realistic planet population

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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drek
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#16 Post by drek »

Off the subject a bit:

I thought Smac style government picks were going to be used...no?

Kostik666
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#17 Post by Kostik666 »

shouldnt there be a socialist government? like

Socialism - people have money, but they dont have anything to buy... lot of things are forced, morale takes a plunge, overall production goes up.

i know id like it... imma communist :twisted:
>^)

drek
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#18 Post by drek »

...

I don't care for real world government picks, for the reason that it will invite nitpicks based on people's perceptions of different real world governments.

Kostik666
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#19 Post by Kostik666 »

fair enough, i see your point

just puttin my crooked ideas everywhere i can, who knows one might help
>^)

Impaler
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#20 Post by Impaler »

Thats an Economic System and would go under the Economic Catagory of Choices just as in SMAC ware theirs a seperation of Goverment/Politics and Economic system. Communism would be a combination of "Police State" Politics with "Hyper Socialism" Economics. Facism would be "Police State" Politics with "Capitalist" Economics (and if this were SMAC the "Power" Value setting). Ofcorse we have "Despotism" rather then Police State and a bunch of interesting options that Human societies have never used.

With diverse enough options we would esentialy be able to replicate almost any real OR fictional society from StarTreks Federation to Huxley's Brave New World.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

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Prokonsul Piotrus
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#21 Post by Prokonsul Piotrus »

Impaler wrote:With diverse enough options we would esentialy be able to replicate almost any real OR fictional society from StarTreks Federation to Huxley's Brave New World.
Yes, I'd love to see that. But it will be very difficult (key word here - optionS). The division of political system from economical is good - but only until you look at details.

Consider the simple divisions on Matthew White's page - and he deals justs with XX century systems (note he treated communism as one). And totalitarism map of property rights vs. personal rights is an intersesting merger of things that one could consider separate - political system and economy system.

So before you start thinking on how to disentangle politics from economy, I'd like to recommend reading of summary of works on sociology of religion by Max Weber which I have recently put there. Short story, culture is interconnected with economy - and if you want examples for culture connections to political systems, I'd be happy to oblige you :)

So 1d models dealing only with one of those factors (pol, econ or cult) are good for ease of game and simple model, but it is not the right tool if you would really like to recreate the multidude of real and sf systems.
They have to many aspects. Yes, you can make a slide from democracy to despotism, but if you try to add somewhere on it factional/anarchical govs or decide on despotism of miliary junta vs. traditional monarchy...you will see the problem.

The Dispersed to Overmind 1-dimentional model is good for a start of brainstorming, But it is not a pol model - it already has systems with elements of culture and evolution (hive, telepathy), the republic-despotism-consensus is not a logical flow of the chart of centralised goverment or peronal rights, and so on.

What I recommend is to make a list of concepts from politics, economy and culture that we think are relevant, try to merge them on several 1 or 2-dimentionals graphs and then translate them into systems.

In the game one would not chose 'a political system' and separatly 'an economical system's, but rather positions of several sliders (personal rights, property rights, religious tolerance, belief in magic and mysticism*, etc.) which would generate a list of numbers on n-dimentional axis, that would in turn describe the political, economical and cultural systems of given race.

No, it wont be easy - but I hope it may be fun :)

--
*think belief in magic is irrelevant? What if I was to say that it was one of the main factors responsible for development of capitalism in Occidental culture and not the Orient? :>
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Krikkitone
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#22 Post by Krikkitone »

Prokonsul Piotrus wrote: *think belief in magic is irrelevant? What if I was to say that it was one of the main factors responsible for development of capitalism in Occidental culture and not the Orient? :>
Then you'd be way off topic.

I think you do have the right idea though (although it would have to be carefully done to avoid excessive overlapping dimensions, or leaving out dimensions)

Having all of a society on a number of sliders, with enemy spies, player initiated social change, and the situation (ie Events) all striving to change it.

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Prokonsul Piotrus
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#23 Post by Prokonsul Piotrus »

Yes, I tend to get OT from time to time.

I was thinking about the interface.

First, of course, is a standard set of pararell sliders, but perhaps we could make something more intuitive.

What about a 2d map with several corners (like in HoI dem-com-fas triangle map). Problem is, we are likely to have more corners - so it will be a kind of polygon. For start, lets imagine a decagon.

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We can make it work with opposites - if the 'opposite' point is in the middle.
It would be like having sliders on the diagonals (or rather, radiuses). The angles would be described (property rights, isolationist tendencies, etc.), with middle being always the 'low' point and the 'angle' high. Mouse over given diagonal would of course give more info.

Or, even better, we can have both views - parallel slider lines and diagonal sliders - to be switched for player's preffered view.
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Krikkitone
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#24 Post by Krikkitone »

The thing is, a 2d map really only allows two sliders. HoI is basically
Dem v. Dictatorship
and
Com v. Fasc
(with the fact that one slider limits the effect of the other)

Now the sliders Might interact such that some combinations are impractical or don't work well, etc. (although because we Are dealing with alien thought processes, I wouldn't rule too much out)

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#25 Post by Impaler »

I'm not realy in favor of slider for ones goverment choices. Keep it like SMAC I always say. The Choices are all Unique and do not apear on any scale only the EFFECTS of the goverment/social enginering choice move you up or down a set of meters. This seems to be the strategy most of us are infavor of.

I envision 3-5 areas of social policy, goverment, economics, values/culture, science policy ect ect. With 6-8 choices in each area that still gives us a huge number of combinations and a lot more then SMAC had. Also keep in mind that were dealing with ALIENS not human cultures, the options will represent BIG changes like "Hive" vs "Despotism", all of human goverment shouldnt account for more then 2 or 3 of the total goverment choices.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

drek
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#26 Post by drek »

No sliders.

Perhaps government picks should have little or no direct gameplay effect. Instead, there could be a large set of events for each government type. Basically, picking a government would be the first choice in a choose-your-own-adventure style story.

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Prokonsul Piotrus
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#27 Post by Prokonsul Piotrus »

But without the sliders a la HoI we cant have gradual movements on the scale - there will be only various revolutions.
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Government

#28 Post by guiguibaah »

- it hit me that maybe not all, er, 'aliens' would have a system of government, or have one that is vastly different.

1. Your standard humans
2. Space bees
3. A sinlge 'entity'
4. A one way-sign
5. A computer program
There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

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Prokonsul Piotrus
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Re: Government

#29 Post by Prokonsul Piotrus »

guiguibaah wrote:- it hit me that maybe not all, er, 'aliens' would have a system of government, or have one that is vastly different.

1. Your standard humans
2. Space bees
3. A sinlge 'entity'
4. A one way-sign
5. A computer program
Yes, this is why simply having few choices would be a bad idea. With sliders (or choice points a la SMAC, although I dont like that idea) we can create diffrent combinations of factors that should allow those 'other' systems.

Any thinking planet entity has to have a goverment of some kind, defined as the power to make and enforce laws, in the extreme cases it will be that mind making and enfocing laws that concern only itself, but it will still be a goverment.

There are many possibilites of vastly diffrent goverment - for starters I can see ideas concerning communal minds, telephaty...but that's for another time.

What I *CANT* see, however, is any form of working goverment created by (non-telephatic/netlinked) anarchists (dispersed gov idea). Without coordination, progress is possible, but very slow. At best, I see such gov having bonuses to happiness and giant minuses to everything else.
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drek
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#30 Post by drek »

No sliders.

Seriously.

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