, government, location, and economics)

I would like to see culture in the game.

I imagine a race would have a default culture, and different colonies will have their cultures change or develop into other types of cultures. Then cultures between different races will spread, dominant ones replacing the recessive ones.

Eg possible culture examples:
"Knowledge, Exploration, Expression"
+ 3 Research
- 2 Farming
Dominance = 1

"War, Competition, Leadership"
+ 5 Fleet Management
- 3 Research
Dominance = 3

Playing around, but cultures would have positive and negative effects on races with a culture. So one race having their culture replaced might give them a penalty that hurts them more once their racial stats are taken into account.
eg Bad researchers should not have a culture that worsens further their researching skills.

I wouldn't see cultures as something that affects racial stats, what they should affect is racial 'happiness'
so militaristic/pacifistic, xenophobic/xenophilic, liberty/security, etc.

How about this for culture types:

a / indicates that this culture is mutually exclusive to the one on the other side of the slash

Bonuses and penalties also described later on

Democracy/ Nobility(Trust in Democratically elected officials over Nobility)
Conservative/Libertarian/Liberal (Conservative values, Liberal Values, or A mash of both)
Peaceful/warlike (Belief in tranquility over warfare)
Happy, Sad, Sadistic (Usually happy, usually sad, or usually sadistic)
Crime low/Crime high (Low crime over high crime)
Economically inclined/ religiously inclined/ Scientifically inclined/ no specific inclination (Science, Relgion, economics? Which does it chose?)
Xenophobic/ socially inclined (Does it favor digging itself inside a hole over socializing with one another?)

Democracy- high happiness, low corruption
Nobility- High loyalty, higher allowed taxation rate
Conservative- Higher morale, bigger economy, weaker environment, low corruption, strongest military, smaller allowed tax rate
Libertarian- Largest Economy, Weakest environment, Strong Military, medium-low corruption
Liberal- Smallest Economy, Strongest environment, lower Morale, higher allowed tax rate
Peaceful- more social, more happy
warlike- more sadistic, more warfare heavy
Happy- higher morale
Sad-lower morale
Sadistic- highest crime, lowest morale
Crime low- lowest crime, high morale
Crime High- high crime, low morale
Science- high technology, low morale
Religion- high morale, average technology,
Economics-average technology, average morale, large Economy
Xenophobic-Large military, high unrest, more violent
Social- smaller military, low unrest, less violent

See I wouldn't see the culture types as giving bonuses, instead they would tell when the culture is happy

so freedom v. security... a
"Security" culture would be more happy with a well run totalitarian state
"Freedom" culture would be happy with a less well run free state

Military v. Peace...
"Peace" culture would get unhappy quicker with wars
"Military" culture would get unhappy with a 'peace' that was 'unfair'

Democracy v. Nobility (or Equality v. Aristocracy) would determine what government types your people would be most happy with

Xenophobic/Xenophilic
Xenophobes are happy about policies that oppress/exterminate other races in your empire and are unhappy with empires of different races (and you if you are to friendly to them)

etc. so the cultures do not give bonuses, but they do make your people "happier" or "sadder" with different things you do

More about my ideas with culture:

Every planet is colonized with a chance of the cultures I listed before.

For instance, the chance that a human planet might be Conservative is 40%, the Chance that it's Liberal 40% and the chance that its libertarian is 20%, or something similar to that.

Similarly, the chance of a planet being happy, sad or sadistic for humans might be:
Happy: 70%
Sad: 25%
Sadistic:5%

Crime low vs crime high might be:
Crime low: 55%
Crime high: 45%

and so on and so forth

Exactly.



The FO galaxy potentially has 5000 planets. Even a fraction of those are far too many for the player to worry about culture that can gradually vary between different extremes. If we try to figure out how to display cultural values in flux to the player it would tend to be pretty complicated, and i expect most people would generally ignore it.

For this and other reasons, i've proposed that the "culture", "ethos", "religion" and/or "philosophy" be inherent and unchanging in each species. (Of course if the player want's to tweak his starting species' stats, thats fine, and a totally different issue) Thus it is reasonably possible to remember and understand which planets (remember "1 species per planet") will be annoyed and which will be made glad by any controversial act. Thus when you are deciding who to to offend and who to please, you are not trying to balance random groups of faceless planets, but different alien species who have a face (of some kind ), a personality, and a history in your game.

IMHO adding in "culture" independent of species does not add enough gameplay value to justify the complexity.

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I think it would especially if

1. there was a Tendency for a planets of the same empire to have a common culture (So you don't have to worry as much about hundreds of random cultures on each planet)
2. there was a Tendency for closer planets to have a common culture (so your empire/galaxy could have a militaristic "south" and a pacifistic "north")
3. there was a Tendency for a planets of the same species to have a common culture (so the Trith planets you captured will tend to have a common culture distinct from your Imperial culture)

4. There were means by which you could try to manipulate culture

5. Finally this would add some variety even with a single species empire... if you are EAXAW and execute all aliens... well some of your population might still become more science focused or honorable than others... leading to a change in tactics... or a civil war over the best way to kill aliens. Some might even come to favor enslavement as opposed to extermination


Culture would then influence Values... and Races would also influence Values (Races in a hard coded way, that would not change without "genetic engineering"... but Culture in a way that would change)

This would allow you try to "civilize" an alien species you had conquered or to ease diplomatic tensions by encouraging a rival empires dominant culture (or at least not suppressing it)


Also some of the effect of Culture would have nothing to do with values, it would just indicate how similar or different two groups are... 7 days a week or no weeks, etc... for that with only one species it doesn't matter, but if you have a good neighbor, you would probably exchange cultural practices over time.. and become even better neighbors... of course if you have a war with the Terran empire you might start executing everyone who has 3 meals a day instead of 1 ... so culture might become more different. (or if you were seceding from the terran empire you might execute people who used the 24 hour clock. ie reducing cultures that are similar to the enemy's)...
Note: you would not know the days/week, etc. represented by a culture there would just be an identifier string that would help show how similar two cultures are based on the similarity of their Identifier strings.

You've alluded to something like "manipulating culture", in other threads, but to my knowledge you have never actually explained how the player is supposed to do that. I'm not aware of any 4X games that do something like this. You really need to provide detail, if this is a serious idea.



I don't find the prospect of random, arbitrary "identifier strings" very exciting or interesting. How does this make the game better?

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Manipulating culture, you could encourage/discourage specific cultures... of course this would make the culture happy/unhappy, and so it could backfire,since there would still be randomness.
one example, there may also be other ways... to 'create' a new culture and then encourage it.

Basically, just a setting. (while 'per culture' would be possible... It would probably be most common to have a 'state supported' culture with a chosen level of support and all other 'Non-state' cultures with a chosen level of suppression)



The identifier strings would be there model similar/different cultures.... so if I had culture Militaristic Honorable "adge" and you had culture Militaristic Honorable "adga" we would be more similar than someone with culture Militaristic Honorable "defr". There would be greater tensions between those planets/empires that are 'more different'

Now there's probably more interesting ways than strings of letters to identify that, maybe colors or shapes or greek letters. but the idea is there is no real meaning except in how itt relates to each other (I don't think there is any gameplay significant difference between 7 days a week and 5.. or Mac v. PC... but there could be a gameplay significant effect on the relationships between individuals/groups that structure themselves that way)

I do support something vaguely similar: i.e. that the government choices you select for your empire will either harmonize or conflict with some Ethoi. If empire's form of government is "Totalitarian" for instance, you will annoy or anger everyone whose places a high value on freedom.

But as to choosing various levels of suppression for each culture, that is sounds too much like micro-heavy spread-sheet gaming.



I understood this idea. The question i asked was, "Why should this be in the game?".

I see no need to use a string of meaningless symbols, colors, or letters to manufacture tensions between different planets. If anything we already have too many reasons for different planets to hate each other. There have been lots of ideas for game-play significant differences to effect the relationship between planets and empires. Why don't you think these are sufficient?

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As for various suppression levels for different cultures, the micromanagement of that should only be useful in the case of a specific enemy culture that you want eradicated.

It might be easier to force that into a general setting though... how much you suppress All "non-state cultures" either be equal or dependent on the difference between the "non-state" and "state" culture.

The only reason I can think of for different planets to hate each other is that they are different species.... maybe if they have different economic foci...or just physical distance? [of course different empires]

The advantage of using culture as a way to make planets hate each other as opposed to those others is your abillity to manipulate it
directly (suppressing non-state cultures)
or
indirectly (by maintaining better relations with another empire, culture will tend to 'bleed across')

I don't see any use in having a planet hate or like another planet. After all individual planets don't interact with each other, and the list could be excessively long.

All we need is for planets to hate/like specific empires. Empires are constantly doing things that planets with particular ethoi can like or dislike, without the need of adding random, intangible "abdg", "dfrt" 'cultures' into the mix.

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I agree, planets wouldn't hate other planets, but they should have different opinions of empires

The problem is, in your model, "planets" wouldn't have ethoi... races would.

While this does make it simpler, I think it oversimplifies.... it would be like having the only options for ship building be Number of weapons, Number of Shields, and number of Engines (and represent them by an Attack, Defense, Movement similar to Civ units)

A seperate Culture gives you the possibility to have Ethoi
1. change over time without evacuating/repopulating planets with different races
2. be different on different planets without them necessarily being different races

Meaning you also couldn't avoid dealing with ethoi difficulties even if you ran a xenocidal empire... if you slaughter every other species there is, some of your colonies would still have different ethoi, giving a reason for even a racially homogenous empire to have to deal with the possibility of civil war. (although lessened)


As for 'intangibles' that allows some reason of the... "we don't like that empire because it is different" without those differences necessarily meaning anything.