Societal Structure

Ok, so there is something that I think is sorely needed for civ phase and onwards, and that is the different classes of society. With this, we can calculate the taxable income of ANY SC simply by counting the populations of the different factions. Each faction will have a different taxable income per population rate, such as 500 credits per 120 people. This is the classification model I drafted up:

High Income: Aristocrats, Capitalists
Middle Income: Merchants, Officers, Clergy, Bureaucrats, Artisans
Low Income: Labourers, Soldiers, Farmers, Craftsmen, Slaves

TBD: Scholars (I can't think of where they would go, please help!)

Each faction (eg. the clergy, the farmers) plays a different role in your society, has different needs, produces different things, and generates a different income. However, there are no subdivisions within the factions. The revenue of the farmers, for example, refers to the combined revenue of the farmers as a whole. However, before we can get to the roles they play, we need to cover another new idea, manpower.

Manpower is a representation of a workforce or body of individuals. The manpower of a faction is the number of able-bodied people in that faction. When factories are designed in the Tech Editor, the number of machines requiring operation in the factory will be counted and a corresponding "required manpower" value will be given to the factory. If I was to, say, design a Textile Manufactory in the TE, and inside I placed 5 mechanical looms, and each loom required 10 people to operate it, then the total required manpower of the manufactory is 50. Manpower is filled by the different factions of your society. Labourers, for example, fill roles in buildings that harvest or refine raw materials. Since the Textile Manufactory takes wool and turns it into cloth/linen, it would be operated by labourers and its required manpower value could only be filled by Labourer manpower. This could be coded in with a simple tag attachment system. If either the input or the output of a factory is a raw material and not a fine good, then the factory is given a tag "employs labourers". The computer identifies that tag, then displays beside the required manpower that it employs labourers. All we would have to do is determine several more methods by which we can tell the computer how to identify what employs what. Here's a list of each faction and their roles and effects.

(These are not set in stone, I need help filling in the blanks and I would appreciate it if you offered some constructive criticism for any roles or effects).

Aristocrats: TBD (Possibly increase culture or influence?)
Capitalists: With high economic freedoms and high taxable incomes, capitalists will go on their own (without the player's instruction) and construct factories with high profits or to fill any demands in the economy.

Merchants: Operate trade routes.
Bureaucrats: Fill government positions, fill managements roles in factories employing 100 manpower or over. Increase administration (A value I will talk about in another thread)
Officers: Fill leadership roles in your military.
Clergy: Fill manpower needs of religious buildings (Increase culture? Increase happiness?)
Artisans: Do not work. Increase culture.

Craftsmen: Fill manpower needs of factories that only consume and produce fine goods (aka finished goods refinement, such as taking the cloth mentioned earlier and making clothes)
Labourers: Fill manpower needs of factories that either intake raw materials, produce them, or both. Increase production.
Soldiers: Recruited for your armies.*
Farmers: Fill manpower needs of buildings that collect food from the environment.
Slaves: Can replace any roles normally filled by farmers, craftsmen, or labourers, but only at a 2:1 ratio (this simulates their lack of expertise and training in the field). It would take 100 slaves to operate a farm requiring 50 farmers.

Scholars: Do not work. Increase science.

*NOTE: Say you have 1000 manpower of soldiers. If you were to recruit a regiment of footmen, 100 strong, then your soldiers' manpower is decreased by 100, because 100 of them were just mobilized. When active soldiers are disbanded (aka your regiment of footmen), it returns however many of them that are still alive back to the manpower pool. So, to summarize, if you had 1000 manpower to start, and you recruited 100 of them into footmen, then only 60 of them returned alive, then you disbanded them, your resulting manpower would be 960.

Populations can shift between the different factions. The following is a list of examples to demonstrate the dynamic nature of the factions, because they change a lot over time. All factions do not always have to exist.
Capitalists only really appear at the dawn of the industrial revolution.
Being communist could result in a lack of or even complete absence of capitalists in your nation.
Being atheist or free religions could result in a lack of or even complete absence of clergy in your nation.
Bureaucrats do not appear until later in the game, with more advanced governments and larger nations requiring more efficient administrations.
Slaves tend to disappear with the advent of civil rights, liberalism, and other political reforms.

Another important thing to note is that certain factions may change class under certain conditions and acquire a new taxable income per population rate. For example, in a military dictatorship, officers could become a high income faction instead of middle income. If their initial taxable income was 1000 credits per 100 people, then after they rose an income class it would change to a higher rate of credits per people.

NOTE: I might add more to this post later, but that covers the main points for now.

In addition, the population of each faction will be counted, as well as the population of that faction that is operating a factory or building (aka working), or receiving the necessary resources they need to pursue their crafts (the factions that don't work, like artisans and scholars).

The total number of people in that faction minus the number of people in that faction that are employed or generating their appropriate output equals the number of people who aren't employed, producing anything, and have no income (aka unemployed). You can only generate a tax on the number of people who do generate income, so unemployment in this manner becomes a factor to deal with in gameplay. The higher percentage of people are employed, the more they contribute to the economy and the more you can generate on taxes.

You're doing great work here.

I got it!

Merchants operate trade routes, that is their employment. The way it would work is, the number of merchants necessary to operate a trade route is equal to the largest value (in tons) of cargo being traded. To put this into an example, if I had a trade route with Violetnam, where I exported 5 tons of cloth in return for an import of 10 tons of coal, the number of merchants required to operate and maintain that trade route is ten, since the largest of the values was 10 tons of coal. The merchants would form a caravan, load up 5 tons of cloth, deliver it to the designated country/city/factory, load up 10 tons of coal, then deliver that back. That cycle would just keep repeating unless the trade route was terminated. Military units could be assigned to escort trade caravans, a very simple trigger just stating that wherever the merchants go, the military units must remain within a certain radius of them.

Using this model, one could distribute their merchants across a few trade routes with large cargoes, or across many trade routes with small shipments back and forth. The total income of the merchants of a city/of your country would just be a sum of the prices of all the goods they return to your country. Then your tax rate would be applied onto that.

Another thing to mention, high income factions are the hardest to please. Their demand for goods is 2x that of the average. Middle income factions have a demand of 1x, and Low income classes a demand of 0.5x. Therefore, if the middle income demand for bread was 1 ton/10 people, then the high income demand would be 2 tons/10 people, or 1 ton/5 people. Low income factions would have a demand of 0.5 tons/10 people, or 1 ton/20 people. This represents the higher consumption rates of higher income classes, and would generally shift populations to form the traditional high income minority structure. Poorer countries would have lower overall consumption rates than wealthier ones as they would have less people in the high and middle income classes as it is harder for them to fulfill their demands.

Math!

Rich = {x|x>y%+z%}
Middle = {x|y%+z%>x>y%}
Poor = {x|x<y%}

LOL, Set theory is fun!

These roles that you have designated, are they restricted by the specialist counts in SCs? Because i believe it only makes sense that you have to have a number relative to their corresponding specialist. For instance, we can't have our Labourer + Craftsmen count equal more than our Worker Specialist count in a city.

I'm also not certain that we should set all these roles as high income, low income, etc. I'll think on this.

Specialist count? I'm sorry I have only heard one reference to that and I didn't find any details afterwards. I'll go and look it up now.

As for the incomes, do you mean that they shouldn't be restricted to one income class only? I meant to mention that factions can switch between the different income classes, they are not just limited to the one they start in by default. I thought I had included that. I'll quickly edit that in.

NickTheNick wrote:

Specialist count? I'm sorry I have only heard one reference to that and I didn't find any details afterwards. I'll go and look it up now.

As for the incomes, do you mean that they shouldn't be restricted to one income class only? I meant to mention that factions can switch between the different income classes, they are not just limited to the one they start in by default. I thought I had included that. I'll quickly edit that in.

Society Centres have Specialists. These specialists sound a lot like what you're talking about, but with slightly more complex mechanics.

Ahkay, coolios. As long as we're on the same page.

Ahh ok. The more I read about specialists the more I see how similar they are to the system I made, like you said. I will send you a PM to discuss the implementation as there are some points I would like to cover.