Cultural Trait Brainstorming

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS CONCEPT HAS NOW BEEN REPLACED BY THE CONCEPT PRESENTED IN THIS THREAD.

So, an important aspect of the socio-economic model I have drafted up here is culture. Now culture cannot simply be a value like happiness or science. Instead it will have its own model and system that dabbles in all parts of your nation. Now, there are several major cultural themes your culture can have. The themes represent the core concept and foundation of your culture. There are also little modifiers called cultural traits. These are like individual customs and traditions within your culture, the sum of which determines your theme. By this I mean the theme you have the most cultural traits from is set as your cultural theme. Obviously it can change if after a certain point you have more traits from another theme. Culture points, also referred to as just culture (yes I know this will get very confusing, but bear with me), are used to adopt these cultural traits. Now, here is a current list of the cultural themes:

Love - Charity, Compassion, Mercy
Honour - Duty, Loyalty, Respect, Bravery
Liberty - Freedom, Patriotism
Wisdom - Knowledge, Understanding, Justice
Order - Conformity, Obedience, Zealotry
Unity - Harmony, Agreement, Peace
Stewardship - Hospitality, Care, Protection
Patronage - Hierarchy, Transaction, Contribution

Now within these broad cultural themes you as the player can adopt individual cultural traits. That's where this thread comes into play. I'm having trouble coming up with a sizable list of traits for the different themes. I have the basic template for each trait, and a few example traits myself, but from there on I would like you guys to give your contributions. Please try and keep them simple, and you can always look at history or cultures today and turn any of their traditions or customs into traits for the themes. Some traits can be only valuable temporarily, like Elder Knowledge since it becomes obsolete with writing (which is mentioned below), while others can be valuable for specific types of countries (example: pacifism wouldn't be good for warmongering nations). Some traits might have some negative effects, but they should still be beneficial enough in some way that some players will adopt it.

Here is a list of the values that a trait can affect:

Socio-Economic Values:

Administration: Your effectiveness at ruling your people
Influence: Your persuasiveness in diplomatic situations
Corruption: How corrupt your government and administration is
Tax Efficiency: How effective your government is at collecting taxes
Tariff Efficiency: How effective your government is at collecting tariffs
Production: Increases build speed of buildings
Science: Increases research speed of techs
Culture: Used to adopt cultural traits (Try not to use this as a bonus too much, because then the player uses up cultural point to adopt a trait that gives it to them)
Happiness: How content your people are
Stability: How stable your society is
Health: How healthy your people are
Revolt Risk: How likely people are to revolt every minute
Manpower Rate: What percent of the population is eligible for work (i.e. able bodied individuals)
Population Growth: Growth Rate of your population

Made the names orange just so they're easier to find at a glance.
~scio

Military Values:

Breaking Point: At what point your soldiers turn tail and run (increases means they are more likely, decreases to this value means less likely)
Morale: How well spirited and eager your soldiers are
Discipline: How well trained your soldiers are

Here are my examples, try to model yours likewise:

Theme: Wisdom
Trait Name: Elder Knowledge
Description: Elders are held in a high level of respect and authority. Their long lives have exposed them to everything life has to offer and thus there is a lot to learn from their stories and experiences. Elders are the source of knowledge and the target of speculation for any questions the younger generations have. However, with writing, knowledge can be recorded in archives and the oral tradition of the elders loses its significance.
Effects: Bonus to Science until Writing is discovered

Theme: Liberty
Trait Name: Nationalism
Description: Your people know their true identity, and aren't afraid to express it when under foreign occupation. They are attached to their true nation which they deserve to belong to. They are members of a nation state.
Effects: Cities of yours that are captured by enemies have increases Revolt Risk for a period of time

Theme: Unity
Trait Name: Pacifism
Description: War is destructive and evil. It is only under peace that society can progress and develop. Everybody loses in war. Peace, stability, and prosperity are the true fruits of a people's labour.
Effects: +Stability during peace, -Stability during war, +Relations with foreign countries

Theme: Order
Trait Name: Divine Right
Description: The monarch was anointed in the in the heavens and thus has absolute power in our realm. We are blessed to be under his rule, and as loyal subjects we will treat him as such.
Effects: +Stability if government is a monarchy

Okay, get those creative juices flowing!

Stability, happiness, and revolt risk are obviously all closely intertwined. This looks like a good list of factors, so let's discuss in PM how they all affect each other.

There isn't a trait that encourages production, consumerism, etc. Would it be a good idea to make one that benefits a highly commercialized society?

(I can't think of a good name for one )

Okay, so to keep this thread from dying before it even began I'm going to post two more traits I thought of just today.

Theme: Liberty
Trait Name: Arsenal of Freedom
Description: Your great country is the home of liberty and democracy, and this privilege is greatly valued by your subjects. Therefore, you have a duty to protect all peoples from tyranny and oppression abroad.
Effects: +1% Population Growth of Soldier Faction, +5% Manpower Rate of Soldier Faction

Theme: Honour
Trait Name: Warrior Code
Description: Combat is an honourable and mighty art. As in all practices, there are rules which your warriors respect in their strive to excel in the field of battle.
Effects: +10% Discipline, -5 Breaking Point

Please guys, submit any traits you can think of in the format I used above. I will record all of these in a Word file on my PC for later use.

EDIT: You don't have to give specific values like I did, just say if it increases or decreases it

Guys, I would also just like to point out that a chart listing the effects of the different socio-economic values can be seen here, hopefully it should give you a clearer perspective of the values' effects on your nation.

EDIT: Since no one else is posting here, and I don't want to triple post, here's another idea I just got for a cultural trait.

Theme: Patronage
Trait Name: Patron of the Arts
Description: The wealthy and the elite of your nation rank each others' influence and prestige through their level of endorsement for fine arts and culture. Painters and composers alike receive large sums of wealth in return for their masterpieces. This cultural and commercial exchange has made your country a fulcrum of culture and high society.
Effects: -5% Culture Cost of adopting Cultural Traits

I got some more, and remember guys you are free to suggest your own as well, your forcing me to triple post.

Theme: Wisdom
Trait Name: Academic Excellence
Description: Your people put great pride and value in the level of education of the children and youth. Families strive to have the next generation excel in all fields of study they pursue.
Effects: +5% Science, Production, and Culture bonuses of schools

Theme: Wisdom
Trait Name: Oral Tradition
Description: Stories and experiences are told down from generation to generation. Songs and poems tell of great stories of your peoples past, and have woven into a deep lore of your society.
Effects: -10% Culture Cost of adopting Cultural traits prior to discovery of writing, in which it becomes -5%

Theme: Honour
Trait Name: Work Ethic
Description: Your people have adopted a set of values based on hard work and diligence. It is almost a duty to have a belief in the moral benefit of work and its ability to enhance character. They support reliability, having initiative, or pursuing new skills. Meritocracy is highly praised.
Effects: +10% Production

Theme: Liberty
Trait Name: Jingoism
Description: The only way to maintain your people's freedom is through a patriotic and aggressive foreign policy. Through the use of threats or
actual force against other countries we may safeguard what our national interests.
Effects: +5 Happiness while at war, -Relations with foreign countries

Also guys, if you can think of any minor restriction for any of these traits so that the player must balance out the benefits and the drawbacks.

Ok, saw this thread now. so lets see if i can get some in addition.

Honesty (ok, thats already there with Honour)
Kindness (possible in Love. Would define the acting of the creature with others (Also some they don't know)
Laughter (don't see anything about this here. Its like how humorful the creature is.)
Generosity (ok, thats Charity)
Loyalty (that we actually have)

attitude against foreigners (could also be some trait. So i creature with this high will be friendly and nice to strangers as they are to themselfs. A create with a low value in this, could act friendly between themselfs, but hostile to others.)

Silver Sterling, I don't necessarily need new cultural themes right now, I need specific traits. However, attitude against foreigners does give me an idea, i'll edit my post before your post shortly, although I have to change it so that it fits as a cultural trait. Thanks for the help!

NickTheNick wrote:

Silver Sterling, I don't necessarily need new cultural themes right now, I need specific traits. However, attitude against foreigners does give me an idea, i'll edit my post before your post shortly, although I have to change it so that it fits as a cultural trait. Thanks for the help!

I'm pretty sure they were trait suggestions, just mostly without specific themes for them to be under.

As cultural themes, well they would do well for pony cultures, but in this case they where intended more as traits, how Uteen noticed correctly.
To be exact, they are the Elements of Harmony, but i tought they could fit into here aswell. So feel free to take what you need from them.
http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Elements_of_Harmony

Ahh I see. However, the thing is that those virtues are apparent amongst all cultures and do not serve as specific traits. Traits can emphasize certain virtues like charity for generosity but they cannot be traits in and unto themselves.

So here's a new one.

Theme: Love
Trait Name: Charity
Description: Generosity had become a prominent value for your people. Donations to the poor are common and many charitable organizations have sprung up to carry this forth on a larger scale.
Effects: +Pop growth of Factions in the Low Income class

I got one, I don't think it has been posted but I could be wrong.
Theme: Wisdom
Trait Name: Philosophical Mindset
Description: Your people believe in great wisdom towards their problems. They approach issues systematically and solve them with logic and truth.
Effect: Bonus to science and stability during troubled times.
Hopefully this can keep the thread alive!

Ahh, interesting one. I will definitely take that into account, but as you may have noticed I don't record our list of them on this thread, or else then the OP would eventually reach pages long.

The only issue I see with this is that it overlaps with the tech, Philosophy, in the research web. We will have to tweak it a bit to make it unique enough to be a cultural trait and not just an extension of the tech tree. Don't worry though, many of my ideas for cultural traits overlap with techs on the research web, I guess it is a tendency to associate the two terms similarly.

EDIT: Something I forgot to mention, how would you define "troubled times" as a specific state regarding variables. By this I mean is a stability of 5 or lower considered "troubled times"? Plus, I don't necessarily agree with that restriction. Although I do think traits shouldn't be all good, but have several benefits with a medium to minor drawback, I don't think it makes sense for philosophy to only provide a bonus during troubled times. Nonetheless, thanks for contributing.

I thought of one .. if it is okay or if it has already been mentioned.


Theme: Theocracy
Trait Name: Divine Right
Description: Theocracy in power is a toll on one person or a number of people (depending on religion) which applies absolutely to the rules dictated by a religion. Everything else is wrong.
Effects: - 40% science, - 20% relations with the other nations of other religions, - 40% relations with other nations, there is an atheist state or countries with a large number of atheists / agnostics , + 10% population growth, + 10% order

Theme: State atheism
Trait Name: Arsenal of Science
Description: A nation where the costs, superstitions and the block of science caused by the religion are canceled by the ban, even by force of their religious rites.
Effects: + 25% science, - 20 % relations with the other nations moderately religious, - 40% relations with other nations Theocracy

Anyone is free to make changes to my ideas! I am actually happy that you are considering adding it! Also, I would consider "troubled times" with a stability rating of 4 or lower? I will post an edited effects of trait below but again everyone is free to edit and change it.
Philosophical Mindset
Effect: +10% influence, +10% tolerance to other religions, +5% science ( don't know if there should be any more bonuses?) -5% Administration, (need more weaknesses, maybe -5% production?)
If you like the idea, you can add to it all you want! I will be trying to think of more soon.

To give you some tips, try to look at cultures we have in the world around us. The cultural trait "Work Ethic" is one I got from the term Protestant Work Ethic, a term used in America and Northern Europe when referring to how their culture values hard work. "Oral Tradition" and "Elder Knowledge" are both ones I got from looking at First Nations, whose culture revolves a lot around respect for the elders and oral storytelling/history. If you look at real life examples you should be able to find examples much more easily.

these traits are for later down the tech trees game:

Theme: Stewardship
Trait Name: Cloning Initiative
Requires: Some form of stem cell tech
Description: Allows your scientists to focus more the field of cloning technologies and the application of cloning in medical and military means. Can not have this trait if Cyber Initiative is already unlocked.
Effects: -25% research time on cloning techs, +10% health, +15% population grow, - relations with foreign countries without cloning, negative hit on happiness and positive hit on revolt risk dependent on how large anti-cloning groups are in your society. Allows creation of clone army.

Theme: Order
Trait Name: Cyber Initiative
Requires: Advanced Computers
Description: Allows your scientists to focus on the field of robotics and robotic prosthetic, to create cold unfeeling robotic warriors and cyborgs. Can not have trait if Cloning Initiative is already unlocked.
Effect: -25% research time on robotic techs, +10% stability, -15 revolt risk(kill-bots), +20% production, -30 happiness, -50 breaking point, +20 discipline, - relations with foreign countries without robotics, possible chance of extinction/enslavement via robotic take over. Allows kill-bot army.

I sort of see these as branching paths to take for the player to chose what they want to focus on before they leave their planet, though they can still research both cloning and robotics with either trait.

Those aren't cultural traits and are not related to culture. Robotics and Cyber initiatives have more to do with science then culture. Such initiatives aren't necessary anyways. The player shouldn't have invisible forces stopping them from developing those researches just because they haven't adopted the appropriate cultural trait. Also, your bonuses and penalties are WAYY too large.

I appreciate the effort nonetheless, but this is very unrelated to culture. Btw, in case you were wondering, I wasn't the one who voted you down.

This may just be my civilization fanboy ideas kikin in but i might as well say it.

order: it should have imperialism, nationalism, comunism, socialism, democratic-communism (lol mao) ,facism, ect. why? well first off all of these have a agenda to control the populus greatly, somtimes it ends up blowing in the contries face. (ww1, nazi propaganda, stalinism, roman empire, ect.)

Freedom: democracy, constitution, universal suffrage, emancipation, free thought, free religion, you get the idea.

the reson why governmental types are in my list is because many tribute a lot to any culture.

slavery: obiously this is hard to say if it should go under order or something else.. but it has a big effect on culture, this allows you to make people build structures for you no matter what....unless they revolt. also it makes you able to make rasicm very common in a culture, unless your a roman slave....then you are the same race...

nationalism can make people take pride in a country and make them hate foreiners from many nations.

comunism can either make people work harder, or make them leave......

facism is hard to get going but lots of force and brainwashing will make you supreme comander of a populus. this can make you found a state religion (aka brainwashed mumbo jumbo that makes you.... for example supreme race of the world.)

last is tribalism behaviors.

canabalism: religios beliefs can make them eat their own kind for some reason. (if they aren't t rex people. lol)

tribal dances, god sacrifices,holy fights, holy wars, migratory traditions, holy holiday battles! (fighting between two nations so soldiers have something to do on that holiday to honor what ever it is they are celibrating.) holidays, even artwork


hope this helps.

Most of those are not cultural traits.

kingTherapsids wrote:

This may just be my civilization fanboy ideas kikin in but i might as well say it.

order: it should have imperialism, nationalism, comunism, socialism, democratic-communism (lol mao) ,facism, ect. why? well first off all of these have a agenda to control the populus greatly, somtimes it ends up blowing in the contries face. (ww1, nazi propaganda, stalinism, roman empire, ect.)

Freedom: democracy, constitution, universal suffrage, emancipation, free thought, free religion, you get the idea.

the reson why governmental types are in my list is because many tribute a lot to any culture.

slavery: obiously this is hard to say if it should go under order or something else.. but it has a big effect on culture, this allows you to make people build structures for you no matter what....unless they revolt. also it makes you able to make rasicm very common in a culture, unless your a roman slave....then you are the same race...

nationalism can make people take pride in a country and make them hate foreiners from many nations.

comunism can either make people work harder, or make them leave......

facism is hard to get going but lots of force and brainwashing will make you supreme comander of a populus. this can make you found a state religion (aka brainwashed mumbo jumbo that makes you.... for example supreme race of the world.)

last is tribalism behaviors.

canabalism: religios beliefs can make them eat their own kind for some reason. (if they aren't t rex people. lol)

tribal dances, god sacrifices,holy fights, holy wars, migratory traditions, holy holiday battles! (fighting between two nations so soldiers have something to do on that holiday to honor what ever it is they are celibrating.) holidays, even artwork


hope this helps.

I guess it'd be sort of a large-scale behavior editor, unless we can only edit the government and not the people. In that case, there'll be some exceptions. I suppose there'd be, say, a rebellion going on against the low-freedom government in a nation/society center that you'll have to put down before there's too much support for it. Or there could be an anti-slavery society that might lead to a rebellion if you don't edit the nation's policies to remove slavery.

Maybe there could be a culture or ideal editor that is part of the nation editor?

Culture is "edited" through the adoption of cultural traits. Most of what you mentioned is accessed in the government panel/tab, a different panel from the culture tab.

Theme: Honour
Trait Name: Respect.
Description: Your people have a high respect of their enemies. Small or Big, they understand and respect the things they do.
+5% Morale bonus to soldiers when donating humanitarian aid to enemy nations. -2% Breakout risk for POWs. -10% more negative bonus when executing POWs.

Theme: Stewardship
Trait name: community bond
Description: your people enjoy the company of one another, and always love to know each other, but this does pose some challenges in larger colonies
Effect: +8 happiness to -6 happiness depending on size of population per colony, +5% happiness on discovery of writing, telecommunication and (some fancy future stuff like photonic-communication or something)