Culture design decision input needed

[JosEPh_II]

Yeah it feels easier and it might've been more fun the other way - it's just that the AI isn't well equipped for the option - however, perhaps it would be cool to make it a part of the option that limits some penalties like WFL and restricts benefits from things like TD to only the player when those are on might be a cool way to go with this because it would be cool if the player had to but the AI didn't.

The NPCs should never get their Subdued teleported under any circumstance. And I still think the AI (from my test games) does very well at getting subdued animals back home during Prehistoric Era. But then again I'm not playing on Noble or any Diff below it either. So my Trackers are seeing AI Hunter and Master Hunters *and sometimes Rangers!) scooping up the "goodies" faster that I can.


But then again I do not play on game faster than 6K turns. The faster GS does not hinder the AI like a GS with 8k or more turns. And your appraisal of the AI being weak at Subduing IS directly related to GS and Diff level the player uses. This is why I still have problems with your reasoning that the AI is too weak in this regard and needs the Teleport crutch. My test games show me otherwise.

 

[pi4t]

The NPCs should never get their Subdued teleported under any circumstance. And I still think the AI (from my test games) does very well at getting subdued animals back home during Prehistoric Era. But then again I'm not playing on Noble or any Diff below it either. So my Trackers are seeing AI Hunter and Master Hunters *and sometimes Rangers!) scooping up the "goodies" faster that I can.


But then again I do not play on game faster than 6K turns. The faster GS does not hinder the AI like a GS with 8k or more turns. And your appraisal of the AI being weak at Subduing IS directly related to GS and Diff level the player uses. This is why I still have problems with your reasoning that the AI is too weak in this regard and needs the Teleport crutch. My test games show me otherwise.

If I understand correctly, you think that the reason the AI is able to deal with transporting animals without the teleport crutch is because it's given a big tech advantage, letting it blitz straight to tougher units which make transporting animals much easier. But isn't that just another crutch in itself, and a bigger one? I mean it's basically skipping the part of hunting where transportation is hardest, and skipping everything else from that era as well. Ideally, we'd have the AI be able to challenge the human player even on an equal tech level, and that won't happen in terms of unit rewards unless either 1) the AI's skill at transporting animals is improved; 2) trackers are buffed to the level of hunters for everyone, trivialising the challenge, or 3) AIs, at least, are allowed to skip the "transporting animals" step.

If it helps, think of this as an option for players who want to use a lower difficulty setting (where the AI won't get such a tech lead), and want to deal with transporting animals themselves, but still want the AI to get those unit builds at the same rate as the player.

 

[Blazenclaw]

"Culture doubles after X years" can be applied to more buildings; this will give old cities a further leg up compared to new ones once "all buildings" have been built. This can be done for infinite culture too, but has a much larger effect in this paradigm (as double culture in X years is more overshadowed by the simple age of the city).

Next SVN ver has this included. All culture buildings will have this effect applied on Equilibrium, which means that, in essence, it should be impossible for a 1v1 culture battle to be substantially won by an upstart 1k years younger than the older city, all other things being equal. "All other things being equal" is important phrasing here, though...

 

[Thunderbrd]

And your appraisal of the AI being weak at Subduing IS directly related to GS and Diff level the player uses.

It's more that I know that the AI doesn't do simple things the player can do to make it easier. Such as have some escort units ready to go out and meet with what the hunters are bringing back early to take the handoff so that valuable hunters times aren't being wasted and ensuring the stack is better protected, allowing the hunter to go back to doing its job as its meant to - hunters aren't really very well suited as escorts. It may be that terrain damage and damaged units don't hold up stacks (aka paralyze) like it used to - I'm sure there has been some work done on that which I wasn't part of. But also all the things a player can realize it needs to watch out for, navigate around, and so on, as well as simply how to get their hunters out to where different kinds of animals are spawning, knowing they don't have those kinds of creatures yet... It's not just a few options but a host of highly complex decisions I know the player can easily be better at than the AI that tells me that generally the AI is at a 'tactical' disadvantage. It does tend to meet the disadvantage by being able to field hunters faster and easier by far with handicaps unless you're on noble or less.

I mean we can always do options the other way around too, where ONLY the player gains an advantage, like the teleportation. But that's just a proxy 'make the game easier for only the player' setting.

I often have wished we had a more robust options setting system.

 

[Joij21]

There aren't any highly educated large nations which are poor, either. Whatever the size of the nation, people being well-off and well educated tend to go together, for fairly obvious reasons.

Of course you need to be rich to keep em.

It's just a lot of larger nations tend to struggle to get or stay rich due to overpopulation or post colonial woes. They have plenty of high IQ people because of their massive populations, just not the amenities and education opportunities to keep them pleased and satisfied, so they end up emigrating to smaller countries where wealth and opportunity is more easily achieved due to the lower population burden and therefore greater ease of creating a perfect welfare state with proper healthcare.

The United States is exceptional in that it is geographically and population wise large, however is also quite wealthy with decent ivy league universities. It's public school system is kinda trash as well as the lessor colleges, this tends to be negligible because those who migrate to the US and are high IQ are wealthy/connected enough whereby they just go straight to the ivy leagues. This is why the immigrant population has generally better chances progression and career wise then the actual home grown population that has to go through the public crap shoot system. It's also why you have more immigrants within high tech silicon valley companies, they know that those are the smart ones, privately taught by their parents in the home country (bypassing the crappy public education system) and then succeed in graduating from the ivy league. Nevertheless this system insures the United States keeps it's technological lead, they don't go back or to some other country because silicon valley jobs usually pay so well due to general lax tax laws on companies here rather than in Europe. Even if those silicon valley jobs don't work out the DOJ and defense industry is willing to hire many of these people to work in the Military Industrial Complex all payed at the taxpayers expense. Plus America loves war so they're always hiring and will always dedicate more tax money there!

Isn't really a cheat, it's intentional. If your population is low, it means its easier to keep your population on average well educated to what the elite minds know.

Yes but it needs more going for it than just that. You need trade connections, open high IQ immigration policy, and a way to retain the high IQ for it to succeed.

Interesting question but if we cut out everyone who didn't go to a university and get a degree that got them up to the cutting edge understood by society, what we'd have is a failure of society due to a loss of labor class effort. If you get tooooo much education going around, you get everyone feeling they're worth the top levels of pay and many would fail to get what they earned by their education level and would thus lead to resentments and unhappiness and... longer anarchy times... Of course, it would be quite an innovative society as such educated commoners would do all they could to create their own means of success, but labor costs would be through the roof.

No, not really. You can always have your goods that require blue collar work manufactured in a cheaper and less regulated nation (such as China). Plus the service type jobs, and farming jobs that have to be done domestically can be done through low skilled migrant workers (from nations such as Mexico) with questionable citizenship so they can be payed generally less thus adding savings down onto the consumer.

 

[Thunderbrd]

You can always have your goods that require blue collar work manufactured in a cheaper and less regulated nation (such as China)

Only if you are a Free Trade enabler and willing to open yourself up to all the many problems that creates, namely a trade deficit in this case. The fact that this element of our system defies our minimum wage laws makes it incredibly difficult for new bootstrap funded startups to have any chance to compete because it creates an enormous barrier for entry to obtaining the exorbitantly cheap labor you can get overseas IF you have the giant volumes of demand necessary to warrant doing so.

Plus the service type jobs, and farming jobs that have to be done domestically can be done through low skilled migrant workers (from nations such as Mexico) with questionable citizenship so they can be payed generally less thus adding savings down onto the consumer.

Which is also highly illegal and another cheat against the minimum wage and just goes to show that you are adopting undereducated citizens by proxy because you admit to requiring them but not wanting them to actually then legally count as citizens.

Besides that, the US largely does a very GOOD job of ensuring that only a very small percentage of its citizens are actually truly educated enough to be able to consider and challenge policy decisions and to question when we wish to take war actions. We are a very good example of a society nowhere near the higher level of education our era allows and if it got so we were further educated we would start having more trouble. It's really so bad that our citizens THINK themselves educated to deny them an understanding that they actually are quite under-educated on purpose. If most of us could tell you how a fission reactor functioned, or build microchips safely in their garage, or refuse to go to work because they could much more easily make themselves financially free millionaires with the tools and knowledge they possess, that would be an example of a truly highly educated society. The problem is, the more the commoner in the US understands, the more we have a hard time keeping inflation down because we start understanding how we're being taken advantage of by employers and start using the system to our benefit instead. This is part of what's happening now thanks to the internet creating far more education availability than the government has anticipated. It's the driving force behind the 'great resignation'. And it's a big part of why, raise the rates all they wish, our labor market stays tight.

A highly educated nation is a powerful one, potentially, but one that has very little control over its citizens.

 

[Joij21]

If most of us could tell you how a fission reactor functioned, or build microchips safely in their garage, or refuse to go to work because they could much more easily make themselves financially free millionaires with the tools and knowledge they possess, that would be an example of a truly highly educated society.

They probably don't want that amount of people having such super intelligence because it would mean so many people could become dangerous domestic terrorists with those skills. Think of millions of Ted Kozinskys running around. It would be difficult to keep the public order unless only a manageable yet corruptible few is allowed to have said skills, then find ways to flush out and ruin the lives and reputations of those who won't comply and accept said corruption.

That's why higher education levels should also lead to much more than longer anarchy turns but higher instability and crime as well due to the increase of domestic terrorism (but maybe make it where it tends to increase based on how un-egalitarian one's civics are since greater crime is already a thing for the lower levels, but maybe it's also more effective cause it's more intelligent criminals). Could also lead to more disease or unhealthiness as there would likely be more bioterrorism, food poisoning, water treatment hacking, ceron gas attacks in subways like that Buddhist terrorist who did so in Japan back in the 1990s, or makeshift guns like that Japanese guy who recently assassinated Shinzo Abe.

 

[Thunderbrd]

They probably don't want that amount of people having such super intelligence because it would mean so many people could become dangerous domestic terrorists with those skills. Think of millions of Ted Kozinskys running around. It would be difficult to keep the public order unless only a manageable yet corruptible few is allowed to have said skills, then find ways to flush out and ruin the lives and reputations of those who won't comply and accept said corruption.

Exactly. High education levels result in low obedience levels due to the sense of ultimate self-empowerment and a deeper grasp of the reasons secrets and higher decisionmaking bodies have for the choices they make, all of which invite one into greater ability to question and disagree, and at the same time, refuse to so easily be led into sheepish herds of tribal political echo chambers that are mostly just there so as to keep people thinking they know anything when in reality they're just being distracted from any of the real decisions being made at all.

but higher instability

If we were clear what 'instability' meant in this case, it would be represented. Working with the Rev stuff, I could see some instability factor buildings being put in place but I'm never fully sure from the XML looking into Rev, how the numbers should go and what would and would not be within tolerable ranges or effects numerically. Therefore, this is very true, but also would take a lot more research and understanding of rev.

Crime tends to be reduced by higher education because people understand the value of civic responsibility to their community as a benefit to themselves more, and by having the tools to advance their own lives, they don't have the sense of powerlessness that drives deviant behaviors. There's an argument for both sides though, in that arrogant intellectualism is also one of the primary motivations in criminal thinking as well, but usually that's where a few smart people can look around and see the droves of stupid ones and realize they shouldn't be trying to play by the games these common thinking people are playing by, so easily guided by rules that serve more to keep people in their lines rather than excelling. And yet, one shouldn't have to break society's rules to excel within it.

 

[Joij21]

Crime tends to be reduced by higher education because people understand the value of civic responsibility to their community as a benefit to themselves more, and by having the tools to advance their own lives, they don't have the sense of powerlessness that drives deviant behaviors. There's an argument for both sides though, in that arrogant intellectualism is also one of the primary motivations in criminal thinking as well, but usually that's where a few smart people can look around and see the droves of stupid ones and realize they shouldn't be trying to play by the games these common thinking people are playing by, so easily guided by rules that serve more to keep people in their lines rather than excelling. And yet, one shouldn't have to break society's rules to excel within it.

I disagree with this theory because one, some of your later criminal units are hackers and technarchists implying some kind of dystopian future whereby high IQ people are the ones committing all major crimes. Two, deviant behaviors I believe are intrinsic to human nature but furthermore such behaviors are not quelled by increased education as education doesn't even give a sense of empowerment to some. Sometimes one could get enlightened and have great disgust for everything that goes on around them, sometimes not, it depends on the person and intelligence can coexist with madness.

On the other hand I do believe a lack of education also leads to higher crime, but that tends to be crime of an ignorant and superstitious kind (though not always as some superstitious people can be quite intelligent, I'm thinking more of the witch burners which tend to be the stupid superstitious) which would tend to be more impulsive and less effective. You know guys from the ghetto getting easily arrested for dealing right in front of the cop (higher capture chance via police units). Just remember crime should also be generated from the higher educational levels as that's when your society is able to create more Ted Kozinskys. Remember he was blowing people up for three decades with his homemade bombs before he got caught in a shack living off the grid. That's the kind of crime that should generate Gotham City type villain units, or uh you know the Unibomber.

 

[Joij21]

In other words make them intelligent enough whereby they ain't wheeling and dealing crack in the projects, but not so intelligent whereby they reject industrial society and it's consequences.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Again, there are valid arguments for whether education would increase or decrease crime. However, one of the values that education usually installs at the same time as the rest of its education is indoctrination as well.

Anyhow, Soc 101: Deviance is the result of someone not meeting their needs (emotional/physical/financial or otherwise) the way their society instructs things SHOULD be done, and therefore being forced to find ways to meet said needs outside of the normal lines society defines. Deviance is not always crime, but it is outside of the cultural boundaries of 'acceptable' behavior. People can find it difficult to meet their needs because there are too few opportunities to do so in society (poverty for example) or they can find it difficult because they are personally flawed (aka neurodivergent or disabled without support for such issues, including narcissism as a neuro-divergency). How intelligent a person is makes it more likely they can find ways to meet their needs without the risks that crime entails. How educated a person is differs from how intelligent a person is. Only the intelligent can reach the highest levels of education personally. Supremely educated societies probably would squeeze off opportunities and at the same time make folks better at getting around system rules. However, it also makes enforcers in the system better at it.

The more we talk about this the more I think it may balance out and perhaps education shouldn't influence crime at all... but since it clearly influences disease on a highly rational basis, I had the effect be mirrored onto crime reduction due to the impact on society for those who would try to hold it together (therapy, teachers, parents, other problem solvers like bureaucrats working to keep things as functional as possible rather than rigged to fail.)

It's certainly a mulberry bush one can debate around in circles for quite a while though, I'll give ya that.

 

[JosEPh_II]

But isn't that just another crutch in itself, and a bigger one?

That is the model ALL of BtS is based on. Above Noble Game difficulty the AI is given ever increasing advantages as each higher level of Difficulty is used. You have been here since 2009. Surely you know this basic game fundamental by now?!

Such as have some escort units ready to go out and meet with what the hunters are bringing back early to take the handoff so that valuable hunters times aren't being wasted and ensuring the stack is better protected,

This is only feasible on the lower Difficulty levels and Longer Game speeds. Which is what pi4t wants. Remove all Difficulty levels and have Noble only and then you argument and pi4t's has any Real merit.

 

[Joij21]

However, one of the values that education usually installs at the same time as the rest of its education is indoctrination as well.

Well that's not exactly what I would consider to be true education. That would rather be represented as culture in general. The plot culture which controls what nation people identify with would be the culture which represents the current cultural zeitgeist. City culture would represent past historical perceptions of the society built up over time regardless of whether those represent historical truths or feel good myths, sometimes it's a little of both.

Therefore it's the culture which would double as propaganda/indoctrination for the society, and since culture in the game already does this pacification role that's how one would keep one's intelligent yet deviant minds under control but also one's dumb yet deviant minds under control. As far as dumb vs. intelligent is concerned the quality of the culture would have to be different to satiate each. So perhaps a distinction between low brow and high brow culture should be made, but nevertheless educational buildings and units should provide some culture with the quality of the education determining whether one gets greater low or high brow fluff tossed in with the actual education points themselves.

 

[tmv]

Again, there are valid arguments for whether education would increase or decrease crime.

It could also depend on the crime itself.

 

[Maltazard]

I feel like you're confating crime and "political crime" such as resistance to tiranny (which from the point of view of the player, aka the Leviathan, is terrorism). You're also conflating education and free thinking a lot. There's plenty of outrageously bigoted yet highyl educated engineers in the world, in fact they tend to be rather conservative.
Also, fully developed regimes integrate education into their power system. There's no deviant thought if everything is controlled. Think about 1984. Imams in Iran are the pinnacle of education, yet they're the strictest thinkers. STEM graduates are the new blue collars... if even that, a unionized blue collar worker in the 60s could sustain a family of five on his salary with holidays and all.
In other words, it's impossible to represent all of this nuance with two scales on a horizontal level.

 

[Thunderbrd]

it's impossible to represent all of this nuance with two scales on a horizontal level.

Agreed. Though, we do represent crime as including political crime in many areas of the crime development in the mod, such as the scoundrel that masters in spreading revolution sentiment.

Well that's not exactly what I would consider to be true education.

While I can understand that sentiment, in C2C you look at all sources of education and you also see a source of indoctrination exists there. Thus there is a noteworthy overlap. If anything our debate on this matter has given strong consideration to divorcing the crime reduction from education... though at the moment the balance seems to be working in play.

It could also depend on the crime itself.

Again true - this may be something that can become a bit more highlighted with some elements of the Outbreaks and Afflictions stuff once we get that deep.

 

[Joij21]

I feel like you're confating crime and "political crime" such as resistance to tiranny (which from the point of view of the player, aka the Leviathan, is terrorism).

You know I wonder how much crime today isn't just merely "crime" but rather something of a politically, racially, ethnically, or religiously motivated mindset. Yet for the sake of preventing panic and copycat actors it is dubbed as "crime" and not terrorism.

In other words there could be like a thousand, possibly more, secret civil wars or insurgencies silently going on under our noses here in the Western World. Mexico right now is already in a state of noticeable civil war with all the drug cartels and militias fighting each other, and yet we here in the West have our media simply report it as "crime" or "gang related activity". You also hear the term "extrajudicial killing" for whenever the Mexican state itself kills unarmed innocents which it suspects (quite wrongly and possibly intentionally because of their corruption) of being part of the cartels, when in reality such events should be called a massacre, just like the Boston Massacre!

But again the press doesn't care and are even taking money from the very people who don't want anyone to know. It would make more sense that crime as represented in C2C is actually a who's who of God knows what, whereby it's up to individuals or the state to decide whether or not it's something typical (as the word "crime" would suggest) or something much more insurrectionist in nature.

 

[Maltazard]

Well, there are some key differences. For instance, a main one is if an organization is endemic or is sponsored by a foreign state. Also, some organizations (I'm thinking about private corporations with their own security forces) probably have far more push and pull in some areas than what the state has - the state is just a bunch of people doing stuff, and they can be corrupt, inefficient, inept, self serving, etc. You see this a lot in "failed states", but what are those exactly?

Here in Italy we have mafia and we call it organized crime, but it's really a parallel (actually, often intersecting) power structure that doesn't acknowledge the central authority and its monopoly on force. Now any decent state has to enforce its monopoly on the use of force, or else it loses authority - it becomes a failed state. So I for one would be ok calling the mafia terrorists, but for some reason it doesn't quite work that way: we assume that terrorists must be ideologically driven, preferrably by an irrational ideology at that. Mafia just wants to make money and there's little irrational about their operations, so they don't quite fit the picture. This is specific to the western point of view (which is also shaped by the idea that crime isn't always wrong) - in communist countries anyone who doesn't bend along is an "enemy of the state" - and they're not wrong, from their point of view. In theocracies, they're infidels. To what extent individualism is allowed and encouraged concurs to determine the line between what's criminal and what's not.

How many people have sheer admiration for Al Capone or El Chapo? They've glorified them with movies and TV shows. The same has been done here with the mafia - while the battle against organized crime it's still an ongoing struggle, the mafioso is romanticized - a sign of a failed state.

Now, I've also heard some americans referring to their local police force as just another gang that has the backing of the judicial system - and with civil forfeiture in mind, or the lack of a real protect and serve obligation, it doesn't sound so far fetched.
So I suppose the main difference is in the eyes of the beholders as to what legitimacy they see to any given action. To the indios in amazonia, the Brazilian state is a rogue entity encroaching on their territory. To the corporations aiming to turn the amazonias into cow fields, they're eco terrorists. In a scenario like this, the state has no choice but to enforce its rule of law, backing whoever is legally the legitimate owner of the territory, or let chaos lose.

In C2C crime units are effectively all foreign agents, which in of itself doesn't quite lend to the idea of a criminal: a criminal should be self serving, not work for a third party (any organization). If I get too many thieves and scoundrels I might consider it covert warfare and retaliate - and the AI does this too since you somehow get diplomatic penalties from killing their units and taking their cities with hidden nationality units (which I believe is a bug but a good one to keep).

In short: authority, legitimacy of power (recognized by the beholders), and the effective monopoly of force are the line breakers. Yet, most petty thieves are probably stealing because they're hungry, stupid, or both. They might have an intuition that there's something wrong with the larger picture, but most shop lifters aren't anarchists making a statement against the big man - some however will be and there's no way to know. While everything seems to be politicized today, usually occam's razor applies. It's also become a bit of a convenient excuse - "I did it because my religion/beliefs/ideology/personal contrivances made me" - I don't believe that we can take so much away from personal responsibility. Usually, if you inquire a little bit, they are acutally clueless as to what they're referring to. As much as I deeply despide the notion of wealth inequality and billionaires, I wouldn't kill one if given the chance to get away with it. I'm just not a criminal, and most people aren't.

On the other hand, Stalin was a bank robber, and most prominent progressive political figures in the XIX century had quite the police record. Criminalizing political dissent is a dangerous act by the state. On the other hand, it can't allow anything to happen helplessly or it loses authority and therefore legitimacy again. When there's an opening, then, competing organizations step in.

 

[Thunderbrd]

In C2C crime units are effectively all foreign agents

No... the barbarian ones that emerge in cities are the local free agent ones, citizens operating criminally on their own accords for their own reasons. Of course, they are resistors to the state defined rules and are thus criminals. But crime is also defined as anything that damages or disrupts the cohesion and mechanism of society. A crime does not HAVE to be defined as a crime to be one in C2C terms - it just has to be disruptful. Whether the state considers murder to be a crime or not, it damages the society either way. Of course, what damages the society can sometimes be a benefit for various reasons. Hackers will likely be all that can possibly save us when the AI's try to take over. Freedoms have long been earned for everyone by the actions taken to resist authority, pushing back where oppression is sinking in.

most shop lifters aren't anarchists making a statement against the big man

True, just as those who commit suicide aren't thinking 'This is really just the loudest cry for help I can make if I survive this'... but the statement, nevertheless, is made that there is a problem here.

 

[Thunderbrd]

and the AI does this too since you somehow get diplomatic penalties from killing their units and taking their cities with hidden nationality units (which I believe is a bug but a good one to keep)

I wrote about this recently on discord saying it does need to be addressed but that HOW it is addressed should be based on the amount of espionage a nation has against the nation using HN units to harm it.