| The
Clash
of Civilizations Glossaries
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| The
Clash
of Civilizations Glossaries
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Technology Model: The mechanism that changes the potential abilities of the civilization. Technology: Any specific discipline responsible for changing the abilities of the civ. There are three Tiers of technology. They interact with the game in slightly different ways, but all of them have the same equations and should be treated the same way.
Tier 1, or Theory, includes abstract studies like Physics. Technology Level: A logarithmic scale for measuring technology. All technologies grow in a continuous fashion, and the civ's mastery of the technology is defined by the technology level for that civ. Applications are physical objects like military units. The civ's technology determines what applications it can make and how good they are. Application is sometimes called Tier 4 of tech system. Knowledge: The ability of a person to do things. Also, the combined ability of the society to do things. This can only be a characteristic of a person or group of people. In the spreadsheet equations, knowledge is the linear scale of Technology. Information: Any data that is stored outside the mind of a person. It can include books, blueprints, and working devices. It is used to transfer knowledge from one person or group to another.
Research Points, or RP's, are responsible for changing the technology level. RP's can be obtained through experience, teaching, invention, experimentation, contact with other
civs, and the study of Information from other civs. |
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BRIEF SUMMARY
List of Govt Policies The political agents interact with each other to define policies through the "negotiation procedure", which is an abstract way to handle all the possible real life interactions between political entities, like voting, making alliances, discussing legal initiatives, bribing the opposition, etc. In general terms, the negotiation procedure ensures that the greater the power an agent has, the more alike the final govt policy will be to what the agent wanted it to be. The ruler enters his preferences for each policy, while what the social classes want for them must be modeled. To this end, the govt model takes info from the culture and social role of each class to determine what they want. Social classes preferences are divided in two groups. For the first group of policies (called Directly Negotiated Policies-DNP), the value a class wants for each policy is computed individually and independently from all the rest. For the second group (called Ideologically Negotiated Policies-INP), the class is forced to choose first an "ideology", which is a pre-set group of values. An ideology is really a "govt type". Given this election, the class preference becomes what the govt type dictates. Division in DNP and INP allows flexibility, consistency and flavor in other areas of the game. In terms of game-play, the political entities are constantly struggling every game turn to force the govt be what they want it to be. The shape of the govt is constantly in change, smoothly. The player, though, doesn't need to interact with the model every turn. He/she just puts what he/she wants and the game engine plays the ruler for him/her in the political arena automatically. The player will also have a set of Special Actions to (or attempt to) make sudden changes to the govt, like "closing the parliament". The Riots Model is in charge of handling violent attempts by social classes to change the govt.
Social Classes
Families: Socioeconomic social classes, Religious social classes, Administrative social classes and Military social classes. For now, the default game will have these social classes:
GLOSSARY (MOST IMPORTANT TERMS) Political power: The power or capability to influence the final value of govt policies. Any form of influence is counted in, legal or not. In a modern democracy, any party with at least one senator in the senate has political power, for example (very small in this case, though). Social Class: A group of people with a certain social role and common mentality in general terms. Govt Policy: A generic govt regulation including in theory a whole set of laws to define how the civ should operate in a given field. Political Block: Group of social classes sharing the same condition that allows them to participate in politics. "Conditions" are 1)Economic power (control of kapital), 2)Military power, 3)Spiritual power/recognition, and 4)Inherent. The latter means you don't need nothing to participate in politics. It's your unalienable right. Political Structure: How political power is distributed among political actors. Expressed in pol. power shares distributed among political blocks. Government Profile: The current political structure and policy values in the civ. Ruler's Govt Profile: Ruler's preferred values for the political structure and policy values. Ideology: A pre-set group of values consistent with each other describing a political structure and an economic system (values for policies Private Property, Economic Planning and Social Policies). It's a more sophisticated concept for "govt type", but the terms are interchangeable. Ideologically Negotiated Policies: Variables defining an ideology. The pol.power shares and Private Property, Economic Planning and Social Policies. Directly Negotiated Policies: Policies not defined in ideologies. That is: Tax Rate, Ethnic Discrimination, Religious Discrimination, Slavery, Foreign Affairs and Civil Rights. Negotiation Procedure: Method that produces the Govt Profile given the preferences of all political actors having political power.
CURRENT STATUS The current effort in model design is to allow greater flexibility in the number of social classes. The "families of social classes" approach seen above is an implication of this. The development in this part is still in progress. Some equations in the model need to be changed to reflect this and that's part of the current work. An alternative system to the "negotiation procedure" has been started by F_Smith under the assumption that a straight forward voting system is more realistic. You can play with this also in the "Beast". Decision to which one use for the final game waits for play testing. The negotiation procedure has been in doubt for several reasons. No agreement yet.
Some discussion about interface has been made with little agreement. |
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BRIEF SUMMARY EG's have one or more religions. The number is still TBD. Cultural attributes are subject to change along the game. The way they change depends on the reality the EG lives in. Religions work as agents of cultural change also. When an EG follows a religion, it tries to take the attitudes the religion dictates or encourages. To this end, religions are defined as a set of "desirable values for cultural attributes". These values are fixed for the whole game. Just the intensity with which people follow the religion changes. Religions spread through the world through contact between civs, which is measured in trade routes.
List of Cultural Attributes
List of other variables defining each EG
GLOSSARY (MOST IMPORTANT TERMS) Primitive or Ethnic Religion: The religion an EG is assumed to have at the beginning of the game. Great Religion of the World (GRW): Religions like Islam that are allowed to spread globally and eventually overshadow all Primitive Religions. Religion's moral code or doctrine: The set of cultural attributes values the religion encourages.
Minorities: All EG's that are discriminated because of religion or nationality.
CURRENT STATUS The number of religions per EG is still unsolved. The following cultural attributes should be included in a future update: Literacy, Natural Affinity and Corruption. The handling of the attribute Nationalism should be refined. Religious converting is missing. Spreading is the passive way by which a religion gets more followers (already covered), while converting is the active attempt by preachers to get more followers. It has been suggested that religions should have branches, like christianity producing catholicism and protestantism. Still unsolved. The model initially was supposed to manage migrations. It doesn't right now and this issue may end up being handled somewhere else.
It has been accepted so far that we won't model human races, their mixing and race discrimination. |
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BRIEF SUMMARY
List of Ethnic Groups PAF's
List of Social Classes PAF's PAF's can take different actions. With the same goal, you can do several different things to achieve it. This is made with events. The higher a PAF is, the greater probabilities for different events ad hoc to the particular PAF. Some of the events are Street Protests, Riots, Formation of Revolutionary Forces, Attempts to Murder the Ruler, etc. The Riots Model is fed by the social, govt and economic models.
GLOSSARY (MOST IMPORTANT TERMS) Event: How a PAF becomes a precise action in the game with implications.
CURRENT STATUS Equations still need to be refined. In particular, no info is yet used from the economic model. That's the main line of work currently. Specification of what exactly should happen when each of available events occur, is missing.
Almost no debate has been around this model. |
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