Simulating Citizens

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Krikkitone
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Re: Simulating Citizens

#16 Post by Krikkitone »

eleazar wrote:Sorry, i really don't see how your post above related to the portion of my post you quoted.
Krikkitone wrote:Well I think the key idea is the 2 different causes of something happening to affect allegiance

1. We don't like what you did TO US
2. We don't like what you did IN PRINCIPLE
I don't see the point in dividing things up like this. Naturally a planet would object more strongly to a genocide against itself, than genocide somewhere else, but i don't think that's the point you are making.

What are you saying should be different if:
1) planet A really hates it's empire because of "what you did TO US", vs
2) planet B that really hates it's empire because of "what you did IN PRINCIPLE"? And of course there's planet C that really hates it's empire because of an equal mix of "what you did TO US" & "what you did IN PRINCIPLE"?

I don't see a reason that planet A, B, & C shouldn't do exactly the same thing (assuming all other things are equal)... nor really do i understand how you are arguing it should be different, especially given "every bad/good event/condition gets Blamed on some Empire(s)".

What you did to us = we want you not tod do that TO US anymore
What you did in principle= we don't want you to do that anymore

Example:
Red Empire enslaves Planet X
Decrease in allegience of Planet X to Red (they enslaved us)
Decrease in allegiance of Egalitarian Planet Y to Red (you enslaved people)

Now there would be no distinction made to these in the Allegiance Meter, BUT when they Rebel the planet establishes a "new look" at Red Empire (from the perspective of a foreign government rather than a subservient planet)

When Planet X rebels against the Red Empire, they just want to be Free (although revenge might be there) and so might be willing to accept peace (they don't care about Other planets that Red Empire is enslaving)

When the Egalitarian Planet Y Rebels against the Red Empire they want to destroy Red Empire

Or for another example
Red Empire conquers Blue Empire's Planet X
Decrease in allegiance of Planet X to Red Empire (we want to rejoin our people) [to us]

When Planet X rebels, if Red Empire Wants to let them go and Join Blue Empire Peacefully, they should be able to do so [Blue Empire shouldn't have to get involved in a war to get its Planet Back if neither Red nor Blue Empire want War]... Now if Blue Empire WANTS war, then this is a good excuse. If Red Empire Wants War over the Planet, then Blue has to go with war to Red over admitting the planet. But if Red wants to let them go peacefully, no sense in forcing Red into a war it doesn't want to preserve a planet it doesn't want.

If you want to be techical, you could say that when they break off from you they are at war... but the first thing that happens is you have the option of offering them peace.

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eleazar
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Re: Simulating Citizens

#17 Post by eleazar »

Krikkitone wrote:Example:
Red Empire enslaves Planet X
Decrease in allegience of Planet X to Red (they enslaved us)
Decrease in allegiance of Egalitarian Planet Y to Red (you enslaved people)

Now there would be no distinction made to these in the Allegiance Meter, BUT when they Rebel the planet establishes a "new look" at Red Empire (from the perspective of a foreign government rather than a subservient planet)

When Planet X rebels against the Red Empire, they just want to be Free (although revenge might be there) and so might be willing to accept peace (they don't care about Other planets that Red Empire is enslaving)

When the Egalitarian Planet Y Rebels against the Red Empire they want to destroy Red Empire
I believe there's a simpler way of looking at this sort of situation without considering your 2 different causes for hate.

1) A break-away empire will have pragmatic considerations for it's diplomatic actions besides it's allegiance meter. The more likely the former overlord will be able to crush them, the more likely the new AI emperor would ignore the citizen's hate, and pragmatically attempt some other solution.

2) In your example "Egalitarian planet" will have a continuing reasons to hate Red, while "X" only has a historical reason to hate Red. X's hate will fade (unless it gains new reasons), while Egalitarian planet will have a continually renewed reason to hate as long as Red practices slavery. X will likely make peace with Red sooner.

Krikkitone wrote:Blue Empire shouldn't have to get involved in a war to get its Planet Back if neither Red nor Blue Empire want War
Once X successfully rebels, If Blue doesn't want war it doesn't have to accept planet X's request to rejoin Blue. But if Red also doesn't want war, then no one will declare war. I said a state of war should be automatic between the former overlords, and any new empire that breaks away from it... but not automatically with any existing empire which accepts a breakaway planet.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Simulating Citizens

#18 Post by Krikkitone »

Well I think that Red should be able to let them know that
"Accepting this colony would be an Act of War against us"
OR
"It won't"

If #1 is true then the colony is going to seek protection (protection that is hard to get since it involves war with Red)
If #2 is true then the colony doesn't need to seek protection (since Red is not at war with it)


Actually... Perhaps an Accepting Empire immediately Enters into "Renewed Peace negotiations" with Red Empire, where Red Empire is giving up Planet X, and Blue Empire is accepting it, and Peace is also on the table (as well as anything else in their current Peace Treaty.

Red+Blue are then given a chance to Accept or Reject that Treaty... If either one of them Rejects there is War [ie no Peace Treaty] (but the Planet is stil Transferred)

Essentially however Blue will get the "Blame" for starting any War (They forced the renegotiation of the Peace Treaty)

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eleazar
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Re: Simulating Citizens

#19 Post by eleazar »

This is veering off topic. How Red and Blue might diplomatically deal with a break-away planet is a subject for the diplomacy thread.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Simulating Citizens

#20 Post by Krikkitone »

Well back on topic

If Red enslaves Planet X

Planet X-> " You enslaved us :( "
Egalitarian planets-> " You enslaved someone :( "
Elitist planets-> " You enslaved someone :) "

That is the difference between in Priciple and To Us (mostly in their justification in game design)
now the "To Us" should probably use the Empathy idea
" You enslaved 'us' :( "

but the "In Principle" one really wouldn't (or at least would use it Very Weakly)... and in some cases the reverse would be true... why would an Elitist planet like you More for enslaving someone More like them

You could probably also have Negative Empathy on the "To Us"
" You enslaved 'them' :) "
for planets that were identified with empires you hated


As for How I would do it

1. Exponential decay (allegiance decays toward 0) of "continuing/lingering Allegiance"
The reason is this way I can know all the effects,
if there was a one time bonus of +16 on turn 1 and turn 3, and the standard decay is 50% in 1 turn (way too fast), then the effect of that "category" is
+16
+8
+20 [+4+16]
+10
+5
+2.5
etc.

2. Conditional Allegiance effects, these only affect the Allegiance This turn... they take the Base Allegiance and modify it but that modification Doesn't pass on to next turn

(The advantage of this is it provides a way to 'adjust' the decay value... if a situation changes, part of the effect is gone immediately, the rest decays away over ~30 turns [I think a 10% decay per turn would be good])

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eleazar
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Re: Simulating Citizens

#21 Post by eleazar »

in another thread kriktone wrote:
"I will not attack your surrendering troops
I will not attack your unarmed civilians"

I'm not sure if i thought of it before, but probably more frequently than rebellion, a planet should be able to offer surrender... especially when the attacker is powerful, and the planet has little loyalty to its empire.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Simulating Citizens

#22 Post by Krikkitone »

eleazar wrote:in another thread kriktone wrote:
"I will not attack your surrendering troops
I will not attack your unarmed civilians"

I'm not sure if i thought of it before, but probably more frequently than rebellion, a planet should be able to offer surrender... especially when the attacker is powerful, and the planet has little loyalty to its empire.
That's also true (of course then it depends not only on the loyalty of the planet, but of the loyalty of the Ground Forces you have on the planet [who would presumably stop the governor/people from letting the foreign ships/troops in])

Since Planetary Shields make it a "Siege" mentality, then a Planet Might be willing to wait for 'the cavalry' to save them... But if their supplies of food are low, or their loyalty is low, if the Army is weak (or strongly locally controlled)... then the Planet will surrender. This is anothere time the "power graph" can come in... if you spare planets that surrender, but glass planets that resist until you get through the shield... then they might consider surrender safer... especially if you are high on the power graph.

[of course if you know the "cavalry is coming" and all collaborators will have to choose which member of their family gets crucified on live TV with them... then you will sit and wait, even if you would really prefer to surrender]

Very Good point.

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Re: Simulating Citizens

#23 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:I'm not sure if i thought of it before, but probably more frequently than rebellion, a planet should be able to offer surrender... especially when the attacker is powerful, and the planet has little loyalty to its empire.
Presumably espionage or other demoralizing methods could also be employed to make an otherwise uncapturable planet capitulate.

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Re: Simulating Citizens

#24 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Presumably espionage or other demoralizing methods could also be employed to make an otherwise uncapturable planet capitulate.
Sure. I've played some 4X games where spies could "Provoke a Rebellion", but it always seemed to be a skill that worked in isolation. It was an all-or-nothing probability, like stealing a tech. You usually couldn't progressively push a planet/city towards rebellion. Success or failure seemed pretty disconnected from other game mechanics.

Another thing spies should be able to do is assess "public opinion" i.e. get the information on a enemy planet's allegiance stats. Thus you could have a way to see the effect on your actions on loyalty.

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Re: Simulating Citizens

#25 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:I've played some 4X games where spies could "Provoke a Rebellion", but it always seemed to be a skill that worked in isolation. It was an all-or-nothing probability, like stealing a tech. You usually couldn't progressively push a planet/city towards rebellion. Success or failure seemed pretty disconnected from other game mechanics.

Another thing spies should be able to do is assess "public opinion" i.e. get the information on a enemy planet's allegiance stats. Thus you could have a way to see the effect on your actions on loyalty.
Probabilities of success for actions of this sort are a crutch, or perhaps a way to make a shallow feature to satisfy a marketing bullet point that is really a pointless un-fun non-feature in most games that include them. Better-designed (from a gameplay standpoint, if not marketing) games omit such features entirely, rather than using the crutch.

I'd like to avoid random chance of success actions as much as possible in general, and for espionage and cultural wars in particular. Ideally there'd be very little random or no chance involved, but if necessary, we can at least make the random factor less all-or-nothing, but having a series of random chances for minor effects that over time accumulate, or having small random modifiers to a larger predictable-magnitude effect.

(Edit: Advance Wars attacks were a good compromise IMO; it was fairly predictable how much damage an attack would do, but roughly 10% variation in result (1 HP of attacked unit out of 10 HP) was common. Wesnoth is a bit too random for my taste, though I acknowledge this is a personal preference, and Wesnoth randomness is nothing like Civ espionage chances.)

Doing this probably requires integrating the esipionage / cultural war systems into the rest of the game. Having simulated citizens with allegiance / opinions that exist and can be altered for a reason is hopefully a good way to make this possible, I suspect.

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Re: Simulating Citizens

#26 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:I'd like to avoid random chance of success actions as much as possible in general, and for espionage and cultural wars in particular. Ideally there'd be very little random or no chance involved, but if necessary, we can at least make the random factor less all-or-nothing, but having a series of random chances for minor effects that over time accumulate, or having small random modifiers to a larger predictable-magnitude effect.
I agree that having big events determined by a single "all or nothing" roll of the dice is lousy... but don't think i'd like to see citizens work in a completely deterministic way. A small degree of unpredictability helps make them seem like real "people", while avoiding frustration and lack of strategy caused by excessive randomness. For instance, if an meter value of 20 was the threshold for rebellion, i wouldn't want to always, instantly see a rebellion as soon as the meter crosses the line.

Geoff the Medio wrote:Doing this probably requires integrating the esipionage / cultural war systems into the rest of the game. Having simulated citizens with allegiance / opinions that exist and can be altered for a reason is hopefully a good way to make this possible, I suspect.
I was drawn to that conclusion unwilling, because i really don't like the potentially high number of allegiance meters per planet. But i really don't see a better way to do this sort of stuff.

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Re: Simulating Citizens

#27 Post by Ranos »

Been a long time since I was on these forums but I decided to visit and see what was going on with the project.

On the subject of Happiness and Allegience vs. just Allegience, I think having two distinct meters will give more options and better show the state of affairs on the planet than just one meter. This is because you can be happy while not having a high allegience to your ruler and you can be unhappy wile having a high allegience.

For example:

I am a US citizen. I am not happy with the current economic, political and military situations in our country. That does not mean, however, that I am willing to rebel/revolt against the government, leave and become a citizen of another country or betray my fellow citizens.

Thus, I am not happy, but my allegience is still to my country.

On the other side, an occupying power may treat the citizens of a country well, give them everything they need and make their lives good. The citizens will be happy because they are being treated well, but given the opportunity, they would switch sides in an instant. The only obvious deterrant is an occupying force.

Thus, the people are happy, but would rather be reunited with their own country or have their own country.

Time would obviously effect these meters. The longer a world is unhappy and the more unhappy it gets, the lower the allegience. The longer a world is happy and the happier it gets, the higher the allegience.

Happiness would also effect the economic and industrial output of the planet as well. Unhappy people just don't work as hard and don't go out as much as happy people do.

Happiness can be affected by a number of different things.

I) Situations on the planet
-A) Taxes
-B) Treatment of the people
--1)Slavery/workload
--2)Genocide/Xenocide
--3)Entertainment
-C)Military presence
-D)Recent attacks
--1)Military
--2)Spies
-E)Piracy
-F)Riots

II) Situations on other planets in your empire
-A) Taxes (Their taxes are lower than ours, we're angry)
-B) Treatment of the people
--1)Slavery/workload
--2)Genocide/Xenocide
-C)Military presence (Our neighbor is protected so their are forces nearby to help us)
-D)Recent attacks
--1)Military
---a)Our neighbor was attacked and we could be next
---b)A planet in the empire was attacked because the planet was undefended
---c)An alien race attacked us and you haven't done anything about it
---d)A planet was taken by an enemy
--2)Spies
---a)Our neighbor was attacked and we could be next
---b)An alien race attacked us and you haven't done anything about it
-E)Piracy (Our neighbors have pirates attacking them, it's affecting our trade and we could be next)
-F)Riots (Our neighbors are rioting so our leader must be doing something wrong)

III) Stiuations outside of your empire
-A)War
--1)We're happy because you're attacking a race we hate
--2)We're angry because you're attacking a race we like
-B)Treaties/agreements with other races
--1)We're happy because this treaty ended a terrible war
--2)We're angry because you ended a war with a race we want annihilated
--3)We're happy because this agreement benefits us
---a)Money coming into the empire
---b)New tech that benefits the people
--4)We're angry because this agreement hurts us
---a)Money going out of the empire
---b)Tech traded that could hurt us
-C)Other races actions
--1)They moved a lot of ships close to our planets
--2)Treatment of the people
---a)Slavery/workload
---b)Genocide/Xenocide

These are just some examples to give you an idea. More can be added, some of the above can be taken away if needed.

The reason I have the three main categories is continuing off of Krikkitone's thought:
Krikkitone wrote:Well I think the key idea is the 2 different causes of something happening to affect allegiance

1. We don't like what you did TO US
2. We don't like what you did IN PRINCIPLE

Now there is some overlap, but generally those are seperate categories (if an empire is Xenociding your race then you don't like it in Principle but if you are a Subject of that empire you also don't like the fact that they are doing Xenocide To You)
You have three sitations:

Happening to me
Happening to my friend
Happening to someone else

Each is going to cause a different amount of happiness or anger.

If I win a million dollars, I'm going to be so happy I'll pass out. If my friend wins a million dollars, I'm going to be happy because he/she is my friend and they're going to be happy and maybe I'll get a bit of a benefit. If some stranger wins a million dollars, I'm happy for them, but it really isn't an extremely big deal.

Likewise, if someone attacks me, I'm going to be furious. I'm going to go after them and hunt them down and hurt them. This is all hypothetically speaking of course. If my friend is attacked, I'm still going to be pretty angry but not quite as angry if it was me. I might help the friend hunt them down or support them in some way, but I'm not going to obsess over it. If some stranger gets attacked, I'm going to be angry, I'm going to want justice done, but that's about as far as it goes.

The effects of happiness on a planet would be

1)Reduction in economy which equals less taxes
2)Reduction in production wich equals longer build times
3)Reduction in Allegience meter

I know this is a long post, but bear with me a bit more. And thanks for reading this far.

Allegience would be a bit simpler since most of the complex stuff would be taken care of in happiness.

Affects on Allegience would be:

1)Happiness
2)Race (conquered planets would have less allegience than ones you colonized)
3)Spies

Once happiness reaches a certain point, there would be a chance of riots. These riots would even further reduce the economic and production outputs.

As riots continue and allegience drops there would be an increasing chance of revolt. If a revolt occurs the planet leaves the empire.

Revolts can be stopped a number of ways, some even before they even get started.

1)Military (Armed citizens attempted to take control of the planet but your garrison stopped them)
2)AI Governor (action depends on level of control of the governor)
-a)Fully automatic A (Governor addresses the issues that cause the revolt and convinces the people to stay in the empire. This could include buildings atomatically getting added at the beginning of the queue, other buildings being destroyed, tax levels getting changed, etc. All changes take care of problems and hapiness and allegience will start to increase.)
-b)Fully automatic B (Governor addresses some of the issues that cause the revolt and convinces the people to stay in the empire. This could include buildings atomatically getting added at the beginning of the queue, other buildings being destroyed, tax levels getting changed, etc. Other changes may still be needed like more ships in orbit to defend against alien attack or pirates, government type change, etc.)
-c)Semi-automatic (Governor convinces the people not to revolt and that you will take care of the problem. This would require the player to take care of all changes.)
Note: Fully automatic means the goervnor is set to take care of all or some of the aspects of your planet. Semi-automatic means the governor is off and you micromanage the planet.
3)Citizen (Some random citizen convinces the masses not to revolt. This would create a leader (if those are going ot be in the game) but it stays on that planet unitl allegience has been sufficeintly increased. Player must manually make all changes required.)

I'm sure there are a couple of things I forgot to address, but I think this post is long enough as it is.

Thanks again for reading all of this if you made it this far.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Simulating Citizens

#28 Post by Krikkitone »

It is simpler having one meter allegiance

what does it matter if the people are "happy" or not, all that matter is if they rebel.

Everything that would impact "happiness" is "blamed" on one empire or another.

So you are unhappy with your lot in life, but you don't blame the US government

If the Occupying power treats you well that may improve your allegiance to them... but the fact that they are the occupying power, and that you have a high allegiance to your homeland keeps your allegiance to them low.

Also Happiness/Allegiance should NOT ever be a general economic boost.

Happiness/Allegiance should be a "political" good that merely stops them from Trashing your economy/declaring independence/ aiding traitors.

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Re: Simulating Citizens

#29 Post by eleazar »

Ranos wrote:On the subject of Happiness and Allegience vs. just Allegience, I think having two distinct meters will give more options and better show the state of affairs on the planet than just one meter. This is because you can be happy while not having a high allegience to your ruler and you can be unhappy wile having a high allegiance.
...
Happiness would also effect the economic and industrial output of the planet as well. Unhappy people just don't work as hard and don't go out as much as happy people do.
Krikkitone wrote:It is simpler having one meter allegiance

what does it matter if the people are "happy" or not, all that matter is if they rebel.
....
Also Happiness/Allegiance should NOT ever be a general economic boost.

Happiness/Allegiance should be a "political" good that merely stops them from Trashing your economy/declaring independence/ aiding traitors.
Actually I think this is part of the heart of the issue of weather happiness can be rolled into allegiance: does happiness effect anything other than the chance of rebellion/riots? I.E. Does happiness have any effect but to prevent the negative results of disloyalty? If not, it's probably possible to dispense with happiness.

However, i think it's rather lame that a extremely loyal and happy population functions identically to a population that's dissatisfied— but not quite dissatisfied enough to start behaving badly. Such 1-dimensional "happiness" It nearly eliminates the classic 4X strategic options of choosing between a "kind" empire where you work hard to keep your citizens happy, but they pay you back with higher productivity, vs a "cruel" empire where citizens are not pampered.

There are lots of results we could choose for happiness, such as faster population growth. But higher resource production is the most obvious effect of high happiness (as in Civ). I tend to like this symmetry:
  • low happiness = no production due to riots
    high happiness = bonus to production
Of course it will have to be verified that it doesn't mess up the production. But i don't avoiding a happiness meter is a compelling enough reason to avoid any positive benefits of a satisfied citizenry.

Krikkitone wrote:Also Happiness/Allegiance should NOT ever be a general economic boost.
You've stated your opinion. It would be much more interesting if you explained "why".

Ranos wrote:For example:

I am a US citizen. I am not happy with the current economic, political and military situations in our country. That does not mean, however, that I am willing to rebel/revolt against the government, leave and become a citizen of another country or betray my fellow citizens.

Thus, I am not happy, but my allegience is still to my country.
Actually this is an unfortunate example. What you are describing in game terms is that you have low allegiance to the USA, (i.e. you don't approve of the government's actions) however it's not low enough to induce riot/betrayal/rebellion.

An example of a distinction would be the difference between:
  • A) someone who is safe, healthy, and well fed (i.e. happy) vs
    B) someone who is in danger, unhealthy and hungry (i.e. unhappy)
It's easy to understand how both A and B might be extremely loyal or disloyal to their government depending on other circumstances. But of course, the real question is weather we need the distinction in the game— not weather a distinction can be made.

Of course, assuming we have distinct happiness/allegiance meters, the two should gradually bleed into each other. The very happy planet will not remain disloyal forever, nor can the miserable planet remain loyal forever.

Ranos wrote:Happiness can be affected by a number of different things.

I) Situations on the planet
-A) Taxes
-B) Treatment of the people
--1)Slavery/workload
--2)Genocide/Xenocide
--3)Entertainment
-C)Military presence
-D)Recent attacks
--1)Military
--2)Spies
-E)Piracy
-F)Riots
I realize this is an everything you can think of list, but some comments:
* The game doesn't have taxes, and seems unlikely to include them
* For purposes of happiness it's probably unnecessary to distinguish between different causes that kill the citizens (genocide, military, monster attacks, etc.)
* Riots IMHO are more properly the result of unhappiness, not the cause

Ranos wrote:II) Situations on other planets in your empire
-A) Taxes (Their taxes are lower than ours, we're angry)
-B) Treatment of the people
--1)Slavery/workload
--2)Genocide/Xenocide
-C)Military presence (Our neighbor is protected so their are forces nearby to help us)
-D)Recent attacks
--1)Military
---a)Our neighbor was attacked and we could be next
---b)A planet in the empire was attacked because the planet was undefended
---c)An alien race attacked us and you haven't done anything about it
---d)A planet was taken by an enemy
--2)Spies
---a)Our neighbor was attacked and we could be next
---b)An alien race attacked us and you haven't done anything about it
-E)Piracy (Our neighbors have pirates attacking them, it's affecting our trade and we could be next)
-F)Riots (Our neighbors are rioting so our leader must be doing something wrong)
Empathy

For most of these effects, i think it's much simpler to use a concept i call empathy.
I.E. the levels of happiness and/or allegiance over an entire empire tend to even out over time, among all the planets. Later i'd like to make a distinction between members of an empire and members of the same species, but that's not important now. Empathy represents a planet caring about what happens to it's fellows, the fear/hope that what happened to them could happen to us, one planet convincing another to (dis)like empire X because of what it did to them, and generally the way ideas flow in a population.

I.E. rather than having a planet react because a neighbor is rioting, it's more flexible and direct to simple have some of the neighbor's disloyalty bleed over to that planet.

I can't explain this well mathematically, but i can make a nifty diagram.

Image

Imagine that each of these rectangles is a container of a fluid. The width of the container represents the size of the colony. The level of the fluid represents a high or low allegiance and/or happiness. At the bottom each of the containers is connected by a narrow tube (for simplicity, imagine that each container is connected directly to every other by a tube). What is going to happen over time to these fluid levels?
The meter on colony #3 & #4 will go down, and the meter on #2 will go up. Since there's not enough fluid in #3 & #4 to fill up #2 to the half-way line, all containers will reach equilibrium at a little lower than the half-way line.

Things that make planets happy or unhappy can be visualized as adding or removing fluid from one of the containers.


Current VS Historical caused for (un)Happiness and/or (dis)Loyalty

This had me stumped earlier, but i think i understand how it could work now. Perhaps someone was trying to express this idea, but if so i didn't get it. Earlier i had said that the meters should gradually tend toward neutral to simulate events in the past gradually being forgotten and loosing significance... but that's not quite what we need.

Let's consider 1 planet at a time, and just the happiness meter: We'll assume the meter goes from 100 to -100. And of course the numbers i use are merely for illustrative value.

Planet X has a neutral happiness meter. Then a space monster shows up and eats half the population, and blockades the planet preventing needed food shipments. Results:
  • 1 time event: half the population dying = -50 happiness

    status: blockade = -10 current situation value
    status: famine = -20 current situation value
OK, so the space monster immediately brings the happiness meter to -50, since this is a 1-time-event, the effect happens immediately. But what about the blockade and famine? Since these are ongoing situations, they don't directly add/subtract to the happiness meter, otherwise a minor status over many turns would quickly wipe out historical events.

So instead the "current situation value" (a really lousy name, but it's the best i have right now) functions as this planet's state of happiness equilibrium. I.E. Planet X has a current situation value of -30. That means over time (as long as the blockade and famine continue) the happiness meter will move from -50 to -30 and then stay at -30 until new events occur or the status changes. Casualties from the famine would be probably be considered a new event.


Similarly, for the allegiance meter, the policies, treaties, and forms of government that a planet (dis)likes would contribute to the "current situation value" of the allegiance meter. One-time events like attacks and gifts would contribute directly to the allegiance meter value, but be forgotten over time.

The meter values of other planets in the empire would of course bleed over to the meter value, not the "current situation value"



P.S. Ranos due to the fact that there's almost nothing to micromanage at a planetary level, the idea of an AI Governor is extremely unlikely for FO. Besides the design goal of avoiding a game the computer must play for you, there's hardly enough things to do to justify an AI Governor.

m_k
Space Floater
Posts: 33
Joined: Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:54 am
Location: Aachen, Germany

Re: Simulating Citizens

#30 Post by m_k »

eleazar wrote:
Current VS Historical caused for (un)Happiness and/or (dis)Loyalty
[...]
I think the same can be achieved without having to use two values. Let's say, the meter tends to get back to neutral by 10% each turn, so for example if it was 20 in one turn it will modified by -2, so it will be at 18 the next, if it was at -50 it will get back to -45 and so on. Instead of shifting all this by your current situation value you can now add -1 for blockade and -2 for famine each turn. The meter will then by itself gradually move to -30 because this is the point where it gains +3 for forgeting older events and loses -3 for blockade and famine, which forms a stable equilibrium.

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