Society Model

This is the new update to the Society Model in Thrive. The old model can be found here:

https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t892p45-socio-economic-model-full-draft#25725

Since that model was based on Pops/Factions, it is now obsolete with the move to Specialists. Over time I will update this OP with more and more of the final concept on how Specialists and Citizens fit in with the rest of the Strategy Mode in Thrive.

-------------------------

Society

The society of your nation will be divided between two categories of people, Specialists and Citizens. Citizens are your basic units. They build, gather, fight, and repair all at the default rate/effectiveness. They also consume the least amount of compounds in terms of their demands. Specialists, on the other hand, are units specialized to specific tasks. They represent the more trained or educated elements of your society. Specialists are more effective at doing specific tasks, but are worse in the rest. Specialists are also required for more advanced gameplay elements. For example, merchants are needed for trade routes, workers for smithies and workshops, and military specialists for recruiting units at barracks'.

The following chart displays the skills of the different specialists and citizens. 1x means the default amount/rate, 2x means double that, 1/2x means half the amount, etc.

	Build	Repair	Gather	Hit Points	Weight Capacity	Weapon Accuracy
Military	1/2x	1/2x	1/2x	2x	3/2x	1x
Worker	2x	2x	1/2x	1x	1x	1/2x
Gatherer	1/2x	1/2x	2x	1x	1x	1/2x
Merchant	1/2x	1/2x	1/2x	1x	1x	1/2x
Researcher	1/2x	1/2x	1/2x	1x	1x	1/2x
Artist	1/2x	1/2x	1/2x	1x	1x	1/2x
Citizen	1x	1x	1x	1x	1x	1/2x

However, certain specialists do also have some extra abilities.

Merchants: Are used for trade routes. Can be automated along routes with other SC's. Can be configured to use vehicles, or to be accompanied with pack animals. Can later be set, in the trade panel options, to travel in caravans, with a ratio set by the player of military specialists (caravan guards) to merchant specialists.
Artists: Generate +0.01 Culture per second per Artist. +1 Happiness per 25 Artists.
Researchers: Generate +0.01 RP per second per Researcher.


Demand

Demand covers the compounds required and consumed by specialists and citizens in their daily lives. Deployed units only keep the food demand. Populated units have demand for Food, Textiles (Clothing), Luxuries, and Supplies (Furniture, fuel, etc.). Demand varies depending on the specialist. The following chart shows the rates at which the different groups consume, compared to each other. 

	Food	Textiles	Luxuries	Supplies
Military	3x	2x	1x	1x
Worker	2x	1x	1x	2x
Gatherer	2x	1x	1x	2x
Merchant	1x	2x	2x	1x
Researcher	1x	1x	1x	2x
Artist	1x	2x	2x	2x
Citizen	1x	1x	2x	1x

Food: Once your species hits the Awakening Stage, evolution stops. At this point, your species' diet also becomes set. This means it is safe for the computer to record what your diet is at this point, and tag the right compounds appropriately, since there is no more chance of it changing and the computer having to recalculate. So, when you hit Awakening Stage, all compounds in your diet are tagged as "Food". The only exception to this is cooked meat. If Fire is discovered, and meat is a compound in your diet, cooked meat will replace meat (raw) on your diet list. Therefore, your Specialists will consume all compounds tagged as "Food" as part of their "Food" demand. Also remember that deployed units still have hunger bars that can be refilled by standing near buildings storing food, or being populated into an SC with food.
Textiles: This is easy. As there is only one compound names Textiles, all intelligent species will be assumed to have a need for this as a basic necessity for clothing.
Luxuries: Certain compounds will have inherent properties that label them as luxuries. Although this may not simulate a varying view on what is luxurious from species to species or nation to nation, it is a far more viable option than creating a system to dynamically tag compounds as luxurious for different nations.
Supplies: All compounds tagged as "Building Materials", i.e. wood, metals, and stone, are consumed as "Supplies". Certain Researches and Inventions also add tags to compounds making them supplies. This is the case for compounds used as fuel. With the discovery of fire, Wood becomes labelled as "Fuel" for your specific nation, and thus is added to the list of "Supplies" compounds your specialists consume.

More coming soon. Feel free to discuss in the meantime.

For the military, what is that weight capacity? it is suposed to be one and a half? (1.5x) That would be better written as 3/2x

Also, this needs to be expanded more. Merchants, researchers and artists need something they are better at (Its clear they will, but it needs to be put explicitedlly).

Also, there needs to be some downside to military or other specialists over citzens, as they are flat out better. (why would you have any plain citzens at all?)

How about the Military can't build or gather at all, and only repair at 1/2X?

Anything more specific for downsides I have no idea at the moment.

Yeah, 1.5. I'll switch it to 3/2.

Yes, there is a lot more left to add. Merchants are required for trade routes, as well as auto-investing in buildings (auto-building structures on their own for the player). Artists give a bonus to culture and happiness, and Researchers contribute to your RP to spend. I'll be adding all that tomorrow.

Plain citizens are what you start with. They consume the least, making them easy to maintain, and they generate a decent amount of income to tax. I want to try and keep them as the largest of all the groups, and a section that will automatically grow on its own. I want the specialists to be something that you have to put effort towards growing, such as building military academies, museums, laboratories, etc. Do you have any ideas as to how to keep citizens as a large group, even thought they are not very useful?

I was actually deciding between what you and Immortal_Dragon suggest, i.e. reducing the skills of military, worker, and gatherer specialists that they are not good at to below 1x, so that citizens would be the perfect average, but I decided against it. However, now that I think about it, I think I'll put it in.

However, how about an Invention called Military Engineering, or something like that, which would increase the build and repair rates of military specialists from 1/2x to 1x? Would it be significant, or even worth it?

Maybe gatherer specialists should have a double weight capacity?

Hmm, Military Engineering, sounds good to me, but maybe it causes a marginal increase in upkeep for those specialists?

And buildings for encouraging the specialist population sounds good too.

Tarpy wrote:

Maybe gatherer specialists should have a double weight capacity?

But then one of they're specialized skills would overlap with one of the Military's. I see why you say so, but I think it's better to keep the bonus weight capacity for the military specs. It's partly to reflect their training of marching with heavy loads, armour, weapons, etc. It's also to reflect their increased strength from their training, and their increased speed of movement and attack with weapons and armour due to their increased finesse.

Actually, what about weapon usage? I'll say every unit type can use any weapon it happens to have equiped but some specialists (namelly military) get bonuses when using them.

Well, I was thinking of that, but the bonuses I thought of were unrealistic. It wouldn't make sense for a military specialist to do more damage with a weapon, because the damage of a weapon is based on its shape and the physics of its impact. Instead, the extra weight capacity will mean military specialists will have a higher movement speed and attack speed when using weapons, as opposed to other specialists or citizens.

EDIT: Okay, there's an update to the OP. I added in Demand. I'll be elaborating on it more later, as well as the first section with the skillsets of Merchants, Artists, and Researchers.

Well, actually, penalizing a bit non-military units would make more sense.

Also, i wasent thinking about increasing damage. For guns, that is all in the gun itself. However, someone trained with them will have a higher chance of hitting (more accuracy). For melee things, like swords, dealing more damage makes sense, as a trained swordman will know better how to use a weapon efectivelly and hit where it should.

I see what you mean with increasing weapon damage, but I think that will make military specialists a little too strong compared to the rest of the specialists. I do agree with the accuracy boost though. How much should it be though?

I think the accuracy boost should be considerable. Trained soldiers would be able to hit their target whilst its moving at lengths and the average citizen would struggle to hit the target from a distance. And a trained swordsman would tear apart someone without training easily.

Okay, so I updated the table with the accuracy boost. I also added some info on how compounds are classified as Food, Textiles, Luxuries, or Supplies.

Will the player be able to tag luxiries on their own, or are the luxuries the same for everyone?

Well, Luxuries are called that because they are rare, which would make them expensive, but they are also more often than not things that are not essentials (food, water, etc.). So things like diamonds and other precious gems are Luxuries, we don't need them to survive, and they are rare enough to make them expensive, so on an alien planet the same things that are rare on Earth might not be rare, thus making them worth less than something that is rare.

So, Luxuries being the same for everyone, I doubt it. Tagging them yourself, Nick or someone else will need to answer that cause I don't know.

I guess it could be that when there is a certain amount of lets say iron.
1cubic cm would be $2, zo the math is amount times multiplier times rating.
So it would be 1 X 1.5 X 1.33.
And diamond if it was very common.
3 X 0.25 X 6 = $4.5 per cm3.
This could ude some tweaking.
Or a lot, but this is meant as a basis.
Also the multiplier is: if amount eqeals common, multiplier is 1.
Again just a basic system.

Actually, luxury resources will be objectively tagged, because there would be too many problems if the player would be allowed to tag them, and no one is going to sit down and try to quantify what make species value things as luxuries. Luxury is wayy too subjective, so instead we will just put some preset resources, which can be assumed to be luxuries, as luxuries. 

AwesomeSiebren wrote:

...Again just a basic system.

Basic system for what? Does this relate to the luxury goods that were just mentioned? If you are suggesting a pricing model, there is already one based on supply-demand here.

I just typed what I thought, so...

What Immortal_Dragon said it's true. That in some planets, diamonds (for example) may not be as rare as they are in Earth. I believe that every planet that you play on, should have statistics about the rarity of ores and other elements. So every planet must have it's own currency that depends on a rare element (we used gold for that). Later in space there should be a universal currency between the races, but that's another story.

Another thing. Should we count wood as a resource on every planet? I mean we don't know if an alien planet has developed earth-like trees to produce wood.

Unfortunately, we are not going to be making a dynamic system to determine what societies think what resources are luxuries or not, as I just said 3 posts ago.

Wood is just any hard plant matter, and that is something plants on any planet will create. It doesn't have to just be oak, spruce, pine, etc. to count as wood.

Actually Nick, I think Hector is talking about using ores such as diamonds as currency. The planned approach as I've read and interpreted it is that if you choose something too common, the currency would be worth next to nothing, but if it's too rare then it becomes impossibly expensive.

Actually, regarding currency, the idea when originally suggested was pretty vague in how it would operate. Actually trying to fit in customizable currency into the game showed me that it conflicts with so many game features. Currency will have to be simplified to a separate entity from compounds, and the player won't be able to set a specific compound as a currency. Instead, they will just have to adopt a generic currency which they can name, and which will have equal exchange rates with all other currencies used by other nations. Later on in development we could have Influence factor in to the strength of a currency of a nation, but that's really starting to get detailed for an RTS.

@HestorKL
The thing you said about capitalism...is true...Nikola Tesla tried to make a Energy Free world with a resource based economy in the 19th century but Edison,Pupin etc. Screwed it up and he died alone in a hotel room broke after inventing the lightbulb,the Tesla Coil (Wireless Energy Transmission Device (WETD)),the solar panel,the hydro-station,etc.
He invented everything relating to electricity...
And he died hated for his intelect
On one of his comferences he was speaking of the future (The Present) and how we will have cars,computers,mobile phones etc. all running on electricity but it breaks my hearth when I see how the people looked at him with suck amazement and shock of the mad-man infront of them talking of his devils power governing the world so he just apologized and left the stand...

NikolaAnicic- Please do not derail this thread

Nick- I was actually thinking about suggesting that nations have dynamic currencies whose values change due to many factors. Although it is complicated to implement, some games have a proto-form of this mechanic, like Europa Universalis III and IV, where you can increase inflation by minting money (in III) and certain events in IV. It probably wouldn't be too hard to implement a system where every currency starts at a generic value and then can either increase or decrease in value depending on multiple factors.

Tarpy wrote:

It probably wouldn't be too hard to implement a system where every currency starts at a generic value and then can either increase or decrease in value depending on multiple factors.

Yeah, that's something I was considering for later, because Influence is a variable the game uses to determine your nations overall strength on the international stage, and so if need be it could be a factor in the formula. However, since there is still a lot of more foundational concept to lay out, it's something to consider later.