Socio-Economic Model Full Draft

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

Okay great to hear. To make it easier I'll put a poll up to see what people think.

Okay as long as no objection shows up soon, we'll move over to the Specialist system.

I know that this post isn't active for a while, but I read it and I found it interesting. I'm new here and I'd like to tell you my opinion on the matter.

First of all Nick-the-Nick was right about the term capitalist. Capitalist isn't necessarily a person that believes in capitalism, but a person that has a huge fortune and power. Aristocrats do not exist anymore and they will never come back. Today the capitalists are the leading class and most governments work for them.
Capitalism isn't the only system. Before capitalism we had feudalism (Aristocrats were the leading class). At the fist societies we had a "prehistoric communism" (by the term communism I mean not a class system).

I do not believe that capitalism will last forever. Every system has an "expire date". I liked the idea of the resource-based economy (RBE) and I believe that the day will come that the capitalists will lose the power and the humanity will be able to cooperate (it's a long and hard road, none said it's easy).

About the communist states. There are none. According to the most famous communist Marx, there's not such thing as state during communism. States exist in socialism (socialism is immature communism). Communism never existed.

I do not support the existed socialist states. Some people like Stalin used the title of "communism" to commit terrible crimes. I do not try to pass on this forum any communist propaganda, but the real communism (and the real socialism) is about direct democracy, liberty and equality. Dictatorships have nothing to do with (real) socialism or communism.

I'm telling you this because socialism/communism is a term that was used by a lot of people the wrong way. Like science. In the wrong hands it can be used to cause destruction, in the right hands it can help humanity, prevent further ecological catastrophes on the planet and much more.

This thread is Archived, meaning it is out of date. Check the new thread on how societies will be modelled.