Socio-Economic Model Full Draft

All the slaves wouldn't disappear all at once. Also, with less slaves there would be more job opportunities for the other Populations, so they would grow faster for a period before stabilizing to a steady growth again. Unemployed don't need to be forced to get jobs. All unemployed individuals naturally/automatically employ themselves in a suitable position once a job opens. Due to this, there can never be unemployment and underemployment for a Population at the same time. This may come off as unrealistic, but it is an easy and non-CPU-intensive method of keeping track of populations and employment. By this point individual members of populations aren't even really individuals anymore. They are simply numbers being traded back and forth like in Wall Street, except without the fraud. They only become actual units again when they are "Deployed".

Fair enough. A gradual replacement would be good.

Also, what about status of descendants of slaves? In ancient Rome, slavery was hereditary, while in early medieval Scandinavia, children of slaves (thralls) are free.

Edit: an example of sudden abolition of slaves and argally both unemployment and underemployment - the old fields of slaveowners were unworked, but the new slaves couldn't find anywhere to work (not my historical cup of tea, feel free to correct me)

Transitions back and forth between slaves and other populations doesn't really require simulation, it is already compensated for.

For a detailed explanation...

The situation in Scandinavia would be an example of higher Social Freedoms. Higher social freedoms also means lower slave pop growth rate. Lower slave pop growth rate would in effect simulate the loss of slaves to freedom from thralls becoming free. Over time, if the social freedoms and other modifiers are high enough, slave pop growth will be negative. This could simulate whatever the player wants it to simulate. This is the part where roleplaying becomes key. Then, either the player refills the depleting slave population by enslaving his enemies' people, or he lets them keep reducing to nothing. Setting the statuses of the descendants of slaves is too detailed for our scope. If it is already simulated and the player can role-play and assume that they are setting lenient descendant status by raising social freedoms, which would in turn reduce slave pop growth, then all the better. Even if this isn't the best way to simulate that, it is the simplest we would want. Also, once a player starts setting descendant status for one population, it would be out of place for them not to be able to for the other pops. Then that is getting way deeper then we want to go.

Fair enough.

Darkgamma wrote:

Of course, but how would you handle the sudden gap the lack of slaves would introduce?
All those artisans, labourers and soldiers are there and their numbers don't change after slavery is disestablished. You could possibly run a force employment of the unemployed, but that would strain your economy and isn't really a good way to do things. Possibly public works, such as the ones Hitler advocated (and pulled through) in 1933 and 1934?

if the slaves become free then they become unemployed then they will either

1. stay with that job.

2.find a different job.

3. return to homeland (if enslaved by conquest)

1) I can't think of how this would happen on a large scale.
2) I'd say they'd rather go into the unemployed category first.
3) Not possible, especially if their homeland is far enough away, not at first at least. Imagine being a poor man in ancient Rome and wanting to go back to Bactria in eastern Persia.

will the slaves gain full citizenship, are they going to be slain or just cheap workforce? i think they just can't be like other citizens because they don't know the language, culture and there is likely be racism and other minor things. likely they are just going to die and that adds more diseases and other things. and forgive me my very bad english.

Rorsten594 wrote:

if the slaves become free then they become unemployed then they will either

1. stay with that job.

2.find a different job.

3. return to homeland (if enslaved by conquest)

Slaves can't be free and unemployed. Slaves becoming free really just means them automatically becoming one of the other Populations (Pops for short). Therefore we won't need to simulate the three things you listed.

@Jopetsu: Again, precisely what happens to the slaves is irrelevant and not simulated. Citizenship and racism and disease won't be taken into account. The slave Pop will simply get smaller or disappear, and all the other Pops get larger. If this sounds very easy, its not. The process of getting slaves to diminish or disappear, and the process of getting your economy to be able to rely on the other Pops instead is a lengthy process for any civilization that has depended on slaves.

NickTheNick wrote:

Rorsten594 wrote:

if the slaves become free then they become unemployed then they will either

1. stay with that job.

2.find a different job.

3. return to homeland (if enslaved by conquest)

Slaves can't be free and unemployed. Slaves becoming free really just means them automatically becoming one of the other Populations (Pops for short). Therefore we won't need to simulate the three things you listed.

@Jopetsu: Again, precisely what happens to the slaves is irrelevant and not simulated. Citizenship and racism and disease won't be taken into account. The slave Pop will simply get smaller or disappear, and all the other Pops get larger. If this sounds very easy, its not. The process of getting slaves to diminish or disappear, and the process of getting your economy to be able to rely on the other Pops instead is a lengthy process for any civilization that has depended on slaves.

149 years later, America still hasn't recovered fully.

My society doesn't operate with the use of a monetary system. There is no social or economic class system either. It's called a resource-based economy (RBE). No hierarchical government/ruler(s) too. Needless to say, my species has a radically different lifestyle than we do, but it is fully functional, in fact optimal. Could Thrive handle this kind of society? I'm afraid that civilizations in Thrive will be just clones or mixes of what we know on Earth.

Also, yes a society can function that way, and flourish. It's just different than anything Earth's ever seen. A man by the name of Jaque Fresco has such a society all planned out, so if you have any questions about exactly how it would work, I encourage you to check out "The Venus Project" and through their website everything you could need to know has been thought out and is easily accessible. You can contact them directly with any questions and they'd be happy to answer them.

Or if you like, you can ask me questions, even though the direct source is optimal, I have a good understanding of the RBE model.

Even if my society must first be primitive, I want to be able to have a social revolution on my planet to transition to the RBE model before moving onto space exploration/colonization.

You can choose to have a barter economy. Adopting currency is optional.

Social and economic classes are impossible to avoid. You can have a stable and prosperous society with little gap between poor and rich, no aristocrats, and no slaves, but it is impossible to avoid having certain groups of society employed in similar fields of study or pursuit, and as such have similar demands and preferences. These Pops may not have conflicts, but they will still be unique and represent different walks of life.

If by no hierarchical government you mean anarchy, then no, that is not possible. If you mean a responsible, well representative government, then yes, that is possible.

Barter, but no auto-resource distribution? The most important thing is that resources are distributed not traded, no one owns anything and yet everyone owns everything. Like native cultures treated things before the notion of ownership and greed. Is there room for the distribution system if it comes after barter, so that barter could be used until a global communication network arises and technology (such as automation of most jobs) allows for the automatic production and distribution of goods based on need balanced with availability? That also means that the system is not based on infinite growth, it is fully aware of the limitations of the environment. I know it can be difficult to grasp, but please don't dismiss the idea just because it is.

The people would be in social classes if you include professions/fields as social class, by social class I meant separate groups which have abstract social value to them causing conflict between them. Basically that they're all individuals with different preferences but none of them are more valuable than the other and socially they're all equal.

By no hierarchical government I do not mean anarchy, what I mean is that every individual has direct input into all decisions made, but every individual is also highly educated and all thinking is done with the scientific method, so that decisions aren't really made, they are rather arrived at.

Could that work? It's sort of like, group consciousness guided by a set of core values everyone holds. They're all concerned primarily with the betterment of their own society, and so the betterment of their own lives. It does require an advanced education and unified ideology to work, and the challenge changes from bartering for goods between opposing factions to fine-tuning resource management and distribution.

There will have to be barter. No barter means infringing on the right of the people to freely exchange goods. Native cultures, like you cited, held barter economies. It is, however, incorrect to that that natives were devoid of greed and ownership. Technology can ease the restraints on the Artisans and the Labourers, the main working class. Robots can, not entirely replace, but assist people in factories, and on the field of war. This opens up more people to move to other Pops, such as Scholars, Merchants, Clergy, and Executives. I'm not having difficulty grasping the idea.

High social freedoms would lead to that, as well as the elimination of probable the Slave and Aristocrat Pops.

Direct democracy doesn't work. There has to be a bare minimum of representation. Unfortunately, the scientific method does not apply to administrative decisions.

The problem is, people will always be different, have unique uprisings and background, unique families and traditions, and unique sets of values. Everyone cannot share the same set core values. There will be deviation. It is human nature. Religion can offer a common set of principles to strive towards, but it is virtually impossible to get everyone to believe in precisely the same ethical code.

Actually, their right to share things is not infringed on, and that's rendered irrelevant anyway because all things are readily accessible at resource distribution centers. They could trade things amongst themselves if they wanted, but they could also just get it themselves. Yes, you're right about native cultures. Automation should be able to replace nearly all hard labour, undesirable jobs and war fighting (also no longer appropriate in this culture, but as a defense against extraterrestrial threats, yes) with high enough technological advancement.

High social freedoms, yay!

Direct democracy has never been implemented with a highly educated public in a highly advanced society, though. So we can't say it doesn't work. Administrative decisions are exactly what logical thinking and the scientific method should be used on though, and so an advanced society would find a way to do it.

People can share the same core values. Your frame of reference for this is our society, where education is insufficient and different everywhere you are. What if it weren't. What you mean when you say "human nature" is actually learned behaviour, and it is very controllable. Also, we aren't even discussing humans and Earth here. We're discussing possibilities in any theoretical (and beyond that, fictional) alien culture. There is no reason this wouldn't work. Of course it isn't perfect, but its designed to be far better than any monetary or barter system. I also think that it would be unlikely to have this kind of system from the get-go, but it makes perfect sense that civilizations would change and as they advanced re-think themselves to be more efficient, and better in their own eyes.

I wasn't saying the right to share, I was saying the right to exchange. These distribution centers are starting to sound like manifestations of communist ideals, which is not a bad thing, but an early sign that it won't work. My first question would be, who runs these centers? Because whoever would, would run the economy. However, if the response is that the people run them, then it's tying back in to the question of direct democracy, or supra-collective rule.

This is not possible. It's not a question of Terra-centracism, but of natural instincts versus sapient altruism. Education and advancement would only mitigate the failure. In our history, even the closest societies to direct democracies still maintained republican institutions. The concept assumes that everyone in the stadium speaks at once and everyone is heard. However, as soon as you take the steps to divide people into small groups, have them speak among themselves, and then send a representative for the group to speak with other representatives, so that people will be heard, you don't have direct democracy anymore.

Another approach is to say that they take turns. However, then everyone must spend a year just waiting for each person to speak. Again, if to ameliorate this you divide them into groups so that the process is faster, you again lose the direct democracy and solve the management issue.

There will be differences in people no matter where you go. Higher education doesn't change this. Human nature is human nature. It is not learned. However, it was my mistake to call it Human nature and limit it to just us. It is natural, in general, for there to be diversity within a species.

Yes, on the surface they do sound communistic, but they do not bring all the other negatives of communism with them (i.e. class war, each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs etc.). Again, this is only possible with advanced technologies to first have the required resources, and then to properly distribute them, such as via advanced 3D printing. The centers are first created in an industrial 3D printer and put in the designed city upon it's construction. The building is extremely weather resistant, and it's surface is photovoltaic as well as connects to the city's power grid. Inside there are various machines that produce a desired item from the resources stored there, which are replenished by automated machines that bring shipments of recycled material back to the center. No people work in these centers, unless they would like to hang around there to assist others with getting things, because they might enjoy it. They are not owned, they are a place to go to get things. I they break, it is reported (likely automatically) and repairs are either done (yes, by machines, or humans who do repairs because they enjoy it) or the entire building is removed, recycled and replaced.

Now, back to direct democracy. The beautiful thing with the Internet is that everyone can speak at once and is heard at once, by each other. A website could be made, which has a list of tasks/decisions, and the people could freely access it, review the issue and then submit their decision. If a vast majority (70%+ not exact, for sake of example) of them agree that abortion is okay (arbitrarily selected hot topic with arbitrarily selected choice) then it is decided, and abortions will be carried out. Now, of course, I selected that problem and response arbitrarily, a fully educated public with all the science around the topic right at hand would reach their own conclusion and with good reason. If the decision is inconclusive (below 70% agreement) the issue is not decided and a new round of voting will take place including more information at some appropriate later date. All issues could be handled in this manner, or with variations where appropriate. Who runs this website? Well, the people who coded it and like to code all run it, and anyone else can learn how to and join in. But they only make the actual website, the issues are submitted by everyone and the decisions are arrived at by everyone and the decisions are carried out by whomever or whatever is appropriate to the task. The point is, that everything that can be, and that the people want to be, is automated, and they can change it any time they want. An advanced artificial intelligence can also oversee subsystems and the entire system, but the humans (or species) are always overseeing everything.

Yes, there are differences in all people, and they're to be cherished. Human nature doesn't decide everything though, most of human behaviour is dictated by what we learn from birth. If you were raised in a group of headhunters, and I asked you "Doesn't it bother you, having 14 heads?" your response would be "Yes, my brother has 20" and this same example is applicable to most things. Human nature does dictate certain responses, like mob-mentality and fight or flight response etc. Not just higher education, but education from birth on up could be utilized to instill a minor set of humanistic core values, and from there give them an accurate, engaging education that specializes how they see fit as they age. Differences between people are huge and conflict causing now because the differences are so vast. These differences are, primarily in their inaccurate, biased education and upbringings. Eliminating these differences are key, and they can be controlled without destroying everyone's culture and uniqueness. Yes, dangerous and detrimental behaviour is to be eliminated, such as religious sacrifice, smoking etc. because they are just that: dangerous and detrimental. So yes there is diversity in the species' ideologies, more so as they're young and developing, but time does eliminate these differences slowly, and at some point it is possible for a species to decide to intelligently re-design their own society so that they can move forward in harmony and peace.

*Forgive me, but we are now entering the level of specificity in which my knowledge of the Resource-Based Economy is being tested, and that my knowledge may be inaccurate. For the correct information, consult "The Venus Project" website and videos, or contact them directly for answers.

Okay, this sounds a lot more feasible and less like the my first impression.

That distributive process still falls under a barter economy.

The internet based decision making still maintains the principles and framework of a republican democracy. However, if that is the kind of democracy that you are speaking of, then its fine.

The topic of legalizing abortion is one of the more scientific disputes found in politics, so the scientific method would have limited use. However, topics like whether to intervene on a nation being invaded, or to repeal the right to bear arms, would both be insufficiently answered if someone was to avoid jurisprudential and philosophical approaches. Even on the topic of abortion, there are questions that derive from these and other non-scientific approaches that are quite significant, such as:

Does the government have the authority to impose a law on abortion on the people?
What is self-awareness? If fetuses don't have it, don't sleeping people and unconscious people fall into the same category? What is the meaning of awareness?
At what point does life begin for a person? At what point are they entitled to the right to life?

However, this is going on quite a tangent.

Lastly, I agree to your concurrence on the topic of moral, ethical, and ideological diversity. The point of this sub-discussion was that direct democracy wouldn't work, and if I am not mistaken you agree with me since your example still was not a direct democracy. So long as it maintains the basic structure, it'll work fine.

I just want to say to i think unhappines should raise revolt risk alot more than 5%
And happines decrease it alot more than 5%

@WilliamstheJohn

If a potential revolt is calculated once every minute, 5% is actually a lot. It is like the difference between having a revolt (about) once every 10 minutes and once every 20 minutes.

Exactly rainwaffles point.

Sorry for that, i thinked its going to be calculated by chances, not by minute

In my goal to simplify the economics and social aspect of the Strategy Mode, I figured out how to eliminate the Officers Pop without taking anything away from gameplay.

The purpose of the Officers Pop was that they would generate Leadership Points (LP), which you would then spend to hire Generals and Admirals (Also known as Military Leaders, or Commanders). However, this was causing many problems. For one thing, LP would naturally rise over time as the player's nation grew, and as a result the price of Commanders would have to rise to accommodate that. But, the problem with that is its forcing the player to have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place, aka grow their officer pop larger and larger to match the rising price.

What's more, it added a lot more management needs for the player. Having to meet the needs of another Pop, having to build buildings to generate more LP when more Commanders are wanted. It just all felt like too much work for not enough gain.

However, if LP was taken out of the picture, everything would change.

Commanders can be hired at any SC without any costs or any restrictions. Commanders are not a requirement for armies, and are instead only needed when you want to automate an army. This way, officers are no longer needed, and can be eliminated as a pop, reducing the total number to 9. Moreover, players won't have to constantly work to generate LP, in addition to the multitude of other resources they are striving to produce and collect.

And to expand on the army automation, commanders can be used to go on campaigns without player guidance. All the player has to do is select a group of units, and form it into an army (Ctrl + A), like grouping in other RTS games. Next, you select the button "Assign Campaign", which gives you a pop-up box. First you select a commander from the list you have recruited (you can recruit more in this menu).

(Commanders will have randomly generated command rating ranging from 1-10 which will determine the intelligence level of their AI.)

After selecting a commander, you give a series of orders to your commander. For example, Attack Move to Target X, Move without Attacking to Target Y, Hold for Z seconds, and then Attack Society Center X. They will not be orders you type in. All the orders will be buttons that you select that are added to the list. The same order can be added multiple times. You do have to select targets and SC's on the map for certain orders. When you are finished, you click the check-mark at the bottom, and your commander executes his orders. This leaves you free to do whatever you want in the meantime.

As a backup measure, you can always go to an army that is being automated, either by selecting one of the units/squads within it, or selecting its icon on the military panel, and you will get the UI box of the commander of that army, but you will not be able to control the army yourself. There will be a red X on the commander's UI which will say "Cancel Campaign", and when clicked it will cancel the campaign and return the army to your control, returning the commander to the commander pool.

Commanders will die after random periods of time based off of your species' lifetime.

Okay, big change coming up. Big, BIG change.

Actually, its not that big, but its still quite a leap from what has settled into current concept. After having worked on the Tech Editor, and the Nation Editor, and the Squad Editor, and just experienced the sheer detail and diversity of gameplay available to the player, I more and more have come to think that this whole concept of Pops is not only too complicated, but not very rewarding in terms of what implementing it would yield.

For that reason, I suggest a shift to a new system, composed of elements from the original Specialists system (straight from Sid Meier's Civilization) and the current Pop system (straight from Victoria II). Pops will go back to being called Specialists, and the list of them will be reduced as some of the similar ones are merged, but at the same time the important parts of the Pop system will still be included. What will be lost, however, is class/social conflict, and slavery.

Class/social conflict I never really saw as a big thing, or an exciting feature, and is more just a gradual competition between the Pops of your nation to have their demands met and rise in social status. Slavery, although interesting, was never something that could be explicitly implemented, and was more of a behind the scenes, implied feature. Lastly, when Pops were deployed, i.e. on the ground as units instead of populated into cities and just numbers on a screen, few had any uses. Most were quite useless. With specialists, it goes back to being a lot more like an RTS, with Worker Specialists, Military Specialists, Science Specialists, Citizens, etc.

Speaking of which, all units/people in your nation are now either citizens or specialists. Citizens are like nerfed workers. They can gather, build, repair, fight, but all at a poor rate. Then there are specialists. These are units specifically tasked for a certain job. Worker Specialists build fast, but gather slow and are weak. Military specialists fight well, but build slowly and eat more food. Some specialists, like Research/Science or Artist Specialists, only give bonuses when they are populated into a city.

So the list of them is (I might be forgetting some):

Military Specialists
Gatherer Specialists
Worker Specialists
Merchant Specialists
Research/Science Specialists
Artist Specialists
Citizens

So this takes out social class, and it takes out social status. It takes out the incredibly arduous assigning of income yields and resource demands that I had begun ploughing through a while back. It cuts back on the number of processes the computer has to run to calculate stats for your nation. It also takes away much of the management it would have demanded of the player to keep Pops stable or growing or happy or suppressed or whatever.

And btw, the commander concept in my last post still applies, regardless of this change. What do you guys think of making this change?

Also, if you have any questions as to concept which you might think is now obsolete or invalidated with this change, but I haven't said something about it, ask away and I'll tell you whether or not it still applies.

Do you guys support this shift? Would you like to move from Pops to Specialists?

Yea, I always felt like the pop system was too complicated, while the specialist approach is good and not overly complicated