In Defence of Death

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

My point is that outside direct manipulation of the Nation Editor, we cease to change culturally if death disapears.

Which means nothing in terms of the game...

You mean culture does not change in-game? Popularity of styles and mediums are stagnent? Cultural influence is moot? Even Civ3 was more in depth than that!

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

My point is that outside direct manipulation of the Nation Editor, we cease to change culturally if death disapears.

Which means nothing in terms of the game...

You mean culture does not change in-game? Popularity of styles and mediums are stagnent? Cultural influence is moot? Even Civ3 was more in depth than that!

The term "Change Culturally" does not mean anything in game terms. If you had have said that Ethics and Values, the Cultural Theme and other actual mechanics would stagnate it would mean something. We can't just say things and expect them to be relevant. We must think of how it affects actual gameplay.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

The term "Change Culturally" does not mean anything in game terms. If you had have said that Ethics and Values, the Cultural Theme and other actual mechanics would stagnate it would mean something. We can't just say things and expect them to be relevant. We must think of how it affects actual gameplay.

Alaska, almost any non-political aspect of the NE is pretty much cultural. I was being general. I thought that was clear, but if not, my mistake. I will endeavor to be more specific in the future.

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

The term "Change Culturally" does not mean anything in game terms. If you had have said that Ethics and Values, the Cultural Theme and other actual mechanics would stagnate it would mean something. We can't just say things and expect them to be relevant. We must think of how it affects actual gameplay.

Alaska, almost any non-political aspect of the NE is pretty much cultural. I was being general. I thought that was clear, but if not, my mistake. I will endeavor to be more specific in the future.

That's still too broad a statement. Do you mean everything outside of the Society and Government Sections? And what exactly would not having an evolving culture do if the player can still choose to manipulate the NE?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

That's still too broad a statement. Do you mean everything outside of the Society and Government Sections? And what exactly would not having an evolving culture do if the player can still choose to manipulate the NE?

*Sigh*

Okay, from the top.

Cultures evolve over time in similer ways to the analogus biological evolution.: Survival of the fittest. In this case, we're talking about thought though, instead of genetics. Cultural evolution would slowly change things like "Religion", "Aesthetics and Entertainment" and "Ethics" as well as the "Importance Sliders". It would also effect the cultural traits I mentioned, though not the cultural theme, which does not change outside revolution.

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

That's still too broad a statement. Do you mean everything outside of the Society and Government Sections? And what exactly would not having an evolving culture do if the player can still choose to manipulate the NE?

*Sigh*

Okay, from the top.

Cultures evolve over time in similer ways to the analogus biological evolution.: Survival of the fittest. In this case, we're talking about thought though, instead of genetics. Cultural evolution would slowly change things like "Religion", "Aesthetics and Entertainment" and "Ethics" as well as the "Importance Sliders". It would also effect the cultural traits I mentioned, though not the cultural theme, which does not change outside revolution.

Well this is the first i've heard of such an idea, Rex. You can't just assume that something will be included in the game concept without ever bringing it up for conversation...

Anyways, the idea sounds alright, but i am unhappy with how much the player is losing control. Also, how will this "cultural change" happen? Will the traits decrease? Will the sliders move around randomly? What will actually happen to the things you mentioned, and what would affect this?

Well, we could have these sliders change over time, but also give players control over them (any change by them would produce temporary unhappiness). Also, there would be a checkbox next to each slider, wich would lock the slider in place (but it would generate unhappiness as long as it's checked).

Sorry Alaska. I thought this was one of the things we agreed upon back at Svenolutions. Either it got lost in the shuffle or my memory diserves me.

Naturally, these sliders would move around randomly, though we should add an overlay that makes bordering nations' sliders try and move toward eachother.

I don't think we should be able to lock these, no matter what. My point was that through immortality these effects cease, which can become very detrimental when trying to communicate with utterly alien (to your nation) cultures. If certain other things that many of the silent watchers here have asked me for IRL get encorperated, than we will want immortality to effect them as well.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Sorry Alaska. I thought this was one of the things we agreed upon back at Svenolutions. Either it got lost in the shuffle or my memory diserves me.

Naturally, these sliders would move around randomly, though we should add an overlay that makes bordering nations' sliders try and move toward eachother.

I don't think we should be able to lock these, no matter what. My point was that through immortality these effects cease, which can become very detrimental when trying to communicate with utterly alien (to your nation) cultures. If certain other things that many of the silent watchers here have asked me for IRL get encorperated, than we will want immortality to effect them as well.

I don't remember it, but oh well.

I definitely like the idea of cultural transfusion, especially for nations with open borders and trade agreements?

Being able to completely lock them is not really very realistic. The player can of course keep changing them, but it will just produce more and more instability.

Being able to lock sliders in place is simulating the goverment forcing it's citizens to do what it does want, sort of like communists (or stalinists if you want to) in the Eastern bloc did (though it generated progressively larger unhappiness and lowered order).

Also, slider locks reduce micromanagement needed. Why to force players to adjust it every once in a while if locking does effectively the same?

Commander Keen wrote:

Also, slider locks reduce micromanagement needed. Why to force players to adjust it every once in a while if locking does effectively the same?

Because cultural diffusion doesn't happen over a couple of years, it takes centuries to make any truly significant change. And in many cases, the changes are for the better socially speaking. You wouldn't see any change that would bother you to the point of distraction unless you were trying to do something radically unlike our neighbors, or more likely holding either unrealistically high standards for your nation, or had a TO set that failed to complement the Nation's preferential traits(The little misc. traits that I described often require certain TOs) Ex.: Your nation has a trait that tells them to favor mass transit over personal transport, but all your Mass Transit TOs are outdated.

I understand your idea of forcing beleifs on people, but it doesn't work that way. These sliders reflect what the people think. You can influence that through media and foreign policy, but you can't control it, something all tyrants learn eventually. The only reason the player would have the ability to move them in the first place is to give them a degree of customizability in their nation and culture. We want to show the realism though.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

Also, slider locks reduce micromanagement needed. Why to force players to adjust it every once in a while if locking does effectively the same?

Because cultural diffusion doesn't happen over a couple of years, it takes centuries to make any truly significant change. And in many cases, the changes are for the better socially speaking. You wouldn't see any change that would bother you to the point of distraction unless you were trying to do something radically unlike our neighbors, or more likely holding either unrealistically high standards for your nation, or had a TO set that failed to complement the Nation's preferential traits(The little misc. traits that I described often require certain TOs) Ex.: Your nation has a trait that tells them to favor mass transit over personal transport, but all your Mass Transit TOs are outdated.

I understand your idea of forcing beleifs on people, but it doesn't work that way. These sliders reflect what the people think. You can influence that through media and foreign policy, but you can't control it, something all tyrants learn eventually. The only reason the player would have the ability to move them in the first place is to give them a degree of customizability in their nation and culture. We want to show the realism though.

Everything said here. We want to give the players a game, but we also want to have some degree of realism. And the idea behind having to change it over and over again is that the player will see that it is basically an unstoppable force anyways, and they're better off trying to enforce media regulations, etc.

Oh, I get it now. I thought it was the official stance of the nation. Sorry for any confusion created.

The sliders seem kinda one-dimensional to me. I mean, it's all very well and good to say that your government can be "democratic" or "oligarchic," but the truth is that there's a lot of different kinds of democracies (and things that call themselves democracies but really aren't.)
That gets even more open ended the more abstract you get, like with art and culture kind of stuff (apologies if I'm unclear: I don't know exactly what the proposed options on these sliders are.) Basically, you don't have two forms of art that are such polar opposites that you could put a slider between them - I mean, if you wanted to do realism versus abstract art, you could artificially construct a slider to show the degree of "realism" that your art had. But "realism" as opposed to "abstract" art also has to take in the completely different angles of Impressionism, stylized figures, and surrealism, to name just a few things.
In addition, while I favor having nations with open borders adjust their views (on whatever the sliders actually do represent) to match up more similarily, i'm not certain if the sliders aren't too broad of a generalization for all the nation's attitudes. We already know we have the potential for different castes, and therefore presumably highly different lifestyles and opinions. At the best, the sliders would be something like the Gallup Poll saying "57 percent of Thrive creatures favor x."

Getting back to immortality....
There. Is. No. Way.
Because there will always be evolution in the bacteria sector, if not in the host body. Antibacterial treatments actually increase the speed of such evolution, because conditions with an antibacterial heavily favor any microbe with any degree of resilience to the antibacterial treatment. (This effect is magnified as the dose gets stronger.) This is how we now have drug-resistent staph and other cuddly superbugs.
So, there will always be a possibility of being killed by disease, even if we can solve the problems which come with aging (hardly likely: there is a limit to the storage capacity of the brain, even if you subscribe to the notion of "uploading" a personality. How much disc space do you think a human's personality would take up? More than one Belgiumming computer, I hope.)
So... realistically, isn't arguing the effects of immortality on the game a bit like arguing the zombie apocalypse? Individuals of a species will always die.
Machine intelligence is the only exception I can see for this... but they're prone to malfunction too. Statistically, they may crash and be unrecoverable. And how do they reproduce? (Therefore, how would they evolve?)

If you haven't noticed yet, I post long ones. Have fun with this one, mostly questions as it is.

Talk about timing

Age reversing solution working on mice

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

The sliders seem kinda one-dimensional to me. I mean, it's all very well and good to say that your government can be "democratic" or "oligarchic," but the truth is that there's a lot of different kinds of democracies (and things that call themselves democracies but really aren't.)
That gets even more open ended the more abstract you get, like with art and culture kind of stuff (apologies if I'm unclear: I don't know exactly what the proposed options on these sliders are.) Basically, you don't have two forms of art that are such polar opposites that you could put a slider between them - I mean, if you wanted to do realism versus abstract art, you could artificially construct a slider to show the degree of "realism" that your art had. But "realism" as opposed to "abstract" art also has to take in the completely different angles of Impressionism, stylized figures, and surrealism, to name just a few things.
In addition, while I favor having nations with open borders adjust their views (on whatever the sliders actually do represent) to match up more similarily, i'm not certain if the sliders aren't too broad of a generalization for all the nation's attitudes. We already know we have the potential for different castes, and therefore presumably highly different lifestyles and opinions. At the best, the sliders would be something like the Gallup Poll saying "57 percent of Thrive creatures favor x."

Getting back to immortality....
There. Is. No. Way.
Because there will always be evolution in the bacteria sector, if not in the host body. Antibacterial treatments actually increase the speed of such evolution, because conditions with an antibacterial heavily favor any microbe with any degree of resilience to the antibacterial treatment. (This effect is magnified as the dose gets stronger.) This is how we now have drug-resistent staph and other cuddly superbugs.
So, there will always be a possibility of being killed by disease, even if we can solve the problems which come with aging (hardly likely: there is a limit to the storage capacity of the brain, even if you subscribe to the notion of "uploading" a personality. How much disc space do you think a human's personality would take up? More than one Belgiumming computer, I hope.)
So... realistically, isn't arguing the effects of immortality on the game a bit like arguing the zombie apocalypse? Individuals of a species will always die.
Machine intelligence is the only exception I can see for this... but they're prone to malfunction too. Statistically, they may crash and be unrecoverable. And how do they reproduce? (Therefore, how would they evolve?)

If you haven't noticed yet, I post long ones. Have fun with this one, mostly questions as it is.

The sliders allow for nearly infinite options for moulding a nation. If that is too one-dimensional for you, i think you are asking too much. See the Wiki for more information on the Nation Editor.

We're not talking about immortality here, we're talking about practical immortality. Where noone dies axcept when they are jkilled or in an accident.

Ah. I was under the impression that the sliders were controlling different kinds of religion, culture, etc, and not their overall importance. Read the thread and wiki too fast, I guess.

Um, Alaska? That is the dictionary definition of immortality: endless life or existence. I understood that you meant that organisms are capable of being destroyed through outside force. But the debate on the realism of immortality is getting into metaphysical stuff that's beyond either of our pay grade. (Not that we're getting payed, but you get it.)
However, given that this game is about evolution, my original arguments about how organisms' diseases, parasites and everything else in the ecology is effected by their evolution, and that medication does, in fact, speed up the evolution of disease and parasitic organisms by changing the traits that are favored still limit the suspension of disbelief for immortality.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Ah. I was under the impression that the sliders were controlling different kinds of religion, culture, etc, and not their overall importance. Read the thread and wiki too fast, I guess.

Um, Alaska? That is the dictionary definition of immortality: endless life or existence. I understood that you meant that organisms are capable of being destroyed through outside force. But the debate on the realism of immortality is getting into metaphysical stuff that's beyond either of our pay grade. (Not that we're getting payed, but you get it.)
However, given that this game is about evolution, my original arguments about how organisms' diseases, parasites and everything else in the ecology is effected by their evolution, and that medication does, in fact, speed up the evolution of disease and parasitic organisms by changing the traits that are favored still limit the suspension of disbelief for immortality.

Parasites, viruses and all diseases can be easily conquered with nano-robotics.

Ah, the famous nano-robotics.
Parasites, definitely. Viruses mutate horrendously fast, though. I suppose it's not completely impossible, though logistically it seems like it would be pretty difficult to keep the nano robotics up to date.
There's also a debate I've seen on how much information a brain can hold, and how long a body can go on replacing its cells, but I suppose your nano robotics would potentially be good for that too.

I guess since we can't know quite yet how effective the nanobots will be, we can just stack this debate in the unsolvables and move on.

The Uteen wrote:

We're all talking about stopping reproduction, but what about if you don't?


Well, firstly the population will boom. Lots of new people being born and none dying, so the population grows greater and greater, and faster and faster. The species tries to expand but with the population doubling every decade (at a rough guess), they can't expand fast enough.
Housing becomes difficult to get as more and more demand arises. Huge skyscrapers whipped up as fast as possible offer basic housing needs, but they are low quality and it is hard to get out of them when you are at the top, so the young population quickly get unhappy, and housing gets suddenly a lot more expensive.
Food is quickly running out, with not enough farms, and not enough room to build any more, especially because that room is rapidly running out through new housing.
With more people, more energy is demanded and global warming reaches tipping point. The sea is rising rapidly, meaning less and less space for farms and houses. But, with the sea rising, people begin thinking towards floating cities, and quickly a plan is made to accommodate people using the sea. Using methods I don't want to go into because that isn't the point, floating cities arise and soon the sea is overwhelmed by floating cities. Sea farms quickly arise too. Problem solved, for now...

The floating cities mean things quickly start settling down again, and better housing becomes available, but then even the sea begins to run out, and skyscrapers are made on the sea cities, and food becomes hard to get, again.
Due to a fatal error the huge weight sinks a section of the city, causing mass panic. Riots begin and people begin to fight for food. Many people die, sea cities quickly loose population as people begin to think of them as unsafe. The people on land are packed incredibly tight together, and food runs out for most of them, even rationing doesn't work. Fighting breaks out over food. The population quickly dies off, taking with it much of man-kind's knowledge, until only a few, with or living close to farms survive.

A new generation arises, strange new religions form, with legends of the old civilisation. Space travel and advanced technology is a thing of the past now, the people are back to what is almost medieval times, set in these old ruins, with some high-tech technology, but fairly primitive in other areas. Robbing ancient shops for clothes and other long-lasting commonly found products becomes the norm, and people begin to thrive again, but dependant on the remnants of an old civilisation. Science is not as much of an interest, anymore, medicine is readily available in old pharmacies. But as they grow, they realise they need to take things into their own hands. What is the future of these strange, uncertain descendants of a once thriving empire?


And thus ends my tale of a devastating future, if anyone cares to make a story of what happens next, go ahead, my fingers can't take much more of this.
Actually, is this counted as off-topic novel-making, or relevant idea-thinking and thought arrangement of possible outcomes for the world as we know it, to be accounted for in the production of Thrive?


Thanks for reading.

Why do you assume a fatal error?

Commander Keen wrote:

Well, we could have these sliders change over time, but also give players control over them (any change by them would produce temporary unhappiness). Also, there would be a checkbox next to each slider, wich would lock the slider in place (but it would generate unhappiness as long as it's checked).

How do you get slide drift? You do not play as a leader. You play as the nation itself, so basically any "cultural change" IS you clicking on sliders.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

Also, slider locks reduce micromanagement needed. Why to force players to adjust it every once in a while if locking does effectively the same?

Because cultural diffusion doesn't happen over a couple of years, it takes centuries to make any truly significant change. And in many cases, the changes are for the better socially speaking. You wouldn't see any change that would bother you to the point of distraction unless you were trying to do something radically unlike our neighbors, or more likely holding either unrealistically high standards for your nation, or had a TO set that failed to complement the Nation's preferential traits(The little misc. traits that I described often require certain TOs) Ex.: Your nation has a trait that tells them to favor mass transit over personal transport, but all your Mass Transit TOs are outdated.

I understand your idea of forcing beleifs on people, but it doesn't work that way. These sliders reflect what the people think. You can influence that through media and foreign policy, but you can't control it, something all tyrants learn eventually. The only reason the player would have the ability to move them in the first place is to give them a degree of customizability in their nation and culture. We want to show the realism though.

Yes, you can. Think of the Internet we have today. You do not need it. You can totally control books. Televison? You can ban it, but that won't help. However, with our technology you could jam it. Somebody brave entering? Unlikely, but it still could happen. So kill them on the spot. Education is largely based on goverment, so you can control what they teach. Sounds easy.