Cultural Themes and Traits

Should I do Czechoslovakia? I'm not sure how well I can handle the social part as I was always more interested in the military part of it. There were several revolutions, people were (and are) xenophobic as a consequence of both world wars and the communist regime, etc.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Longpost.

Good work Alaska! However, there are a few subtleties(sp?) I want to point out.

Through most of it's history, England has been anti-imperial in it's thinking. The best examples are in Magna-Carta and the English Civil War. England has had a strong heritage of democratic leanings, if not sentiments. The creates great stress within the culture during it's colonial expansions, and this really comes to a head in Australia. With such an open environment, and so few massive political swings like you have in the rest of the Empire, people were allowed a smoother and purer (Please ignore all bias implied in this word, I simply mean that it's easier to understand without outside influences) cultural developement.

From the sounds of it, basic fear of change was really what sparked most of the bigotry. Then, later on, wider and more open (That bit's important) communications networks allowed for more empathy, and subsequently the walls of bigotry began to fall.

Commander Keen wrote:

Should I do Czechoslovakia? I'm not sure how well I can handle the social part as I was always more interested in the military part of it. There were several revolutions, people were (and are) xenophobic as a consequence of both world wars and the communist regime, etc.

Don't do anything you don't feel comfortable with. If you aren't sure you could provide an accurate depiction, than feel free to step out.

Okay, cool. So Alaska do good? That'll help with some of the culture mechanics?

OK, got a local historian on my side, so I'll try and post if the results are any good.

Reviving thread for Scio's new push for a clean up of the wiki.

We need to figure out how we are going to display and let the player change this section. Once we have the things that can occur, we can figure out how they occur. Have we moved away from having the basic themes of Love, Honor, etc? If so, we need to come up with a new system of sliders or something (yes i have a thing for sliders) that can handle what we have talked about in this thread. As a recap we've talked about:

Empathic ranges
Person to person interaction
Discrimination and Tolerance
Attitudes to Inequality

And we need to figure out how to include ethics into this section, although i think a lot of that is done with what we've discussed above.

My ideas so far:

A slider for each empathic field that displays how strong it is, and allows for the player to spend resources on attempting to move it. Right now the empathic fields i have are Family, Appearance, Customs (handled by however we deal with person to person interaction), Language, Duty (like the fuedal sort of deal, empathy to your lord and whatnot), Religious, Nation, Species, Organisms. Please point out all the problems with these.

Discrimination and Tolerance could have a list of all "groups", either racial or caste or national or religious or socioeconomic and a slider of how much tolerance of discrimination the culture of your nation averages with these groups. Inequality could also be handled in this, determining whether people like or dislike inequality.

Then we could have a number of somewhat procedurally generated animations that are somehow triggered, like bowing to one another with a high Duty empathy slider or something. I'm not so flash hot on this one.

Other than this all we have in this section is a shortcut to a mini editor to edit animations for sports, arts and entertainment and the always elusive Caste System/Life Progression stuff. Head to this thread to help figure out that.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Reviving thread for Scio's new push for a clean up of the wiki.

We need to figure out how we are going to display and let the player change this section. Once we have the things that can occur, we can figure out how they occur. Have we moved away from having the basic themes of Love, Honor, etc? If so, we need to come up with a new system of sliders or something (yes i have a thing for sliders) that can handle what we have talked about in this thread. As a recap we've talked about:

Empathic ranges
Person to person interaction
Discrimination and Tolerance
Attitudes to Inequality

And we need to figure out how to include ethics into this section, although i think a lot of that is done with what we've discussed above.

My ideas so far:

A slider for each empathic field that displays how strong it is, and allows for the player to spend resources on attempting to move it. Right now the empathic fields i have are Family, Appearance, Customs (handled by however we deal with person to person interaction), Language, Duty (like the fuedal sort of deal, empathy to your lord and whatnot), Religious, Nation, Species, Organisms. Please point out all the problems with these.

Discrimination and Tolerance could have a list of all "groups", either racial or caste or national or religious or socioeconomic and a slider of how much tolerance of discrimination the culture of your nation averages with these groups. Inequality could also be handled in this, determining whether people like or dislike inequality.

Then we could have a number of somewhat procedurally generated animations that are somehow triggered, like bowing to one another with a high Duty empathy slider or something. I'm not so flash hot on this one.

Other than this all we have in this section is a shortcut to a mini editor to edit animations for sports, arts and entertainment and the always elusive Caste System/Life Progression stuff. Head to this thread to help figure out that.

Society and the concepts/theories behind it's machinations aren't exactly my forte, but as a gamer I have to chime in here and just say that, for almost all situations, it's best to try and avoid the dreaded 'slider bar', especially for things as uniquely complicated as Discrimination, and other societal influences. Even if we are forced to use slider bars (I'd rather find some workaround, but it's escaping me at the moment), we can at least camouflage them as something else, with a description of their effects. Slider bars are generally (not always) boring for the player to use, and while they are direct and effective, we want to keep the game interesting, while still being understandable and playable. Right?
:?

Zetal wrote:

Society and the concepts/theories behind it's machinations aren't exactly my forte, but as a gamer I have to chime in here and just say that, for almost all situations, it's best to try and avoid the dreaded 'slider bar', especially for things as uniquely complicated as Discrimination, and other societal influences. Even if we are forced to use slider bars (I'd rather find some workaround, but it's escaping me at the moment), we can at least camouflage them as something else, with a description of their effects. Slider bars are generally (not always) boring for the player to use, and while they are direct and effective, we want to keep the game interesting, while still being understandable and playable. Right?
:?

QFT

Most of the things mentioned here aren't straight up more/less inclusive. I think having at least a list of possible discriminatory categories would be good. On another note, discrimination overlaps heavily with psychology, which is controlled in the behavior editor.

Tenebrarum wrote:

QFT

Most of the things mentioned here aren't straight up more/less inclusive. I think having at least a list of possible discriminatory categories would be good. On another note, discrimination overlaps heavily with psychology, which is controlled in the behavior editor.

(hey sorry been busy, only post where I think I can be helpful, but I've been reading a lot of the forum.)

QFT as well, not to mention that discrimination can rise and fall with economic and societal pressures.
I could see a list of discriminatory categories consisting of Racial/ caste differences, class differences, and political differences along with some cultural stuff.

As for the sliders, I wouldn't know if there's any other way for the player to interact with class behavior (unless you suddenly decide you'd like to type in the values instead).
With this slider method the player has a way to both see and interact with the behaviors so it works well.

The bigger problem is how do we get the behaviors to change by themselves over time.

For now, the only factors I can think of that would effect class behaviors are:
Class to Class interaction,
And the state of the faction the class belongs to. (economy, agriculture, political discrimination ect.)

Speaking of political discrimination, as long as we have class behaviors, I could see if a certain class was to be in power than faction policies could reflect their behavior, which is pretty interesting but I suppose that's something else on its own.

I appreciate your enthiusiasm, but remember that these things are all just numbers- their only effect is on groups, not on individuals. we need them to work, but work simply.

I still think that sliders are the best way to display these things to the player, have the players interact with these things, and the computer easily understand and act on these things. Obviously these would only really affect stability and happiness in Strat Mode, but in Org mode you might also see some fights break out amongst discriminated groups and perhaps even an occasional riot, depending on the level of the slider.

So yeah. I still like sliders.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I still think that sliders are the best way to display these things to the player, have the players interact with these things, and the computer easily understand and act on these things. Obviously these would only really affect stability and happiness in Strat Mode, but in Org mode you might also see some fights break out amongst discriminated groups and perhaps even an occasional riot, depending on the level of the slider.

So yeah. I still like sliders.

I do as well. They are the best way to represent the values graphically and also the best way to set the values.

God so much for culture! Where can I start my first contribution to this incredible idea?
I just got one! I am sorry for any incovenience, i did not have readed every post here and i have to write before i forget.


Culture is based in a number of facts, but these facts don't come entirely from their leaders. I think some important factors in the core of certain societies, that they CAN control are these:

Love/Diplomacy: As it was written on the firsts post it would be meassured in the kindness that the population have with each other. " We deserve to treat each other the way we want to treat ourselves

Science Oriented: High value of science, the goverment would have invested heavily in research.
" We will finish this vote session as soon as the White Coat guys find a way to cure the flesh-eating virus they released this morning"

Honor: Protect the weak, destroy evil.
"We don't care you can bomb our planet away! We will throw the pieces that flew away back at ya, until you stop making fun of the poor Oogies in Betelgeuse!"

Destruction/Domination: Only want to make the planet a pile of rubble and put a flag on the top.
"The weak only deserve to clean our shoes, clean our socks and monitor our trafic!"

Economy: The gorvment have full autority over the economy, and actualy only thinks on it.
"Money is the best friend money can buy."

So the second type of caracteristics are going to influence the originals:
Religion: This can make things complicated I will try to show my point.
There can be several types of religions, to make the good, the bad or don't make anything at all.

The repercursions that a "make the good" religion will do to the core of the society:

Love:Love each other because the gods say so.

Science Oriented: "We are searching new ways to reach godhood! Saturday we did find something usefull but a thunder destroyed the building"

Honor: "The god of justice shall prevail!"

Destruction/Domination: "Only by making the evil shall we impose the "goodness" of our gods"

Economy "Buy in Cosmic Burgers! You don't want to make the god of money cry, right?"

The repercursions the a "make the evil" religion will do to the core of society:

Love: "Love each other because with ours gods we can't expect good from anyone without making something about it"

Science Oriented "We killed some dogs yesterday, not that anyone cares, but we found out that killing dogs with a chaisaw DO make children cry!"

Honor "The god of death will LOVE these sadistics infiels that tryed to burn down that village"

Destruction/Domination " I am the god of destruction in flesh! Hear my call to burn down that village!"

Economy " These new oil is fantastic! Fast! Buy before the animals that we kill to make it go instinct!"

The religion that do nothing (neutral) won't change the core of society.

Another fact is the Patriotism. It will make people pay taxes, fight for the contry. The more patriot the people are, more the government control them.

Nature love will make people want less poplution on their cities and planets.

But some fact doesn't come from us, the player. Other will be by the influence of another contry. Pressure factor will be it's name.

A war will be a strong preassure factor, a contry that loves peace will be totally lost in a fact like that if it don't change in time. The other contry can impose their religion in war or by sending missionaries.
A economy contry can cut deals with another to make them do something they want.

So lets go to the math to show how a contry will be. Explaning that this aren't made of numbers. When "Core Theme X Religion" it will explain why they do what they do.

Final Theme= Core Theme X Religion X Level of Patriotism (1 to 100) X Nature loving X (Positive Preassure factors + Empathic Range) / Negative Preassure Factors - empathic range .

Now I will read the other posts and try to improve this view.

As I do that equantion I am going to see if that works.

Core Theme: Science Oriented
Religion:Atheism (I am not saying Atheism is a religion, it is just that culture belief in a super-natural way of the reality)
Level of Patriotism: 100
Nature Orientation: Preservation
Positive Preassure Factors: A ally that believes preservation is a good thing. The empathic range with that Ally is high.
Negative Preassure Factors: This contry is at war with a religious faction. The empathic range with that enemy is high.

So this war agaist the religious faction will cause a number of problems to that Atheism reality they have. So this war is going to make some people inside the contry more open to new religions. But the patriotism is high enough to make the decisions their leaders want, so in fact these people will not be more open to new religions.

This Ally believes that preservation is a good thing. It will effect the already existed preservation policy in the contry. This will make the people's mind even more ecologic. As the Patriotism is high enough the leader will make decisions, the other contry is a Ally so why should he care? The "nature loving" will grow indeed.

So the Final Theme: Will be a Scientific State but with no religion and high ecology policies.

There can be a infinite number of Preassure Factors (refferred from now on by me as PFs). From united scientific research with some contries; to a coalition of enemies tring to fight a common and powerful foe. If you guys need any more exemples I will be more than glad to provide them.

PS: One thing that I realized is that you are trying to search cultures that work. For instance, in Celtic and Aztec cultures were nature oriented, but upon the "Preassure Factors" their culture changed or was destroied. So yeah humans are self-centered but that doesn't mean other races from another planets would consider themselfs superior than animals.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed but...

What if in that nations, despite having a traditional culture, there's a small circle based on that culture, much like a gaming culture where despite being big, it has a small culture to the scientists, theorist, and hardcore gamers, if the species have that, or maybe a culture from an another nation, much like where Anime is the animation for japan, while a small group of people in America watches it.

How about people who oppose the nation's culture, such as activism, much like American which had various history of activism such as civil rights, women rights, gay rights, protest against the war in Vietnam.

What if the leader of that Nation has different viewpoints in that culture, would he change it by converting people to his viewpoints, or execute his people if he was oppressive to people who didn't agree with him?

My point in this post is, what if the certain species may have different viewpoints than others, and how will be effected by the nation?

Gawayno wrote:

I'm not sure if this has been discussed but...

What if in that nations, despite having a traditional culture, there's a small circle based on that culture, much like a gaming culture where despite being big, it has a small culture to the scientists, theorist, and hardcore gamers, if the species have that, or maybe a culture from an another nation, much like where Anime is the animation for japan, while a small group of people in America watches it.

How about people who oppose the nation's culture, such as activism, much like American which had various history of activism such as civil rights, women rights, gay rights, protest against the war in Vietnam.

What if the leader of that Nation has different viewpoints in that culture, would he change it by converting people to his viewpoints, or execute his people if he was oppressive to people who didn't agree with him?

My point in this post is, what if the certain species may have different viewpoints than others, and how will be effected by the nation?

Well hey there! It's been a while since someone brought this up.

To be blunt, I don't see this having a great effect. While a member of small circles like this might enjoy and celebrate aspects of foreign cultures, there is rarely a significant move towards all aspects of said foreign cultures. While such subjects create fascinating real-world mini-societies, they rarely cause major societal shifts. Thrive really shouldn't be dealing with anything on a scale that small, so the effects are negligible.

Now, if we're talking about a more isolated demographic and a stronger culture, things get interesting. African slaves in America did not engage in full-fledged cultural diffusion, and had a stronger cultural foundation than someone adopting aspects of a foreign culture. This allowed new identities and traditions to form, effectively creating a whole new culture that thrived in and of itself.

Basically what this boils down to is the strength and severity of cultural diffusion, and the amount of resistance different cultures exert on each other.